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Big K.R.I.T.

King Remembered In Time

Rap

Mike Madden

Return of 4Eva was a new-school, rearview-checking masterpiece of Dixie rap, but that 2011 mixtape remains the pinnacle of Big K.R.I.T.’s young career. That’s not to say the Mississippi native hasn’t turned out some major highs over the past couple years: his “Money on the Floor”, Freddie Gibbs’s “Rob Me a Nigga" and T.I.’s “I’m Flexin’” are just three examples of why K.R.I.T.’s been one of the most vital young forces in rap both on the mic and as a producer. It’s just that, even after the debut proper Live from the Underground, K.R.I.T.’s yet to deliver the irrefutable classic-- his Ridin’ Dirty, his The Diary-- that Return seemingly promised was on its way. Despite the mixtape's major features (Bun B, Wiz Khalifa, Future), its interesting risk-taking (there’s a James Blake sample on “REM”), and the music's spit-shined mastering job that recalls Rick Ross’s triumphant Rich Forever, the new King Remembered in Time doesn’t try to deliver on that promise. Instead of feeling like a definitive pinpointing of the spot K.R.I.T.’s at right now, King sounds more like a checkpoint halfway between where he’s been and where he wants to go. As the beats go, the tape is one of the boldest of the year, with samples ranging from Blake’s “The Wilhelm Scream” to Cody ChesnuTT’s “Serve This Royalty” and enough instrumentation (live or otherwise) to embarrass a Musician’s Friend catalog. But what distinguishes King from other K.R.I.T. releases is that there’s nothing quite as earth-splitting as “Country Shit” or “Money on the Floor” here; half the tracks hardly even have drums, and the ones that knock at all aren't about to devastate anybody’s trunk. “Talkin Bout Nothing” is a variation on the lingering California ratchet sound, the piano that runs through “REM” goes great with Blake’s haunted croon, and the drips of horns and guitars on tracks like “Banana Clip Theory” and “Meditate” are perfectly sensual. Point is, K.R.I.T. is searching for ways to write hooky, immediately gratifying music without having to concoct something so aggressive as a sheer banger. Which is admirable, but King proves that he hasn’t quite figured it all out yet. If there’s been one knock on K.R.I.T., it’s that he’s goofy as a rapper, a guy who might have grown up agreeing with the East Coast’s collective reservations of Southern rappers but could never argue with the latter party’s commercial success. His humble-hedonist persona is an appealing one, but no new folds to the temperament are presented here, which ultimately implies that K.R.I.T.’s abilities as an MC might be lagging even further behind his production abilities than they have been in other cases. If he’s able to even out his skillset-- which is still, as the dude Robin Van Der Zee might put it, very unique-- his still-immense potential could be fully realized. For the time being, K.R.I.T. has some catching up to do if he doesn’t want to go down as a guy who peaked too early.

Artist: Big K.R.I.T., Album: King Remembered In Time, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "Return of 4Eva was a new-school, rearview-checking masterpiece of Dixie rap, but that 2011 mixtape remains the pinnacle of Big K.R.I.T.’s young career. That’s not to say the Mississippi native hasn’t turned out some major highs over the past couple years: his “Money on the Floor”, Freddie Gibbs’s “Rob Me a Nigga" and T.I.’s “I’m Flexin’” are just three examples of why K.R.I.T.’s been one of the most vital young forces in rap both on the mic and as a producer. It’s just that, even after the debut proper Live from the Underground, K.R.I.T.’s yet to deliver the irrefutable classic-- his Ridin’ Dirty, his The Diary-- that Return seemingly promised was on its way. Despite the mixtape's major features (Bun B, Wiz Khalifa, Future), its interesting risk-taking (there’s a James Blake sample on “REM”), and the music's spit-shined mastering job that recalls Rick Ross’s triumphant Rich Forever, the new King Remembered in Time doesn’t try to deliver on that promise. Instead of feeling like a definitive pinpointing of the spot K.R.I.T.’s at right now, King sounds more like a checkpoint halfway between where he’s been and where he wants to go. As the beats go, the tape is one of the boldest of the year, with samples ranging from Blake’s “The Wilhelm Scream” to Cody ChesnuTT’s “Serve This Royalty” and enough instrumentation (live or otherwise) to embarrass a Musician’s Friend catalog. But what distinguishes King from other K.R.I.T. releases is that there’s nothing quite as earth-splitting as “Country Shit” or “Money on the Floor” here; half the tracks hardly even have drums, and the ones that knock at all aren't about to devastate anybody’s trunk. “Talkin Bout Nothing” is a variation on the lingering California ratchet sound, the piano that runs through “REM” goes great with Blake’s haunted croon, and the drips of horns and guitars on tracks like “Banana Clip Theory” and “Meditate” are perfectly sensual. Point is, K.R.I.T. is searching for ways to write hooky, immediately gratifying music without having to concoct something so aggressive as a sheer banger. Which is admirable, but King proves that he hasn’t quite figured it all out yet. If there’s been one knock on K.R.I.T., it’s that he’s goofy as a rapper, a guy who might have grown up agreeing with the East Coast’s collective reservations of Southern rappers but could never argue with the latter party’s commercial success. His humble-hedonist persona is an appealing one, but no new folds to the temperament are presented here, which ultimately implies that K.R.I.T.’s abilities as an MC might be lagging even further behind his production abilities than they have been in other cases. If he’s able to even out his skillset-- which is still, as the dude Robin Van Der Zee might put it, very unique-- his still-immense potential could be fully realized. For the time being, K.R.I.T. has some catching up to do if he doesn’t want to go down as a guy who peaked too early."

Half-Handed Cloud

As Stowaways in Cabinets of Surf, We Live-out in Our Members a Kind of Rebirth

Rock

Zach Kelly

It's never going to be easy to make Christian-themed music for the indie set and find a large, receptive audience. Half-Handed Cloud ringleader John Ringhofer has gone about it in the smartest way possible, aligning with artists unafraid to express their spirituality, like Sufjan Stevens (Ringhofer is a long-time member of the Illinoisemakers) and Daniel Smith of Danielson, who helped mix this album, Half-Handed Cloud's fifth full-length. Here, amidst the short, choppy tunes, Ringhofer is even more forthcoming in his concept, assembling an album "where water serves as a surrogate body for God." But Ringhofer's anxious, exhaustive approach makes As Stowaways a hard sell. The music shifts, starts, stops, and shifts again in uncomfortable ways. By packing each minute with a mess of hairpin turns and giddy rhythmic fluctuations, he's made it difficult to form any sort of emotional connection with the material here. By the time you've spent 10 minutes with the album, you feel like you are overdue for a breather. That said, Ringhofer clearly knows what he's doing and has a specific effect in mind. The songs are able to turn on a dime and are crafted with great attention to detail. And the excitement in their creation is palpable. Sometimes, the songs have an appeal reminiscent of a hyper-caffeinated Shins, with the addition of a refined sense of quirkiness that evokes a Mark Mothersbaugh score for a Wes Anderson movie. And the introduction of sweet but fleeting patches of string and horn work is welcome, especially as a respite from Ringhofer's zigzagging songs. But while it's clear that a lot of love went into As Stowaways, it's ultimately hard to keep up. The songs are jarring and all over the place, which is a real problem, but the focus is lost in other ways, too. Ringhofer often delivers these anecdotes and thoughts in an irritatingly cheeky manner that makes it hard to form any spiritual or emotional connection, and his pinched voice is an acquired taste, to put it mildly. For such a hyperactive record, As Stowaways weirdly becomes a rather passive listening experience, difficult to penetrate beyond its busy surface.

Artist: Half-Handed Cloud, Album: As Stowaways in Cabinets of Surf, We Live-out in Our Members a Kind of Rebirth, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.2 Album review: "It's never going to be easy to make Christian-themed music for the indie set and find a large, receptive audience. Half-Handed Cloud ringleader John Ringhofer has gone about it in the smartest way possible, aligning with artists unafraid to express their spirituality, like Sufjan Stevens (Ringhofer is a long-time member of the Illinoisemakers) and Daniel Smith of Danielson, who helped mix this album, Half-Handed Cloud's fifth full-length. Here, amidst the short, choppy tunes, Ringhofer is even more forthcoming in his concept, assembling an album "where water serves as a surrogate body for God." But Ringhofer's anxious, exhaustive approach makes As Stowaways a hard sell. The music shifts, starts, stops, and shifts again in uncomfortable ways. By packing each minute with a mess of hairpin turns and giddy rhythmic fluctuations, he's made it difficult to form any sort of emotional connection with the material here. By the time you've spent 10 minutes with the album, you feel like you are overdue for a breather. That said, Ringhofer clearly knows what he's doing and has a specific effect in mind. The songs are able to turn on a dime and are crafted with great attention to detail. And the excitement in their creation is palpable. Sometimes, the songs have an appeal reminiscent of a hyper-caffeinated Shins, with the addition of a refined sense of quirkiness that evokes a Mark Mothersbaugh score for a Wes Anderson movie. And the introduction of sweet but fleeting patches of string and horn work is welcome, especially as a respite from Ringhofer's zigzagging songs. But while it's clear that a lot of love went into As Stowaways, it's ultimately hard to keep up. The songs are jarring and all over the place, which is a real problem, but the focus is lost in other ways, too. Ringhofer often delivers these anecdotes and thoughts in an irritatingly cheeky manner that makes it hard to form any spiritual or emotional connection, and his pinched voice is an acquired taste, to put it mildly. For such a hyperactive record, As Stowaways weirdly becomes a rather passive listening experience, difficult to penetrate beyond its busy surface."

Burnt Friedman

First Night Forever

Electronic

Philip Sherburne

Burnt Friedman has a rep for flirting with the funk. Early on, his approach and his output-- intricately polyrhythmic, meticulously crafted "hypermodern jazz" tracks full of shimmering vibraphones and cheeky Latin percussion-- often found him branded as an ironist. But his productions, whether solo, with Atom Heart (as the duo Flanger), or alongside a growing cast of collaborators-- like Root 70 saxophonist Hayden Chisholm, improvising/experimental guitarist Joseph Suchy, vocalist Theo Altenberg and, perhaps most importantly, Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit-- have never been reducible to kitsch. Listen to Burnt Friedman & The Nu Dub Players' 2003 album Can't Cool: for all the obvious digital traces (oddly truncated hi-hats, drum patterns physically impossible for a single percussionist to play) there are no winks or nudges. To say that "Fuck Back", the record's lead cut, is a postmodern take on Afrobeat is hardly to deny its ferocity: no matter how many steps removed from the source, urgency remains coded in the music's DNA. Indeed, it's in the collaborative work that Friedman has really dug into the groove, particularly on his two records with Liebezeit: both volumes of Secret Rhythms offer an approach to polyrhythm rarely heard in electronic music. By slowing everything down, the two amplify the wiggle room, leaving more space for drum hits to bounce beyond the strictures of quantization, allowing for rhythms that restore liquidity to the idea of pulse. After 2006's sublime Heaps Dub-- in which the jazz quartet Root 70 performed acoustic versions of Friedman and Flanger classics that Friedman, in turn, remixed into 10 tracks of exactly five minutes apiece, a sort of dub of a dub of a dub-- Friedman, aided by an expanded cast of characters, returns with a far more conventional album. Formally, it's probably the most conventional of his career: these aren't krautrock jams or ambient dub meditations or electro-cumbia dustups, they're proper songs fronted by a rotating crew of vocalists. Longtime Friedman collaborator Theo Altenberg lends a Tom Waits-like croak to three songs; Hamburg soul singer Daniel Dodd-Ellis, Berlin's Barbara Panther, Funkstörung collaborator Enik and UK broken-beat veteran Steve Spacek all guest on two apiece. All of them dusky, throaty singers, they give First Night an unmistakably late-night vibe. The closest reference point might be to the acoustic-guitars-and-edits approach to soul practiced by His Name Is Alive on 2001's Someday My Blues Will Cover the Earth, which might not be as surprising as it first seems: Friedman actually covered "Someday" on Can't Cool, and he also remixed H.N.I.A.'s "Nothing Special" for a set of Someday-derived singles. Timbre and voicing play a central role, because these songs hardly live and die by their chord changes: propelled by scraggly guitar figures and dub's ruminative bass lines, they remain classically minimalist in spirit, splitting the difference between Steve Reich and Roy Ayers' RAMP (or Philip Glass and Tony Allen). What makes even the most static of the songs so engaging is the way they seem to shimmer in place, as diverse lines of winds, strings, guitar, accordion, synthesizers and effects weave porous webs. It's somewhat shocking that only two tracks are credited to a session drummer, Root 70's Jochen Rückert-- the majority of the record's rhythms are presumably Friedman's own programmed creations. If true, it's one hell of a percussive coup; for all their understatement, these are among the most sophisticated beats Friedman's ever come up with. Like virtually everything on the album, they never call attention to their own virtuosity. The whole record, in fact, has been put together so subtly that at first it may fail to stick. For a long time, I thought of First Night Forever as a nice, relaxing mood piece, and bided my time for a new Friedman/Liebezeit collaboration. But somehow I kept coming back to the album; where most records on my review-assignments list find their way back to the shelves, this one crept into regular rotation in those rare slots I listen to music for pleasure: morning coffee, cooking dinner, the bedtime wind-down. Such domestically functionalist music often gets the short end of the critical stick; 30 years after Music for Airports, we still have an innate distrust of music as wallpaper. First Night Forever's trick is that it functions on two levels at once: behind that calming, rippling, jazzy veneer there are strange forces at work, peeling back the wallpaper to reveal a passageway to points unknown.

Artist: Burnt Friedman, Album: First Night Forever, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "Burnt Friedman has a rep for flirting with the funk. Early on, his approach and his output-- intricately polyrhythmic, meticulously crafted "hypermodern jazz" tracks full of shimmering vibraphones and cheeky Latin percussion-- often found him branded as an ironist. But his productions, whether solo, with Atom Heart (as the duo Flanger), or alongside a growing cast of collaborators-- like Root 70 saxophonist Hayden Chisholm, improvising/experimental guitarist Joseph Suchy, vocalist Theo Altenberg and, perhaps most importantly, Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit-- have never been reducible to kitsch. Listen to Burnt Friedman & The Nu Dub Players' 2003 album Can't Cool: for all the obvious digital traces (oddly truncated hi-hats, drum patterns physically impossible for a single percussionist to play) there are no winks or nudges. To say that "Fuck Back", the record's lead cut, is a postmodern take on Afrobeat is hardly to deny its ferocity: no matter how many steps removed from the source, urgency remains coded in the music's DNA. Indeed, it's in the collaborative work that Friedman has really dug into the groove, particularly on his two records with Liebezeit: both volumes of Secret Rhythms offer an approach to polyrhythm rarely heard in electronic music. By slowing everything down, the two amplify the wiggle room, leaving more space for drum hits to bounce beyond the strictures of quantization, allowing for rhythms that restore liquidity to the idea of pulse. After 2006's sublime Heaps Dub-- in which the jazz quartet Root 70 performed acoustic versions of Friedman and Flanger classics that Friedman, in turn, remixed into 10 tracks of exactly five minutes apiece, a sort of dub of a dub of a dub-- Friedman, aided by an expanded cast of characters, returns with a far more conventional album. Formally, it's probably the most conventional of his career: these aren't krautrock jams or ambient dub meditations or electro-cumbia dustups, they're proper songs fronted by a rotating crew of vocalists. Longtime Friedman collaborator Theo Altenberg lends a Tom Waits-like croak to three songs; Hamburg soul singer Daniel Dodd-Ellis, Berlin's Barbara Panther, Funkstörung collaborator Enik and UK broken-beat veteran Steve Spacek all guest on two apiece. All of them dusky, throaty singers, they give First Night an unmistakably late-night vibe. The closest reference point might be to the acoustic-guitars-and-edits approach to soul practiced by His Name Is Alive on 2001's Someday My Blues Will Cover the Earth, which might not be as surprising as it first seems: Friedman actually covered "Someday" on Can't Cool, and he also remixed H.N.I.A.'s "Nothing Special" for a set of Someday-derived singles. Timbre and voicing play a central role, because these songs hardly live and die by their chord changes: propelled by scraggly guitar figures and dub's ruminative bass lines, they remain classically minimalist in spirit, splitting the difference between Steve Reich and Roy Ayers' RAMP (or Philip Glass and Tony Allen). What makes even the most static of the songs so engaging is the way they seem to shimmer in place, as diverse lines of winds, strings, guitar, accordion, synthesizers and effects weave porous webs. It's somewhat shocking that only two tracks are credited to a session drummer, Root 70's Jochen Rückert-- the majority of the record's rhythms are presumably Friedman's own programmed creations. If true, it's one hell of a percussive coup; for all their understatement, these are among the most sophisticated beats Friedman's ever come up with. Like virtually everything on the album, they never call attention to their own virtuosity. The whole record, in fact, has been put together so subtly that at first it may fail to stick. For a long time, I thought of First Night Forever as a nice, relaxing mood piece, and bided my time for a new Friedman/Liebezeit collaboration. But somehow I kept coming back to the album; where most records on my review-assignments list find their way back to the shelves, this one crept into regular rotation in those rare slots I listen to music for pleasure: morning coffee, cooking dinner, the bedtime wind-down. Such domestically functionalist music often gets the short end of the critical stick; 30 years after Music for Airports, we still have an innate distrust of music as wallpaper. First Night Forever's trick is that it functions on two levels at once: behind that calming, rippling, jazzy veneer there are strange forces at work, peeling back the wallpaper to reveal a passageway to points unknown."

Plaid

The Digging Remedy

Electronic

Benjamin Scheim

As hard as it is to believe that Warp Records mainstays Plaid have been making experimental electronic music now for over twenty-five years, it’s even harder to believe that they’ve managed to do without markedly adjusting their basic formula for success. Plaid have staked out a well-defined musical territory for themselves by choosing on each new record to continually mine their existing plot of land rather than explore new terrain elsewhere. Their latest album, the appropriately named The Digging Remedy, reiterates that the Plaid game plan remains intact. Luckily for Plaid, their game plan has usually been a pretty good one. Their music is a unique strain of listenable, hyper-melodic experimental electronic music that fits the frequently maligned tag “Intelligent Dance Music” all while sounding truly like no one else. They’ve also never made a truly bad album, which isn’t easy to say for a band who’ve been together that long, both in their current incarnation as Plaid and in the past life as the Black Dog with Ken Downie (anywhere from 10 to 15 records depending on how you’re counting). If nothing else, the Plaid blueprint is strong, unique and reliable. The Plaid coming to us now on The Digging Remedy is in a sort of fourth stage: from the early Black Dog years running from ‘91-‘95; to the first Warp trifecta golden era of ‘95-02; to the experiments and soundtracks of ‘03-'12; and finally in 2014, they hit a wizened, back-to-basics phase. 2014’s Reachy Prints returned to the warm tones and friendly melodies that had worked so well for them over the previous twenty years. Now, two years later, The Digging Remedy picks up where its predecessor left off. One tradition that The Digging Remedy also carries on is the somewhat odd placement of an album opener that is distinct (and often superior) from anything else on its accompanying record. 2001’s Double Figure opener “Eyen,” with it’s fade-in intro, circular acoustic guitar arpeggio and coo-ing choral vocals sounded beautiful and stands out from the rest of the album. The first two minutes of “Even Spring” from 2003’s Spokes, featuring Leila-collaborator Luca Santucci’s ghostly vocals, sounded even further away (before returning to “standard Plaid” mid-song). And Scintilli’s delightfully exquisite “missing” is perhaps the most unique track in their catalog, incorporating vocals not for lyricism but as a new instrument. On The Digging Remedy, lead track “Do Matter” lays down a tone of ominous, reflective menace that feels like a perfect development for the band: after years of playfulness and warmth, the idea of imagining a darkwave Plaid record that turns that warmth into nightmare feels like a potential home run. Alas, that dream is not to be, as second track “Dilatone” drags the mood back to familiar territory. The jarring transition from “Do Matter” to “Dilatone,” a slight track that spins in tiny circles while going nowhere, represents one of The Digging Remedy’s biggest weak spots. Though the album reaches greater heights than its predecessor Reachy Prints with a number of excellent compositions (“Do Matter,” “Clock,” “Melifer,” “Yu Mountain,” “Saladore”), the sequencing of everything just feels a bit off, in a way that seems uncharacteristic. Too often, the momentum of a great track is followed by the slow thud of something both different and lesser. The deliberate build and pitter-patter Knight Rider paranoia of “Saladore”—the closest thing to “Do Matter”’s ghoulishness—is wonderful, but to have it wind down into the bass drum circus thump of “Reeling Birds” feels like bit of a let down. The good news about The Digging Remedy is that it’s lovely and listenable for any longtime followers, or for anyone remotely interested in the kind of melodic IDM defined by this piece. However, it is neither an exciting deviation nor a refinement; as such, it’s really just more of an already-good thing, albeit packaged less delicately. Few artists can say that twenty-five years in they are still able to put out quality records. But here’s to hoping that next time around Plaid might consider stepping off their lawn to chase that darkwave dream.

Artist: Plaid, Album: The Digging Remedy, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "As hard as it is to believe that Warp Records mainstays Plaid have been making experimental electronic music now for over twenty-five years, it’s even harder to believe that they’ve managed to do without markedly adjusting their basic formula for success. Plaid have staked out a well-defined musical territory for themselves by choosing on each new record to continually mine their existing plot of land rather than explore new terrain elsewhere. Their latest album, the appropriately named The Digging Remedy, reiterates that the Plaid game plan remains intact. Luckily for Plaid, their game plan has usually been a pretty good one. Their music is a unique strain of listenable, hyper-melodic experimental electronic music that fits the frequently maligned tag “Intelligent Dance Music” all while sounding truly like no one else. They’ve also never made a truly bad album, which isn’t easy to say for a band who’ve been together that long, both in their current incarnation as Plaid and in the past life as the Black Dog with Ken Downie (anywhere from 10 to 15 records depending on how you’re counting). If nothing else, the Plaid blueprint is strong, unique and reliable. The Plaid coming to us now on The Digging Remedy is in a sort of fourth stage: from the early Black Dog years running from ‘91-‘95; to the first Warp trifecta golden era of ‘95-02; to the experiments and soundtracks of ‘03-'12; and finally in 2014, they hit a wizened, back-to-basics phase. 2014’s Reachy Prints returned to the warm tones and friendly melodies that had worked so well for them over the previous twenty years. Now, two years later, The Digging Remedy picks up where its predecessor left off. One tradition that The Digging Remedy also carries on is the somewhat odd placement of an album opener that is distinct (and often superior) from anything else on its accompanying record. 2001’s Double Figure opener “Eyen,” with it’s fade-in intro, circular acoustic guitar arpeggio and coo-ing choral vocals sounded beautiful and stands out from the rest of the album. The first two minutes of “Even Spring” from 2003’s Spokes, featuring Leila-collaborator Luca Santucci’s ghostly vocals, sounded even further away (before returning to “standard Plaid” mid-song). And Scintilli’s delightfully exquisite “missing” is perhaps the most unique track in their catalog, incorporating vocals not for lyricism but as a new instrument. On The Digging Remedy, lead track “Do Matter” lays down a tone of ominous, reflective menace that feels like a perfect development for the band: after years of playfulness and warmth, the idea of imagining a darkwave Plaid record that turns that warmth into nightmare feels like a potential home run. Alas, that dream is not to be, as second track “Dilatone” drags the mood back to familiar territory. The jarring transition from “Do Matter” to “Dilatone,” a slight track that spins in tiny circles while going nowhere, represents one of The Digging Remedy’s biggest weak spots. Though the album reaches greater heights than its predecessor Reachy Prints with a number of excellent compositions (“Do Matter,” “Clock,” “Melifer,” “Yu Mountain,” “Saladore”), the sequencing of everything just feels a bit off, in a way that seems uncharacteristic. Too often, the momentum of a great track is followed by the slow thud of something both different and lesser. The deliberate build and pitter-patter Knight Rider paranoia of “Saladore”—the closest thing to “Do Matter”’s ghoulishness—is wonderful, but to have it wind down into the bass drum circus thump of “Reeling Birds” feels like bit of a let down. The good news about The Digging Remedy is that it’s lovely and listenable for any longtime followers, or for anyone remotely interested in the kind of melodic IDM defined by this piece. However, it is neither an exciting deviation nor a refinement; as such, it’s really just more of an already-good thing, albeit packaged less delicately. Few artists can say that twenty-five years in they are still able to put out quality records. But here’s to hoping that next time around Plaid might consider stepping off their lawn to chase that darkwave dream."

Scene Creamers

I Suck on That Emotion

William Bowers

I've seen the future, and it ain't pretty: In Fall 2003, the staff of an undisclosed, juvenile-yet-encyclopedic modern music ezine will be summoned to appear before a Total Information Awareness tribunal headed by Attourniquette General John Ashcroft's anointed eyebags and Homeland Securitrix Tom Ridge's roid-raging gerbils. Our feigned grasp of subcultural machinations will finally bite us in our collective posterior, and the staff will be divided. Certain blowhards will refuse to fess up the whereabouts of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and like-minded dissidents, while others of us will cooperate and be given star-spangled clip-on ties and badges that say Justice Consultant, or Liberty Advisor. I plan to provide the feds with insight into the degenerate minds of every undergrounder except the former bandleader of Nation of Ulysses, Cupid Car Club, The Make-Up, and Weird War. He now refers to himself only as "Svenonius," perhaps to drive home his exalted, totemic status. I will run interference on my gub'mint minders by playing his new band Scene Creamers' album I Suck on That Emotion. See? Eye bags. See? Gerbils. This ain't political; it's get-it-on-core. You know, original booty-call soundtrack material, the stuff you pump in the background while you tell that low-priority crush that you're "kind of drunk" and "can't sleep" and "don't [sigh] really know what you're doing tonight." Some of the suits will even tap their sensibly-loafered toes to the Creamers' spiraling, spare anglo-funk: Guitarist Alex Minoff (Golden, Six Finger Satellite) constantly riffs via a floorful of pedals that wah-flange-phase his every almost-indulgent flourish. Longtime Svenonius sidekick Michelle Mae navigates her bass with understated panache, and Blake Brunner's stop/start retro-military drums perfectly replace Make-Up-artist Steve Gamboa's more skillful, but also fill-happy, work. (The file on Brunner is thin but incriminating: he interviewed former Royal Trux and Weird War wandering guitarist Neil Hagerty in 2000, which raises some paranoid eyebrows, since Minoff was in Golden with Truxer Jon Theodore.) I'll almost get away with my united front, because a superficial listen to the Creamers begs the question of why Svenonius' dapper ass spent the Clinton-giddy 90s shrouding his gospel-punk party-jams in neo-Marxist rhetoric, only to "go horn-dog" when his D.C. neighbors' geostrategery got all ballistic. I'll admit that some of the change-your-bedsheet material is rich, particularly "Session Man" (a randy take on musician-for-hire whoredom), "Housework for Three" (possibly a menage-ode to the classic pine-scented porn fantasy), and "Wet Paint" (about an art student, with the slurred yeah-times-three refrain, "looks the same, but it ain't"). These songs prove that Svenonius could find a double entendre in a falafel wrap. And whatever, partying can be subversive, reckon. There's definitely a libertine element to a post-midnight doowhatyalike vibe, despite the oddly codified hedonism of a zillion Best Spring Break Evers. But elsewhere on I Suck on That Emotion, Svenonius drops the funny and sings of naïve political pawns ("Candidate", "Bag Inc.") Drag City dry humor meets John Fogerty, creating Neil Jamburger! New guitar tones emerge, breaking up the Zapatista Zeppelin boogie! Acoustic songs! Surf songs! The rest is pure Robitussin-slag; imagine a pistol-whipped Frankie Valli teamed with Ween and The Cramps, and forced to perform deadpan send-ups of cock-rock histrionics! Get your Lockheed Martin on! Never mind the references to Roman Empire or Luxembourg or miserly millionaires! This red-white-and-blue-balled release embraces the butt-hott contradictatorial goofiness of enduring freedom. Pay no mind to the end of "Here Comes the Judge Part Two", when Svenonius says "the accused is you." Nilla, please! We built this city on shock and awe!

Artist: Scene Creamers, Album: I Suck on That Emotion, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "I've seen the future, and it ain't pretty: In Fall 2003, the staff of an undisclosed, juvenile-yet-encyclopedic modern music ezine will be summoned to appear before a Total Information Awareness tribunal headed by Attourniquette General John Ashcroft's anointed eyebags and Homeland Securitrix Tom Ridge's roid-raging gerbils. Our feigned grasp of subcultural machinations will finally bite us in our collective posterior, and the staff will be divided. Certain blowhards will refuse to fess up the whereabouts of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and like-minded dissidents, while others of us will cooperate and be given star-spangled clip-on ties and badges that say Justice Consultant, or Liberty Advisor. I plan to provide the feds with insight into the degenerate minds of every undergrounder except the former bandleader of Nation of Ulysses, Cupid Car Club, The Make-Up, and Weird War. He now refers to himself only as "Svenonius," perhaps to drive home his exalted, totemic status. I will run interference on my gub'mint minders by playing his new band Scene Creamers' album I Suck on That Emotion. See? Eye bags. See? Gerbils. This ain't political; it's get-it-on-core. You know, original booty-call soundtrack material, the stuff you pump in the background while you tell that low-priority crush that you're "kind of drunk" and "can't sleep" and "don't [sigh] really know what you're doing tonight." Some of the suits will even tap their sensibly-loafered toes to the Creamers' spiraling, spare anglo-funk: Guitarist Alex Minoff (Golden, Six Finger Satellite) constantly riffs via a floorful of pedals that wah-flange-phase his every almost-indulgent flourish. Longtime Svenonius sidekick Michelle Mae navigates her bass with understated panache, and Blake Brunner's stop/start retro-military drums perfectly replace Make-Up-artist Steve Gamboa's more skillful, but also fill-happy, work. (The file on Brunner is thin but incriminating: he interviewed former Royal Trux and Weird War wandering guitarist Neil Hagerty in 2000, which raises some paranoid eyebrows, since Minoff was in Golden with Truxer Jon Theodore.) I'll almost get away with my united front, because a superficial listen to the Creamers begs the question of why Svenonius' dapper ass spent the Clinton-giddy 90s shrouding his gospel-punk party-jams in neo-Marxist rhetoric, only to "go horn-dog" when his D.C. neighbors' geostrategery got all ballistic. I'll admit that some of the change-your-bedsheet material is rich, particularly "Session Man" (a randy take on musician-for-hire whoredom), "Housework for Three" (possibly a menage-ode to the classic pine-scented porn fantasy), and "Wet Paint" (about an art student, with the slurred yeah-times-three refrain, "looks the same, but it ain't"). These songs prove that Svenonius could find a double entendre in a falafel wrap. And whatever, partying can be subversive, reckon. There's definitely a libertine element to a post-midnight doowhatyalike vibe, despite the oddly codified hedonism of a zillion Best Spring Break Evers. But elsewhere on I Suck on That Emotion, Svenonius drops the funny and sings of naïve political pawns ("Candidate", "Bag Inc.") Drag City dry humor meets John Fogerty, creating Neil Jamburger! New guitar tones emerge, breaking up the Zapatista Zeppelin boogie! Acoustic songs! Surf songs! The rest is pure Robitussin-slag; imagine a pistol-whipped Frankie Valli teamed with Ween and The Cramps, and forced to perform deadpan send-ups of cock-rock histrionics! Get your Lockheed Martin on! Never mind the references to Roman Empire or Luxembourg or miserly millionaires! This red-white-and-blue-balled release embraces the butt-hott contradictatorial goofiness of enduring freedom. Pay no mind to the end of "Here Comes the Judge Part Two", when Svenonius says "the accused is you." Nilla, please! We built this city on shock and awe!"

Calexico

Feast of Wire

Rock

Joe Tangari

Calexico have always been restless experimenters, juxtaposers and journeymen, crafting a unique fusion of bluesy Mariachi, desert-rock and jazz, and injecting healthy doses of experimentation into the otherwise straightforward records on which they've made guest appearances. Yet, for their innovation and distinctive sound, their albums have always had their weak spots-- moments in which their ideas seemed to be running away with the band's ability to execute them. That time has passed. All of Calexico's previous strengths come home to roost on Feast of Wire, the band pushing their experiments further than ever before and pulling each of them off unfalteringly. In short, Calexico have created their first genuinely masterful full-length, crammed with immediate songcraft, shifting moods and open-ended exploration. A brief acoustic guitar figure and pounding waltz beat open things at a crisp gait. Joey Burns quickly intones with the lines, "Washed my face in the rivers of empire/ Made my bed with a cardboard crate," immediately establishing the tension of the borderline that pulls Calexico's music in its many directions. Burns is suddenly a singer-- he's always made do with what he had, but the limitations that were once so apparent have developed into a strong and confident tenor, assertive and emotive. The music behind him feels bolder and more courageous, too, as the veil of obscurity that guarded so much of their previous releases has vanished. The detail of this album is utterly stunning, as melodies rise against countermelodies, subtle electronic processing seals guitars in amber, and instruments blend in fascinating and unpredictable ways. The band keeps things tight and concise across sixteen tracks, and John Convertino's drums corral the rush of sound into all the right spaces, pushing the steel guitar motifs that color the background of "Quattro (World Drifts In)" up to meet Burns' vocals and beating back the bombastic strings that cascade over "Black Heart" like a desert thunderstorm. "Not Even Stevie Nicks" is pristine pop that makes me wish Burns would find more occasions to use his falsetto. It also makes me wish he'd print his lyrics, even if lines like, "With a head like a vulture and a heart full of hornets/ He drives off the cliff into the blue," convey such a rush of emotions that they virtually fill in the blanks by themselves. He's still full of border stories, too, with narratives like "Across the Wire" packing up tales of dodging the border patrol and leaving everything you know for the abstraction of hope. "Woven Birds" is a hushed reverie for an abandoned mission that even the swallows have left to the ghosts, building to spine-tingling moments where the vocals, Melodica and vibes all meet on the same note and coalesce into a single sound. The piano and strings of "The Book and the Canal" serve as a moody pivot into the album's mostly instrumental second half, though the darkness of that piece is largely swept aside by "Attack El Robot! Attack!", which mashes Pharaoh Sanders, Portuguese guitar and German IDM into a beautiful stew of sci-fi strangeness. "Dub Latina" and "Crumble" show Calexico burrowing deeper into jazz than ever before, with the latter featuring fluid guitar, trombone and trumpet solos squaring off against each other over a white-hot groove. "Güero Canelo" is a curious flamenco strut built around what sounds like a distorted Speak-n-Spell sample and sliding sound effects, while "Whipping the Horse's Eyes" and the closer, "No Doze", each examine big skies and desert stillness-- one with steel guitar and bowed bass, the other with bowed vibes, nylon strings, static, percussion and steel. Burns is back to a whisper on the closer, but here it strikes as though he's trying not to wake someone sleeping in the room rather than shielding the listener from his limitations. Calexico have always threatened to make a spectacular record, and even came close on 1998's The Black Light, but having spent the last three years honing their skills has paid off for them in ways no one could have predicted. Feast of Wire calls on a stunning, finely kept arsenal of genres, textures and images to transport you to the Southwest's forgotten places and put you in the shoes of the people who stare across the border in both directions. It is the album we always knew they had in them but feared they would never make.

Artist: Calexico, Album: Feast of Wire, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.9 Album review: "Calexico have always been restless experimenters, juxtaposers and journeymen, crafting a unique fusion of bluesy Mariachi, desert-rock and jazz, and injecting healthy doses of experimentation into the otherwise straightforward records on which they've made guest appearances. Yet, for their innovation and distinctive sound, their albums have always had their weak spots-- moments in which their ideas seemed to be running away with the band's ability to execute them. That time has passed. All of Calexico's previous strengths come home to roost on Feast of Wire, the band pushing their experiments further than ever before and pulling each of them off unfalteringly. In short, Calexico have created their first genuinely masterful full-length, crammed with immediate songcraft, shifting moods and open-ended exploration. A brief acoustic guitar figure and pounding waltz beat open things at a crisp gait. Joey Burns quickly intones with the lines, "Washed my face in the rivers of empire/ Made my bed with a cardboard crate," immediately establishing the tension of the borderline that pulls Calexico's music in its many directions. Burns is suddenly a singer-- he's always made do with what he had, but the limitations that were once so apparent have developed into a strong and confident tenor, assertive and emotive. The music behind him feels bolder and more courageous, too, as the veil of obscurity that guarded so much of their previous releases has vanished. The detail of this album is utterly stunning, as melodies rise against countermelodies, subtle electronic processing seals guitars in amber, and instruments blend in fascinating and unpredictable ways. The band keeps things tight and concise across sixteen tracks, and John Convertino's drums corral the rush of sound into all the right spaces, pushing the steel guitar motifs that color the background of "Quattro (World Drifts In)" up to meet Burns' vocals and beating back the bombastic strings that cascade over "Black Heart" like a desert thunderstorm. "Not Even Stevie Nicks" is pristine pop that makes me wish Burns would find more occasions to use his falsetto. It also makes me wish he'd print his lyrics, even if lines like, "With a head like a vulture and a heart full of hornets/ He drives off the cliff into the blue," convey such a rush of emotions that they virtually fill in the blanks by themselves. He's still full of border stories, too, with narratives like "Across the Wire" packing up tales of dodging the border patrol and leaving everything you know for the abstraction of hope. "Woven Birds" is a hushed reverie for an abandoned mission that even the swallows have left to the ghosts, building to spine-tingling moments where the vocals, Melodica and vibes all meet on the same note and coalesce into a single sound. The piano and strings of "The Book and the Canal" serve as a moody pivot into the album's mostly instrumental second half, though the darkness of that piece is largely swept aside by "Attack El Robot! Attack!", which mashes Pharaoh Sanders, Portuguese guitar and German IDM into a beautiful stew of sci-fi strangeness. "Dub Latina" and "Crumble" show Calexico burrowing deeper into jazz than ever before, with the latter featuring fluid guitar, trombone and trumpet solos squaring off against each other over a white-hot groove. "Güero Canelo" is a curious flamenco strut built around what sounds like a distorted Speak-n-Spell sample and sliding sound effects, while "Whipping the Horse's Eyes" and the closer, "No Doze", each examine big skies and desert stillness-- one with steel guitar and bowed bass, the other with bowed vibes, nylon strings, static, percussion and steel. Burns is back to a whisper on the closer, but here it strikes as though he's trying not to wake someone sleeping in the room rather than shielding the listener from his limitations. Calexico have always threatened to make a spectacular record, and even came close on 1998's The Black Light, but having spent the last three years honing their skills has paid off for them in ways no one could have predicted. Feast of Wire calls on a stunning, finely kept arsenal of genres, textures and images to transport you to the Southwest's forgotten places and put you in the shoes of the people who stare across the border in both directions. It is the album we always knew they had in them but feared they would never make."

Ellen Allien

Watergate 05

Electronic

Andrew Gaerig

Ellen Allien is a pillar of the Berlin electronic music scene. Since she dropped her Boogybytes mix and Sool in 2008, however, she's acted more as a scene curator than an artist, counting just a remix and a single as official releases and instead focusing her energy on BPitch Control's expanding roster and her own fashion label. Watergate 05, a mix for Berlin's famed Watergate club (where Allien holds a DJ residency), not only marks Allien's first full-length release since 2008, it is her latest contribution to a high-profile mix series, following both BPitch's own Boogybytes and her 2007 mix for London's Fabric club. Watergate 05 is the second mix Allien has provided from Watergate-- her 2009 podcast for Resident Advisor was recorded live at the club. Working there seems to have loosened up Allien a bit, as both Watergate and her RA mix are friendlier and jammier than previous deck work. Where Boogybytes felt tightly wound, Watergate is almost schizophrenic, featuring work from looser producers like Matias Aguayo, Luciano, and Röyksopp. Here Allien allows her selections to develop-- Watergate offers just 16 tracks during its hour runtime. This leads to few mixing revelations, placing the focus squarely on Allien's choices. After a ho-hum opening featuring some meticulous but boilerplate techno from John Tejada and DJ Yellow, Niconé & Sascha Breamer's "Nur Ma Kurz (Philip Bader Remix)" sets the tone: humid, busy percussion set against earworm vocal samples. It's something Allien returns to with Aguayo's vocal mix of "Bo Jack", Allien's own remix of Uffie's "Pop the Glock", and AGF/Delay's outstanding Connection ("Heartthrob Remix)". Finishing the set with Brigitte Fontaine & Khan's "Fine Mouche (Original Tango Paris Version)", a wry French piano ballad, is a welcome concession, as it's probably not the type of track you can close a proper live set with. Watergate's main fault is that it's too backloaded: The Uffie and AGF/Delay tracks both appear in the final minutes, as does nsi.'s disquieting remix of Margarat Dygas' "Hidden Form View". The mix hinges on longtime Allien pal Apparat's remix of Röyksopp's "This Must Be It", which features the Knife's Karin Dreijer Andersson. The remix takes the original's glassy Euro-pop and replaces it with a roiling electro loop, massive enough that it overshadows the mix's excellent back-end. At this point it seems unlikely that Allien is going to submit a truly defining mix; she seems content to use these high-profile gigs to tweak her formula while continuing to build the Berlin scene (as always, several of Allien's friends and collaborators feature here). Watergate 05 can frustrate, but ultimately Allien's ability to differentiate her mixes while retaining her voice makes Watergate a worthwhile addition to her catalog.

Artist: Ellen Allien, Album: Watergate 05, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.9 Album review: "Ellen Allien is a pillar of the Berlin electronic music scene. Since she dropped her Boogybytes mix and Sool in 2008, however, she's acted more as a scene curator than an artist, counting just a remix and a single as official releases and instead focusing her energy on BPitch Control's expanding roster and her own fashion label. Watergate 05, a mix for Berlin's famed Watergate club (where Allien holds a DJ residency), not only marks Allien's first full-length release since 2008, it is her latest contribution to a high-profile mix series, following both BPitch's own Boogybytes and her 2007 mix for London's Fabric club. Watergate 05 is the second mix Allien has provided from Watergate-- her 2009 podcast for Resident Advisor was recorded live at the club. Working there seems to have loosened up Allien a bit, as both Watergate and her RA mix are friendlier and jammier than previous deck work. Where Boogybytes felt tightly wound, Watergate is almost schizophrenic, featuring work from looser producers like Matias Aguayo, Luciano, and Röyksopp. Here Allien allows her selections to develop-- Watergate offers just 16 tracks during its hour runtime. This leads to few mixing revelations, placing the focus squarely on Allien's choices. After a ho-hum opening featuring some meticulous but boilerplate techno from John Tejada and DJ Yellow, Niconé & Sascha Breamer's "Nur Ma Kurz (Philip Bader Remix)" sets the tone: humid, busy percussion set against earworm vocal samples. It's something Allien returns to with Aguayo's vocal mix of "Bo Jack", Allien's own remix of Uffie's "Pop the Glock", and AGF/Delay's outstanding Connection ("Heartthrob Remix)". Finishing the set with Brigitte Fontaine & Khan's "Fine Mouche (Original Tango Paris Version)", a wry French piano ballad, is a welcome concession, as it's probably not the type of track you can close a proper live set with. Watergate's main fault is that it's too backloaded: The Uffie and AGF/Delay tracks both appear in the final minutes, as does nsi.'s disquieting remix of Margarat Dygas' "Hidden Form View". The mix hinges on longtime Allien pal Apparat's remix of Röyksopp's "This Must Be It", which features the Knife's Karin Dreijer Andersson. The remix takes the original's glassy Euro-pop and replaces it with a roiling electro loop, massive enough that it overshadows the mix's excellent back-end. At this point it seems unlikely that Allien is going to submit a truly defining mix; she seems content to use these high-profile gigs to tweak her formula while continuing to build the Berlin scene (as always, several of Allien's friends and collaborators feature here). Watergate 05 can frustrate, but ultimately Allien's ability to differentiate her mixes while retaining her voice makes Watergate a worthwhile addition to her catalog."

Sia

Some People Have Real Problems

Pop/R&B

Liz Colville

Each of Sia Furler's albums has been released on a different label, but it should come as no surprise that her fourth, and most promising, comes on Starbucks' label Hear Music. (It also should be no surprise that Hear Music has helped make this her most commercially successful record.) The Adelaide-born English crossover, who has worked with Jamiroquai, Massive Attack, and Zero 7, has been a likeable, clean-voiced accessory for years, but she got her first (independent) big break when "Breathe Me", off 2004's Color the Small One, was featured in the final episode of Six Feet Under and caused a minor that. Some People Have Real Problems tries to be something else: brazen yet fun, sophisticated yet goofy. Composed in large part by Sia in conjunction with her supporting instrumentalists, the songs are full of bounce, springtime, and California cool. And Beck is featured on two tracks, "Academia" and "Death By Chocolate". But it doesn't help. From the start, Problems nods to both Sia's résumé and to her neighbors on the latté bar: Feist's playful, smokey ballads and Zero 7's drum-and-bass slugs. "Little Black Sandals" screams failure just by mentioning a pair of shoes in its title (see: Katherine McPhee) and the R&B reaches are dreadful. "Lentil" is brave and explorative by rhythm and melody, inserting a pinch of Regina Spektor-via-Tori Amos into the mix. Still, the chorus is too bland and the rhythm too slow. This andante dullness is prevalent on the album, as if Norah Jones were going about stealing Feist's audience. has potential, but where this song could actually use the heat and the punch of percussion, there is none. "The Girl You Lost to Cocaine" is stellar, but like Esthero before her, Sia so often concedes to choruses that are rote and thin on the ground, packed full of airy, electrified harmonies. I want soars, climbs, and surprising bridges; instead there are puffed up harmonies and a tad of decoration from the brass and keys. The anticipation of the chorus is enough to play the song on repeat for a couple of days, but the chorus is still there, irritatingly memorable, and, in fact, it seeps into every part of the song, dominating the subtle inventions of melody and Sia's clear talent for deft hops around the scale. "Electric Bird" is a winner, though it, too, has stock elements in its alternatively languorous and rushed lyrics, pumps from the brass, and tricky shifts into minor key. "Playground"'s all click-clacking and hand-clapping and more overused vocal multi-tracking. I'd venture to say Sia has not penned a single song without this feature. The perfect balance-- and the potential that few of the tracks reach-- is uncovered on "Soon We'll Be Found", which is sexy and balladic, yet dark and raging. It's surprising, colorful, and complex. But there are too many attempts at this type of song, and not enough of the springtime fun suggested on the ridiculous cover. If Sia spent more time at the piano, and/or hired Robyn to write her a couple of tracks, the results could be marvelous. But as it stands, Sia is not aware of her potential-- or rather, her options.

Artist: Sia, Album: Some People Have Real Problems, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 4.8 Album review: "Each of Sia Furler's albums has been released on a different label, but it should come as no surprise that her fourth, and most promising, comes on Starbucks' label Hear Music. (It also should be no surprise that Hear Music has helped make this her most commercially successful record.) The Adelaide-born English crossover, who has worked with Jamiroquai, Massive Attack, and Zero 7, has been a likeable, clean-voiced accessory for years, but she got her first (independent) big break when "Breathe Me", off 2004's Color the Small One, was featured in the final episode of Six Feet Under and caused a minor that. Some People Have Real Problems tries to be something else: brazen yet fun, sophisticated yet goofy. Composed in large part by Sia in conjunction with her supporting instrumentalists, the songs are full of bounce, springtime, and California cool. And Beck is featured on two tracks, "Academia" and "Death By Chocolate". But it doesn't help. From the start, Problems nods to both Sia's résumé and to her neighbors on the latté bar: Feist's playful, smokey ballads and Zero 7's drum-and-bass slugs. "Little Black Sandals" screams failure just by mentioning a pair of shoes in its title (see: Katherine McPhee) and the R&B reaches are dreadful. "Lentil" is brave and explorative by rhythm and melody, inserting a pinch of Regina Spektor-via-Tori Amos into the mix. Still, the chorus is too bland and the rhythm too slow. This andante dullness is prevalent on the album, as if Norah Jones were going about stealing Feist's audience. has potential, but where this song could actually use the heat and the punch of percussion, there is none. "The Girl You Lost to Cocaine" is stellar, but like Esthero before her, Sia so often concedes to choruses that are rote and thin on the ground, packed full of airy, electrified harmonies. I want soars, climbs, and surprising bridges; instead there are puffed up harmonies and a tad of decoration from the brass and keys. The anticipation of the chorus is enough to play the song on repeat for a couple of days, but the chorus is still there, irritatingly memorable, and, in fact, it seeps into every part of the song, dominating the subtle inventions of melody and Sia's clear talent for deft hops around the scale. "Electric Bird" is a winner, though it, too, has stock elements in its alternatively languorous and rushed lyrics, pumps from the brass, and tricky shifts into minor key. "Playground"'s all click-clacking and hand-clapping and more overused vocal multi-tracking. I'd venture to say Sia has not penned a single song without this feature. The perfect balance-- and the potential that few of the tracks reach-- is uncovered on "Soon We'll Be Found", which is sexy and balladic, yet dark and raging. It's surprising, colorful, and complex. But there are too many attempts at this type of song, and not enough of the springtime fun suggested on the ridiculous cover. If Sia spent more time at the piano, and/or hired Robyn to write her a couple of tracks, the results could be marvelous. But as it stands, Sia is not aware of her potential-- or rather, her options."

Freeway, The Jacka

Highway Robbery

Rap

Jayson Greene

Highway Robbery, a collaboration between Freeway and Bay Area legend the Jacka, has been held up for years by logistical and legal hurdles—which is a shame, because it's the best and most natural-sounding project Freeway has been involved with since 2007. "Got with Jacka 'cause he pray like I pray," he growls on the album's second track, "Dunya", a reference to their shared Muslim faith. But the two share a lot more than that: they are both pained, repentant, and thoughtful, their lyrics glowing with hard-won wisdom and regrets. They are stubby, stocky, unlovely guys with devoted regional fans, and on Highway Robbery they sound like they've been sitting on the same porch together for decades. The producers on Highway Robbery include the Jacka's frequent collaborator Jeffro and other Bay Area rap staples, like Traxamillion and Young L; the bulk of the music is low-key, liquid, and unmistakably bluesy.  The guests that float through are on the same wavelength—Trae tha Truth on "Just Remain", Freddie Gibbs on "Cherry Pie". On "Write My Wrongs" Cormega drops by, whose stern and reflective new album Mega Philosophy put some metaphysical weight and writerly bite behind conscious-rap scolding. These are serious rappers, and you don't bob your head to Highway Robbery so much as nod slowly, your eyes squinted from the glare of all the old-head wisdom unfurling in front of you. Highway Robbery isn't all hard-won old-man jewels, though. There are airy party tracks, too: "Sunnah Boys", featuring Killer Mike, high-steps through some jazzy keyboard chords and candy-coated synths.  "Shuckin & Jivin" is a lip-licker sex jam from Young L, and it knocks like retooled "Mr. Me Too" stripped for scrap. It also represents one of two appearances on the album of wild card Husalah, a human exclamation point who lends unstable energy to any song he's on. Even though Highway Robbery is an independent release, Free and Jacka have somehow managed to liberate a Daft Punk sample, and a high-profile one, for "One More Time", and they slow it down and pump it full of low end. Freeway raps in a lower register than normal, and he sounds incredible; more importantly, he sounds palpably at home. As a member of the scattered early-'00s Roc-A-Fella dynasty, he has a lot of past to compete with, and he's been working gamely against the cultural tide for the last few years, trying to reinvent himself as a backpack rapper and then as a nostalgia act. But here, he finds a milieu that suits him. He and Jacka trade lines with gusto and fire: "Pray you keep my family safe/ They didn't ask to be here, they shouldn't pay for my mistakes". The Jacka moans on "Dunya", "No matter how much I smoke, the pain won't burn away." "My close homies turned on me for no reason, they're such traitors," Free seethes, adding a gut-kicker: "My last album was only in fourteen stores." Simply put, Freeway always works best when he's got a foil, and the Jacka is his most natural partner since Beanie Sigel slipped sadly off the grid. When you listen to him here you aren't, for the first time in years, pondering Roc-A-Fella. He's talked in interviews about being energized by the grind of artists like Jacka, who has built up a formidable mystique as a sort of Bay Area philosopher king, and frankly, Free should do three projects like this a year: the regional rap landscape is dotted with serious-minded, knotty rappers—Vic Spencer or Lil Durk from Chicago, or Young Moe from Alexandria, with whom he's worked before—who would make perfect complements. Free's hunger is a precious resource, and it's hard not to want to hear more of it in the world.

Artist: Freeway, The Jacka, Album: Highway Robbery, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "Highway Robbery, a collaboration between Freeway and Bay Area legend the Jacka, has been held up for years by logistical and legal hurdles—which is a shame, because it's the best and most natural-sounding project Freeway has been involved with since 2007. "Got with Jacka 'cause he pray like I pray," he growls on the album's second track, "Dunya", a reference to their shared Muslim faith. But the two share a lot more than that: they are both pained, repentant, and thoughtful, their lyrics glowing with hard-won wisdom and regrets. They are stubby, stocky, unlovely guys with devoted regional fans, and on Highway Robbery they sound like they've been sitting on the same porch together for decades. The producers on Highway Robbery include the Jacka's frequent collaborator Jeffro and other Bay Area rap staples, like Traxamillion and Young L; the bulk of the music is low-key, liquid, and unmistakably bluesy.  The guests that float through are on the same wavelength—Trae tha Truth on "Just Remain", Freddie Gibbs on "Cherry Pie". On "Write My Wrongs" Cormega drops by, whose stern and reflective new album Mega Philosophy put some metaphysical weight and writerly bite behind conscious-rap scolding. These are serious rappers, and you don't bob your head to Highway Robbery so much as nod slowly, your eyes squinted from the glare of all the old-head wisdom unfurling in front of you. Highway Robbery isn't all hard-won old-man jewels, though. There are airy party tracks, too: "Sunnah Boys", featuring Killer Mike, high-steps through some jazzy keyboard chords and candy-coated synths.  "Shuckin & Jivin" is a lip-licker sex jam from Young L, and it knocks like retooled "Mr. Me Too" stripped for scrap. It also represents one of two appearances on the album of wild card Husalah, a human exclamation point who lends unstable energy to any song he's on. Even though Highway Robbery is an independent release, Free and Jacka have somehow managed to liberate a Daft Punk sample, and a high-profile one, for "One More Time", and they slow it down and pump it full of low end. Freeway raps in a lower register than normal, and he sounds incredible; more importantly, he sounds palpably at home. As a member of the scattered early-'00s Roc-A-Fella dynasty, he has a lot of past to compete with, and he's been working gamely against the cultural tide for the last few years, trying to reinvent himself as a backpack rapper and then as a nostalgia act. But here, he finds a milieu that suits him. He and Jacka trade lines with gusto and fire: "Pray you keep my family safe/ They didn't ask to be here, they shouldn't pay for my mistakes". The Jacka moans on "Dunya", "No matter how much I smoke, the pain won't burn away." "My close homies turned on me for no reason, they're such traitors," Free seethes, adding a gut-kicker: "My last album was only in fourteen stores." Simply put, Freeway always works best when he's got a foil, and the Jacka is his most natural partner since Beanie Sigel slipped sadly off the grid. When you listen to him here you aren't, for the first time in years, pondering Roc-A-Fella. He's talked in interviews about being energized by the grind of artists like Jacka, who has built up a formidable mystique as a sort of Bay Area philosopher king, and frankly, Free should do three projects like this a year: the regional rap landscape is dotted with serious-minded, knotty rappers—Vic Spencer or Lil Durk from Chicago, or Young Moe from Alexandria, with whom he's worked before—who would make perfect complements. Free's hunger is a precious resource, and it's hard not to want to hear more of it in the world."

The Mendoza Line

Like Someone In Love EP

Rock

Shan Fowler

Though it appears that somebody made an error and that this EP is actually a 10- track long- player, the album covers only 27 minutes worth of musical territory. Don't worry-- Like Someone In Love may be shorter than a sitcom, but there aren't any commercial breaks and 10 songs means 10 songs-- brevity is irrelevant. Core members Timothy Bracy and Peter Hoffman are a songwriting duo in the tradition of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Bob Mould and Grant Hart, Rufus and Chaka Khan-- you get the picture. The differences between the two are audible-- Bracy is the down- homebody, Hoffman likes his guitars shaken, not stirred-- but neither is willing to sing above a dusty whisper. And in case any number of Replacements/ Uncle Tupelo (they're not as different as you think) disciples haven't proven that country is just fine with fuzzy guitars, Like Someone In Love will testify. Don't mistake this for a punk- rock hoedown though; the Mendoza Line is a strictly low- key affair. "Wiretapping" keeps a two- step beat going as melancholy seeps into the cryptic vocals. Before you know it, the two- step's done and the fuzz-fi peach "I Know I Will Not Find The Words" looks at like- minded lyrics through a pure pop lens. Bracy and Hoffman grew up in the Washington, D.C. area and the influence of such brainy popsters as Unrest and Velocity Girl is obvious and welcome. But there's no need to pigeonhole. Pop is just one element of many crammed onto this disc. The Mendoza Line seem to relish the thought that what they're doing is mostly mediocre. The name itself is the term used to describe when a baseball player falls below .200 (for those not familiar with baseball terminology, .200 really sucks). By doing so, they're guaranteeing themselves musical happiness, because while none of these 10 at-bats goes long enough to be a home run, there isn't a strikeout among them.

Artist: The Mendoza Line, Album: Like Someone In Love EP, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "Though it appears that somebody made an error and that this EP is actually a 10- track long- player, the album covers only 27 minutes worth of musical territory. Don't worry-- Like Someone In Love may be shorter than a sitcom, but there aren't any commercial breaks and 10 songs means 10 songs-- brevity is irrelevant. Core members Timothy Bracy and Peter Hoffman are a songwriting duo in the tradition of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Bob Mould and Grant Hart, Rufus and Chaka Khan-- you get the picture. The differences between the two are audible-- Bracy is the down- homebody, Hoffman likes his guitars shaken, not stirred-- but neither is willing to sing above a dusty whisper. And in case any number of Replacements/ Uncle Tupelo (they're not as different as you think) disciples haven't proven that country is just fine with fuzzy guitars, Like Someone In Love will testify. Don't mistake this for a punk- rock hoedown though; the Mendoza Line is a strictly low- key affair. "Wiretapping" keeps a two- step beat going as melancholy seeps into the cryptic vocals. Before you know it, the two- step's done and the fuzz-fi peach "I Know I Will Not Find The Words" looks at like- minded lyrics through a pure pop lens. Bracy and Hoffman grew up in the Washington, D.C. area and the influence of such brainy popsters as Unrest and Velocity Girl is obvious and welcome. But there's no need to pigeonhole. Pop is just one element of many crammed onto this disc. The Mendoza Line seem to relish the thought that what they're doing is mostly mediocre. The name itself is the term used to describe when a baseball player falls below .200 (for those not familiar with baseball terminology, .200 really sucks). By doing so, they're guaranteeing themselves musical happiness, because while none of these 10 at-bats goes long enough to be a home run, there isn't a strikeout among them."

Hana Vu

How Many Times Have You Driven By EP

Pop/R&B

Jenn Pelly

Small acts of public vulnerability feel radical today: crying at the supermarket, crying on Instagram, crying at the club. With the megaphones in our pockets, we have grown accustomed to amplifying our personal sadness, to subverting the idea that emotional excess is weak or wrong. “Crying on the subway send tweet” is about as universal as human sentiments come. Hana Vu wrote a song about that. “Crying on the Subway” is the lead track from her EP, How Many Times Have You Driven By, a coolly minimal collection that the 17-year-old recorded and produced on her own. Following three-and-a-half years of self-released material from Vu—who has used Bandcamp like an emotional diary, in the vein of Frankie Cosmos and Soccer Mommy—How Many Times is her first release for the label Luminelle Recordings (run by the folks behind the still-kicking MP3-download-era blog Gorilla vs. Bear). Her version of bedroom pop is one that clearly aspires to a slick, sophisticated level of production, like that of Jay Som. Vu’s primary mode is electronic dream pop with streaks of misery that feel discernibly teenage: “I’m always on the phone/I’m always doing nothing,” she sang on the 2016 album Sensitive, which included a collaboration with Willow Smith called “Queen of High School.” How Many Times spans such styles as loungey downbeat pop and yearning indie rock balladry, but it is all tied together by a charmingly droll vibe and Vu’s deep, soulful voice. Her elliptical sensibility makes “Crying on the Subway” more subtle and restrained than you’d expect. The song doesn’t convey the claustrophobia so typical of city music, like Chandra’s “Subways,” nor does it contain the gut-wrenching despair of girl-group weepers. Instead, “Crying on the Subway” is emotionally vacant in a way that feels real. It is a muted daydream with a wobbly bass sway, the sound of quiet longing and a resigned single tear, of a person who really is trying to just get by. “In my dreams I’m in that gray room/In my chest I’m feeling dark blue,” Vu sings, evoking the colors of her mood music. “Take the red line into downtown/I’m trying to escape you.” Her richly layered vocals feel like a long sigh, like infatuation steadily deflating, like a cold stare. The entire song conveys loneliness and comfort at once. Across the minor keys and twinkling chords of How Many Times, Vu sings about mundanity, failure, disappointment, and fear. “426” has a melancholic, retro shuffle with shades of Lana Del Rey cool. “Cool” is Vu’s understated loner anthem about hiding out and staying home to work on yourself: “It’s OK to be alone/’Cos I’m gonna make it happen,” she sings. “Gonna make it perfect/Better than it has been.” When Vu proclaims, wisely, “I’m tryna make it cool/....Don’t tell me that I’m wrong/’Cos ain’t nobody right,” it feels like her personal aesthetic thesis. The focus of How Many Times attests to it. On the whole, Vu’s knowingly detached vision feels cohesive, and her productions shine. But in terms of lyrics and melodies, nothing else on the EP resonates quite as strongly as “Crying on the Subway,” and often the smoothed edges threaten to turn these songs into chilled-out indie muzak. When the rapper Satchy adds a sleek verse to “Cool,” their voices sound complementary, but it’s a bit of a disruption. Still, How Many Times is an intriguing glimpse of an artist at the beginning of a skillfully carved path—even if it leaves you wondering what it was that made her cry in public in the first place, what makes her tears dry.

Artist: Hana Vu, Album: How Many Times Have You Driven By EP, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "Small acts of public vulnerability feel radical today: crying at the supermarket, crying on Instagram, crying at the club. With the megaphones in our pockets, we have grown accustomed to amplifying our personal sadness, to subverting the idea that emotional excess is weak or wrong. “Crying on the subway send tweet” is about as universal as human sentiments come. Hana Vu wrote a song about that. “Crying on the Subway” is the lead track from her EP, How Many Times Have You Driven By, a coolly minimal collection that the 17-year-old recorded and produced on her own. Following three-and-a-half years of self-released material from Vu—who has used Bandcamp like an emotional diary, in the vein of Frankie Cosmos and Soccer Mommy—How Many Times is her first release for the label Luminelle Recordings (run by the folks behind the still-kicking MP3-download-era blog Gorilla vs. Bear). Her version of bedroom pop is one that clearly aspires to a slick, sophisticated level of production, like that of Jay Som. Vu’s primary mode is electronic dream pop with streaks of misery that feel discernibly teenage: “I’m always on the phone/I’m always doing nothing,” she sang on the 2016 album Sensitive, which included a collaboration with Willow Smith called “Queen of High School.” How Many Times spans such styles as loungey downbeat pop and yearning indie rock balladry, but it is all tied together by a charmingly droll vibe and Vu’s deep, soulful voice. Her elliptical sensibility makes “Crying on the Subway” more subtle and restrained than you’d expect. The song doesn’t convey the claustrophobia so typical of city music, like Chandra’s “Subways,” nor does it contain the gut-wrenching despair of girl-group weepers. Instead, “Crying on the Subway” is emotionally vacant in a way that feels real. It is a muted daydream with a wobbly bass sway, the sound of quiet longing and a resigned single tear, of a person who really is trying to just get by. “In my dreams I’m in that gray room/In my chest I’m feeling dark blue,” Vu sings, evoking the colors of her mood music. “Take the red line into downtown/I’m trying to escape you.” Her richly layered vocals feel like a long sigh, like infatuation steadily deflating, like a cold stare. The entire song conveys loneliness and comfort at once. Across the minor keys and twinkling chords of How Many Times, Vu sings about mundanity, failure, disappointment, and fear. “426” has a melancholic, retro shuffle with shades of Lana Del Rey cool. “Cool” is Vu’s understated loner anthem about hiding out and staying home to work on yourself: “It’s OK to be alone/’Cos I’m gonna make it happen,” she sings. “Gonna make it perfect/Better than it has been.” When Vu proclaims, wisely, “I’m tryna make it cool/....Don’t tell me that I’m wrong/’Cos ain’t nobody right,” it feels like her personal aesthetic thesis. The focus of How Many Times attests to it. On the whole, Vu’s knowingly detached vision feels cohesive, and her productions shine. But in terms of lyrics and melodies, nothing else on the EP resonates quite as strongly as “Crying on the Subway,” and often the smoothed edges threaten to turn these songs into chilled-out indie muzak. When the rapper Satchy adds a sleek verse to “Cool,” their voices sound complementary, but it’s a bit of a disruption. Still, How Many Times is an intriguing glimpse of an artist at the beginning of a skillfully carved path—even if it leaves you wondering what it was that made her cry in public in the first place, what makes her tears dry."

Cat's Eyes

Cat's Eyes

Rock

Larry Fitzmaurice

For the past few years, Horrors frontman Faris Badwan has frequently turned his gaze to past sounds and styles, from the rockabilly gutter-punk lurking under the dirty fingernails of his band's 2007 LP, Strange House, to its surprisingly successful about-face embracing of dark, melodic post-punk on 2009's Primary Colours. The past continues to be the focus in Cat's Eyes, Badwan's collaborative project with Canadian opera singer and multi-instrumentalist Rachel Zeffira. The pair create gauzy reminiscences of 1950s and 60s pop, while their videos and visual design resemble the flickering glow of a damaged, ancient TV set. Even Cat's Eyes' first show took place in a particularly old-world venue: St. Peter's Basilica, in Vatican City. Leading up to the duo's self-titled debut LP, Badwan cited Joe Meek, Phil Spector, and the film Dirty Dancing as sources of inspiration; there are merely strains of those influences throughout Cat's Eyes. Instead, Badwan and Zeffira have created an enjoyably sinister, richly atmospheric backdrop for their soft-focus pop fragments. The influence of Portishead's Geoff Barrow producing Primary Colours continues to bear fruit, as the intense claustrophobia that marked Portishead's 2008 comeback Third similarly colors these proceedings. The death-march horns in "Bandit" suggest that the badly behaved lover in question is more of a murderer than a philanderer; when the infamous opening rhythm to the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" finally appears in the kiss-off "Not a Friend", it sounds not like a heartbeat, but a pair of feet, trying to get the hell out of town. Zeffira sounds like she's already gone, though: She maintains her distance throughout Cat's Eyes. Any hint of her operatic training has been wiped clean and replaced with a delivery that rarely breaks past a coolly delivered sing-chant. Initially, the choice not to exercise what's a fairly unique ability comes off as a bit strange; you'd think that she would want to see how at least one of these songs would sound in her full-throated soprano. As it turns out, though, Zeffira's vocal stylistic departure is a solid fit, emphasizing the damaged loneliness captured on the record. She floats over these songs, dropping quiet bombs on "Best Person I Know" and adding weariness to the brassy proclamations of "Over You". At times, her voice is reminiscent of late Broadcast member Trish Keenan in vocal tone and enunciation, adding an occasionally eerie feel to Cat's Eyes. Consequently, when Badwan's own deep-toned voice enters to duet with Zeffira, it's something of an intrusion; unhelpfully, during the torrential dirge "Sooner or Later", he takes his only solo turn on the album, and the droning mess sticks out like a fist of sore thumbs. Badwan and Zeffira are credited with writing, orchestrating, and arranging the record on their own, and despite all the fluttery horns and Disney strings it wears like Christmas bells, the result is tight in form and execution. The two non-Cat's Eyes cuts from the Broken Glass teaser EP released earlier this year, the punky "Sunshine Girls" and "Love You Anyway", would have no place on this album, revealing a talent for self-editing that makes a miserable, moaning momentum-killer like "Sooner or Later" feel wholly extraneous. Otherwise, Cat's Eyes is the rare side project effort that feels as (if not more) fully realized than the band from which it borrows members.

Artist: Cat's Eyes, Album: Cat's Eyes, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "For the past few years, Horrors frontman Faris Badwan has frequently turned his gaze to past sounds and styles, from the rockabilly gutter-punk lurking under the dirty fingernails of his band's 2007 LP, Strange House, to its surprisingly successful about-face embracing of dark, melodic post-punk on 2009's Primary Colours. The past continues to be the focus in Cat's Eyes, Badwan's collaborative project with Canadian opera singer and multi-instrumentalist Rachel Zeffira. The pair create gauzy reminiscences of 1950s and 60s pop, while their videos and visual design resemble the flickering glow of a damaged, ancient TV set. Even Cat's Eyes' first show took place in a particularly old-world venue: St. Peter's Basilica, in Vatican City. Leading up to the duo's self-titled debut LP, Badwan cited Joe Meek, Phil Spector, and the film Dirty Dancing as sources of inspiration; there are merely strains of those influences throughout Cat's Eyes. Instead, Badwan and Zeffira have created an enjoyably sinister, richly atmospheric backdrop for their soft-focus pop fragments. The influence of Portishead's Geoff Barrow producing Primary Colours continues to bear fruit, as the intense claustrophobia that marked Portishead's 2008 comeback Third similarly colors these proceedings. The death-march horns in "Bandit" suggest that the badly behaved lover in question is more of a murderer than a philanderer; when the infamous opening rhythm to the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" finally appears in the kiss-off "Not a Friend", it sounds not like a heartbeat, but a pair of feet, trying to get the hell out of town. Zeffira sounds like she's already gone, though: She maintains her distance throughout Cat's Eyes. Any hint of her operatic training has been wiped clean and replaced with a delivery that rarely breaks past a coolly delivered sing-chant. Initially, the choice not to exercise what's a fairly unique ability comes off as a bit strange; you'd think that she would want to see how at least one of these songs would sound in her full-throated soprano. As it turns out, though, Zeffira's vocal stylistic departure is a solid fit, emphasizing the damaged loneliness captured on the record. She floats over these songs, dropping quiet bombs on "Best Person I Know" and adding weariness to the brassy proclamations of "Over You". At times, her voice is reminiscent of late Broadcast member Trish Keenan in vocal tone and enunciation, adding an occasionally eerie feel to Cat's Eyes. Consequently, when Badwan's own deep-toned voice enters to duet with Zeffira, it's something of an intrusion; unhelpfully, during the torrential dirge "Sooner or Later", he takes his only solo turn on the album, and the droning mess sticks out like a fist of sore thumbs. Badwan and Zeffira are credited with writing, orchestrating, and arranging the record on their own, and despite all the fluttery horns and Disney strings it wears like Christmas bells, the result is tight in form and execution. The two non-Cat's Eyes cuts from the Broken Glass teaser EP released earlier this year, the punky "Sunshine Girls" and "Love You Anyway", would have no place on this album, revealing a talent for self-editing that makes a miserable, moaning momentum-killer like "Sooner or Later" feel wholly extraneous. Otherwise, Cat's Eyes is the rare side project effort that feels as (if not more) fully realized than the band from which it borrows members."

Johnny Boy

Johnny Boy

Rock

Rob Mitchum

Here's a theory: For a genre to legitimize itself, it needs to have more than just good artists; you also need bad or mediocre ones to provide contrast. In the still embryonic field of indie rock-dance, we've been blessed with an early run of quality bands, like Love Is All, The Go! Team, and United State of Electronica. Taking inspiration from primary dance sources like Daft Punk and the Avalanches rather than the already rock-filtered sound of Gang of Four or Happy Mondays, these groups have kept the indie kids from regressing to crossed-arms days, opening up new avenues of high-energy questionable-fi genre scrapbooks along the way. With 2004's "You Are the Generation Who Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve", British duo Johnny Boy made a strong argument for inclusion in that upper echelon of call-it-what-you-will. Well received by critics-- even the ones that don't get paid by the word-- "Generation" hit the perfect balance between the epic and the homemade: the "Be My Baby" drums, the TASCAM Wall of Sound, the exuberant yell-along climax. No small accomplishment to make one of the decade-so-far's best singles on the first try, but the qualifying test of whether the band could stretch the promise of "Generation" across an LP frame still loomed large. Sadly, the rest of Johnny Boy never matches the brilliance of "Generation", which bats leadoff and provides the record's immediate peak. Playing the genre mix-and-match angle may seem like an easy task, merely requiring a mastery of the unexpected juxtaposition, but unless the approach is meticulously assembled, like the Polaroid pastiches of the Go! Team, it can come out as a malformed mess. Besides a few notable and promising exceptions, unfortunate or over-busy chimeras are largely what Johnny Boy deals out here, collages that assemble their way out of emotional range. "Bonnie Parker's 115th Dream" is the easiest target, a junkyard of "I Want Candy" drums, sax squeals emulating DJ scratches, rapping 101, incongruous sample breaks, noir horns, and a happy-chant chorus. Songs slum through half-hearted stabs at jazzy noir ("Wall Street") or snotty punk ("Formaldehyde") seemingly just because they can, while breakbeats and horn parts turn up in places that don't seem so much carefully chosen as opportunities to vacantly "weird" up the proceedings. Some of these genre excursions may have been more successful were it not for the limited range of primary singer Lolly, whose sweet Claudia Gonson-like voice fit snugly within the Lo-town of "Generation", but finds itself overextended trying to Beth Gibbons her way through the trip-hoppier parts or keep the sugar-pop of "Livin' in the City" from becoming too shrill. It's not until the album-closing "Johnny Boy Theme", also previously released, that the band regains its footing, intercutting girl-group sighs with clattering breaks and sleigh-bell fringe, while finally using the good old boy-girl vocal interplay between Lolly and partner Davo to full effect. Between the goalposts of the two already familiar highlights, the missteps of Johnny Boy's debut draw attention to the relative successes of their peers: the way U.S.E. flirts with but avoids S Club 7 cavities, the way Ian Parton's vinyl-raiding symphonies for the Go! Team articulate diversity without sacrificing cohesion. Here, Johnny Boy show themselves to be, at this point, primarily a singles act, which may eventually not be a slight in the still-evolving world of dance-friendly indie/indie-friendly dance, but which, for now, means they don't quite measure up to the competition.

Artist: Johnny Boy, Album: Johnny Boy, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.2 Album review: "Here's a theory: For a genre to legitimize itself, it needs to have more than just good artists; you also need bad or mediocre ones to provide contrast. In the still embryonic field of indie rock-dance, we've been blessed with an early run of quality bands, like Love Is All, The Go! Team, and United State of Electronica. Taking inspiration from primary dance sources like Daft Punk and the Avalanches rather than the already rock-filtered sound of Gang of Four or Happy Mondays, these groups have kept the indie kids from regressing to crossed-arms days, opening up new avenues of high-energy questionable-fi genre scrapbooks along the way. With 2004's "You Are the Generation Who Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve", British duo Johnny Boy made a strong argument for inclusion in that upper echelon of call-it-what-you-will. Well received by critics-- even the ones that don't get paid by the word-- "Generation" hit the perfect balance between the epic and the homemade: the "Be My Baby" drums, the TASCAM Wall of Sound, the exuberant yell-along climax. No small accomplishment to make one of the decade-so-far's best singles on the first try, but the qualifying test of whether the band could stretch the promise of "Generation" across an LP frame still loomed large. Sadly, the rest of Johnny Boy never matches the brilliance of "Generation", which bats leadoff and provides the record's immediate peak. Playing the genre mix-and-match angle may seem like an easy task, merely requiring a mastery of the unexpected juxtaposition, but unless the approach is meticulously assembled, like the Polaroid pastiches of the Go! Team, it can come out as a malformed mess. Besides a few notable and promising exceptions, unfortunate or over-busy chimeras are largely what Johnny Boy deals out here, collages that assemble their way out of emotional range. "Bonnie Parker's 115th Dream" is the easiest target, a junkyard of "I Want Candy" drums, sax squeals emulating DJ scratches, rapping 101, incongruous sample breaks, noir horns, and a happy-chant chorus. Songs slum through half-hearted stabs at jazzy noir ("Wall Street") or snotty punk ("Formaldehyde") seemingly just because they can, while breakbeats and horn parts turn up in places that don't seem so much carefully chosen as opportunities to vacantly "weird" up the proceedings. Some of these genre excursions may have been more successful were it not for the limited range of primary singer Lolly, whose sweet Claudia Gonson-like voice fit snugly within the Lo-town of "Generation", but finds itself overextended trying to Beth Gibbons her way through the trip-hoppier parts or keep the sugar-pop of "Livin' in the City" from becoming too shrill. It's not until the album-closing "Johnny Boy Theme", also previously released, that the band regains its footing, intercutting girl-group sighs with clattering breaks and sleigh-bell fringe, while finally using the good old boy-girl vocal interplay between Lolly and partner Davo to full effect. Between the goalposts of the two already familiar highlights, the missteps of Johnny Boy's debut draw attention to the relative successes of their peers: the way U.S.E. flirts with but avoids S Club 7 cavities, the way Ian Parton's vinyl-raiding symphonies for the Go! Team articulate diversity without sacrificing cohesion. Here, Johnny Boy show themselves to be, at this point, primarily a singles act, which may eventually not be a slight in the still-evolving world of dance-friendly indie/indie-friendly dance, but which, for now, means they don't quite measure up to the competition."

Katy B

Honey

Electronic,Rock

Brad Nelson

Katy B’s songs tend to orbit people and relationships, but they’re just as often about rooms, and the way music sounds inside of those rooms, or the way that environmental combinations of music and desire can distort one’s sense of time. "Let history repeat / in parallel lines," she sang on Little Red’s "5 AM," describing not only the small infinities implied by dance music but the recursive structure of desire itself. On her new album, Honey, Katy B seems to want to sublimate herself even further into the texture of her music, as if to emphasize the distinct rooms she finds herself in; each of the producers and singers she works with on the album receives equal credit with her, and most of them are located deep with the roster of Rinse FM, the radio station/label that’s released each of her records. She isn’t lost so easily. The album’s centerpiece is a collaboration with jackin’ house producer Chris Lorenzo called "I Wanna Be," the instrumental of the which has been floating around the internet since 2014. Katy B gives the diffuse beat gravity and narrative drama; it ceases to be a tightly-cropped brightness and unfolds and shimmers into a complete emotional landscape. "I wanna tell you / but anxiety’s a bitch babe," she sings, unlocking inner melodies and tensions from otherwise iridescent, smooth house. Where Little Red saw Katy throwing herself into the occasional ballad, Honey is reduced to a pure set of dance music; within these aesthetic limits, though, it may be her most varied record stylistically. On "So Far Away," produced by Wilkinson, drum and bass production gathers and collides together, and Katy weaves through it in deliberate swerves. "Calm Down," written with Floating Points and Four Tet, features strings that saw crisply through the track and then rematerialize in ribbony masses. Only on "Lose Your Head," with grime MCs J Hus and D Double E, does Katy B feel like a hook singer on her own song, which causes it feels drawn from an entirely different order of work. Because of the wide range of producers, the songs on Honey can feel unrelated to each other, and often settle together indifferently. Oddly enough Honey starts to snap into focus on a track originally released last year as a single by KDA, "Turn the Music Louder (Rumble)," itself a vocal rework of an earlier instrumental; on the album version, Tinie Tempeh is subtracted from the song, and Katy B draws the verses and chorus of the song into a subterranean gravity.  Songs like these show Katy B at her best, caught up in the flow of something so overwhelming she can’t see the beginning or the end of it, time expanding and collapsing with her in its center. As with Little Red, the ideal way of hearing Honey is in its continuous mix, but where Little Red’s arranged all of its album and bonus tracks into a kind of diagram of a long, frustrating night out, Honey’s continuous mix merely places opaque tempo shifts between each song. Regardless, the album feels more connected and coherent when experienced in this way, when the listener is allowed to enter a portal before the next distinct context asserts itself, and where Katy herself feels like she’s stretching seamlessly from one dimension into another.

Artist: Katy B, Album: Honey, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "Katy B’s songs tend to orbit people and relationships, but they’re just as often about rooms, and the way music sounds inside of those rooms, or the way that environmental combinations of music and desire can distort one’s sense of time. "Let history repeat / in parallel lines," she sang on Little Red’s "5 AM," describing not only the small infinities implied by dance music but the recursive structure of desire itself. On her new album, Honey, Katy B seems to want to sublimate herself even further into the texture of her music, as if to emphasize the distinct rooms she finds herself in; each of the producers and singers she works with on the album receives equal credit with her, and most of them are located deep with the roster of Rinse FM, the radio station/label that’s released each of her records. She isn’t lost so easily. The album’s centerpiece is a collaboration with jackin’ house producer Chris Lorenzo called "I Wanna Be," the instrumental of the which has been floating around the internet since 2014. Katy B gives the diffuse beat gravity and narrative drama; it ceases to be a tightly-cropped brightness and unfolds and shimmers into a complete emotional landscape. "I wanna tell you / but anxiety’s a bitch babe," she sings, unlocking inner melodies and tensions from otherwise iridescent, smooth house. Where Little Red saw Katy throwing herself into the occasional ballad, Honey is reduced to a pure set of dance music; within these aesthetic limits, though, it may be her most varied record stylistically. On "So Far Away," produced by Wilkinson, drum and bass production gathers and collides together, and Katy weaves through it in deliberate swerves. "Calm Down," written with Floating Points and Four Tet, features strings that saw crisply through the track and then rematerialize in ribbony masses. Only on "Lose Your Head," with grime MCs J Hus and D Double E, does Katy B feel like a hook singer on her own song, which causes it feels drawn from an entirely different order of work. Because of the wide range of producers, the songs on Honey can feel unrelated to each other, and often settle together indifferently. Oddly enough Honey starts to snap into focus on a track originally released last year as a single by KDA, "Turn the Music Louder (Rumble)," itself a vocal rework of an earlier instrumental; on the album version, Tinie Tempeh is subtracted from the song, and Katy B draws the verses and chorus of the song into a subterranean gravity.  Songs like these show Katy B at her best, caught up in the flow of something so overwhelming she can’t see the beginning or the end of it, time expanding and collapsing with her in its center. As with Little Red, the ideal way of hearing Honey is in its continuous mix, but where Little Red’s arranged all of its album and bonus tracks into a kind of diagram of a long, frustrating night out, Honey’s continuous mix merely places opaque tempo shifts between each song. Regardless, the album feels more connected and coherent when experienced in this way, when the listener is allowed to enter a portal before the next distinct context asserts itself, and where Katy herself feels like she’s stretching seamlessly from one dimension into another."

Nick Drake

Fruit Tree

Folk/Country

Stephen M. Deusner

A popular way to hear Nick Drake's music is as a protracted suicide note, each song leading to the same incontrovertible conclusion. You don't have look very far in his lyrics to find quotable lines pointing the way to tragedy; just listen to "Fruit Tree", from his 1969 debut Five Leaves Left, or "Parasite", an early song recorded for his 1972 swan song Pink Moon. But listeners also tend to search for foreboding insight within ill-fated songwriters' catalogs, and the knowledge of Drake's early death doesn't intensify or justify whatever emotions exist in the music. The fact that he died may be the best-known aspect of his life, but his songs don't need that tragedy to convey sadness, isolation, confusion, disappointment, and wonder-- all of which may have contributed to his overdose of anti-depressants in 1974, whether accidental or not. Fruit Tree, an incomplete reissue of a defining compilation, touches on the darker aspects of Drake's music, but to avoid romanticizing his doomed life, the 3xCD/1xDVD set couches it in a very close, often very technical reading of his songs. The set was first released in England five years after Drake's death and in America in 1986, and has been repackaged in various permutations since then. Historically, the set has been anchored by Drake's three studio albums, the rarities collection Time of No Reply (which was released separately in 1986), and extensive liner notes, with a black-and-white cover depicting Drake on an empty sidewalk, his overcoat blowing in the wind. This new American version drops Time of No Reply (a curious and almost criminal omission) but replaces it with new and exhaustive liner notes, a DVD containing Jeroen Berkvens' 1999 documentary A Skin Too Few, and a new cover showing a dark-green tree against a northern-sky-blue background. While far from complete, Fruit Tree is nevertheless the most comprehensive Drake compilation available and the best introduction to the singer-songwriter. Its remastering renders obsolete your copies of his uniformly superb studio albums (and should have done the same to any of his rarities collections like Time of No Reply or Made to Love Magic). The absence of non-album tracks from Time of No Reply may make Fruit Tree stronger song for song, but it still gives the sense of an incomplete picture. The new liner notes and Berkvens' elegiac film go to great lengths to fill in this portrait, discussing Drake's life and his death but generally avoiding easy mythmaking. A Skin Too Few emphasizes Drake's essential unknowability: He was never a public figure, so we have no common memory of him, as we have for other dead celebrities. In fact, so little was known about him that every detail of his life, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, has been parsed for significance. And he died so long ago-- 33 years ago this month, to be exact-- that we have lost many people who were close to him, leaving us with the testimony of a very few. A Skin Too Few offers no interviews with Drake and no performance footage, which are typically the bedrock of rock documentaries; Drake gave no interviews and very rarely performed publicly. His legacy is analog. At the center of this film, and of that legacy, is an absence, which Berkvens expresses visually. He situates Drake's songs in landscapes that initially appear as still lifes, but eventually humanity invades the frame in the form of a train or a boy on a bicycle or two professors greeting each other. The suggestion is that these places-- his childhood room, his university quad, London alleyways-- informed Drake's music as strongly as his internal landscape did. It's a simple, valid point that gives a fuller idea of the artist by taking the mortal burden off of his shoulders, at least in part. As a textual complement to Berkvens' film, the new liner notes feature commentary from four individuals who knew Drake well: Robin Frederick, a music journalist, musician, and friend; Joe Boyd, who produced Five Leaves Left and 1970's Bryter Layter; Robert Kirby, who composed for Drake; and John Wood, who engineered all of Drake's albums. Together, they present a very useful alternative to the suicide-note reading of these albums-- a technical approach-- by discussing his songwriting, composing, and guitar playing in fine detail. Of "Way to Blue", Frederick observes, "The heart of the song is the resolving of the suspended fourth to the major third." Others point to his use of cluster chords on "River Man" and "Place to Be", the uncommon tunings on Pink Moon, and the unusual time signatures on almost every song. They also explain how these elements interact and how Drake resolves them in unexpected ways. It's rarely mentioned when discussing Drake, but he was an exceptional guitarist, able to strum out intricate rhythms on low strings while picking distinctive melodies on high. He draws from milonga rhythms for "The Thoughts of Mary Jane", Mose Allison jazz-blues for "Man in a Shed", and Stan Getz for "Poor Boy". On Five Leaves Left and Bryter Layter, Boyd, Kirby, and Wood complement his guitarwork with eccentric arrangements, creating a swirl of strings and reed instruments around him. By contrast, Pink Moon, featuring Drake alone, is a guitar album-- by necessity, sure, but what makes the collection so fascinating is how he was able to use his guitar both to evoke the loneliness of a solo musician (especially this solo musician) and to create the effect of two or sometimes even three instruments at once, studied in a variety of tones and styles. Despite its starkness, for this reason Pink Moon may be his richest album. That the liner notes can point this out without alienating lay readers with too much technical language is surely an accomplishment, but then again lay readers have been listening to and discussing these albums for years now, at least since 2000, when Volkswagen used "Pink Moon" in its Cabriolet commercial. Perhaps those same listeners didn't pick up on the cluster chords and 5/4 time signatures, but they no doubt felt their effect. The 31 tracks on these three albums evoke the uncertainty of life, a strong wonder at the world, and an equally intense despair as clearly and eloquently through the music as through the words. Drake remains a mysterious figure, so well known popularly yet completely unknown personally; Fruit Tree presents a timid man but a bold artist. As someone who expressed himself wholly through music, Drake understood that his music must be wholly expressive.

Artist: Nick Drake, Album: Fruit Tree, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 8.1 Album review: "A popular way to hear Nick Drake's music is as a protracted suicide note, each song leading to the same incontrovertible conclusion. You don't have look very far in his lyrics to find quotable lines pointing the way to tragedy; just listen to "Fruit Tree", from his 1969 debut Five Leaves Left, or "Parasite", an early song recorded for his 1972 swan song Pink Moon. But listeners also tend to search for foreboding insight within ill-fated songwriters' catalogs, and the knowledge of Drake's early death doesn't intensify or justify whatever emotions exist in the music. The fact that he died may be the best-known aspect of his life, but his songs don't need that tragedy to convey sadness, isolation, confusion, disappointment, and wonder-- all of which may have contributed to his overdose of anti-depressants in 1974, whether accidental or not. Fruit Tree, an incomplete reissue of a defining compilation, touches on the darker aspects of Drake's music, but to avoid romanticizing his doomed life, the 3xCD/1xDVD set couches it in a very close, often very technical reading of his songs. The set was first released in England five years after Drake's death and in America in 1986, and has been repackaged in various permutations since then. Historically, the set has been anchored by Drake's three studio albums, the rarities collection Time of No Reply (which was released separately in 1986), and extensive liner notes, with a black-and-white cover depicting Drake on an empty sidewalk, his overcoat blowing in the wind. This new American version drops Time of No Reply (a curious and almost criminal omission) but replaces it with new and exhaustive liner notes, a DVD containing Jeroen Berkvens' 1999 documentary A Skin Too Few, and a new cover showing a dark-green tree against a northern-sky-blue background. While far from complete, Fruit Tree is nevertheless the most comprehensive Drake compilation available and the best introduction to the singer-songwriter. Its remastering renders obsolete your copies of his uniformly superb studio albums (and should have done the same to any of his rarities collections like Time of No Reply or Made to Love Magic). The absence of non-album tracks from Time of No Reply may make Fruit Tree stronger song for song, but it still gives the sense of an incomplete picture. The new liner notes and Berkvens' elegiac film go to great lengths to fill in this portrait, discussing Drake's life and his death but generally avoiding easy mythmaking. A Skin Too Few emphasizes Drake's essential unknowability: He was never a public figure, so we have no common memory of him, as we have for other dead celebrities. In fact, so little was known about him that every detail of his life, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, has been parsed for significance. And he died so long ago-- 33 years ago this month, to be exact-- that we have lost many people who were close to him, leaving us with the testimony of a very few. A Skin Too Few offers no interviews with Drake and no performance footage, which are typically the bedrock of rock documentaries; Drake gave no interviews and very rarely performed publicly. His legacy is analog. At the center of this film, and of that legacy, is an absence, which Berkvens expresses visually. He situates Drake's songs in landscapes that initially appear as still lifes, but eventually humanity invades the frame in the form of a train or a boy on a bicycle or two professors greeting each other. The suggestion is that these places-- his childhood room, his university quad, London alleyways-- informed Drake's music as strongly as his internal landscape did. It's a simple, valid point that gives a fuller idea of the artist by taking the mortal burden off of his shoulders, at least in part. As a textual complement to Berkvens' film, the new liner notes feature commentary from four individuals who knew Drake well: Robin Frederick, a music journalist, musician, and friend; Joe Boyd, who produced Five Leaves Left and 1970's Bryter Layter; Robert Kirby, who composed for Drake; and John Wood, who engineered all of Drake's albums. Together, they present a very useful alternative to the suicide-note reading of these albums-- a technical approach-- by discussing his songwriting, composing, and guitar playing in fine detail. Of "Way to Blue", Frederick observes, "The heart of the song is the resolving of the suspended fourth to the major third." Others point to his use of cluster chords on "River Man" and "Place to Be", the uncommon tunings on Pink Moon, and the unusual time signatures on almost every song. They also explain how these elements interact and how Drake resolves them in unexpected ways. It's rarely mentioned when discussing Drake, but he was an exceptional guitarist, able to strum out intricate rhythms on low strings while picking distinctive melodies on high. He draws from milonga rhythms for "The Thoughts of Mary Jane", Mose Allison jazz-blues for "Man in a Shed", and Stan Getz for "Poor Boy". On Five Leaves Left and Bryter Layter, Boyd, Kirby, and Wood complement his guitarwork with eccentric arrangements, creating a swirl of strings and reed instruments around him. By contrast, Pink Moon, featuring Drake alone, is a guitar album-- by necessity, sure, but what makes the collection so fascinating is how he was able to use his guitar both to evoke the loneliness of a solo musician (especially this solo musician) and to create the effect of two or sometimes even three instruments at once, studied in a variety of tones and styles. Despite its starkness, for this reason Pink Moon may be his richest album. That the liner notes can point this out without alienating lay readers with too much technical language is surely an accomplishment, but then again lay readers have been listening to and discussing these albums for years now, at least since 2000, when Volkswagen used "Pink Moon" in its Cabriolet commercial. Perhaps those same listeners didn't pick up on the cluster chords and 5/4 time signatures, but they no doubt felt their effect. The 31 tracks on these three albums evoke the uncertainty of life, a strong wonder at the world, and an equally intense despair as clearly and eloquently through the music as through the words. Drake remains a mysterious figure, so well known popularly yet completely unknown personally; Fruit Tree presents a timid man but a bold artist. As someone who expressed himself wholly through music, Drake understood that his music must be wholly expressive."

Happy Jawbone Family Band

Tastes the Broom

Liz Pelly

There's been no shortage of endearingly sloppy, blues-inflected garage rock in recent years, but Brattleboro, Vt.'s Happy Jawbone Family Band uses the template to create its own mythical world. Since 2009, the band has remained blissfully off-grid, recording hundreds of songs over several tapes and full-lengths for similarly homegrown labels like Spooky Town Artifacts, Feeding Tube, and Night People, which makes their next release feel like a move into the spotlight: it's being recorded with Jarvis Taverniere of Woods, and is set for release on Mexican Summer later this year. For context, the label is prepping for the forthcoming LP with this retrospective compilation, which might seem premature if the songs weren't so strong. The collection opens with "Now Everybody Rock Like You Got AIDS", a track from their 2009 album Family Matters-- one of two 40-track cassettes they released that year. The song is an explosive, excessively distorted shout-along that brings to mind the blown-out sound of Siltbreeze acts like Times New Viking and Eat Skull, or the proudly out-of-tune punk rock of Half Japanese. But unlike those bands, Happy Jawbone's members sing with more of a whimsical, childlike disposition, an eerie aesthetic given the title and the chorus. It works as an introduction to the way their songs often juxtapose youthful innocence with dark realities of life and death (according to the band, it was written while members were studying at Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and alludes to how "the ghosts of that epidemic walk freely around the campus"). Continuing the thread is"Fireflies Made Out of Dust", a crackly, off-kilter gem that sounds like each player is learning the song as they go along, screeching the blues in childish voices: "You drew an airplane flying through my head/ I might as well be dead." The world of Happy Jawbone is shaded by absurdist comedy, especially in the way their songs are are so self-referential, recycling and re-contextualizing their own lyrics, melodies, song titles, and motifs from record to record: fires, broken glass, butter, and bugs, particularly fireflies, are all popular song topics. Halfway through Family Matters, there's a wacky aside in "The Album So Far...", which takes the first half of the tape and compacts it into the length of a single track; to date, they've recorded three variations on "At the Hotel Double Tragedy"-- the version here sounds cartoonish and toy-like. Happy Jawbone's disturbed take on whimsy and rebellious, youthful spirit recalls lo-fi stables, Elephant 6 and K Records: The alien-sounding "Martian Santa" comes from a Christmas album they released in 2011, and brings to mind the way the Music Tapes treat holiday tunes; the record's final song, the six-minute "Don't Tread on the Museums of Your Youth", reads like a poetic distillation of all this band's complex ways of dealing with nostalgia and childhood. But Happy Jawbone have their own thing going on, thanks all the same: Like Olympia, Brattleboro is a small town where a regional sound and tiny but fruitful community of experimenters (Blanche Blanche Blanche, the Great Valley, Chris Weisman) exist outside of the big city glare and sheen. On Tastes the Broom, Happy Jawbone Family Band celebrate the value of lo-fi as an act of direct resistance to the toxic gloss of professionalism, making a persuasive statement in defense of wide-eyed amateurism in the process.

Artist: Happy Jawbone Family Band, Album: Tastes the Broom, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "There's been no shortage of endearingly sloppy, blues-inflected garage rock in recent years, but Brattleboro, Vt.'s Happy Jawbone Family Band uses the template to create its own mythical world. Since 2009, the band has remained blissfully off-grid, recording hundreds of songs over several tapes and full-lengths for similarly homegrown labels like Spooky Town Artifacts, Feeding Tube, and Night People, which makes their next release feel like a move into the spotlight: it's being recorded with Jarvis Taverniere of Woods, and is set for release on Mexican Summer later this year. For context, the label is prepping for the forthcoming LP with this retrospective compilation, which might seem premature if the songs weren't so strong. The collection opens with "Now Everybody Rock Like You Got AIDS", a track from their 2009 album Family Matters-- one of two 40-track cassettes they released that year. The song is an explosive, excessively distorted shout-along that brings to mind the blown-out sound of Siltbreeze acts like Times New Viking and Eat Skull, or the proudly out-of-tune punk rock of Half Japanese. But unlike those bands, Happy Jawbone's members sing with more of a whimsical, childlike disposition, an eerie aesthetic given the title and the chorus. It works as an introduction to the way their songs often juxtapose youthful innocence with dark realities of life and death (according to the band, it was written while members were studying at Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and alludes to how "the ghosts of that epidemic walk freely around the campus"). Continuing the thread is"Fireflies Made Out of Dust", a crackly, off-kilter gem that sounds like each player is learning the song as they go along, screeching the blues in childish voices: "You drew an airplane flying through my head/ I might as well be dead." The world of Happy Jawbone is shaded by absurdist comedy, especially in the way their songs are are so self-referential, recycling and re-contextualizing their own lyrics, melodies, song titles, and motifs from record to record: fires, broken glass, butter, and bugs, particularly fireflies, are all popular song topics. Halfway through Family Matters, there's a wacky aside in "The Album So Far...", which takes the first half of the tape and compacts it into the length of a single track; to date, they've recorded three variations on "At the Hotel Double Tragedy"-- the version here sounds cartoonish and toy-like. Happy Jawbone's disturbed take on whimsy and rebellious, youthful spirit recalls lo-fi stables, Elephant 6 and K Records: The alien-sounding "Martian Santa" comes from a Christmas album they released in 2011, and brings to mind the way the Music Tapes treat holiday tunes; the record's final song, the six-minute "Don't Tread on the Museums of Your Youth", reads like a poetic distillation of all this band's complex ways of dealing with nostalgia and childhood. But Happy Jawbone have their own thing going on, thanks all the same: Like Olympia, Brattleboro is a small town where a regional sound and tiny but fruitful community of experimenters (Blanche Blanche Blanche, the Great Valley, Chris Weisman) exist outside of the big city glare and sheen. On Tastes the Broom, Happy Jawbone Family Band celebrate the value of lo-fi as an act of direct resistance to the toxic gloss of professionalism, making a persuasive statement in defense of wide-eyed amateurism in the process."

Johnny and the Moon

Johnny and the Moon

Grayson Currin

Utilitarian record sleeves come branded with three bits of information for potential consumers: The name of the artist, the title, and the tracklist. The front cover of Johnny and the Moon's eponymous album fulfills the first two identifiers, and, expectedly, the flipside lists the songs. That's easy enough. There's one fact, though, that the cover doesn't mention. Not that it's essential for assessment, but as marketing goes, it would probably be wise to slap on a sticker conveying that this is the latest project from Dante DeCaro, the Hot Hot Heat guitarist with enough sense to leave that band and join Wolf Parade following the freefall that was Elevator. Based on the sleeve alone, a would-be buyer could instead make more important extrapolations about this Canadian band: The group's name is a truncated take on Johnny and the Moondogs, the moniker the Beatles went by for a time in 1959, when they were still in high school. And that the album is self-titled likely signals that it's either a debut or a shift in direction. But, the real signifier here is "Green Rocky Road", the first of 11 tracks listed. Its namesake, "Green, Green Rocky Road", is a folk mainstay, written in 1961 by Robert Kaufman and Len Chandler and recorded at least a dozen times in the past four decades by people ranging from Dave Van Ronk to Emmylou Harris. Contemporary recreations of folk standards with nebulous, exposed faultlines? Sounds likely. Indeed, Johnny and the Moon is another band interested in attaching traditional folk tones and topics to contemporary rock idioms, but it's a long cry from the cyclical revivalism and avant hybridization that have both enjoyed surprising success this decade. Instead, it splits the difference, a keen realization of rock-borne appeal brightened by folk's propensity for parable. Eight tracks are written for drums, voice, and either acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin, or piano, but almost all of them pepper those arrangements ever so slightly with electronics, keyboards, and bells. "Green Rocky Road", for instance, gallops to sleigh bells, chimes, crotales, and an acoustic guitar, and lines like, "Hooka, tooka, soda cracker/ Does your mamma chew tobacco?" are handled with a traditionalist's reverence. But later, Johnny parades atop an aged saloon piano for "When You're All Alone" with a driving midsection-- a beer-and-vinegar, bar-room yowl drunk on piercing harmonica and a high-flying, atonal horn-- that happily violates the stereotypical purity of such recorded balladry. Even the mandolin-helmed "The Ballad of Scarlet Town" punches up the lonely lusts of young girls and mountain men with big-bottom drums and a shout-along, campfire chorus. Its immediacy is built on sheer pop exuberance with an ancestral spirit, at least, close at hand. But the album falls short in its reach, especially when consciously straddling hemispheres of antiquity and reinvention. At its worst, the playing seems indecisive, belabored with material that seems borrowed and, worse still, impersonal. "Oleanna"-- a rewriting of an obscure tune revived by the Kingston Trio in 1959-- is especially timid, as though the long-distance love it employs is the kind of thing that's been experienced only in books. Folk music is a deep, daunting well and drawing from it requires preparation, if not caution. Given the diversity of North American folk relative to the even-keel whole Johnny manages, this is, at times, a novice affair, or a broken-bottle weekender between Jesse Malin (DeCaro sounds just like him) and Ryan Adams (a Carolinian). Still, these non-traditionalist interpretations are imperfectly full of promise and earnest enthusiasm, and that's a start.

Artist: Johnny and the Moon, Album: Johnny and the Moon, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "Utilitarian record sleeves come branded with three bits of information for potential consumers: The name of the artist, the title, and the tracklist. The front cover of Johnny and the Moon's eponymous album fulfills the first two identifiers, and, expectedly, the flipside lists the songs. That's easy enough. There's one fact, though, that the cover doesn't mention. Not that it's essential for assessment, but as marketing goes, it would probably be wise to slap on a sticker conveying that this is the latest project from Dante DeCaro, the Hot Hot Heat guitarist with enough sense to leave that band and join Wolf Parade following the freefall that was Elevator. Based on the sleeve alone, a would-be buyer could instead make more important extrapolations about this Canadian band: The group's name is a truncated take on Johnny and the Moondogs, the moniker the Beatles went by for a time in 1959, when they were still in high school. And that the album is self-titled likely signals that it's either a debut or a shift in direction. But, the real signifier here is "Green Rocky Road", the first of 11 tracks listed. Its namesake, "Green, Green Rocky Road", is a folk mainstay, written in 1961 by Robert Kaufman and Len Chandler and recorded at least a dozen times in the past four decades by people ranging from Dave Van Ronk to Emmylou Harris. Contemporary recreations of folk standards with nebulous, exposed faultlines? Sounds likely. Indeed, Johnny and the Moon is another band interested in attaching traditional folk tones and topics to contemporary rock idioms, but it's a long cry from the cyclical revivalism and avant hybridization that have both enjoyed surprising success this decade. Instead, it splits the difference, a keen realization of rock-borne appeal brightened by folk's propensity for parable. Eight tracks are written for drums, voice, and either acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin, or piano, but almost all of them pepper those arrangements ever so slightly with electronics, keyboards, and bells. "Green Rocky Road", for instance, gallops to sleigh bells, chimes, crotales, and an acoustic guitar, and lines like, "Hooka, tooka, soda cracker/ Does your mamma chew tobacco?" are handled with a traditionalist's reverence. But later, Johnny parades atop an aged saloon piano for "When You're All Alone" with a driving midsection-- a beer-and-vinegar, bar-room yowl drunk on piercing harmonica and a high-flying, atonal horn-- that happily violates the stereotypical purity of such recorded balladry. Even the mandolin-helmed "The Ballad of Scarlet Town" punches up the lonely lusts of young girls and mountain men with big-bottom drums and a shout-along, campfire chorus. Its immediacy is built on sheer pop exuberance with an ancestral spirit, at least, close at hand. But the album falls short in its reach, especially when consciously straddling hemispheres of antiquity and reinvention. At its worst, the playing seems indecisive, belabored with material that seems borrowed and, worse still, impersonal. "Oleanna"-- a rewriting of an obscure tune revived by the Kingston Trio in 1959-- is especially timid, as though the long-distance love it employs is the kind of thing that's been experienced only in books. Folk music is a deep, daunting well and drawing from it requires preparation, if not caution. Given the diversity of North American folk relative to the even-keel whole Johnny manages, this is, at times, a novice affair, or a broken-bottle weekender between Jesse Malin (DeCaro sounds just like him) and Ryan Adams (a Carolinian). Still, these non-traditionalist interpretations are imperfectly full of promise and earnest enthusiasm, and that's a start."

Droop Capone

Mad Hueman Disease

Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

"I'm not a dopehead, I'm a herbal sewer/ Blow smoke out my teeth/ Then pass like Heath Schuler." This lyric pretty much sums up how Droop Capone-- better known as L.A. emcee Dr.Oop-- devised such alter egos as Droopy Drawls, Chief Big Hat, Mr. Verbal Sunshine, and Dread Kaczinski. He's the "ganja guru." He's "burning nugs the size of Miss Piggy, the color of Kermit." And, as a warning to anyone planning to shake it down with him: he burns "sometimes before sex, after, or during." Watch your chochas, ladies! The sheer volume of these 20 semi-focused tracks makes the fact that he's such a big-time stoner the unifying theme on Mad Hueman Disease. When Dr.Oop is on, he's on; his forte is rhyming in a no-frills, earnest style about his life. "One Life", a nostalgic "jazz funeral" track, has a slippery, laidback feel, and "9 to 5" describes the struggle of looking for work: "I've been denied jobs 'cause of my hair configuration." But when certain songs get lost in the mix due to messy or forgettable production, the fact that he's the "mary-jane-iac" who "smokes the green that Jah provided for me" is the only idea that's really sticky. Much of Mad Hueman Disease's edutainment vibe comes off as distinctly 1998. Surprisingly, one of the freshest cuts sounds straight out of '88, and not just cause he namedrops the ill-fated single mom-edy Kate & Allie. "Pre-Dawn" is a simple, almost arrhythmic a cappella freestyle placed blearily atop midtempo beatboxing; Dr.Oop sounds summertime-careless as he raps, "Talkin' shit from New York to L.A./ Kickin' like Pele/ When he's playin' socca/ Drinkin' vodka/ With ism in my locka." Despite Mad Hueman's scattered concept, Dr.Oop's good-hearted, frank style can be very endearing. At other points, his honesty verges on TMI. From "Punan Puffessa": "My patients give me feedback about examinations/ One said she liked the way the scalpel stuck her." Eww. "6 Months", a song extolling the virtues of safe sex, feels like a public service announcement; the beats are a Nickelodeon-spunky mélange of bright percussion and a conservatively funky bassline, and like... he's preaching about using a jimmy. A noble cause, I do not deny this, but the problem is, after establishing the moralistic-dad vibe, the next song on the record, "Toke and Poke", illustrates how Dr.Oop likes to smoke a little of the cheeba before he freaks it with his woman, and it comes off vaguely creepy. Dr.Oop's lyrics are tight, but nobody likes it when Dad talks about doin' the nasty with his "Pookie Bear".

Artist: Droop Capone, Album: Mad Hueman Disease, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: ""I'm not a dopehead, I'm a herbal sewer/ Blow smoke out my teeth/ Then pass like Heath Schuler." This lyric pretty much sums up how Droop Capone-- better known as L.A. emcee Dr.Oop-- devised such alter egos as Droopy Drawls, Chief Big Hat, Mr. Verbal Sunshine, and Dread Kaczinski. He's the "ganja guru." He's "burning nugs the size of Miss Piggy, the color of Kermit." And, as a warning to anyone planning to shake it down with him: he burns "sometimes before sex, after, or during." Watch your chochas, ladies! The sheer volume of these 20 semi-focused tracks makes the fact that he's such a big-time stoner the unifying theme on Mad Hueman Disease. When Dr.Oop is on, he's on; his forte is rhyming in a no-frills, earnest style about his life. "One Life", a nostalgic "jazz funeral" track, has a slippery, laidback feel, and "9 to 5" describes the struggle of looking for work: "I've been denied jobs 'cause of my hair configuration." But when certain songs get lost in the mix due to messy or forgettable production, the fact that he's the "mary-jane-iac" who "smokes the green that Jah provided for me" is the only idea that's really sticky. Much of Mad Hueman Disease's edutainment vibe comes off as distinctly 1998. Surprisingly, one of the freshest cuts sounds straight out of '88, and not just cause he namedrops the ill-fated single mom-edy Kate & Allie. "Pre-Dawn" is a simple, almost arrhythmic a cappella freestyle placed blearily atop midtempo beatboxing; Dr.Oop sounds summertime-careless as he raps, "Talkin' shit from New York to L.A./ Kickin' like Pele/ When he's playin' socca/ Drinkin' vodka/ With ism in my locka." Despite Mad Hueman's scattered concept, Dr.Oop's good-hearted, frank style can be very endearing. At other points, his honesty verges on TMI. From "Punan Puffessa": "My patients give me feedback about examinations/ One said she liked the way the scalpel stuck her." Eww. "6 Months", a song extolling the virtues of safe sex, feels like a public service announcement; the beats are a Nickelodeon-spunky mélange of bright percussion and a conservatively funky bassline, and like... he's preaching about using a jimmy. A noble cause, I do not deny this, but the problem is, after establishing the moralistic-dad vibe, the next song on the record, "Toke and Poke", illustrates how Dr.Oop likes to smoke a little of the cheeba before he freaks it with his woman, and it comes off vaguely creepy. Dr.Oop's lyrics are tight, but nobody likes it when Dad talks about doin' the nasty with his "Pookie Bear"."

Yamantaka // Sonic Titan

Yamantaka // Sonic Titan

Experimental,Rock

Stuart Berman

It's no coincidence that Emerson, Lake & Palmer once recorded a live album at Montreal's Olympic Stadium, that Roger Waters was inspired to write The Wall after a spit-soaked altercation with an overzealous fan at the same venue, and that the city is home to the world's most popular Genesis tribute band-- this town loves it some prog-rock. Perhaps it's because Montreal is the North American metropolis with the most pronounced European influence, but even local bands of metal (Voivod), Britpop (the Dears), electro-punk (Les Georges Leningrad), and populist-indie (Arcade Fire) origin have embraced the genre's narrative qualities, intricate musicality, and theatricality. Montreal's Yamantaka//Sonic Titan are the latest torch-bearers for the city's prog-and-proud tradition. But where the most renowned prog-rock bands have introduced thematic frameworks into their music very gradually over the course several years-- remember, even Rush started out writing three-minute pop crotch-rockers about wanting to get laid-- the conceptual scope and song-cycle composition heard on YT//ST is the result of refinement and focus. To say the duo of Ruby Kato Attwood and Alaska B have lofty ambitions would be an understatement. Being of Anglo-Asian descent-- the former is Japanese-Scottish, the latter Chinese-Irish-- the two formed Yamantaka//Sonic Titan to address the duality of their cultural identities, as reflected in their band's double name, not to mention the tendency to appear in public sporting kabuki face paint and bikinis. Early shows were reportedly defined by decorative stage sets, performance art, homemade instruments made of trash and noisy experimentation, as the duo worked toward the goal of making its debut album a full-blown "noh-wave" rock opera, titled Star. Now that YT//ST have solidified into an eight-piece rock-band formation, they've issued this album as a 30-minute preview of that larger, still-in-progress work. But the record feels wholly substantial and satisfying in its own right, and even those with no prior knowledge of YT//ST's history and elaborate intentions can just enjoy it for what it is: volcanic prog-rock colored with equal parts post-punk urgency, stoner-metal heft, and psychedelic pop whimsy. Thanks to smart, brisk sequencing, the seven disparate songs presented here hang together as a seamless piece, even if the thematic devices linking them aren't so easy to discern: The tribal-ceremonial scene setter "Queens" offers references to ravens, snakes, hounds, and Alejandro Jodorowsky's surrealist-horror classic The Holy Mountain, but it proves to be the only lyrically legible song on the album, as Ruby and Alaska become increasingly reliant on words of indeterminate language and ghostly harmonies. However, inscrutably titled songs like the funhouse-mirrored acid-pop of "Reverse Crystal//Murder of a Spider" and the space-age stomper "Hoshi Neko" nonetheless display an insidiously melodic quality that suggests Stereolab on steroids. And where these songs foreground YT//ST's eccentric side, the nightmarish, seven-minute colossus "A Star Over Pureland" showcases their command of brute physicality, pitting the ladies' echo-drenched shrieks against a relentless, jackhammered fuzz-metal assault, like Fly-era Yoko Ono waging war with Lightning Bolt. Yamantaka//Sonic Titan may still aspire to the sort of conceptual grandeur that requires an Olympic Stadium to contain it, but right now, what they're really good at is putting the "raw" in prog.

Artist: Yamantaka // Sonic Titan, Album: Yamantaka // Sonic Titan, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "It's no coincidence that Emerson, Lake & Palmer once recorded a live album at Montreal's Olympic Stadium, that Roger Waters was inspired to write The Wall after a spit-soaked altercation with an overzealous fan at the same venue, and that the city is home to the world's most popular Genesis tribute band-- this town loves it some prog-rock. Perhaps it's because Montreal is the North American metropolis with the most pronounced European influence, but even local bands of metal (Voivod), Britpop (the Dears), electro-punk (Les Georges Leningrad), and populist-indie (Arcade Fire) origin have embraced the genre's narrative qualities, intricate musicality, and theatricality. Montreal's Yamantaka//Sonic Titan are the latest torch-bearers for the city's prog-and-proud tradition. But where the most renowned prog-rock bands have introduced thematic frameworks into their music very gradually over the course several years-- remember, even Rush started out writing three-minute pop crotch-rockers about wanting to get laid-- the conceptual scope and song-cycle composition heard on YT//ST is the result of refinement and focus. To say the duo of Ruby Kato Attwood and Alaska B have lofty ambitions would be an understatement. Being of Anglo-Asian descent-- the former is Japanese-Scottish, the latter Chinese-Irish-- the two formed Yamantaka//Sonic Titan to address the duality of their cultural identities, as reflected in their band's double name, not to mention the tendency to appear in public sporting kabuki face paint and bikinis. Early shows were reportedly defined by decorative stage sets, performance art, homemade instruments made of trash and noisy experimentation, as the duo worked toward the goal of making its debut album a full-blown "noh-wave" rock opera, titled Star. Now that YT//ST have solidified into an eight-piece rock-band formation, they've issued this album as a 30-minute preview of that larger, still-in-progress work. But the record feels wholly substantial and satisfying in its own right, and even those with no prior knowledge of YT//ST's history and elaborate intentions can just enjoy it for what it is: volcanic prog-rock colored with equal parts post-punk urgency, stoner-metal heft, and psychedelic pop whimsy. Thanks to smart, brisk sequencing, the seven disparate songs presented here hang together as a seamless piece, even if the thematic devices linking them aren't so easy to discern: The tribal-ceremonial scene setter "Queens" offers references to ravens, snakes, hounds, and Alejandro Jodorowsky's surrealist-horror classic The Holy Mountain, but it proves to be the only lyrically legible song on the album, as Ruby and Alaska become increasingly reliant on words of indeterminate language and ghostly harmonies. However, inscrutably titled songs like the funhouse-mirrored acid-pop of "Reverse Crystal//Murder of a Spider" and the space-age stomper "Hoshi Neko" nonetheless display an insidiously melodic quality that suggests Stereolab on steroids. And where these songs foreground YT//ST's eccentric side, the nightmarish, seven-minute colossus "A Star Over Pureland" showcases their command of brute physicality, pitting the ladies' echo-drenched shrieks against a relentless, jackhammered fuzz-metal assault, like Fly-era Yoko Ono waging war with Lightning Bolt. Yamantaka//Sonic Titan may still aspire to the sort of conceptual grandeur that requires an Olympic Stadium to contain it, but right now, what they're really good at is putting the "raw" in prog."

Port St. Willow

Holiday

Ian Cohen

Nick Principe, the sole proprietor of Port St. Willow, has made a record of falsetto-heavy, atmospheric mope-rock played at lugubrious tempos. He insists that it should be be listened to as a whole. This is not the sort of thing that gets you noticed in 2012. But while his debut LP Holiday lacks cultural cachet or wow factor, there's another kind of immediacy here if you're wired a certain way. This kind of spare urban brooding is often the result of some serious heartbreak, making you want to really listen for the lyrics. Whether Principe has endured the kind of personal tragedy that sometimes makes its way into press kits is ultimately irrelevant. This record is intensely absorbing based solely on what it's willing to explicitly share. If it sounds like I'm describing a scenario simlar to the one that greeted the Antlers' Hospice back in 2009, it's for good reason. Principe is a collaborator and childhood friend of Antlers frontman Pete Silberman, and from that you could fashion a reasonable Okkervil River/Shearwater relationship dynamic. They share musical ideas, but the Antlers are more typical of a rock band that prefers demonstrative, emotional storytelling and skyscraping choruses, while Port St. Willow are more attuned to impressionism and studied musicianship.  Holiday can fool you into thinking Principe isn't alone; it's a rich and lush record where most of the textures could still be conceivably looped and performed by one guy. There are unorthodox, yet hooky percussive patterns that almost wholly forgo kicks, snare hits and hi-hats, washes of soft, harmonic feedback, silvery filigrees of guitar. Most of the songs on Holiday glide past five minutes, but there's a lightness and subtle evolution to Principe's arrangements that make Holiday a surprisingly brisk listen. What it lacks in traditional hooks, it compensates for with distinct and weighty gestures. The sophisticated melody contained with the guitar chords of "Amawalk" is power-pop turned slower-than-slowcore, leading up to a brass funeral march. An overdub of militaristic drum rolls pushes the already tense "Hollow" to the Holiday's earliest hints at catharsis, while the moaning peals of Principe's vocals on "Orphan" imply the release might never come. Within the instrumental and textural cohesion, reverb often determines mood, and it's rare to hear it as carefully and purposefully utilized as it is here. Just listen to how the mix dries up after the beatific "On Your Side" and allows for the dour drone of "Corners" to sound truly lonely. There's little sweet or airy about Principe's falsetto, and his lyrics are akin to his arrangements, conceptually heavy but rendered with a gentle touch. It's sometimes difficult to know exactly what he's getting at. Family relationships (birth, orphanage, fatherhood) are encoded within the terse nature of his lyrics ("slow your breathing," "I won't be a father in a family that runs deep," "don't push me off the ledge you've grown to love"), suggesting conversations between isolated people. The words are evocative rather than exploitative, hinting at trauma having been processed and all that's left is a deep, muscular ache. Holiday is so clearly intended as a single piece that I hesitate to suggest it's missing something, but I do find myself wishing for Principe to go all-in either lyrically or sonically. On a record like Hospice, the extroverted likes of "Sylvia" or "Bear" provided easy entry points, giving an indication that it was a deeply personal record meant to be related to on a mass scale. Holiday's goals might be different; it's by no means self-indulgent or abrasive or impenetrable, but I hear a record that Principe needed to make whether or not he sought an audience. That said, Holiday deserves an audience, and it'll be interesting to see how Principe reacts to knowing someone's listening in.

Artist: Port St. Willow, Album: Holiday, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Nick Principe, the sole proprietor of Port St. Willow, has made a record of falsetto-heavy, atmospheric mope-rock played at lugubrious tempos. He insists that it should be be listened to as a whole. This is not the sort of thing that gets you noticed in 2012. But while his debut LP Holiday lacks cultural cachet or wow factor, there's another kind of immediacy here if you're wired a certain way. This kind of spare urban brooding is often the result of some serious heartbreak, making you want to really listen for the lyrics. Whether Principe has endured the kind of personal tragedy that sometimes makes its way into press kits is ultimately irrelevant. This record is intensely absorbing based solely on what it's willing to explicitly share. If it sounds like I'm describing a scenario simlar to the one that greeted the Antlers' Hospice back in 2009, it's for good reason. Principe is a collaborator and childhood friend of Antlers frontman Pete Silberman, and from that you could fashion a reasonable Okkervil River/Shearwater relationship dynamic. They share musical ideas, but the Antlers are more typical of a rock band that prefers demonstrative, emotional storytelling and skyscraping choruses, while Port St. Willow are more attuned to impressionism and studied musicianship.  Holiday can fool you into thinking Principe isn't alone; it's a rich and lush record where most of the textures could still be conceivably looped and performed by one guy. There are unorthodox, yet hooky percussive patterns that almost wholly forgo kicks, snare hits and hi-hats, washes of soft, harmonic feedback, silvery filigrees of guitar. Most of the songs on Holiday glide past five minutes, but there's a lightness and subtle evolution to Principe's arrangements that make Holiday a surprisingly brisk listen. What it lacks in traditional hooks, it compensates for with distinct and weighty gestures. The sophisticated melody contained with the guitar chords of "Amawalk" is power-pop turned slower-than-slowcore, leading up to a brass funeral march. An overdub of militaristic drum rolls pushes the already tense "Hollow" to the Holiday's earliest hints at catharsis, while the moaning peals of Principe's vocals on "Orphan" imply the release might never come. Within the instrumental and textural cohesion, reverb often determines mood, and it's rare to hear it as carefully and purposefully utilized as it is here. Just listen to how the mix dries up after the beatific "On Your Side" and allows for the dour drone of "Corners" to sound truly lonely. There's little sweet or airy about Principe's falsetto, and his lyrics are akin to his arrangements, conceptually heavy but rendered with a gentle touch. It's sometimes difficult to know exactly what he's getting at. Family relationships (birth, orphanage, fatherhood) are encoded within the terse nature of his lyrics ("slow your breathing," "I won't be a father in a family that runs deep," "don't push me off the ledge you've grown to love"), suggesting conversations between isolated people. The words are evocative rather than exploitative, hinting at trauma having been processed and all that's left is a deep, muscular ache. Holiday is so clearly intended as a single piece that I hesitate to suggest it's missing something, but I do find myself wishing for Principe to go all-in either lyrically or sonically. On a record like Hospice, the extroverted likes of "Sylvia" or "Bear" provided easy entry points, giving an indication that it was a deeply personal record meant to be related to on a mass scale. Holiday's goals might be different; it's by no means self-indulgent or abrasive or impenetrable, but I hear a record that Principe needed to make whether or not he sought an audience. That said, Holiday deserves an audience, and it'll be interesting to see how Principe reacts to knowing someone's listening in."

Freescha

Whats Come Inside of You

Electronic

Scott Plagenhoef

If the more indie-centric styles of electronic music-- chin-stroking head music or evocative slices of arrested development-- seem to mirror a couple of the primary strains of indie guitar-based music, it's probably no accident. After all, they're generally after the same type of music listeners, all seeking the same core emotions, albeit from different sounds. Freescha, the California-based duo of Nick Huntington and Michael McGroarty, make that second kind of indie electronic pop: the sort of warm, melodic, almost twee sound that sells well at Darla.com, and is favored by the majority of the Morr and City Centre Offices rosters. Whats Come Inside of You (sic) is Freescha's third full-length (following 2000's Kids Fill the Floor and 2002's Slower Than Church Music), available from their self-run Attacknine label. Perhaps less distinctive than many of their peers, Freescha is taking slight steps away from the organic, clean sounds perfected by Boards of Canada and, more recently, Carpark Records' Casino Versus Japan, with whom the California duo recently shared a spot on that label's Wanna Buy a Crapark? compilation. Freescha is still primarily making fluid, mid-tempo, synthesizer-based sounds, but their latest effort is boosted by primarily 4/4 beats, a further emphasis on overt hooks, and more compact and digestible song structures. The album's provocative, retrograde art suggests a more decadent direction, citing 70s porn, Ming the Merciless, roller-skating, and boom boxes as suggested inspirations. For the most part, however, that seems like a bit of red herring. Despite the near-electro throb of opener "Rinky Dink"-- which starts off like a bouncy filter-disco version of "Crocodile Rock"-- the record quickly settles into more traditionally ambient glitch-pop patterns. Like BoC, Freescha dress their sounds in a lot of delay and echo, using dub as a production inspiration more than aiming directly for its spatial qualities. Freescha retains the waterlogged, reverb-heavy feel of electronic dub, but their BoC-style analogue toy box nostalgia suggests they are clouding time and memory rather than simply drum and bass. Vocals are used scarcely and, when employed, are buried under echo or treated with a vocoder, making any words essentially indistinguishable. The sensation of communication is more important here than the message. The most distinctive of the vocal passages are snippets of heavy breathing and erotic moaning. They're more overtly sexual than sensual as the cover art - as well as song titles such as "Come Good" and "Lover Function"-- suggests. It's the tracks that most tactfully toe those lines between the seedy and sentimental that are the most rewarding, mostly notably the understated, slowly unfolding "Baby Maker" or "Come Good," which-- like much of the second-half of the album-- is a dead-ringer for Air. And therein lies part of the problem. With simplistic rhythms and uncomplicated melodies, Freeshca are certainly crafting easygoing, inviting sounds, but are trying to tempt us down very familiar paths.

Artist: Freescha, Album: Whats Come Inside of You, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.3 Album review: "If the more indie-centric styles of electronic music-- chin-stroking head music or evocative slices of arrested development-- seem to mirror a couple of the primary strains of indie guitar-based music, it's probably no accident. After all, they're generally after the same type of music listeners, all seeking the same core emotions, albeit from different sounds. Freescha, the California-based duo of Nick Huntington and Michael McGroarty, make that second kind of indie electronic pop: the sort of warm, melodic, almost twee sound that sells well at Darla.com, and is favored by the majority of the Morr and City Centre Offices rosters. Whats Come Inside of You (sic) is Freescha's third full-length (following 2000's Kids Fill the Floor and 2002's Slower Than Church Music), available from their self-run Attacknine label. Perhaps less distinctive than many of their peers, Freescha is taking slight steps away from the organic, clean sounds perfected by Boards of Canada and, more recently, Carpark Records' Casino Versus Japan, with whom the California duo recently shared a spot on that label's Wanna Buy a Crapark? compilation. Freescha is still primarily making fluid, mid-tempo, synthesizer-based sounds, but their latest effort is boosted by primarily 4/4 beats, a further emphasis on overt hooks, and more compact and digestible song structures. The album's provocative, retrograde art suggests a more decadent direction, citing 70s porn, Ming the Merciless, roller-skating, and boom boxes as suggested inspirations. For the most part, however, that seems like a bit of red herring. Despite the near-electro throb of opener "Rinky Dink"-- which starts off like a bouncy filter-disco version of "Crocodile Rock"-- the record quickly settles into more traditionally ambient glitch-pop patterns. Like BoC, Freescha dress their sounds in a lot of delay and echo, using dub as a production inspiration more than aiming directly for its spatial qualities. Freescha retains the waterlogged, reverb-heavy feel of electronic dub, but their BoC-style analogue toy box nostalgia suggests they are clouding time and memory rather than simply drum and bass. Vocals are used scarcely and, when employed, are buried under echo or treated with a vocoder, making any words essentially indistinguishable. The sensation of communication is more important here than the message. The most distinctive of the vocal passages are snippets of heavy breathing and erotic moaning. They're more overtly sexual than sensual as the cover art - as well as song titles such as "Come Good" and "Lover Function"-- suggests. It's the tracks that most tactfully toe those lines between the seedy and sentimental that are the most rewarding, mostly notably the understated, slowly unfolding "Baby Maker" or "Come Good," which-- like much of the second-half of the album-- is a dead-ringer for Air. And therein lies part of the problem. With simplistic rhythms and uncomplicated melodies, Freeshca are certainly crafting easygoing, inviting sounds, but are trying to tempt us down very familiar paths."

Blood Orange

Coastal Grooves

Pop/R&B

Joshua Love

As a member of short-lived dance punks Test Icicles, Dev Hynes abused eardrums and EQ levels with glee. Since that group's demise, he's flashed surprising proclivities towards lush, orchestral-tinged folk-pop in the vein of Okkervil River with his solo project Lightspeed Champion. There have been growing pains at every step along the way, but they were always the result of Hynes admirably trying to do too much, trying to pour too many words and ideas and emotions into his compositions. So it's a real shock listening to Coastal Grooves, the debut LP released under Hynes' newest solo moniker, Blood Orange. Coastal Grooves is all about what's missing-- it's a highly stylish album that frequently forgoes things like melodies, energy, and vocal choruses in favor of slinky, solitary guitar lines and seductively spare, post-punk atmospherics. Most of the album's 10 tracks feel like promising skeletal demos of songs that are close to being truly great. Hynes is a gifted and voracious guitarist, displaying here particular predilections for sounds from Asia and the American West. Aside from a couple of purely moody pieces ("Can We Go Inside Now", "Complete Failure"), Coastal Grooves is also largely propelled by strong, strutting rhythmic foundations, while Hynes' vocals remain appealingly florid throughout. The problem is there are almost no payoffs. Far too often, Hynes lays intriguing groundwork for a sexy, indie-funk jam or a sweetly kissed pop song, arrives at the chorus, and gives us only a stark guitar line or plinky little rhythm. I suppose this minimalist approach is in keeping with the album's artfully space-conscious post-punk leanings, and sometimes the device is evocative (particularly on first single "Sutphin Boulevard"), but it gets to a point with Coastal Grooves that you halfway start expecting to hear Hynes mumble, "Chorus goes here," during some of the seemingly placeholding moments. Subsequently, the few songs that have genuine vocal refrains-- like "Forget It" and "The Complete Knock"-- end up feeling more fleshed out and dynamic than they really are. Hynes is the type of demonstrative, emotionally engaging artist who definitely feels more at home being messily overambitious than coolly restrained. The sounds he pursues here as Blood Orange might be more hip than his work as Lightspeed Champion, but the end results are less satisfying. Ideally, a blend of the two styles would be best, the artfulness of one project with the human connection of the other. So which sounds better: Blood Champion, or Lightspeed Orange?

Artist: Blood Orange, Album: Coastal Grooves, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 5.9 Album review: "As a member of short-lived dance punks Test Icicles, Dev Hynes abused eardrums and EQ levels with glee. Since that group's demise, he's flashed surprising proclivities towards lush, orchestral-tinged folk-pop in the vein of Okkervil River with his solo project Lightspeed Champion. There have been growing pains at every step along the way, but they were always the result of Hynes admirably trying to do too much, trying to pour too many words and ideas and emotions into his compositions. So it's a real shock listening to Coastal Grooves, the debut LP released under Hynes' newest solo moniker, Blood Orange. Coastal Grooves is all about what's missing-- it's a highly stylish album that frequently forgoes things like melodies, energy, and vocal choruses in favor of slinky, solitary guitar lines and seductively spare, post-punk atmospherics. Most of the album's 10 tracks feel like promising skeletal demos of songs that are close to being truly great. Hynes is a gifted and voracious guitarist, displaying here particular predilections for sounds from Asia and the American West. Aside from a couple of purely moody pieces ("Can We Go Inside Now", "Complete Failure"), Coastal Grooves is also largely propelled by strong, strutting rhythmic foundations, while Hynes' vocals remain appealingly florid throughout. The problem is there are almost no payoffs. Far too often, Hynes lays intriguing groundwork for a sexy, indie-funk jam or a sweetly kissed pop song, arrives at the chorus, and gives us only a stark guitar line or plinky little rhythm. I suppose this minimalist approach is in keeping with the album's artfully space-conscious post-punk leanings, and sometimes the device is evocative (particularly on first single "Sutphin Boulevard"), but it gets to a point with Coastal Grooves that you halfway start expecting to hear Hynes mumble, "Chorus goes here," during some of the seemingly placeholding moments. Subsequently, the few songs that have genuine vocal refrains-- like "Forget It" and "The Complete Knock"-- end up feeling more fleshed out and dynamic than they really are. Hynes is the type of demonstrative, emotionally engaging artist who definitely feels more at home being messily overambitious than coolly restrained. The sounds he pursues here as Blood Orange might be more hip than his work as Lightspeed Champion, but the end results are less satisfying. Ideally, a blend of the two styles would be best, the artfulness of one project with the human connection of the other. So which sounds better: Blood Champion, or Lightspeed Orange?"

Chad Valley

Young Hunger

Electronic,Rock

Harley Brown

In 2008, Guardian music critic John Burgess wrote optimistically about the comeback of Balearic pop, citing producers like Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas as proponents of its revival. Last year, in the same publication, Simon Reynolds blamed the genre's transformation into an "overall banging boshing feel" for the decline of Top 40 pop, with "Dynamite" by Taio Cruz acting as the main offender. Listening to Chad Valley's debut LP, there's evidence for both Burgess and Reynolds' respective arguments: "My Girl" lifts a lyric from the Spice Girls' "Wannabe" almost verbatim, but "Fall 4 U" exemplifies Burgess' platonic ideal of Balearic, with Valley's voice curling like a saxophone against a pillowy, gently propulsive backbeat. On the other hand, you have the wince-inducing title track, which renders "banging boshing" 80s synth bass and wooden blocks in lurid colors. "There's a hell of a lot of really awful pop music, and I actually really like it," says Hugo Manuel, the electronic producer behind Chad Valley and frontman of Oxford-based tropical pop group Jonquil. "I've grown up thinking pop was such a dirty word with bands like Steps, which will never even be ironically cool or good in a retro way." For the most part, however, Young Hunger's fat bass, bongo breakdowns, and Manuel's bell-like tenor sound closer to 1980s and 90s balladeers that might never be ironically cool or good, like Billy Ocean (especially on "Young Hunger") or George Michael. In contrast to the cool Biggie bounce of Equatorial Ultravox's "Reach Lines" and the beach boombox-thick "Ensoniq Funk", Manuel sounds earnest on most of Young Hunger. After announcing, "Tell all your friends/ Tell everyone/ That all that I can think about is you," he closes "Tell All Your Friends" with an "ay-ee-ay-ee-ay" that's definitely more Taio Cruz than Prins Thomas. A few songs later, as smooth as Al Jarreau atop a bed of Peruvian flutes, he tells guest El Perro Del Mar, "You know I want to do this together/ You know I want to go far." She gamely responds, "You're so excited," with the coyness of the female part on Next's "Too Close". The many guests on Young Hunger prevent the album from getting too bogged down in schmaltz, adding color and texture to the record. Album opener "I Owe You This" features Twin Shadow's George Lewis Jr.-- who, like Manuel, was tagged as chillwave until this year's Confess earned comparisons to bands like the Human League-- whose gritty lower register offsets Manuel's high, pure voice, but matches it in emotional weight, something that can't be said for Orlando Higginbottom of Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs' part on "My Life Is Complete". The only track on which Manuel doesn't appear vocally (aside from the instrumental "Interlude") is "Fathering/Mothering". It's a simple track, contracting with heavy beats and minimal atmospheric synthesizers as Anne Lise Frøkedal of Norwegian band Harry's Gym carries verses about the womb. It also builds differently than the rest of Young Hunger, getting louder and faster in the way that Chad Valley's older material did, Frøkedal singing, "Getting louder than the sun." After the rest of the album's clutter of neon-hued effects, "Fathering/Mothering" provides welcome space. "Manimals" closes Young Hunger, a similarly sparse and serious track featuring Active Child's Pat Grossi. His is the closest-- and slightly superior-- vocal match to Manuel, but his voice is shrouded in echo, as though he doesn't want to outdo him. Like Lewis Jr.'s contribution, it doesn't really add or detract anything vital from the record, but it's a nice touch among many. It's as though Manuel's afraid to let his numerous contributors take the spotlight, too often cluttering their voices with synthesizer effects. These flourishes generally add up to a record that's, as Manuel suggests, "good in a retro way," but when Chad Valley loosens his grip on the keys and lets space rather than noise carry his songs ("Fall 4 U", "Manimals", "Fathering/Mothering"), the album soars instead of floats.

Artist: Chad Valley, Album: Young Hunger, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "In 2008, Guardian music critic John Burgess wrote optimistically about the comeback of Balearic pop, citing producers like Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas as proponents of its revival. Last year, in the same publication, Simon Reynolds blamed the genre's transformation into an "overall banging boshing feel" for the decline of Top 40 pop, with "Dynamite" by Taio Cruz acting as the main offender. Listening to Chad Valley's debut LP, there's evidence for both Burgess and Reynolds' respective arguments: "My Girl" lifts a lyric from the Spice Girls' "Wannabe" almost verbatim, but "Fall 4 U" exemplifies Burgess' platonic ideal of Balearic, with Valley's voice curling like a saxophone against a pillowy, gently propulsive backbeat. On the other hand, you have the wince-inducing title track, which renders "banging boshing" 80s synth bass and wooden blocks in lurid colors. "There's a hell of a lot of really awful pop music, and I actually really like it," says Hugo Manuel, the electronic producer behind Chad Valley and frontman of Oxford-based tropical pop group Jonquil. "I've grown up thinking pop was such a dirty word with bands like Steps, which will never even be ironically cool or good in a retro way." For the most part, however, Young Hunger's fat bass, bongo breakdowns, and Manuel's bell-like tenor sound closer to 1980s and 90s balladeers that might never be ironically cool or good, like Billy Ocean (especially on "Young Hunger") or George Michael. In contrast to the cool Biggie bounce of Equatorial Ultravox's "Reach Lines" and the beach boombox-thick "Ensoniq Funk", Manuel sounds earnest on most of Young Hunger. After announcing, "Tell all your friends/ Tell everyone/ That all that I can think about is you," he closes "Tell All Your Friends" with an "ay-ee-ay-ee-ay" that's definitely more Taio Cruz than Prins Thomas. A few songs later, as smooth as Al Jarreau atop a bed of Peruvian flutes, he tells guest El Perro Del Mar, "You know I want to do this together/ You know I want to go far." She gamely responds, "You're so excited," with the coyness of the female part on Next's "Too Close". The many guests on Young Hunger prevent the album from getting too bogged down in schmaltz, adding color and texture to the record. Album opener "I Owe You This" features Twin Shadow's George Lewis Jr.-- who, like Manuel, was tagged as chillwave until this year's Confess earned comparisons to bands like the Human League-- whose gritty lower register offsets Manuel's high, pure voice, but matches it in emotional weight, something that can't be said for Orlando Higginbottom of Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs' part on "My Life Is Complete". The only track on which Manuel doesn't appear vocally (aside from the instrumental "Interlude") is "Fathering/Mothering". It's a simple track, contracting with heavy beats and minimal atmospheric synthesizers as Anne Lise Frøkedal of Norwegian band Harry's Gym carries verses about the womb. It also builds differently than the rest of Young Hunger, getting louder and faster in the way that Chad Valley's older material did, Frøkedal singing, "Getting louder than the sun." After the rest of the album's clutter of neon-hued effects, "Fathering/Mothering" provides welcome space. "Manimals" closes Young Hunger, a similarly sparse and serious track featuring Active Child's Pat Grossi. His is the closest-- and slightly superior-- vocal match to Manuel, but his voice is shrouded in echo, as though he doesn't want to outdo him. Like Lewis Jr.'s contribution, it doesn't really add or detract anything vital from the record, but it's a nice touch among many. It's as though Manuel's afraid to let his numerous contributors take the spotlight, too often cluttering their voices with synthesizer effects. These flourishes generally add up to a record that's, as Manuel suggests, "good in a retro way," but when Chad Valley loosens his grip on the keys and lets space rather than noise carry his songs ("Fall 4 U", "Manimals", "Fathering/Mothering"), the album soars instead of floats."

Royal Bangs

Flux Outside

Rock

Paul Thompson

Flux Outside, the third LP from hyperkinetic Knoxvillians Royal Bangs, goes off like a wind-up toy, rattling through 50 genre-eradicating minutes before collapsing into a heap. Matching the spastic rush of math rock with the heft of 1970s arena-fillers and a bit of Tennessee-born Southern boogie, the Bangs' shapeshifting whiplash-prog certainly gets the blood going. And this surging LP is their most spirited, sense-assaulting work to date. Every sound on Flux Outside-- and there are many, coming in from all angles-- gleams, buffed to an electroid sheen. Frontman Ryan Schafer, who produced the Bangs' previous LPs, turns over the production duties to ex-Sparklehorse member Scott Minor, with indie superproducer Dave Fridmann handling the mixing. Minor and Fridmann help deepen the band's drums and tease out some alluringly glitzy new textures without altering the dynamic scramble that powered 2009's fine Let It Beep. For all the instrumental bombardment, the Bangs manage to maintain order, never veering too far off course even when they're taking sharp curves at 100 MPH. The record's got a constant forward motion, and its 50 minutes seem to zip by in double-time. The Bangs' greatest strength isn't so much the almost mechanistic turn-on-a-dime cohesion of their future rock, but how they manage to wrangle their pristine assault into appealing shapes. Highlight "Silver Steps" zig-zags its way into a rousing straightahead chorus, and while "Bull Elk" comes on like a tornado, Schafer shouts out its hook from the eye of the storm. For all its alien textures, Flux Outside is a generous, sweaty, markedly human record, powered as much by groovy southern-rock melodies as the steely synth shrapnel that seems to jut out from everywhere. It's a rare thing indeed to hear a musical unit nail that midpoint between those frequently oppositional tendencies time and again. Still, there are times when the fast-moving currents in the Royal Bangs sound cause them to barrel through their hooks, lessening their impact and causing the distinctions between one ripcord track to the next to blur a bit. But the Bangs seem to place every drum stutter, keyboard whirr, and Schafer howl on equal footing, a nice testament to the tightness and democracy of their musical unit, so pushing the songwriting further to the forefront could come at the risk of toppling the delicate balance the not-so-delicate Flux Outside achieves. May they never learn to sit still.

Artist: Royal Bangs, Album: Flux Outside, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.9 Album review: "Flux Outside, the third LP from hyperkinetic Knoxvillians Royal Bangs, goes off like a wind-up toy, rattling through 50 genre-eradicating minutes before collapsing into a heap. Matching the spastic rush of math rock with the heft of 1970s arena-fillers and a bit of Tennessee-born Southern boogie, the Bangs' shapeshifting whiplash-prog certainly gets the blood going. And this surging LP is their most spirited, sense-assaulting work to date. Every sound on Flux Outside-- and there are many, coming in from all angles-- gleams, buffed to an electroid sheen. Frontman Ryan Schafer, who produced the Bangs' previous LPs, turns over the production duties to ex-Sparklehorse member Scott Minor, with indie superproducer Dave Fridmann handling the mixing. Minor and Fridmann help deepen the band's drums and tease out some alluringly glitzy new textures without altering the dynamic scramble that powered 2009's fine Let It Beep. For all the instrumental bombardment, the Bangs manage to maintain order, never veering too far off course even when they're taking sharp curves at 100 MPH. The record's got a constant forward motion, and its 50 minutes seem to zip by in double-time. The Bangs' greatest strength isn't so much the almost mechanistic turn-on-a-dime cohesion of their future rock, but how they manage to wrangle their pristine assault into appealing shapes. Highlight "Silver Steps" zig-zags its way into a rousing straightahead chorus, and while "Bull Elk" comes on like a tornado, Schafer shouts out its hook from the eye of the storm. For all its alien textures, Flux Outside is a generous, sweaty, markedly human record, powered as much by groovy southern-rock melodies as the steely synth shrapnel that seems to jut out from everywhere. It's a rare thing indeed to hear a musical unit nail that midpoint between those frequently oppositional tendencies time and again. Still, there are times when the fast-moving currents in the Royal Bangs sound cause them to barrel through their hooks, lessening their impact and causing the distinctions between one ripcord track to the next to blur a bit. But the Bangs seem to place every drum stutter, keyboard whirr, and Schafer howl on equal footing, a nice testament to the tightness and democracy of their musical unit, so pushing the songwriting further to the forefront could come at the risk of toppling the delicate balance the not-so-delicate Flux Outside achieves. May they never learn to sit still."

The Orb

Bicycles & Tricycles

Electronic

Alexander Lloyd Linhardt

The human mind doesn't quite know what to do with The Orb anymore. Back in the early 90s, I think most of us expected The Orb to reign victorious in all the wars it would ever fight against or amongst electronic music's endless subgenres. Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld and U.F. Orb were, after all, masterpieces suggestive of classic Pink Floyd and Eno. But, as with all great battles (Catholics and Protestants, North and South, Betamax and Sony), the Squares won out. Rather than ushering in a perpetually expanding and pulsating sphere of psycho-dub vacillations, time gave way to Plaid freeform, Autechrean architecture, and Squarepushing. So, upon first listen, Bicycles & Tricycles seemed instantly seductive with its harrowingly anachronistic synth washes, four-on-the-floor dub, quotes from those BBC Fairy Tale Hour shows, and the interstellar mind-freezes. However, on the third or fourth listen, I realized I didn't exactly like the songs as much as I liked the idea of someone making them. My relationship to The Orb is a lot like my relationship to Beyoncé or Willie Nelson. I don't know that I particularly like what they're doing, but I'm glad someone is doing it. The Orb seems to understand this. The first moments of "From a Distance" consist of the rooster from "Little Fluffy Clouds" struggling to avoid getting buried under distortion and destruction. A voice screams, "A new morning!" and proceeds to vitriolically spit out one of the most spellbindingly silly ragga teen-pop tunes to ever be so throttled with foghorns. It's a damn effective tactic, as startling as when De La Soul killed themselves or, hell, as Dylan going electric. Of course, it also borders on novelty, turning into one of those things you hear on British pop charts (Fast Food Rockers, anyone?) that makes you wonder, "How is this place still a country?" Whether it's actually any good or not, there's nothing else remotely like it on the album-- which we can be thankful for, because if the music of "From a Distance" was sustained for an hour, migraines would be as prevalent as original sin. The following track, "The Land of Green Ginger", is traditional Orb, rushing waves and audio excerpts from books-on-tape. Between tape loops and whittling, the drum machine sounds as if it's been buried in gravel. It's 80s techno to the point of self-delusion. "Hell's Kitchen" and "Gee Strings" are stunning Orb epics (basically what you would buy any Orb album for), flaunting vaguely Indian percussion that drips bongwater. If you've ever enjoyed an Orb song, there's no possible way you could be entirely disappointed by this album. It's resolutely affixed to the past, and while it's not nearly as liberal in its portions of psychedelic ambiance as their greatest works, it's at least par with Cydonia. I had a blast listening to it. I'll probably even listen to it after I finish writing this-- something I can hardly say about a lot of my favorite albums. But even when it's making raves out of paranoia, it feels like The Orb are trapped in a fading genre that gains its adherents through nostalgia rather than innovation. Long and painful deaths have never been this much fun.

Artist: The Orb, Album: Bicycles & Tricycles, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "The human mind doesn't quite know what to do with The Orb anymore. Back in the early 90s, I think most of us expected The Orb to reign victorious in all the wars it would ever fight against or amongst electronic music's endless subgenres. Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld and U.F. Orb were, after all, masterpieces suggestive of classic Pink Floyd and Eno. But, as with all great battles (Catholics and Protestants, North and South, Betamax and Sony), the Squares won out. Rather than ushering in a perpetually expanding and pulsating sphere of psycho-dub vacillations, time gave way to Plaid freeform, Autechrean architecture, and Squarepushing. So, upon first listen, Bicycles & Tricycles seemed instantly seductive with its harrowingly anachronistic synth washes, four-on-the-floor dub, quotes from those BBC Fairy Tale Hour shows, and the interstellar mind-freezes. However, on the third or fourth listen, I realized I didn't exactly like the songs as much as I liked the idea of someone making them. My relationship to The Orb is a lot like my relationship to Beyoncé or Willie Nelson. I don't know that I particularly like what they're doing, but I'm glad someone is doing it. The Orb seems to understand this. The first moments of "From a Distance" consist of the rooster from "Little Fluffy Clouds" struggling to avoid getting buried under distortion and destruction. A voice screams, "A new morning!" and proceeds to vitriolically spit out one of the most spellbindingly silly ragga teen-pop tunes to ever be so throttled with foghorns. It's a damn effective tactic, as startling as when De La Soul killed themselves or, hell, as Dylan going electric. Of course, it also borders on novelty, turning into one of those things you hear on British pop charts (Fast Food Rockers, anyone?) that makes you wonder, "How is this place still a country?" Whether it's actually any good or not, there's nothing else remotely like it on the album-- which we can be thankful for, because if the music of "From a Distance" was sustained for an hour, migraines would be as prevalent as original sin. The following track, "The Land of Green Ginger", is traditional Orb, rushing waves and audio excerpts from books-on-tape. Between tape loops and whittling, the drum machine sounds as if it's been buried in gravel. It's 80s techno to the point of self-delusion. "Hell's Kitchen" and "Gee Strings" are stunning Orb epics (basically what you would buy any Orb album for), flaunting vaguely Indian percussion that drips bongwater. If you've ever enjoyed an Orb song, there's no possible way you could be entirely disappointed by this album. It's resolutely affixed to the past, and while it's not nearly as liberal in its portions of psychedelic ambiance as their greatest works, it's at least par with Cydonia. I had a blast listening to it. I'll probably even listen to it after I finish writing this-- something I can hardly say about a lot of my favorite albums. But even when it's making raves out of paranoia, it feels like The Orb are trapped in a fading genre that gains its adherents through nostalgia rather than innovation. Long and painful deaths have never been this much fun."

Allan Kingdom

Northern Lights

Rap

Paul A. Thompson

Last February, Kanye West brought 40 hoodied-and-masked-up men (and at least a couple of flamethrowers) to the front of the O2 Arena in London. They were assembled to perform “All Day,” which was then slated as a single from his still-unreleased seventh album. The song had been teased, in various unfinished states, for more than a year, but Allan Kingdom, the key player in the song’s final cut, made the trip abroad with less than two days notice, and hadn’t even unpacked when he hopped onstage. Kingdom’s affecting bridge on “All Day” helped turn the song from a sleek ode to out-of-season shopping to a carefully pointed political screed, one where all the parole hearings and Farrakhan meetings are grounded in something immediate and human. On Kingdom’s new mixtape, Northern Lights, the obvious connections between West and the Winnipeg-born, St. Paul-bred Kingdom are stylistic. The younger MC favors a musical atmosphere that marries the brooding, synth-backed minor keys of 808s & Heartbreak to the more spare and visceral sounds Kanye has explored with Yeezus and “All Day.” Kingdom also enjoys some of Kanye’s everyman appeal circa The College Dropout and Late Registration, though he mines this territory less than the elder rapper. Here, weighty existential worries and simple practical hangups are allowed to simply exist next to one another; most of West’s music has dealt with, in some form, the tension between Benzes and backpacks. Allan Kingdom acknowledges both, but moves quickly onto other concerns. When he does deal in moral panic, Kingdom is at his slickest. On “Hypocrite,” he laments, “You got fatter thighs than the one that I lied to”; on the title track, he says he’s “Trying to stack some fucking funds, fuck a lot, and have some fun,” and encourages his guest, “Leave your questions at the door, and your dress, like, half-undone.” A few songs later, on the Auto-Tune-drenched “I Feel Ya,” sex is far less trivial. The coda that includes “Tell me when to stop/ Tell me when to stop/ Feeling for you” and a warbled “I can make you feel better” is his strongest vocal performance on the tape—confused, guilty, defiant, naked. Northern Lights clocks in just under 45 minutes, but plays even faster. “Believe” benefits from a pulsing house beat, and the production as a whole is more concerned with forward motion than with virtuosity. Kingdom’s time with the Stand4rd—the four-piece St. Paul collective that also includes the producer Psymun, the rapper, singer, and producer Bobby Raps, and Corbin, who was originally known as Spooky Black—has clearly served him well. His 2014 mixtape, Future Memoirs, was mostly excellent, but it was on the Stand4rd’s self-titled debut that he codified his raps into something that bent and cascaded into sharp, half-crooned records. While he surrenders hook duties a few times here (most notably to D.R.A.M., who sings about changing his cell number on “Renovate”), he’s more than capable of starting and finishing a dynamic song without ever leaving the booth. Still, the strongest song on Northern Lights is the most autobiographical. “Interruption,” which is produced in part by the Minneapolis mainstay Ryan Olson, looks back at when Kingdom was darting from Hennepin Avenue through the city’s freeway system, lying that he’d lost his wallet to avoid paying for meals, and meeting Plain Pat, the manager that would eventually link him with West. Allan calls himself “the son of some immigrants, ‘bout to son ‘em like Africa.” And when he puts his life into plain language, it starts to come into light—the tension between the backpacks and Benzes is what set him in motion in the first place. What matters is where he goes next.

Artist: Allan Kingdom, Album: Northern Lights, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "Last February, Kanye West brought 40 hoodied-and-masked-up men (and at least a couple of flamethrowers) to the front of the O2 Arena in London. They were assembled to perform “All Day,” which was then slated as a single from his still-unreleased seventh album. The song had been teased, in various unfinished states, for more than a year, but Allan Kingdom, the key player in the song’s final cut, made the trip abroad with less than two days notice, and hadn’t even unpacked when he hopped onstage. Kingdom’s affecting bridge on “All Day” helped turn the song from a sleek ode to out-of-season shopping to a carefully pointed political screed, one where all the parole hearings and Farrakhan meetings are grounded in something immediate and human. On Kingdom’s new mixtape, Northern Lights, the obvious connections between West and the Winnipeg-born, St. Paul-bred Kingdom are stylistic. The younger MC favors a musical atmosphere that marries the brooding, synth-backed minor keys of 808s & Heartbreak to the more spare and visceral sounds Kanye has explored with Yeezus and “All Day.” Kingdom also enjoys some of Kanye’s everyman appeal circa The College Dropout and Late Registration, though he mines this territory less than the elder rapper. Here, weighty existential worries and simple practical hangups are allowed to simply exist next to one another; most of West’s music has dealt with, in some form, the tension between Benzes and backpacks. Allan Kingdom acknowledges both, but moves quickly onto other concerns. When he does deal in moral panic, Kingdom is at his slickest. On “Hypocrite,” he laments, “You got fatter thighs than the one that I lied to”; on the title track, he says he’s “Trying to stack some fucking funds, fuck a lot, and have some fun,” and encourages his guest, “Leave your questions at the door, and your dress, like, half-undone.” A few songs later, on the Auto-Tune-drenched “I Feel Ya,” sex is far less trivial. The coda that includes “Tell me when to stop/ Tell me when to stop/ Feeling for you” and a warbled “I can make you feel better” is his strongest vocal performance on the tape—confused, guilty, defiant, naked. Northern Lights clocks in just under 45 minutes, but plays even faster. “Believe” benefits from a pulsing house beat, and the production as a whole is more concerned with forward motion than with virtuosity. Kingdom’s time with the Stand4rd—the four-piece St. Paul collective that also includes the producer Psymun, the rapper, singer, and producer Bobby Raps, and Corbin, who was originally known as Spooky Black—has clearly served him well. His 2014 mixtape, Future Memoirs, was mostly excellent, but it was on the Stand4rd’s self-titled debut that he codified his raps into something that bent and cascaded into sharp, half-crooned records. While he surrenders hook duties a few times here (most notably to D.R.A.M., who sings about changing his cell number on “Renovate”), he’s more than capable of starting and finishing a dynamic song without ever leaving the booth. Still, the strongest song on Northern Lights is the most autobiographical. “Interruption,” which is produced in part by the Minneapolis mainstay Ryan Olson, looks back at when Kingdom was darting from Hennepin Avenue through the city’s freeway system, lying that he’d lost his wallet to avoid paying for meals, and meeting Plain Pat, the manager that would eventually link him with West. Allan calls himself “the son of some immigrants, ‘bout to son ‘em like Africa.” And when he puts his life into plain language, it starts to come into light—the tension between the backpacks and Benzes is what set him in motion in the first place. What matters is where he goes next."

Purling Hiss

Weirdon

Rock

Jason Heller

Mike Polizze’s worship of the guitar is so single-minded and unshakeable, at times it approaches Neil Young’s own devotion to the instrument. His long-running project Purling Hiss—which started as a solo affair before being fleshed out into a full band—hasn’t ever particularly sounded like Young’s Crazy Horse, but there’s a similar dynamic at play: one moment Polizze is pouring mud all over his lonesome folk ballads, and the next he’s punching the haywire distortion into noise-jam extremes. Purling Hiss’ most recent full-length, last year’s Water on Mars, was produced by fellow Philadelphian Adam Granduciel of the War on Drugs, and it showed a little more discipline and neatness without sacrificing any of Polizze’s prodigious, religious fretwork. Purling Hiss’ new album, Weirdon, goes even further in that direction, but not by much. It’s tighter and clearer-sounding, but what really makes it stand out is its reconciliation of everything Polizze has dabbled in over the past half-decade. More precisely, Purling Hiss have settled into a sharply defined middle ground: gentle strumming and blown-out heaviness still lurk in the wings, but the sweet spot is punk rock'n'roll. Granted, that still leaves Polizze plenty of room to maneuver, and he does so with lithe agility. “Sundance Saloon Boogie” lays a silly, three-note, clean-toned guitar hook over a jumble of junky riffs; Polizze’s vocals are half chanted, half commanded, and his slop-bucket solo is torn straight from Bob Stinson’s beer-stained playbook. Things are looser on Weirdon’s other punk rippers, including “Learning Slowly” and “Where’s Sweetboy”; the latter is particularly inspired, sapping its energy straight from Raw Power-era Stooges filtered through the Saints’ first album. Still, this is a contained, controlled album. The leash is stretched to the breaking point on otherwise tranquil “Forcefield of Solitude”, which bears a faint trace of Dinosaur Jr. in Polizze’s narcoleptic drawl. His lyrics don’t amount to much—a spare image here, a catchy incantation there—but they're all served up with unforced melodic ease. It’s a charming approach that works best on “Airwaves”, the album’s hands-down pop gem; with chicken-wire jangle and hokey walking bass propelling him, Polizze kicks on the singsong in a chorus that extolls the virtues of its own ridiculous catchiness. “This is my radio!”, he repeats like a mantra, cramming in an anthem’s worth of joyousness in under a minute and a half. Like the Men’s recent output, “Airwaves” calls to mind the ramshackle, 1980s heyday of SST Records, but its genial twang is more fIREHOSE than Minutemen. Weirdon doesn’t dwell long on folkier sounds, but when it does, it makes the most of it. "Reptili-A-Genda" oozes ghosts and dissonance, but its psychedelic edges don’t obscure the bluesy haze at its core. For all its upbeat, euphoric outpouring of guitar, bass, and drums, the album retains the solitary, cranky strangeness that made early releases like Purling Hiss and* Dizzy Polizzy* so entrancing. That atmosphere congeals beautifully on “Six Ways to Sunday”, eight minutes of melancholy rumination and overdriven, hideously lovely minor chords, the kind that trawl the pit of your soul if held too long. Polizze doesn’t, though; instead, he submerges and surfaces, a cycle of shadows and sunrise that puts the rest of the album into a similar mood-swinging context. And fittingly enough, the saga-length guitar meltdown—lilting yet monolithic—that meanders throughout “Six Ways to Sunday” sounds eerily like Neil Young at his Crazy Horsiest. Weirdon doesn’t attempt to alter the course or conviction of Polizze’s faith in six strings, a volume knob, and the truth, but it does make it more compelling than ever.

Artist: Purling Hiss, Album: Weirdon, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "Mike Polizze’s worship of the guitar is so single-minded and unshakeable, at times it approaches Neil Young’s own devotion to the instrument. His long-running project Purling Hiss—which started as a solo affair before being fleshed out into a full band—hasn’t ever particularly sounded like Young’s Crazy Horse, but there’s a similar dynamic at play: one moment Polizze is pouring mud all over his lonesome folk ballads, and the next he’s punching the haywire distortion into noise-jam extremes. Purling Hiss’ most recent full-length, last year’s Water on Mars, was produced by fellow Philadelphian Adam Granduciel of the War on Drugs, and it showed a little more discipline and neatness without sacrificing any of Polizze’s prodigious, religious fretwork. Purling Hiss’ new album, Weirdon, goes even further in that direction, but not by much. It’s tighter and clearer-sounding, but what really makes it stand out is its reconciliation of everything Polizze has dabbled in over the past half-decade. More precisely, Purling Hiss have settled into a sharply defined middle ground: gentle strumming and blown-out heaviness still lurk in the wings, but the sweet spot is punk rock'n'roll. Granted, that still leaves Polizze plenty of room to maneuver, and he does so with lithe agility. “Sundance Saloon Boogie” lays a silly, three-note, clean-toned guitar hook over a jumble of junky riffs; Polizze’s vocals are half chanted, half commanded, and his slop-bucket solo is torn straight from Bob Stinson’s beer-stained playbook. Things are looser on Weirdon’s other punk rippers, including “Learning Slowly” and “Where’s Sweetboy”; the latter is particularly inspired, sapping its energy straight from Raw Power-era Stooges filtered through the Saints’ first album. Still, this is a contained, controlled album. The leash is stretched to the breaking point on otherwise tranquil “Forcefield of Solitude”, which bears a faint trace of Dinosaur Jr. in Polizze’s narcoleptic drawl. His lyrics don’t amount to much—a spare image here, a catchy incantation there—but they're all served up with unforced melodic ease. It’s a charming approach that works best on “Airwaves”, the album’s hands-down pop gem; with chicken-wire jangle and hokey walking bass propelling him, Polizze kicks on the singsong in a chorus that extolls the virtues of its own ridiculous catchiness. “This is my radio!”, he repeats like a mantra, cramming in an anthem’s worth of joyousness in under a minute and a half. Like the Men’s recent output, “Airwaves” calls to mind the ramshackle, 1980s heyday of SST Records, but its genial twang is more fIREHOSE than Minutemen. Weirdon doesn’t dwell long on folkier sounds, but when it does, it makes the most of it. "Reptili-A-Genda" oozes ghosts and dissonance, but its psychedelic edges don’t obscure the bluesy haze at its core. For all its upbeat, euphoric outpouring of guitar, bass, and drums, the album retains the solitary, cranky strangeness that made early releases like Purling Hiss and* Dizzy Polizzy* so entrancing. That atmosphere congeals beautifully on “Six Ways to Sunday”, eight minutes of melancholy rumination and overdriven, hideously lovely minor chords, the kind that trawl the pit of your soul if held too long. Polizze doesn’t, though; instead, he submerges and surfaces, a cycle of shadows and sunrise that puts the rest of the album into a similar mood-swinging context. And fittingly enough, the saga-length guitar meltdown—lilting yet monolithic—that meanders throughout “Six Ways to Sunday” sounds eerily like Neil Young at his Crazy Horsiest. Weirdon doesn’t attempt to alter the course or conviction of Polizze’s faith in six strings, a volume knob, and the truth, but it does make it more compelling than ever."

Psychic TV

Alienist

Experimental

Saby Reyes-Kulkarni

At first glance, Psychic TV bandleader Genesis P-Orridge would seem a most unlikely champion of nostalgia. As co-founder of trailblazing ’70s noise act Throbbing Gristle, P-Orridge became the unwitting progenitor of industrial music—just one of several milestones in a multi-faceted career defined by a rabid dedication to non-conformity. And even when P-Orridge switched from Throbbing Gristle’s collagist technique to song-based structures with the formation of Psychic TV in 1981, the subversive streak remained intact. But as this latest installment in a series of covers-themed releases proves, P-Orridge has long harbored a romance for musical tradition. You can go all the way back to Psychic TV’s first album Force the Hand of Chance to hear hints of P-Orridge’s childhood affinity for early, pre-rock forms of pop. That album, in fact, begins with P-Orridge singing, “You caress me with simple love,” over an orchestral string arrangement. Looking back, it appears as if P-Orridge was being totally sincere, but in the wake of Sid Vicious’ “My Way” and with the corpse of Throbbing Gristle still warm, the song must have come across as ironic at the time. On Alienist, P-Orridge and the current incarnation of the band come to celebrate the past. Given P-Orridge’s history of provocation, Psychic TV aren’t interested in preserving anyone’s comfortable idea of the status quo. Nevertheless, the band’s renditions of singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson’s "Jump Into the Fire" and ’60s psychedelic outfit the Creation’s “How Does It Feel to Feel” stay faithful to the sonic character of the original versions. Still, the very act of picking those two tunes expands rather than fortifies the definition of pop music. It also says a lot about the band’s unwillingness to pander to the obvious—even as they play with nothing to prove. If Psychic TV sound like a bar band on these covers, it’s a bar band that puts a lot of thought into its choice of songs. Since 2009, Psychic TV have recorded covers of Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain,” Hawkwind’s “Silver Machine,” Can’s "Mother Sky," and Captain Beefheart’s “Dropout Boogie,” releasing the covers as 12-inches once a year with new original tunes as B-sides. Alienist presents two covers and two originals that together clock-in at 34 minutes—long enough to qualify as a full-length but slanted closer to the mixed-bag personality an EP. P-Orridge and drummer/producer/band director Edward O’Dowd (formerly of the Toilet Boys) don’t make very many radical alterations. The archetypal ’70s-guitar churn of “Jump Into the Fire,” for example, is panned to the right side of the stereo field, just like in Nilsson’s original. But keyboardist John Weingarten’s left-panned piano rolls burst with color and vibrancy where Nilsson’s merely served as an accompaniment. On both covers, in fact, the band oozes with an unguarded joy that’s downright life-affirming. Meanwhile, the two original songs provide contrast. “I’m Looking for You,” a space-rock dirge, hovers in the same darkly reflective mood for almost 12 minutes, with P-Orridge sounding sinister, weary, and wise all at once. And on the title track, Psychic TV give us an organic version of electronic music as P-Orridge—a somewhat warbly but nevertheless convincing singer—muses about alienation in a robotic monotone over an upbeat dance rhythm played on live drums. The term “rock and roll” all too often functions as a mantra for reinforcing boundaries, shorthand for “Weren’t things better back in simpler times?” The suggestion that the past was somehow better, more innocent and purer lends itself, consciously or not, to conservative social ideals. That Psychic TV can reach to the past without appealing to such regressive attitudes is just one of the qualities that give Alienist its charm. That they still sound vital and wide-eyed doing it makes it a triumph.

Artist: Psychic TV, Album: Alienist, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "At first glance, Psychic TV bandleader Genesis P-Orridge would seem a most unlikely champion of nostalgia. As co-founder of trailblazing ’70s noise act Throbbing Gristle, P-Orridge became the unwitting progenitor of industrial music—just one of several milestones in a multi-faceted career defined by a rabid dedication to non-conformity. And even when P-Orridge switched from Throbbing Gristle’s collagist technique to song-based structures with the formation of Psychic TV in 1981, the subversive streak remained intact. But as this latest installment in a series of covers-themed releases proves, P-Orridge has long harbored a romance for musical tradition. You can go all the way back to Psychic TV’s first album Force the Hand of Chance to hear hints of P-Orridge’s childhood affinity for early, pre-rock forms of pop. That album, in fact, begins with P-Orridge singing, “You caress me with simple love,” over an orchestral string arrangement. Looking back, it appears as if P-Orridge was being totally sincere, but in the wake of Sid Vicious’ “My Way” and with the corpse of Throbbing Gristle still warm, the song must have come across as ironic at the time. On Alienist, P-Orridge and the current incarnation of the band come to celebrate the past. Given P-Orridge’s history of provocation, Psychic TV aren’t interested in preserving anyone’s comfortable idea of the status quo. Nevertheless, the band’s renditions of singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson’s "Jump Into the Fire" and ’60s psychedelic outfit the Creation’s “How Does It Feel to Feel” stay faithful to the sonic character of the original versions. Still, the very act of picking those two tunes expands rather than fortifies the definition of pop music. It also says a lot about the band’s unwillingness to pander to the obvious—even as they play with nothing to prove. If Psychic TV sound like a bar band on these covers, it’s a bar band that puts a lot of thought into its choice of songs. Since 2009, Psychic TV have recorded covers of Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain,” Hawkwind’s “Silver Machine,” Can’s "Mother Sky," and Captain Beefheart’s “Dropout Boogie,” releasing the covers as 12-inches once a year with new original tunes as B-sides. Alienist presents two covers and two originals that together clock-in at 34 minutes—long enough to qualify as a full-length but slanted closer to the mixed-bag personality an EP. P-Orridge and drummer/producer/band director Edward O’Dowd (formerly of the Toilet Boys) don’t make very many radical alterations. The archetypal ’70s-guitar churn of “Jump Into the Fire,” for example, is panned to the right side of the stereo field, just like in Nilsson’s original. But keyboardist John Weingarten’s left-panned piano rolls burst with color and vibrancy where Nilsson’s merely served as an accompaniment. On both covers, in fact, the band oozes with an unguarded joy that’s downright life-affirming. Meanwhile, the two original songs provide contrast. “I’m Looking for You,” a space-rock dirge, hovers in the same darkly reflective mood for almost 12 minutes, with P-Orridge sounding sinister, weary, and wise all at once. And on the title track, Psychic TV give us an organic version of electronic music as P-Orridge—a somewhat warbly but nevertheless convincing singer—muses about alienation in a robotic monotone over an upbeat dance rhythm played on live drums. The term “rock and roll” all too often functions as a mantra for reinforcing boundaries, shorthand for “Weren’t things better back in simpler times?” The suggestion that the past was somehow better, more innocent and purer lends itself, consciously or not, to conservative social ideals. That Psychic TV can reach to the past without appealing to such regressive attitudes is just one of the qualities that give Alienist its charm. That they still sound vital and wide-eyed doing it makes it a triumph."

Van Morrison

Astral Weeks

Rock

Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Van Morrison released Astral Weeks in November 1968, not even 18 months after cracking the Billboard Top 10 with "Brown Eyed Girl". Much of the ebullience of "Brown Eyed Girl" derives from its AM-radio friendly arrangement, a sound encouraged by Bert Berns, the head of Van's label Bang. Berns was determined to get the record on the charts because that's where the money was, so the single sounded peppier than its lyric, a disconnect Morrison later noted. An undercurrent of melancholy desire runs through "Brown Eyed Girl"—Van pines for a moment as it's passing—and Astral Weeks brings that yearning to the forefront as it ventures into the slipstream of memories, dreams, and regret. Generalized longing—for a lover or a friend, for a certain time or place, for a younger version of yourself—is one of the defining elements of Astral Weeks, an album where spirituality, mysticism, and death intertwine on a vast expanding plane. It is youthful and old, the first flowering of expanded consciousness, one not yet tarnished by either tragedy or cynicism but impeded by an encroaching sense of mortality. Death flows through the album but doom doesn't cloud each moment. Rather, this music comes from the perspective of a young man realizing everything he has will erode, an awareness arriving while the wonder of life has yet to fade. Morrison doesn't dwell upon such sadness so much as he brushes upon them, a sensibility mirrored in his open-ended songs—compositions that largely evade traditional structure in favor of a boundless ballad, one stripped of story but following an interior emotional narrative. There's reason why both its creator and admirers so often call Astral Weeks poetry: it has its own internal language. Other singer/songwriters wound up using Astral Weeks as a primary text, either discovering their own voice in its viaducts or wallowing in its detours, but nobody has approached its soft, untethered spirituality, not even Van Morrison himself. In a way, Morrison's occasional disregard for the record helped fuel its cult, suggesting he tapped into a vein that frightened even him (this is a common thread among cult albums, where audiences choose to live eternally within a few dark months of an artist's life; see also Big Star's Third or Weezer's Pinkerton). Certainly, Astral Weeks seems to exist in a separate dimension from the rest of Van Morrison's catalog, its supple, soft-focus jazz-folk lacking the deeper R&B grooves of so many of his records, while its songs are often absent on compilations (tellingly, there's not a single song from it on the artist-endorsed 2007 compilation, Still on Top—The Greatest Hits). All of which underscores its separateness, playing into the myths that Astral Weeks is a record out of time and place. But even this, the most mystical album in the classic rock canon, has prosaic beginnings. Although it gives the illusion that it was written as a piece, several of its songs were composed years earlier ("Ballerina" dates from 1966, when Them recorded a prescient version of Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"), with Morrison recording two of the songs—"Beside You" and "Madame George"—for Bang Records during a day-long 1967 session designed to deliver all 36 songs he owed the label. This patchwork assemblage wasn't an accident. Part of the condition for Morrison's departure from the imprint dictated that he record two Bang-era songs for his Warner debut and, if Morrison released a single in 1968, half of the copyright would belong to Berns' publishing company. Morrison had radio-friendly material at the ready—"Domino", the lead single from the subsequent His Band and the Street Choir, was kicking around in '68—but he deliberately saved these songs for a later date, choosing contemplative compositions that were frankly uncommercial. Critics and Morrison himself would occasionally lament the album's lack of promotion but that underselling seems a deliberate tactic: there were no singles by design and both the artist and Warner would benefit financially if the hits arrived somewhere down the road. Hence, Astral Weeks is a bit of conventional artist building by Warner, a label known for being artist-friendly. Where Bang sought to shoehorn Morrison into the confines of AM radio, Warner's Mo Ostin and Joe Smith indulged their new signing, teaming him with producer Lewis Merenstein, who recruited a band of jazz players led by bassist Richard Davis, a veteran of out sessions by Andrew Hill (he played on every one of the pianist's pivotal mid-'60s Blue Note titles) and Eric Dolphy, but also straighter sessions by Brother Jack McDuff and Lou Donaldson. Modern Jazz Quartet drummer Connie Kay came next, along with guitarist Jay Berliner and vibraphonist/percussionist Warren Smith Jr., both veterans of sessions with Charles Mingus, and the group simply followed the lead of Morrison, who was playing the songs while sequestered in his separate booth. Three days—just two longer than the Bang copyright dump—was all that was needed to finish the record, with four songs completed the first day of the session. Morrison later told NPR in 2009 "That was that performance on those days" and, in a way, that's all that needs to be said about the record: it is musicians, previously unknown to each other, discovering a shared vernacular, stumbling upon something transcendent that no party attempted to conjure again. Astral Weeks is defined by Morrison's transient collaborations, not only between the musicians in the studio but producer Merenstein. So distinct is its atmosphere, it's easy to assume this is the work of a lone auteur who crafted the compositions and arrangements, but Merenstein is the one who sequenced the album, imposing the designations "In the Beginning" and "Afterwards" to the two sides, thereby strengthening the illusion that this is a song cycle. He's also the one who directed the orchestrations and chose to clip "Slim Slow Slider" so the album shudders to a halt, the dream coming to a conclusion with a start. The long-rumored complete version of "Slim Slow Slider" is one of four bonus tracks added to Warner's new remastered and expanded reissue of Astral Weeks; the other three include a longer version of "Ballerina" and alternate takes on "Beside You" and "Madame George", the latter with no orchestration and heavy vibes, offering a muted variation on the original. "Slim Slow Slider" does feel different in its lengthier incarnation, where it now glides to a gentler conclusion with Morrison trading lines with John Payne's saxophone, an effect that lends a slightly hopef

Artist: Van Morrison, Album: Astral Weeks, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 10.0 Album review: "Van Morrison released Astral Weeks in November 1968, not even 18 months after cracking the Billboard Top 10 with "Brown Eyed Girl". Much of the ebullience of "Brown Eyed Girl" derives from its AM-radio friendly arrangement, a sound encouraged by Bert Berns, the head of Van's label Bang. Berns was determined to get the record on the charts because that's where the money was, so the single sounded peppier than its lyric, a disconnect Morrison later noted. An undercurrent of melancholy desire runs through "Brown Eyed Girl"—Van pines for a moment as it's passing—and Astral Weeks brings that yearning to the forefront as it ventures into the slipstream of memories, dreams, and regret. Generalized longing—for a lover or a friend, for a certain time or place, for a younger version of yourself—is one of the defining elements of Astral Weeks, an album where spirituality, mysticism, and death intertwine on a vast expanding plane. It is youthful and old, the first flowering of expanded consciousness, one not yet tarnished by either tragedy or cynicism but impeded by an encroaching sense of mortality. Death flows through the album but doom doesn't cloud each moment. Rather, this music comes from the perspective of a young man realizing everything he has will erode, an awareness arriving while the wonder of life has yet to fade. Morrison doesn't dwell upon such sadness so much as he brushes upon them, a sensibility mirrored in his open-ended songs—compositions that largely evade traditional structure in favor of a boundless ballad, one stripped of story but following an interior emotional narrative. There's reason why both its creator and admirers so often call Astral Weeks poetry: it has its own internal language. Other singer/songwriters wound up using Astral Weeks as a primary text, either discovering their own voice in its viaducts or wallowing in its detours, but nobody has approached its soft, untethered spirituality, not even Van Morrison himself. In a way, Morrison's occasional disregard for the record helped fuel its cult, suggesting he tapped into a vein that frightened even him (this is a common thread among cult albums, where audiences choose to live eternally within a few dark months of an artist's life; see also Big Star's Third or Weezer's Pinkerton). Certainly, Astral Weeks seems to exist in a separate dimension from the rest of Van Morrison's catalog, its supple, soft-focus jazz-folk lacking the deeper R&B grooves of so many of his records, while its songs are often absent on compilations (tellingly, there's not a single song from it on the artist-endorsed 2007 compilation, Still on Top—The Greatest Hits). All of which underscores its separateness, playing into the myths that Astral Weeks is a record out of time and place. But even this, the most mystical album in the classic rock canon, has prosaic beginnings. Although it gives the illusion that it was written as a piece, several of its songs were composed years earlier ("Ballerina" dates from 1966, when Them recorded a prescient version of Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"), with Morrison recording two of the songs—"Beside You" and "Madame George"—for Bang Records during a day-long 1967 session designed to deliver all 36 songs he owed the label. This patchwork assemblage wasn't an accident. Part of the condition for Morrison's departure from the imprint dictated that he record two Bang-era songs for his Warner debut and, if Morrison released a single in 1968, half of the copyright would belong to Berns' publishing company. Morrison had radio-friendly material at the ready—"Domino", the lead single from the subsequent His Band and the Street Choir, was kicking around in '68—but he deliberately saved these songs for a later date, choosing contemplative compositions that were frankly uncommercial. Critics and Morrison himself would occasionally lament the album's lack of promotion but that underselling seems a deliberate tactic: there were no singles by design and both the artist and Warner would benefit financially if the hits arrived somewhere down the road. Hence, Astral Weeks is a bit of conventional artist building by Warner, a label known for being artist-friendly. Where Bang sought to shoehorn Morrison into the confines of AM radio, Warner's Mo Ostin and Joe Smith indulged their new signing, teaming him with producer Lewis Merenstein, who recruited a band of jazz players led by bassist Richard Davis, a veteran of out sessions by Andrew Hill (he played on every one of the pianist's pivotal mid-'60s Blue Note titles) and Eric Dolphy, but also straighter sessions by Brother Jack McDuff and Lou Donaldson. Modern Jazz Quartet drummer Connie Kay came next, along with guitarist Jay Berliner and vibraphonist/percussionist Warren Smith Jr., both veterans of sessions with Charles Mingus, and the group simply followed the lead of Morrison, who was playing the songs while sequestered in his separate booth. Three days—just two longer than the Bang copyright dump—was all that was needed to finish the record, with four songs completed the first day of the session. Morrison later told NPR in 2009 "That was that performance on those days" and, in a way, that's all that needs to be said about the record: it is musicians, previously unknown to each other, discovering a shared vernacular, stumbling upon something transcendent that no party attempted to conjure again. Astral Weeks is defined by Morrison's transient collaborations, not only between the musicians in the studio but producer Merenstein. So distinct is its atmosphere, it's easy to assume this is the work of a lone auteur who crafted the compositions and arrangements, but Merenstein is the one who sequenced the album, imposing the designations "In the Beginning" and "Afterwards" to the two sides, thereby strengthening the illusion that this is a song cycle. He's also the one who directed the orchestrations and chose to clip "Slim Slow Slider" so the album shudders to a halt, the dream coming to a conclusion with a start. The long-rumored complete version of "Slim Slow Slider" is one of four bonus tracks added to Warner's new remastered and expanded reissue of Astral Weeks; the other three include a longer version of "Ballerina" and alternate takes on "Beside You" and "Madame George", the latter with no orchestration and heavy vibes, offering a muted variation on the original. "Slim Slow Slider" does feel different in its lengthier incarnation, where it now glides to a gentler conclusion with Morrison trading lines with John Payne's saxophone, an effect that lends a slightly hopef"

Chiddy Bang

Peanut Butter and Swelly

Rap,Rock

Tom Breihan

Earlier this year, Chidera "Chiddy" Anamege, the rapping half of the Philly rap duo Chiddy Bang, broke the Guiness World Record for Longest Freestyle, rapping for more than nine hours straight. And if you want to hear some utterly godawful rapping, pull up a video of Chiddy finishing off that marathon. Or rapping for a 10-minute stretch during hour five. Or 22 minutes into it. Really, any random moment from the writ-large publicity stunt is going to give you some truly clumsy time-killing fluffiness. Even if Chiddy was Rakim, he couldn't have pulled this thing off; there's not a rapper alive who could say anything compelling for nine hours straight. But a great rapper wouldn't have attempted this stunt because a great rapper wouldn't have needed to do it. There's no worthwhile artistic reason to rap for that long-- it's pure online traffic-bait. When you rap for nine hours, words stop meaning anything; they become a way to fill time. If you pull up a random video from the nine-hour stretch, you'll see Chiddy wandering aimlessly around a spotlessly furnished room, flopping down on a blinding white couch, lifelessly throwing out words while the other dudes in the room stare at their iPhones. It's depressing. That same disregard for language is all over Peanut Butter and Swelly, Chiddy Bang's recent mixtape. As a rapper, Chiddy never shows the slightest bit of intensity or emotion. This is breezy cool-kid rap and nothing more, which might be fine if Chiddy did it with style. Instead, we get some truly awkward, forced, jumbled line construction. On the very first song, Chiddy actually uses the word "hashtag" in a (terrible) hashtag-rap punchline. Here's Chiddy on himself: "My life is pretty as the face of a girl/ And watch out, I got too much soul for the world." On a girl: "She got them soft legs/ She got them plum thighs/ And her bathing suit is something that is fun-sized." On his rivals: "Rapper, you should die/ Reading Catcher in the Rye." It's grisly. Chiddy Bang first started building blog attention because producer Xaphoon Jones used samples of some extremely recognizable mainstream-indie pop hits (MGMT's "Kids", Sufjan Stevens' "Chicago") to build his synth-rap tracks. These kinda-juxtapositions don't quite qualify as a neat trick; rappers have been rapping over weird shit since rap's earliest days. As canny as they are, the production choices are simply lazy, a transparent bid for Chiddy Bang to become the one rap group a certain subset of indie kids cares about. So on Peanut Butter and Swelly we get stuff like Chiddy rapping over Matt and Kim's "Cameras", a decent song that's way too thin and burnished to serve as the skeleton for a rap song. Or we get "Heatwave", the posse cut where Xaphoon throws bleepy keyboard sounds all over a Martha and the Vandellas song for absolutely no reason. They seem to be aiming for the "Oh, hey, I know that song" reaction. It's not like they go anywhere with the songs. It's all reference with nothing behind it, and that also goes for the rapping. A line from all over: "Got me throwing my arms around Paris, shit: Morrissey." It just figures that this kid's Morrissey reference of choice would be some shit from Years of Refusal. On "Heatwave", after painful verses from Chiddy and the odious Pittsburgh frat-rap goon Mac Miller, we get a verse from the Texas gangsta legend Trae, who stays on autopilot and steals the entire mixtape anyway. (Rest assured that the score at the top of this page would be a couple of decimal points lower without him.) Trae has been making a transparent bid for career-revival lately, showing up on tracks with ascendant weed-rap goofballs like Wiz Khalifa. Even so, his appearance here feels jarring. Trae made his name with a gutturally depressive hardhead style. He's a ferociously powerful voice who can sound tough even when he's talking about intense emotional pain. That makes him basically the polar opposite of Chiddy, a rapper who never has anything to say and who always sounds comfortable saying it.

Artist: Chiddy Bang, Album: Peanut Butter and Swelly, Genre: Rap,Rock, Score (1-10): 2.1 Album review: "Earlier this year, Chidera "Chiddy" Anamege, the rapping half of the Philly rap duo Chiddy Bang, broke the Guiness World Record for Longest Freestyle, rapping for more than nine hours straight. And if you want to hear some utterly godawful rapping, pull up a video of Chiddy finishing off that marathon. Or rapping for a 10-minute stretch during hour five. Or 22 minutes into it. Really, any random moment from the writ-large publicity stunt is going to give you some truly clumsy time-killing fluffiness. Even if Chiddy was Rakim, he couldn't have pulled this thing off; there's not a rapper alive who could say anything compelling for nine hours straight. But a great rapper wouldn't have attempted this stunt because a great rapper wouldn't have needed to do it. There's no worthwhile artistic reason to rap for that long-- it's pure online traffic-bait. When you rap for nine hours, words stop meaning anything; they become a way to fill time. If you pull up a random video from the nine-hour stretch, you'll see Chiddy wandering aimlessly around a spotlessly furnished room, flopping down on a blinding white couch, lifelessly throwing out words while the other dudes in the room stare at their iPhones. It's depressing. That same disregard for language is all over Peanut Butter and Swelly, Chiddy Bang's recent mixtape. As a rapper, Chiddy never shows the slightest bit of intensity or emotion. This is breezy cool-kid rap and nothing more, which might be fine if Chiddy did it with style. Instead, we get some truly awkward, forced, jumbled line construction. On the very first song, Chiddy actually uses the word "hashtag" in a (terrible) hashtag-rap punchline. Here's Chiddy on himself: "My life is pretty as the face of a girl/ And watch out, I got too much soul for the world." On a girl: "She got them soft legs/ She got them plum thighs/ And her bathing suit is something that is fun-sized." On his rivals: "Rapper, you should die/ Reading Catcher in the Rye." It's grisly. Chiddy Bang first started building blog attention because producer Xaphoon Jones used samples of some extremely recognizable mainstream-indie pop hits (MGMT's "Kids", Sufjan Stevens' "Chicago") to build his synth-rap tracks. These kinda-juxtapositions don't quite qualify as a neat trick; rappers have been rapping over weird shit since rap's earliest days. As canny as they are, the production choices are simply lazy, a transparent bid for Chiddy Bang to become the one rap group a certain subset of indie kids cares about. So on Peanut Butter and Swelly we get stuff like Chiddy rapping over Matt and Kim's "Cameras", a decent song that's way too thin and burnished to serve as the skeleton for a rap song. Or we get "Heatwave", the posse cut where Xaphoon throws bleepy keyboard sounds all over a Martha and the Vandellas song for absolutely no reason. They seem to be aiming for the "Oh, hey, I know that song" reaction. It's not like they go anywhere with the songs. It's all reference with nothing behind it, and that also goes for the rapping. A line from all over: "Got me throwing my arms around Paris, shit: Morrissey." It just figures that this kid's Morrissey reference of choice would be some shit from Years of Refusal. On "Heatwave", after painful verses from Chiddy and the odious Pittsburgh frat-rap goon Mac Miller, we get a verse from the Texas gangsta legend Trae, who stays on autopilot and steals the entire mixtape anyway. (Rest assured that the score at the top of this page would be a couple of decimal points lower without him.) Trae has been making a transparent bid for career-revival lately, showing up on tracks with ascendant weed-rap goofballs like Wiz Khalifa. Even so, his appearance here feels jarring. Trae made his name with a gutturally depressive hardhead style. He's a ferociously powerful voice who can sound tough even when he's talking about intense emotional pain. That makes him basically the polar opposite of Chiddy, a rapper who never has anything to say and who always sounds comfortable saying it."

Endless Boogie

Full House Head

Paul Thompson

Endless Boogie's 2008 LP debut, Focus Level, brimmed over with agreeably out-of-time guitar rambles, a wooly tangle of Skynyrd and Steppenwolf and anybody else unwilling to let a good solo go. The album, clocking in well over an hour, was fitfully satisfying but felt unfocused and exhausting over the course of an LP. Their latest, Full House Head, spreads eight chugging fretboard excursions over an equally copious 76 minutes, roving past everything from the Marshall Tucker Band to the Meat Puppets along the way. The boogie's still not bad; it's that other thing they've gotta knock off. After a brief intro lick, "Empty Eye" starts chooglin' and, for the better part of 10 minutes, doesn't stop. Guitarists Paul Major and Jesper Eklow duke it out on the fretboards, with Major getting in a few gutturals just to keep things interesting. Trouble is, they lock right down into it and never let up, rarely varying tempo or toying with dynamics, locking in the bass and drums and weaving solos in, out and around until even they can't take it anymore. Then "Tarmac City" starts, and we're at it again. Tracks are loosely arranged into songs but they mostly feel like just excuses for Major and Eklow to go off. Which they do. Repeatedly. Endlessly. And it works; for a while, anyway. Their playing's loose and economical, and the period-appropriate, bombed-in-the-backseat vibe admirably regressive. Major's singing seems to suit these songs a bit better than it did on the sometimes goofy Focus Level, although he's still a little light on hooks. The proceedings seem livelier overall, if even more protracted. The Southern smoke, San Fran psych and hard rock snarl that makes up these tracks doesn't feel overly reverent in their hands, just a little Bar Band 101. And, as with Focus Level, repeat spins don't do Full House Head many favors; Eklow and Major are fine guitarists, rugged and never gar [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| ish, but a little more flash might do them some good, as many of these tracks feel samey even after you've spent 10 minutes with them. After a while these rangy solos seem to content to just traipse along side by side, occasionally veering into each other messily, never reaching for any kind of precipice. Which means pretty much every song that passes the five-minute mark-- which is pretty much every song-- outstays its welcome. Leaner, fierier takes on these same wayfaring tunes would've surely resulted in a punchier, more replayable set. But the patchy, drawn-out Full House Head once again finds the band with way more boogie than they know what to do with.

Artist: Endless Boogie, Album: Full House Head, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 4.6 Album review: "Endless Boogie's 2008 LP debut, Focus Level, brimmed over with agreeably out-of-time guitar rambles, a wooly tangle of Skynyrd and Steppenwolf and anybody else unwilling to let a good solo go. The album, clocking in well over an hour, was fitfully satisfying but felt unfocused and exhausting over the course of an LP. Their latest, Full House Head, spreads eight chugging fretboard excursions over an equally copious 76 minutes, roving past everything from the Marshall Tucker Band to the Meat Puppets along the way. The boogie's still not bad; it's that other thing they've gotta knock off. After a brief intro lick, "Empty Eye" starts chooglin' and, for the better part of 10 minutes, doesn't stop. Guitarists Paul Major and Jesper Eklow duke it out on the fretboards, with Major getting in a few gutturals just to keep things interesting. Trouble is, they lock right down into it and never let up, rarely varying tempo or toying with dynamics, locking in the bass and drums and weaving solos in, out and around until even they can't take it anymore. Then "Tarmac City" starts, and we're at it again. Tracks are loosely arranged into songs but they mostly feel like just excuses for Major and Eklow to go off. Which they do. Repeatedly. Endlessly. And it works; for a while, anyway. Their playing's loose and economical, and the period-appropriate, bombed-in-the-backseat vibe admirably regressive. Major's singing seems to suit these songs a bit better than it did on the sometimes goofy Focus Level, although he's still a little light on hooks. The proceedings seem livelier overall, if even more protracted. The Southern smoke, San Fran psych and hard rock snarl that makes up these tracks doesn't feel overly reverent in their hands, just a little Bar Band 101. And, as with Focus Level, repeat spins don't do Full House Head many favors; Eklow and Major are fine guitarists, rugged and never gar [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| ish, but a little more flash might do them some good, as many of these tracks feel samey even after you've spent 10 minutes with them. After a while these rangy solos seem to content to just traipse along side by side, occasionally veering into each other messily, never reaching for any kind of precipice. Which means pretty much every song that passes the five-minute mark-- which is pretty much every song-- outstays its welcome. Leaner, fierier takes on these same wayfaring tunes would've surely resulted in a punchier, more replayable set. But the patchy, drawn-out Full House Head once again finds the band with way more boogie than they know what to do with."

Hawnay Troof

Islands of Ayle

Electronic,Pop/R&B

Mia Clarke

Vice Cooler, a suited and booted energy machine hailing from Oakland, California, is known for his brilliant, hyperactive live performances, yet his recorded output to date has felt rather thin by comparison. The template he created for himself as solo electro maniac Hawnay Troof has come close to sounding like a one-trick pony at times, but that is set to change with the release of his third album, Islands of Ayle, which was largely assembled during a 20-month world tour and features samples recorded everywhere from the Swiss Alps to Beijing. Here we can hear Cooler breaking his own mold with a fully realized album that fuses his hot-headed and fun approach to music making with some surprisingly great experimentation. The most enjoyable aspect of Islands of Ayle is Cooler's bold employment of traditional hip-hop rhythmic structures, which dishevel his more standard electro-punk patterns and allow the arrangements on this album to be completely thrilling-- this is the sound of a young musician who is not afraid to fuck with anything, or try something new, and this attitude leaves every track with an aftertaste as bright and strong as neon. The result is undoubtedly erratic, as Cooler intersperses classic common meter MCing in the style of Run-D.M.C. and Beastie Boys with unexpected breaks and fierce synth patches that burst out all over the place like the startling unpredictability of fireworks. (In fact, this record borrows so much from Hello Nasty that if Cooler wasn't so exploratory and light-hearted in his approach it would verge on ridiculous; even Jenny Hoyston sounds like Mike D in her guest appearance on "Out of Teen Revisited".) Unlike his contemporaries, such as Pittsburgh duo Grand Buffet and fellow west coaster Gold Chains, Cooler doesn't focus on creating anthemic melodies. His hooks are like hot potatoes: just when you get into it, he sweeps the beat to leave you hanging. The closest he comes to sticking to his guns is "Underneath the Ocean", which features lovely vocals from High Places' Mary Pearson. Elsewhere, tracks like the recent single "Connection" match bratty cat calling with intricately layered programming, and "Bizarre Triangle" sizzles with lyrical wildness, finishing up with a dirty edged skit that could either be about sex or cake baking (Cooler actually released his first cookbook, "The Hungry Truth", in 2005). Of course, underneath the silver hip-hop lining and flirtations with Kanye West style vocal samples fused with the type of dance euphoria that would make the Chemical Brothers proud (such as "Venus Venus Piper"), Cooler is a punk rock kid still firmly rooted to the west coast DIY scene that he has been a part of since moving from Alabama in 1998. This celebration of community is imprinted all over Islands of Ayle: Cooler drafted a slew of pals, including Randy Randall (No Age), Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu), and Carla Bozulich, to contribute to the album proper, while a limited-edition CD offers a selection of remixes from Lucky Dragons, Mae Shi, and Soft Pink Truth. When Cooler sings "If you've got your walk down, I hope you fully walk" on "Connection" one can't help feeling that he has taken his own advice. In just over 30 minutes, he leaves an impression of a confidence that has moved beyond the ego and into a territory that enables him to get away with just about anything.

Artist: Hawnay Troof, Album: Islands of Ayle, Genre: Electronic,Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "Vice Cooler, a suited and booted energy machine hailing from Oakland, California, is known for his brilliant, hyperactive live performances, yet his recorded output to date has felt rather thin by comparison. The template he created for himself as solo electro maniac Hawnay Troof has come close to sounding like a one-trick pony at times, but that is set to change with the release of his third album, Islands of Ayle, which was largely assembled during a 20-month world tour and features samples recorded everywhere from the Swiss Alps to Beijing. Here we can hear Cooler breaking his own mold with a fully realized album that fuses his hot-headed and fun approach to music making with some surprisingly great experimentation. The most enjoyable aspect of Islands of Ayle is Cooler's bold employment of traditional hip-hop rhythmic structures, which dishevel his more standard electro-punk patterns and allow the arrangements on this album to be completely thrilling-- this is the sound of a young musician who is not afraid to fuck with anything, or try something new, and this attitude leaves every track with an aftertaste as bright and strong as neon. The result is undoubtedly erratic, as Cooler intersperses classic common meter MCing in the style of Run-D.M.C. and Beastie Boys with unexpected breaks and fierce synth patches that burst out all over the place like the startling unpredictability of fireworks. (In fact, this record borrows so much from Hello Nasty that if Cooler wasn't so exploratory and light-hearted in his approach it would verge on ridiculous; even Jenny Hoyston sounds like Mike D in her guest appearance on "Out of Teen Revisited".) Unlike his contemporaries, such as Pittsburgh duo Grand Buffet and fellow west coaster Gold Chains, Cooler doesn't focus on creating anthemic melodies. His hooks are like hot potatoes: just when you get into it, he sweeps the beat to leave you hanging. The closest he comes to sticking to his guns is "Underneath the Ocean", which features lovely vocals from High Places' Mary Pearson. Elsewhere, tracks like the recent single "Connection" match bratty cat calling with intricately layered programming, and "Bizarre Triangle" sizzles with lyrical wildness, finishing up with a dirty edged skit that could either be about sex or cake baking (Cooler actually released his first cookbook, "The Hungry Truth", in 2005). Of course, underneath the silver hip-hop lining and flirtations with Kanye West style vocal samples fused with the type of dance euphoria that would make the Chemical Brothers proud (such as "Venus Venus Piper"), Cooler is a punk rock kid still firmly rooted to the west coast DIY scene that he has been a part of since moving from Alabama in 1998. This celebration of community is imprinted all over Islands of Ayle: Cooler drafted a slew of pals, including Randy Randall (No Age), Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu), and Carla Bozulich, to contribute to the album proper, while a limited-edition CD offers a selection of remixes from Lucky Dragons, Mae Shi, and Soft Pink Truth. When Cooler sings "If you've got your walk down, I hope you fully walk" on "Connection" one can't help feeling that he has taken his own advice. In just over 30 minutes, he leaves an impression of a confidence that has moved beyond the ego and into a territory that enables him to get away with just about anything."

FM3

The Buddha Machine

Electronic,Rock

Chris Dahlen

Instead of explaining the Buddha Machine, I wish I could just persuade you to drop the cash and order one, so you can figure it out on your own. Giving you my impressions will ruin the fun, in the same way that you don't give kids a review of a toy-- you just hand it over and let them start playing. When mine came in the mail, opening the box gave me a kind of Christmas morning rush and a flash of "what is this thing?" It's packaged in a small cardboard box printed with Chinese lettering around an image of a street scene. Inside you'll find what looks like a small transistor radio, plus two AA batteries (also Chinese). Switch it on, and a soft, ambient loop starts to crackle through the tiny, cheap speaker built into the device. You can adjust the volume dial, or switch between the nine short loops programmed into the Buddha Machine-- and then you set it down and leave it alone. I've left it playing hours at a time while I sit at my desk, and I could even picture installing these around my house, like low budget installation art. But I don't want to get hung up on its artistry, because most important of all, it's also an object. The minute I opened the box, I wanted to hold it in my hand, and play with the switches, and carry it around with me. It has an output jack, but it's much more fun to listen to its cheap built-in speaker: at low volumes, the loops are placid, fitting into the corner of your ear, but turn up the dial or press it to your ear and you hear hundreds of nuances and crackles of static. And best of all, the music never stops. Sure, you can listen to a minimalist CD and imagine how it would feel to hear it for days on end, but the Buddha Machine lets you try it: There's no 80-minute limit, and the batteries will go for hours. Psychologically, it makes a big difference when you aren't waiting for the music to fade out. The nine loops are suggestive, but they're deliberately not engaging. A piece like Ekkehard Ehlers' "Plays John Cassavetes 2" makes you feel like you could hear it repeat forever, but in practice it needs to wrap itself up and end before we can get tired of it. The loops on the Buddha Machine don't shift or change over time, although you may be tricked into believing that they do, and a couple of loops that almost have hooks actually made me anxious, as I realized that I was waiting for them to move on. (The ninth loop, which is only two seconds long, is too fast and abrupt and probably could have been cut.) More than anything, the Buddha Machine is a great way to study ambient music. It's built to produce background music, but as you treat it more functionally, you might question whether it's "art." What's the point of music that doesn't move forward? Can something this boundless and utilitarian meet the same criteria as an album, like Brian Eno's Discreet Music, where the system was designed to run forever but strategically isn't allowed to? You don't have to think about these issues-- or about anything at all-- but you'd be missing out on part of the fun. Some people will call this a novelty, but it's not: It's a toy. Most of us are drawn to little gadgets that make music; we love to pick them up and fiddle with the switches, and play with them, and figure out how they work. Along the way we're testing and stretching the ways we experience and consume music. The Buddha Machine isn't the first self-contained music maker to sell as a work of electronic art, but it is an almost perfectly-realized example. And I can't stop playing with it.

Artist: FM3, Album: The Buddha Machine, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "Instead of explaining the Buddha Machine, I wish I could just persuade you to drop the cash and order one, so you can figure it out on your own. Giving you my impressions will ruin the fun, in the same way that you don't give kids a review of a toy-- you just hand it over and let them start playing. When mine came in the mail, opening the box gave me a kind of Christmas morning rush and a flash of "what is this thing?" It's packaged in a small cardboard box printed with Chinese lettering around an image of a street scene. Inside you'll find what looks like a small transistor radio, plus two AA batteries (also Chinese). Switch it on, and a soft, ambient loop starts to crackle through the tiny, cheap speaker built into the device. You can adjust the volume dial, or switch between the nine short loops programmed into the Buddha Machine-- and then you set it down and leave it alone. I've left it playing hours at a time while I sit at my desk, and I could even picture installing these around my house, like low budget installation art. But I don't want to get hung up on its artistry, because most important of all, it's also an object. The minute I opened the box, I wanted to hold it in my hand, and play with the switches, and carry it around with me. It has an output jack, but it's much more fun to listen to its cheap built-in speaker: at low volumes, the loops are placid, fitting into the corner of your ear, but turn up the dial or press it to your ear and you hear hundreds of nuances and crackles of static. And best of all, the music never stops. Sure, you can listen to a minimalist CD and imagine how it would feel to hear it for days on end, but the Buddha Machine lets you try it: There's no 80-minute limit, and the batteries will go for hours. Psychologically, it makes a big difference when you aren't waiting for the music to fade out. The nine loops are suggestive, but they're deliberately not engaging. A piece like Ekkehard Ehlers' "Plays John Cassavetes 2" makes you feel like you could hear it repeat forever, but in practice it needs to wrap itself up and end before we can get tired of it. The loops on the Buddha Machine don't shift or change over time, although you may be tricked into believing that they do, and a couple of loops that almost have hooks actually made me anxious, as I realized that I was waiting for them to move on. (The ninth loop, which is only two seconds long, is too fast and abrupt and probably could have been cut.) More than anything, the Buddha Machine is a great way to study ambient music. It's built to produce background music, but as you treat it more functionally, you might question whether it's "art." What's the point of music that doesn't move forward? Can something this boundless and utilitarian meet the same criteria as an album, like Brian Eno's Discreet Music, where the system was designed to run forever but strategically isn't allowed to? You don't have to think about these issues-- or about anything at all-- but you'd be missing out on part of the fun. Some people will call this a novelty, but it's not: It's a toy. Most of us are drawn to little gadgets that make music; we love to pick them up and fiddle with the switches, and play with them, and figure out how they work. Along the way we're testing and stretching the ways we experience and consume music. The Buddha Machine isn't the first self-contained music maker to sell as a work of electronic art, but it is an almost perfectly-realized example. And I can't stop playing with it."

Etran Finatawa

Desert Crossroads

Global

D. Shawn Bosler

Desert Crossroads couldn't be a more apt title for Niamey, Niger's Etran Finatawa. This sextet's potent, trance-y "nomadic blues" is a blend of two West-Central African ethnic groups-- the Tuareg and the Wodaabe peoples-- who historically have lived in the south Sahara and Sahel grasslands. The band itself is a crossroad, not only in its novel and successful attempt at mixing the two distinct musical strains (vocals are in the Wodaabe style while the pronounced guitar and hand-drum grooves are steeped in Tuareg rhythms), but also since the group features three representatives from each tribe. Etran Finatawa represent two groups that have both traditionally wandered to where the water and pastures took them, sadly not always free of conflict over these essential resources. The other obvious "crossroads" analogy comes in with the themes of the music which address the trials and tribulations common to both ethnic groups, primarily due to the erosion of their cultural traditions and loss of their lands. Desertification is driving many people to the cities where the old ways are being forgotten, but still longed for. Granted, this English-speaking writer couldn't glean all that from the Tamashek (Tuareg) or Fulfulde (Wodaabe) languages that Etran sing in for this sophomore release, but there is a beautiful earnestness that, even during more uptempo and joyous numbers like the circular vamp "Amidinine", reveals a composed seriousness. This track isn't the only one that hypnotically and repetitively explores the churning bluesy guitar spiral-- pretty much the whole record displays this signature of Kel Tamasheck (a name the Tuareg call themselves) music. These trilling, slurring, serpentine guitar lines are most prominent in the internationally-renowned Tuareg band Tinariwen, who are the reason that many Tuareg musicians made the switch to electric guitar back in the 1970s. Where Tinariwen spin their desert blues with strong rock overtones-- wah-wah on the six-string, pronounced electric bass lines-- Etran keep things more traditional. Guitars may be electric, but the tone is clean; and the infrequent bass is far less featured. Though the dexterous, cobwebbed guitars have an affinity towards contemporary Afropop, the essential throbbing drones and implied bass lines are pure blues. (One can also hear this African/American Delta blues connection in the style of Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré.) Two songs that reveal a pronounced Wodaabe influence are "Gaynaako" and "Naanaaye". Both use call-and-response vocals-- nasally and wailing with alternately smoothly-subdued replies-- that intertwine over a pulsing, clip-clop of percussion and hand-claps (besides the polyphonic and contrapuntal vocal-style, hand-claps are key to the Wodaabe sound.) These are extremely evocative and enticing tunes rich with the melding of both tribesmen, especially considering the shifting landscape and cross-cultural exchange they borrow from, including various sub-Saharan cultures, West African influences, Berber, Arabic, and even the subtle hint of contemporary Western rock. Afropop fans and world music buffs wishing to broaden their palette should experience Etran's genius musical nomadism.

Artist: Etran Finatawa, Album: Desert Crossroads, Genre: Global, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "Desert Crossroads couldn't be a more apt title for Niamey, Niger's Etran Finatawa. This sextet's potent, trance-y "nomadic blues" is a blend of two West-Central African ethnic groups-- the Tuareg and the Wodaabe peoples-- who historically have lived in the south Sahara and Sahel grasslands. The band itself is a crossroad, not only in its novel and successful attempt at mixing the two distinct musical strains (vocals are in the Wodaabe style while the pronounced guitar and hand-drum grooves are steeped in Tuareg rhythms), but also since the group features three representatives from each tribe. Etran Finatawa represent two groups that have both traditionally wandered to where the water and pastures took them, sadly not always free of conflict over these essential resources. The other obvious "crossroads" analogy comes in with the themes of the music which address the trials and tribulations common to both ethnic groups, primarily due to the erosion of their cultural traditions and loss of their lands. Desertification is driving many people to the cities where the old ways are being forgotten, but still longed for. Granted, this English-speaking writer couldn't glean all that from the Tamashek (Tuareg) or Fulfulde (Wodaabe) languages that Etran sing in for this sophomore release, but there is a beautiful earnestness that, even during more uptempo and joyous numbers like the circular vamp "Amidinine", reveals a composed seriousness. This track isn't the only one that hypnotically and repetitively explores the churning bluesy guitar spiral-- pretty much the whole record displays this signature of Kel Tamasheck (a name the Tuareg call themselves) music. These trilling, slurring, serpentine guitar lines are most prominent in the internationally-renowned Tuareg band Tinariwen, who are the reason that many Tuareg musicians made the switch to electric guitar back in the 1970s. Where Tinariwen spin their desert blues with strong rock overtones-- wah-wah on the six-string, pronounced electric bass lines-- Etran keep things more traditional. Guitars may be electric, but the tone is clean; and the infrequent bass is far less featured. Though the dexterous, cobwebbed guitars have an affinity towards contemporary Afropop, the essential throbbing drones and implied bass lines are pure blues. (One can also hear this African/American Delta blues connection in the style of Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré.) Two songs that reveal a pronounced Wodaabe influence are "Gaynaako" and "Naanaaye". Both use call-and-response vocals-- nasally and wailing with alternately smoothly-subdued replies-- that intertwine over a pulsing, clip-clop of percussion and hand-claps (besides the polyphonic and contrapuntal vocal-style, hand-claps are key to the Wodaabe sound.) These are extremely evocative and enticing tunes rich with the melding of both tribesmen, especially considering the shifting landscape and cross-cultural exchange they borrow from, including various sub-Saharan cultures, West African influences, Berber, Arabic, and even the subtle hint of contemporary Western rock. Afropop fans and world music buffs wishing to broaden their palette should experience Etran's genius musical nomadism."

Nadja

Truth Becomes Death

Electronic,Metal,Rock

Zach Baron

The hallmarks of newest-wave rock and roll aren't shaping up to be very punk. Earth-long drones, Mogwai builds, previously unheard of portions of Japanoise ear-bleed; there are fewer three minute songs, and, even when loud, tracks seem less confrontational. The double-edged sword of the new avant garde: more patient audiences, more bands taking license. On this contested ground, Toronto two piece Nadja drop Truth Becomes Death. Heavy and abstract, Nadja plow the increasingly popular territory being laid out between slow metal and staticy ambiance. Alien8's first real venture into the far side of the art-rock metal divide, the move would perhaps be more significant if the gap wasn't already shrinking so rapidly. Without being shockingly original, Nadja's sound is the apotheosis of a long convergence and (welcome) genre bleed. Though timely, Truth Becomes Death risks being a marginal record, if only because it has a nature so huge some might take it as scenery. Archaeological in the same way a many times dubbed-over tape is, Nadja move their source material way back in mix and let fuzz and a sea of glowing noise ride shotgun along with the instruments. The resulting environment has a giant resonance. Drum (machine) sound is triply huge on "Bug/Golem"; not only is the recording so big it sounds as if they expanded the room to accommodate it, but stray elements echo the percussion on every rock solid hit. The song incorporates lo-fi 90s cassette aesthetics and 80s guitar breakdowns and assigns both new meanings: a Youth of Today macho bullshit chug-chug-chug is turned into epic, arty song punctuation. In this barbarously delicate sea, the crashing guitars and horror house vocals of "Memory Leak" wreck damage in some other nearby room. Spooky synth guitar solos only add to the distance; the aggro stuff is so diluted it becomes panoramic. Part of the charm of the old slow-core, big riffs pseudo-metal was that it shot a pure dose, but so did the ultra-fast grind of the Locust or Discordance Axis; once the gimmick is over, it's over. Nadja's not obsessed or stuck on ideologies, which is why they sound like latecomers. But as they put it on "Breakpoint", "the infestation breaks loose, spreads, and at some point takes over\xD1bacteria grows on my circuits and I learn how to feel." So they take the old grinding sonic palette of indecipherable and ripping vocals over thundering guitars, rot it, and stick its head underwater. Then they learn how to sing with their lungs submerged.

Artist: Nadja, Album: Truth Becomes Death, Genre: Electronic,Metal,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "The hallmarks of newest-wave rock and roll aren't shaping up to be very punk. Earth-long drones, Mogwai builds, previously unheard of portions of Japanoise ear-bleed; there are fewer three minute songs, and, even when loud, tracks seem less confrontational. The double-edged sword of the new avant garde: more patient audiences, more bands taking license. On this contested ground, Toronto two piece Nadja drop Truth Becomes Death. Heavy and abstract, Nadja plow the increasingly popular territory being laid out between slow metal and staticy ambiance. Alien8's first real venture into the far side of the art-rock metal divide, the move would perhaps be more significant if the gap wasn't already shrinking so rapidly. Without being shockingly original, Nadja's sound is the apotheosis of a long convergence and (welcome) genre bleed. Though timely, Truth Becomes Death risks being a marginal record, if only because it has a nature so huge some might take it as scenery. Archaeological in the same way a many times dubbed-over tape is, Nadja move their source material way back in mix and let fuzz and a sea of glowing noise ride shotgun along with the instruments. The resulting environment has a giant resonance. Drum (machine) sound is triply huge on "Bug/Golem"; not only is the recording so big it sounds as if they expanded the room to accommodate it, but stray elements echo the percussion on every rock solid hit. The song incorporates lo-fi 90s cassette aesthetics and 80s guitar breakdowns and assigns both new meanings: a Youth of Today macho bullshit chug-chug-chug is turned into epic, arty song punctuation. In this barbarously delicate sea, the crashing guitars and horror house vocals of "Memory Leak" wreck damage in some other nearby room. Spooky synth guitar solos only add to the distance; the aggro stuff is so diluted it becomes panoramic. Part of the charm of the old slow-core, big riffs pseudo-metal was that it shot a pure dose, but so did the ultra-fast grind of the Locust or Discordance Axis; once the gimmick is over, it's over. Nadja's not obsessed or stuck on ideologies, which is why they sound like latecomers. But as they put it on "Breakpoint", "the infestation breaks loose, spreads, and at some point takes over\xD1bacteria grows on my circuits and I learn how to feel." So they take the old grinding sonic palette of indecipherable and ripping vocals over thundering guitars, rot it, and stick its head underwater. Then they learn how to sing with their lungs submerged."

Soccer Mommy

Clean

Rock

Jenn Pelly

When Sophie Allison sings, “I wanna be that cool,” you believe her. Coolness would be something to aspire to for a young indie rocker who records music under the decidedly uncool alias of Soccer Mommy. But the 20-year-old Allison, from Nashville, Tennessee, has something more valuable: humble relatability. Her hazy singing can be conversational and appealingly flat. She sounds like a person you might know. In the summer of 2015, just after she had finished high school, Allison procured a Tascam four-track and collected her raw feelings—like an audio diary of teenaged heartbreak—onto Bandcamp releases with titles like songs for the recently sad and “moving to new york.” Still trading in piercing vulnerability, Clean is Allison’s excellent studio debut: a compact album of clear melodies, plainspoken lyrics, and the impossibly tangled logic of infatuation. Clean has only subtle flourishes. Allison can be blunt like Liz Phair, or perceptive like early Taylor Swift, but she tells her stories of love and betrayal with a welcomed pop-punk brevity and kick. The melodrama of youth is rendered in sometimes uncomfortable detail—the seemingly innocuous memories that send you spiraling, like a particular way of brushing up against a person. In Clean’s songs, lovers become wolves; crushes linger with world-ending gravity; disaffected stoner girls become godly. Allison is caught between who she is and who she wants to be, singing such self-loathing lines as, “I am just a dying flower,” and, “Why would you still want to be with me?” But her dry voice itself deflects the anguish; it’s empowering. Things happen on Clean that you wouldn’t expect. In the sad opener, “Still Clean,” Allison likens a greedy lover to a wild animal who literally eats her. It’s a twisted image, like a Grimm’s fairytale: “Left me drowning once you picked me out of your bloody teeth.” The pairing of lilting strums with such a savage lyric makes a statement: This soft music is not precious. It’s gnarly and intense, like the heart itself. When Allison sings that she “checked the window just to see if you’d come back to me,” it’s a crushing depiction of how easily obsession can lead to self-destruction. (Perhaps all this complication accounts for Allison’s simple desire, on “Skin,” to just “be the one you’re kissing when you’re stoned.”) Over the breezy riff of “Cool,” Allison flips the script, romanticizing a rebel girl who’s equally vicious. She wants to be “Mary [with] a heart of coal,” a girl who treats boys like toys and gets high with her friends. The fiercer “Your Dog,” meanwhile, is not an interpolation of Iggy Pop but rather a total inversion: “I don’t wanna be your fucking dog,” Allison sings with fire. She conveys a sentiment about ownership that women have been shouting since they began picking up instruments without permission. Even when Allison’s strummy music evokes a coffee house open-mic, though, there’s an edge to it. At the towering center of Clean is “Blossom (Wasting All My Time).” It is so spare as to be almost void-like: just Allison hovering six feet above her quietest strums, a mysticism perhaps learned from Leonard Cohen. When it starts, “Blossom” is so stinging that you might close your eyes. “Wasting all my time thinking about the way you treat me/Wasting all my time on someone who didn’t know me,” Allison sings, evoking a wrenching blues traditional. But the song cracks down the middle like a split locket, and halfway through, the bad feeling is replaced by an optimistic one. New longing replaces the old. And then life goes on. If the album’s title brings to mind “Clean,” the pristine closing ballad from Swift’s 1989, you’d not be mistaken. Allison admits a devotion to Swift, and it shows in the sweetened ease and biting honesty of her music, in her knowing fixation on un-coolness. This comes into focus on Clean’s slow-burning “Scorpio Rising.” Allison is sitting in the car as the sun comes up with a boy who is going to leave her for another girl—one who’s “bubbly and sweet like a Coca-Cola.” She can’t let go: “You’re made from the stars/We watched from your car,” Allison sings as the song swirls. It’s the sound of knotted nascent love, a snapshot of a person with her messy thoughts. But in all its sonic clarity, Allison’s music contains the promise that these tragic scenarios could still be untangled. Clean is that much-cooler indie record Taylor once sung of. Below the surface, its spark gleams like a secret.

Artist: Soccer Mommy, Album: Clean, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.4 Album review: "When Sophie Allison sings, “I wanna be that cool,” you believe her. Coolness would be something to aspire to for a young indie rocker who records music under the decidedly uncool alias of Soccer Mommy. But the 20-year-old Allison, from Nashville, Tennessee, has something more valuable: humble relatability. Her hazy singing can be conversational and appealingly flat. She sounds like a person you might know. In the summer of 2015, just after she had finished high school, Allison procured a Tascam four-track and collected her raw feelings—like an audio diary of teenaged heartbreak—onto Bandcamp releases with titles like songs for the recently sad and “moving to new york.” Still trading in piercing vulnerability, Clean is Allison’s excellent studio debut: a compact album of clear melodies, plainspoken lyrics, and the impossibly tangled logic of infatuation. Clean has only subtle flourishes. Allison can be blunt like Liz Phair, or perceptive like early Taylor Swift, but she tells her stories of love and betrayal with a welcomed pop-punk brevity and kick. The melodrama of youth is rendered in sometimes uncomfortable detail—the seemingly innocuous memories that send you spiraling, like a particular way of brushing up against a person. In Clean’s songs, lovers become wolves; crushes linger with world-ending gravity; disaffected stoner girls become godly. Allison is caught between who she is and who she wants to be, singing such self-loathing lines as, “I am just a dying flower,” and, “Why would you still want to be with me?” But her dry voice itself deflects the anguish; it’s empowering. Things happen on Clean that you wouldn’t expect. In the sad opener, “Still Clean,” Allison likens a greedy lover to a wild animal who literally eats her. It’s a twisted image, like a Grimm’s fairytale: “Left me drowning once you picked me out of your bloody teeth.” The pairing of lilting strums with such a savage lyric makes a statement: This soft music is not precious. It’s gnarly and intense, like the heart itself. When Allison sings that she “checked the window just to see if you’d come back to me,” it’s a crushing depiction of how easily obsession can lead to self-destruction. (Perhaps all this complication accounts for Allison’s simple desire, on “Skin,” to just “be the one you’re kissing when you’re stoned.”) Over the breezy riff of “Cool,” Allison flips the script, romanticizing a rebel girl who’s equally vicious. She wants to be “Mary [with] a heart of coal,” a girl who treats boys like toys and gets high with her friends. The fiercer “Your Dog,” meanwhile, is not an interpolation of Iggy Pop but rather a total inversion: “I don’t wanna be your fucking dog,” Allison sings with fire. She conveys a sentiment about ownership that women have been shouting since they began picking up instruments without permission. Even when Allison’s strummy music evokes a coffee house open-mic, though, there’s an edge to it. At the towering center of Clean is “Blossom (Wasting All My Time).” It is so spare as to be almost void-like: just Allison hovering six feet above her quietest strums, a mysticism perhaps learned from Leonard Cohen. When it starts, “Blossom” is so stinging that you might close your eyes. “Wasting all my time thinking about the way you treat me/Wasting all my time on someone who didn’t know me,” Allison sings, evoking a wrenching blues traditional. But the song cracks down the middle like a split locket, and halfway through, the bad feeling is replaced by an optimistic one. New longing replaces the old. And then life goes on. If the album’s title brings to mind “Clean,” the pristine closing ballad from Swift’s 1989, you’d not be mistaken. Allison admits a devotion to Swift, and it shows in the sweetened ease and biting honesty of her music, in her knowing fixation on un-coolness. This comes into focus on Clean’s slow-burning “Scorpio Rising.” Allison is sitting in the car as the sun comes up with a boy who is going to leave her for another girl—one who’s “bubbly and sweet like a Coca-Cola.” She can’t let go: “You’re made from the stars/We watched from your car,” Allison sings as the song swirls. It’s the sound of knotted nascent love, a snapshot of a person with her messy thoughts. But in all its sonic clarity, Allison’s music contains the promise that these tragic scenarios could still be untangled. Clean is that much-cooler indie record Taylor once sung of. Below the surface, its spark gleams like a secret."

Nina Simone

In Concert

Jazz,Pop/R&B

Carvell Wallace

Nina Simone hurts you. She does it with her voice, which is sharpened and ready, versatile as a set of top flight chef’s knives able to slice through the music making a myriad of purposeful and precise incisions, wounds, gashes or lacerations. She does it through words, delivered sometimes like poisoned darts, other times like butterfly kisses from a child on the cheek of an exhausted mother. She does it by staring you down and withering your resolve; looking at you the way death looks at you, and in so doing giving you life. Her pain becomes yours, and her pain is eternal and without limit. It is a human pain, a ghostly, ancient suffering that comes through her more than it does from her. Having been dropped to the earth in Depression-era America, she sang this pain through blues and Broadway, through jazz and campy lovestruck standards. She played Bach fugues and cantatas with the same urgent grace that she lent to the hammer-busting work ballads of the black south. Born a classical prodigy in a hot and rural segregated North Carolina town, she was formed into (or perhaps already was) a warrior of unmatched regality; a woman in possession of kind, delicate fingers and the kind of emotional bloodlust that only comes when you grow up in a place where people are lynched for looking just like you. Ms. Simone attended Juliard with money her hometown collected to further her career, but left the school when her cash ran out. After a rejection from a conservatory in Philadelphia, she took on gigs at a supper club, and eventually earned a recording contract first with Bethlehem and then Colpix where she released eight albums, became a darling of the folk scene and culminated with a performance at Carnegie Hall in 1963. But then civil rights activist Medgar Evers was assassinated in his driveway by a Klan member. And several months later a bomb ripped through a black church in Birmingham, Alabama murdering four children. And within months Nina Simone switched labels to Philips and unleashed a series of songs about civil rights and anger and freedom, the most noted of which is “Mississippi Goddamn,” a sprightly show tune that slow-builds into an unrestrained call to arms. The tune is based on a passage on Bertolt Brecht’s and Kurt Weill’s “Alabama Song” from the 1927 experimental play, Mahagonny-Songspiel aka The Little Mahagonny. Brecht and Weill would prove consistent and proper antecedents to the particular brew of theatricality and revolution that defined much of Ms. Simone’s work after she joined Philips. Her cover of “Pirate Jenny” from Threepenny Opera is one of the creepiest recordings of all time for a great many reasons, one of which being Simone’s implicit understanding of how closely 1930s Germany paralleled the violent psychosis of American racism. These songs and scores more all appear on the seven albums she recorded at Philips from 1964-1967, which have been re-released as a boxed set. The set, simply called, Nina Simone: The Philips Years, covers a period of time that is arguably her creative best. Too large to be subsumed under one description, the 74 songs contained herein cover all corners of the Simone musical universe, from the bright and lacy Sunday best of “Nearer Blessed Lord,” to the hellfire and brimstone of “Sinnerman,” from the lush, indulgent ennui of “Ne Me Quitte Pas,” to the bold, agonizing solemnity of “Strange Fruit.” Nearly every song in this far-flung cycle has its opposite, because Nina Simone was the nexus point of nearly all the western musical ideas of her time. She may be the only artist to find the link between Sam Cooke and Edith Piaf, between Bertolt Brecht and Malcolm X. Her thorough and strict classical training (she was in the truest and least sensational sense a diva) allowed her to treat the music of black Americans—soul, jazz, blues, roots and folk—with a level of deference typically reserved for Rachmaninov. On display in these recordings is Simone’s vast and unmatched set of gifts, technical and otherwise. Her pure jazz keyboard work on tracks like “Mood Indigo” makes her one of the few pianists to legitimately rival Duke Ellington’s combination of clarity and melodic complexity. Although she largely interpreted other people’s songs, some of the strongest lyrical content in her catalogue comes from her own compositions, particularly “Four Women,” a spare, trenchant character study that manages to capture all the impossible contradictions of black American womanhood in just 16 lines. And the impact of her vocals went beyond her distinctive voice. She was an incisive and adroit singer, who could seamlessly navigate the vulnerable passages that appeared in ballads like “Don’t Smoke in Bed,” and “I Loves You Porgy,” while also bringing a virtuosic gravitas even to syrupy standards like “One September Day.” The other end of her skill set was her unmatched ability to make listeners feel every bit of what she was feeling. Think of the vast and prickly joy of a track like “Feeling Good,” how it conveys a manic freedom, a heart-bursting love that shoots from the chest in nerve-sized lightening bolts, tingling like chandeliers shattering throughout your limbs. Or the meandering mourning of “Plain Gold Ring,” that unfolds itself slowly over the dark, creeping motive that comprises the song’s melodic underpinning. She delivers, “In my heart it will never be spring” in a way that darkens the skies of your own heart, stripping the foliage, laying bare the branches of your skeleton. At their peak, Simone’s powers bordered on emotional clairvoyance. Predictably it was when she turned the full power of these weapons to the cause of affirming the rights and humanity of black people that her career began to falter in ways from which she could never fully recover. It is difficult to overstate how strident and militant she was about ending racism and injustice, how unabashedly she proclaimed her love for blackness and the preciousness of the lives of black people. My own mother and her sisters have told me for years that of all the civil rights leaders of their generation, it was Ms. Simone, dark-skinned, natural-haired, big lipped, seated at a piano with a head wrapped in queenly cloths, and fingers that have mastered Western music, who meant the most to them. It was Ms. Simone who loved them when she sang their pain. It was Ms. Simone who entitled them when she sang their anger. This boxed set contains some of the best pure music ever recorded. It doesn’t really matter what your genre loyalties are. At its essence, music is about chords, melodies, and harmon

Artist: Nina Simone, Album: In Concert, Genre: Jazz,Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 10.0 Album review: "Nina Simone hurts you. She does it with her voice, which is sharpened and ready, versatile as a set of top flight chef’s knives able to slice through the music making a myriad of purposeful and precise incisions, wounds, gashes or lacerations. She does it through words, delivered sometimes like poisoned darts, other times like butterfly kisses from a child on the cheek of an exhausted mother. She does it by staring you down and withering your resolve; looking at you the way death looks at you, and in so doing giving you life. Her pain becomes yours, and her pain is eternal and without limit. It is a human pain, a ghostly, ancient suffering that comes through her more than it does from her. Having been dropped to the earth in Depression-era America, she sang this pain through blues and Broadway, through jazz and campy lovestruck standards. She played Bach fugues and cantatas with the same urgent grace that she lent to the hammer-busting work ballads of the black south. Born a classical prodigy in a hot and rural segregated North Carolina town, she was formed into (or perhaps already was) a warrior of unmatched regality; a woman in possession of kind, delicate fingers and the kind of emotional bloodlust that only comes when you grow up in a place where people are lynched for looking just like you. Ms. Simone attended Juliard with money her hometown collected to further her career, but left the school when her cash ran out. After a rejection from a conservatory in Philadelphia, she took on gigs at a supper club, and eventually earned a recording contract first with Bethlehem and then Colpix where she released eight albums, became a darling of the folk scene and culminated with a performance at Carnegie Hall in 1963. But then civil rights activist Medgar Evers was assassinated in his driveway by a Klan member. And several months later a bomb ripped through a black church in Birmingham, Alabama murdering four children. And within months Nina Simone switched labels to Philips and unleashed a series of songs about civil rights and anger and freedom, the most noted of which is “Mississippi Goddamn,” a sprightly show tune that slow-builds into an unrestrained call to arms. The tune is based on a passage on Bertolt Brecht’s and Kurt Weill’s “Alabama Song” from the 1927 experimental play, Mahagonny-Songspiel aka The Little Mahagonny. Brecht and Weill would prove consistent and proper antecedents to the particular brew of theatricality and revolution that defined much of Ms. Simone’s work after she joined Philips. Her cover of “Pirate Jenny” from Threepenny Opera is one of the creepiest recordings of all time for a great many reasons, one of which being Simone’s implicit understanding of how closely 1930s Germany paralleled the violent psychosis of American racism. These songs and scores more all appear on the seven albums she recorded at Philips from 1964-1967, which have been re-released as a boxed set. The set, simply called, Nina Simone: The Philips Years, covers a period of time that is arguably her creative best. Too large to be subsumed under one description, the 74 songs contained herein cover all corners of the Simone musical universe, from the bright and lacy Sunday best of “Nearer Blessed Lord,” to the hellfire and brimstone of “Sinnerman,” from the lush, indulgent ennui of “Ne Me Quitte Pas,” to the bold, agonizing solemnity of “Strange Fruit.” Nearly every song in this far-flung cycle has its opposite, because Nina Simone was the nexus point of nearly all the western musical ideas of her time. She may be the only artist to find the link between Sam Cooke and Edith Piaf, between Bertolt Brecht and Malcolm X. Her thorough and strict classical training (she was in the truest and least sensational sense a diva) allowed her to treat the music of black Americans—soul, jazz, blues, roots and folk—with a level of deference typically reserved for Rachmaninov. On display in these recordings is Simone’s vast and unmatched set of gifts, technical and otherwise. Her pure jazz keyboard work on tracks like “Mood Indigo” makes her one of the few pianists to legitimately rival Duke Ellington’s combination of clarity and melodic complexity. Although she largely interpreted other people’s songs, some of the strongest lyrical content in her catalogue comes from her own compositions, particularly “Four Women,” a spare, trenchant character study that manages to capture all the impossible contradictions of black American womanhood in just 16 lines. And the impact of her vocals went beyond her distinctive voice. She was an incisive and adroit singer, who could seamlessly navigate the vulnerable passages that appeared in ballads like “Don’t Smoke in Bed,” and “I Loves You Porgy,” while also bringing a virtuosic gravitas even to syrupy standards like “One September Day.” The other end of her skill set was her unmatched ability to make listeners feel every bit of what she was feeling. Think of the vast and prickly joy of a track like “Feeling Good,” how it conveys a manic freedom, a heart-bursting love that shoots from the chest in nerve-sized lightening bolts, tingling like chandeliers shattering throughout your limbs. Or the meandering mourning of “Plain Gold Ring,” that unfolds itself slowly over the dark, creeping motive that comprises the song’s melodic underpinning. She delivers, “In my heart it will never be spring” in a way that darkens the skies of your own heart, stripping the foliage, laying bare the branches of your skeleton. At their peak, Simone’s powers bordered on emotional clairvoyance. Predictably it was when she turned the full power of these weapons to the cause of affirming the rights and humanity of black people that her career began to falter in ways from which she could never fully recover. It is difficult to overstate how strident and militant she was about ending racism and injustice, how unabashedly she proclaimed her love for blackness and the preciousness of the lives of black people. My own mother and her sisters have told me for years that of all the civil rights leaders of their generation, it was Ms. Simone, dark-skinned, natural-haired, big lipped, seated at a piano with a head wrapped in queenly cloths, and fingers that have mastered Western music, who meant the most to them. It was Ms. Simone who loved them when she sang their pain. It was Ms. Simone who entitled them when she sang their anger. This boxed set contains some of the best pure music ever recorded. It doesn’t really matter what your genre loyalties are. At its essence, music is about chords, melodies, and harmon"

Archy Marshall

A New Place 2 Drown

Electronic,Rock

Jayson Greene

Since releasing his first single as Zoo Kid in 2010, the Londoner Archy Marshall has treated his creative output like loose change spilled into couch cushions. He's released hip-hop mixtapes, ambient instrumentals, and remixes of other acts' songs; only some of his output has been under the name King Krule, the moniker he settled on for his 2013 debut full-length, meaning it's flown beneath the radar of casual music fans who were stunned by 6 Feet Beneath the Moon. The work of tracking what he does now has fallen to hardcore faithful, which seems like a smart long-term survival strategy and a sensible reaction to early career hype: halve your visibility, double your productivity, and wait for the universe to catch up. A New Place 2 Drown is a name given to three new projects—there is also a handsome 208-page art book of sketches, photographs, and poetry from Marshall alongside his older brother Jack, and a short film. And then there is this album. All of it surfaced together this week, and the shared title seems to make an offer to fans and clarify a wish to the larger world. Marshall wants to be swallowed by his work, and he's offering you a chance to join him. Marshall has often seemed eager for disappearance—journalists have dubbed him "press-shy," a euphemism for "loathes journalists"—but on A New Place 2 Drown, he achieves it completely. His voice was the star of 6 Feet Beneath the Moon, a blood-red streak against black, but here he dissolves it into the grey mist of his beats. Mostly he croons or mutters over crackles, drips, and clanks. He is an element in his landscape now, not a spotlit singer-songwriter or an ersatz modern-day blues singer. There isn't a single guitar audible on the album's drifting, dreamlike 37 minutes, and not a single song you could imagine Willow Smith attempting to cover. What it shares with his older work is the septic world it depicts, full of flickering halogen bulbs, sticky synth keys, and corroded outputs. He's made tremendous strides as a producer, to the point where his touch exceeds Rodaidh McDonald's work on his debut. His sound is more three-dimensional, a series of shrouded corners and murmured conversations. This is wandering, grey-skies music, finding pleasure and even sensuality in solitude. Like most others in the sentient universe, Marshall is a professed fan of hardcore '90s NYC hip-hop, stuff like Wu-Tang and D.I.T.C. Unlike everyone else, he gorgeously reproduces its gloom and loneliness, and finds a way to integrate it into his own style. He does this mostly with a succession of sounds so obsessively perfect and tactile they seem like whole songs themselves: The hollow, rounded thunk of the drum track on "The Sea Liner MK 1" precisely mimics the sound of colliding pool balls, and hearing it for only a measly four minutes seems like a cheat, somehow: It is a drum knock so perfect you would cross the street to listen to it. The formal grain of his music bends increasingly towards hip-hop: The sluggish tempo and tar-thick synths of "Dull Boys" and "Thames Water" suggest across-the-pond admiration of Houston's DJ Screw, as does the halting sing-song of "Buffed Sky". His mumbly, string-of-conscious delivery on "Sex With Nobody" conjures early-'00s indie rappers like Serengeti or Atmosphere. He is steadily narrowing the gap between the rap he admires and the music he makes, and A New Place 2 Drown seems like evidence that he should start producing for rappers regularly. Marshall's own words are haunting but elusive, ripples moving across the surface of his music that dissipate before your ear focuses on their meaning. But you get a peek into a mind state and a mood with every legible phrase: "I'm pretty sure I'm dying as I speak," he offers on "Arise Dear Brother". "She plays me Barry White, all night/ She drift into the light," he sings wistfully on "Ammi Ammi". The most ringing line, clearest in both its setting and its intention, comes from "Buffed Sky": "I'll fly solo," he sings, drawing out the second syllable of the last word for relish and emphasis. It seems like it's working for him.

Artist: Archy Marshall, Album: A New Place 2 Drown, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 8.6 Album review: "Since releasing his first single as Zoo Kid in 2010, the Londoner Archy Marshall has treated his creative output like loose change spilled into couch cushions. He's released hip-hop mixtapes, ambient instrumentals, and remixes of other acts' songs; only some of his output has been under the name King Krule, the moniker he settled on for his 2013 debut full-length, meaning it's flown beneath the radar of casual music fans who were stunned by 6 Feet Beneath the Moon. The work of tracking what he does now has fallen to hardcore faithful, which seems like a smart long-term survival strategy and a sensible reaction to early career hype: halve your visibility, double your productivity, and wait for the universe to catch up. A New Place 2 Drown is a name given to three new projects—there is also a handsome 208-page art book of sketches, photographs, and poetry from Marshall alongside his older brother Jack, and a short film. And then there is this album. All of it surfaced together this week, and the shared title seems to make an offer to fans and clarify a wish to the larger world. Marshall wants to be swallowed by his work, and he's offering you a chance to join him. Marshall has often seemed eager for disappearance—journalists have dubbed him "press-shy," a euphemism for "loathes journalists"—but on A New Place 2 Drown, he achieves it completely. His voice was the star of 6 Feet Beneath the Moon, a blood-red streak against black, but here he dissolves it into the grey mist of his beats. Mostly he croons or mutters over crackles, drips, and clanks. He is an element in his landscape now, not a spotlit singer-songwriter or an ersatz modern-day blues singer. There isn't a single guitar audible on the album's drifting, dreamlike 37 minutes, and not a single song you could imagine Willow Smith attempting to cover. What it shares with his older work is the septic world it depicts, full of flickering halogen bulbs, sticky synth keys, and corroded outputs. He's made tremendous strides as a producer, to the point where his touch exceeds Rodaidh McDonald's work on his debut. His sound is more three-dimensional, a series of shrouded corners and murmured conversations. This is wandering, grey-skies music, finding pleasure and even sensuality in solitude. Like most others in the sentient universe, Marshall is a professed fan of hardcore '90s NYC hip-hop, stuff like Wu-Tang and D.I.T.C. Unlike everyone else, he gorgeously reproduces its gloom and loneliness, and finds a way to integrate it into his own style. He does this mostly with a succession of sounds so obsessively perfect and tactile they seem like whole songs themselves: The hollow, rounded thunk of the drum track on "The Sea Liner MK 1" precisely mimics the sound of colliding pool balls, and hearing it for only a measly four minutes seems like a cheat, somehow: It is a drum knock so perfect you would cross the street to listen to it. The formal grain of his music bends increasingly towards hip-hop: The sluggish tempo and tar-thick synths of "Dull Boys" and "Thames Water" suggest across-the-pond admiration of Houston's DJ Screw, as does the halting sing-song of "Buffed Sky". His mumbly, string-of-conscious delivery on "Sex With Nobody" conjures early-'00s indie rappers like Serengeti or Atmosphere. He is steadily narrowing the gap between the rap he admires and the music he makes, and A New Place 2 Drown seems like evidence that he should start producing for rappers regularly. Marshall's own words are haunting but elusive, ripples moving across the surface of his music that dissipate before your ear focuses on their meaning. But you get a peek into a mind state and a mood with every legible phrase: "I'm pretty sure I'm dying as I speak," he offers on "Arise Dear Brother". "She plays me Barry White, all night/ She drift into the light," he sings wistfully on "Ammi Ammi". The most ringing line, clearest in both its setting and its intention, comes from "Buffed Sky": "I'll fly solo," he sings, drawing out the second syllable of the last word for relish and emphasis. It seems like it's working for him."

Tasha

Alone at Last

Pop/R&B

Vrinda Jagota

Tasha makes wondrous, gentle soul that advocates for self-care. But the music of the Chicago singer-songwriter is radically different from Dove beauty campaigns or expensive Goop product guides, where ideas of empowerment are preached with no mention of the struggle it takes to get there or the fact that real self-care is more than a marketing ploy. Instead, on her incisive seven-song debut, Alone at Last, she reimagines the world as loving and safe while exploring the hurt and anguish inherent in navigating our society, especially as a queer black woman. She positions self-care as a remedy to oppression, not as a crass money-making tool. Tasha is a poet, activist, and musician who has worked with organizations like Black Youth Project 100, a nationwide group built in part on “political education using a Black queer feminist lens.” Her 2016 EP, Divine Love, focused on self-love and political activism, inspired in part by her work with the Black Youth Project. For Alone at Last, she picks up near where she left off: “Sometimes I’m afraid that if I die/Everyone will be too tired to remember my name,” she says during the still, spoken-word opener “Take Care.” She contrasts images of unknotted curls, warm water, and bubbles on her nose with jarring lines about the inevitability of pain and loss. For her, self-care means preparing to meet injustices in order to honor and protect those injured by them. That starts with the individual. “When the next deaths come, because they will,” she speaks, “we will have vigor enough to remember their names.” This acknowledgement of the dark realities of a racist, sexist, homophobic world—and Tasha’s celebration of joy in spite of it—is Alone at Last’s unifying idea. On “Kind of Love,” a song about the thrill of falling for someone, Tasha sees the act itself as political, a way to find “stillness in a world on fire and bodies without hurt.” She imagines radiant utopias where black people can exist free of harm during “New Place,” singing, “Hurry, before they see that we’re leaving/Don’t worry, haven’t you noticed you haven’t been breathing?” And on the stunning “Lullaby,” Tasha reassures black girls that she understands too well “how much it hurts/To always prove your worth.” She urges them to “keep your magic to yourself.” During “New Place” and “Lullaby,” Tasha’s layered vocals create an angelic cushion for her words; her simple, pick-and-strum guitar lines foster a sense of intimacy. Tasha’s voice and her deliberate words are foregrounded above these choral orchestrations and meandering beats. Like amber, her voice is mellow and luminous, adding to the music’s feeling of comfort in the face of all this anxiety. The subtly psychedelic instrumentals and warped vocals during “Something About This Girl” alter the pace and tone, adding depth and texture. Still, there is more room for variation and experimentation here, other ways to animate these conflicting feelings. In this sense, Alone at Last feels like the debut it is. But with lines as beautiful on the page as they are on the track, like “What’s the word for falling into someone else’s sigh,” it is exciting enough to imagine the shapes Tasha’s songs may soon take. These are “bed songs,” Tasha has said, sweet and tender tunes to which you could drift asleep. Beds—in particular, her bed—show up numerous times, representing dreaminess and safety, a holy place where Tasha is “alone at last with space to cry.” But this is not mere escapism, songs about forgetting the world outside. Tasha reminds the listener again and again why rest is necessary, how the fight for equality or even existence requires tremendous energy and care.

Artist: Tasha, Album: Alone at Last, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 7.1 Album review: "Tasha makes wondrous, gentle soul that advocates for self-care. But the music of the Chicago singer-songwriter is radically different from Dove beauty campaigns or expensive Goop product guides, where ideas of empowerment are preached with no mention of the struggle it takes to get there or the fact that real self-care is more than a marketing ploy. Instead, on her incisive seven-song debut, Alone at Last, she reimagines the world as loving and safe while exploring the hurt and anguish inherent in navigating our society, especially as a queer black woman. She positions self-care as a remedy to oppression, not as a crass money-making tool. Tasha is a poet, activist, and musician who has worked with organizations like Black Youth Project 100, a nationwide group built in part on “political education using a Black queer feminist lens.” Her 2016 EP, Divine Love, focused on self-love and political activism, inspired in part by her work with the Black Youth Project. For Alone at Last, she picks up near where she left off: “Sometimes I’m afraid that if I die/Everyone will be too tired to remember my name,” she says during the still, spoken-word opener “Take Care.” She contrasts images of unknotted curls, warm water, and bubbles on her nose with jarring lines about the inevitability of pain and loss. For her, self-care means preparing to meet injustices in order to honor and protect those injured by them. That starts with the individual. “When the next deaths come, because they will,” she speaks, “we will have vigor enough to remember their names.” This acknowledgement of the dark realities of a racist, sexist, homophobic world—and Tasha’s celebration of joy in spite of it—is Alone at Last’s unifying idea. On “Kind of Love,” a song about the thrill of falling for someone, Tasha sees the act itself as political, a way to find “stillness in a world on fire and bodies without hurt.” She imagines radiant utopias where black people can exist free of harm during “New Place,” singing, “Hurry, before they see that we’re leaving/Don’t worry, haven’t you noticed you haven’t been breathing?” And on the stunning “Lullaby,” Tasha reassures black girls that she understands too well “how much it hurts/To always prove your worth.” She urges them to “keep your magic to yourself.” During “New Place” and “Lullaby,” Tasha’s layered vocals create an angelic cushion for her words; her simple, pick-and-strum guitar lines foster a sense of intimacy. Tasha’s voice and her deliberate words are foregrounded above these choral orchestrations and meandering beats. Like amber, her voice is mellow and luminous, adding to the music’s feeling of comfort in the face of all this anxiety. The subtly psychedelic instrumentals and warped vocals during “Something About This Girl” alter the pace and tone, adding depth and texture. Still, there is more room for variation and experimentation here, other ways to animate these conflicting feelings. In this sense, Alone at Last feels like the debut it is. But with lines as beautiful on the page as they are on the track, like “What’s the word for falling into someone else’s sigh,” it is exciting enough to imagine the shapes Tasha’s songs may soon take. These are “bed songs,” Tasha has said, sweet and tender tunes to which you could drift asleep. Beds—in particular, her bed—show up numerous times, representing dreaminess and safety, a holy place where Tasha is “alone at last with space to cry.” But this is not mere escapism, songs about forgetting the world outside. Tasha reminds the listener again and again why rest is necessary, how the fight for equality or even existence requires tremendous energy and care."

Hudson

Hudson

Jazz

Seth Colter Walls

Drummer Jack DeJohnette has spent five decades in jazz’s vanguard. Last century, he helped steer Miles Davis’ fusion excursions, led a stellar series of sessions for the ECM label, and later accompanied fellow giant Herbie Hancock. In more recent years, DeJohnette has built out that legacy with a range of work that has been notably diverse in character, even by the standards of someone with his eclectic track record. In 2013, DeJohnette convened a group of avant-garde elders including Henry Threadgill and Roscoe Mitchell for the searing live set Made in Chicago. Then he teamed up with Ravi Coltrane and Matthew Garrison for In Movement, an album that spent some time looking at jazz’s past without neglecting to push things forward. Now comes yet another new DeJohnette ensemble: the collaborative group Hudson. Since the lineup includes famed jazz guitarist John Scofield, keyboard stylist John Medeski, and the versatile bassist Larry Grenadier, Hudson is being billed as a “supergroup.” If that seems a stretch—given that no one else’s reputation is quite on the level of DeJohnette’s—it’s only a slight one. The band’s self-titled debut opens with a song that’s also titled “Hudson”: a nearly 11-minute meditation on the subject of improvisational funk. Steering so close to the textures of Davis’ Bitches Brew might prove embarrassing for most groups, but Hudson pulls the homage off—and not just because DeJohnette played on that vintage landmark. Scofield’s distorted tone on the track suggests a cool, pristinely judged restraint. At the close of the song, the guitarist plucks some ghostly harmonics with just the right amount of bite, merging with the drummer’s quiet-but-crisp pulses. It’s electric, not histrionic. Named after the valley that its members call home, the band also draws on the legacy of a few musicians associated with the area (at least in the broader pop imagination). So Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” gets a tender, bluesy airing. Hendrix, a Woodstock veteran, is conjured via a hurtling take on “Wait Until Tomorrow.” Medeski shines during an interpretation of Robbie Robertson’s “Up on Cripple Creek”—producing soulful figures on his electric instrument, at select points, while also crafting boisterous, early-jazz textures on an acoustic piano. Scofield turns in some of his most inventive work on two Dylan covers: the guitarist lends “Lay Lady Lay” a cheerful vibe, while “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” inspires a harmonically adventurous solo. All of these covers sound successful on their own individual terms. But as a band, Hudson hits an interpretive high note on “Hard Rain.” They start out doing justice to Dylan’s melody—though as the performance progresses, the group collectively channels the song’s sense of portent, without any need of the recent Nobel laureate’s lyrics. The originals have charm, too. DeJohnette’s “Dirty Ground” sounds like it could be an old-school R&B number. The composer-drummer’s vocals have a weathered quality, but his phrasing is catchy and assured. (The man knows what goes into a memorable rhythmic progression.) “Song for World Forgiveness” and “Great Spirit Peace Chant” further enforce the fusion-jazz-meets-Summer of Love concept. And since Bitches Brew was (roughly) part of that same moment, another new song—Scofield’s “Tony Then Jack”—references the lineage of Davis’ drummers (specifically, Tony Williams, who preceded DeJohnette in the trumpeter’s retinue). This is not the most fiery music DeJohnette has collaborated on, in his eighth decade. But the peaceable mastery that moves through Hudson does have the distinction of feeling comfortable without being too predictable.

Artist: Hudson, Album: Hudson, Genre: Jazz, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "Drummer Jack DeJohnette has spent five decades in jazz’s vanguard. Last century, he helped steer Miles Davis’ fusion excursions, led a stellar series of sessions for the ECM label, and later accompanied fellow giant Herbie Hancock. In more recent years, DeJohnette has built out that legacy with a range of work that has been notably diverse in character, even by the standards of someone with his eclectic track record. In 2013, DeJohnette convened a group of avant-garde elders including Henry Threadgill and Roscoe Mitchell for the searing live set Made in Chicago. Then he teamed up with Ravi Coltrane and Matthew Garrison for In Movement, an album that spent some time looking at jazz’s past without neglecting to push things forward. Now comes yet another new DeJohnette ensemble: the collaborative group Hudson. Since the lineup includes famed jazz guitarist John Scofield, keyboard stylist John Medeski, and the versatile bassist Larry Grenadier, Hudson is being billed as a “supergroup.” If that seems a stretch—given that no one else’s reputation is quite on the level of DeJohnette’s—it’s only a slight one. The band’s self-titled debut opens with a song that’s also titled “Hudson”: a nearly 11-minute meditation on the subject of improvisational funk. Steering so close to the textures of Davis’ Bitches Brew might prove embarrassing for most groups, but Hudson pulls the homage off—and not just because DeJohnette played on that vintage landmark. Scofield’s distorted tone on the track suggests a cool, pristinely judged restraint. At the close of the song, the guitarist plucks some ghostly harmonics with just the right amount of bite, merging with the drummer’s quiet-but-crisp pulses. It’s electric, not histrionic. Named after the valley that its members call home, the band also draws on the legacy of a few musicians associated with the area (at least in the broader pop imagination). So Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” gets a tender, bluesy airing. Hendrix, a Woodstock veteran, is conjured via a hurtling take on “Wait Until Tomorrow.” Medeski shines during an interpretation of Robbie Robertson’s “Up on Cripple Creek”—producing soulful figures on his electric instrument, at select points, while also crafting boisterous, early-jazz textures on an acoustic piano. Scofield turns in some of his most inventive work on two Dylan covers: the guitarist lends “Lay Lady Lay” a cheerful vibe, while “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” inspires a harmonically adventurous solo. All of these covers sound successful on their own individual terms. But as a band, Hudson hits an interpretive high note on “Hard Rain.” They start out doing justice to Dylan’s melody—though as the performance progresses, the group collectively channels the song’s sense of portent, without any need of the recent Nobel laureate’s lyrics. The originals have charm, too. DeJohnette’s “Dirty Ground” sounds like it could be an old-school R&B number. The composer-drummer’s vocals have a weathered quality, but his phrasing is catchy and assured. (The man knows what goes into a memorable rhythmic progression.) “Song for World Forgiveness” and “Great Spirit Peace Chant” further enforce the fusion-jazz-meets-Summer of Love concept. And since Bitches Brew was (roughly) part of that same moment, another new song—Scofield’s “Tony Then Jack”—references the lineage of Davis’ drummers (specifically, Tony Williams, who preceded DeJohnette in the trumpeter’s retinue). This is not the most fiery music DeJohnette has collaborated on, in his eighth decade. But the peaceable mastery that moves through Hudson does have the distinction of feeling comfortable without being too predictable."

Flume, Chet Faker

Lockjaw EP

Electronic

Harley Brown

After Chet Faker contributed vocals to “Left Alone”, a song from electronic producer Flume’s self-titled debut last year, the two Aussies discovered they make a good team. “His strengths are all my weaknesses and vice versa so we kinda complement each other,” said the former, whose real name is Harley Streten. “It’s a bit like a yin yang thing we’ve got going on.” (Even the video for “Left Alone”, in which a camera circles the pair playing drum pads and singing back-to-back, makes them appear almost Janus-like.) A subsequent collaboration seemed natural, so earlier this year Flume and Faker, aka Nicholas Murphy, holed up on Australia’s South Coast for a week of recording that culminated in the three-track Lockjaw EP. The Postal Service imitation "This Song Is Not About A Girl" (the title says it all, but the briskly driving hi-hats and light vocal effects certainly don’t help) is the EP's only misstep, which admittedly means more in the context of three songs than it would on a full-length. Still, Lockjaw is a solid statement of intent. Streten hasn't ruled out the possibility of a future album with Murphy, and the excellent singles "Drop the Game" and "What About Us" give listeners an idea of what that would look like. Despite Streten's insistence that the songs aren't like anything either has done before, not to mention both artists’ versatility—Flume remixes bangers for Mad Decent as easily as he builds pretty, twinkling tracks like “Star Eyes”, and Murphy adeptly covers both “No Diggity” and “Archangel”—Lockjaw succeeds when it doesn’t stray far from the template set by “Left Alone”. "Game" is probably the most fully realized track on the EP, complete with a painstakingly stylized video featuring Brooklyn dancer Storyboard P, whose unnervingly fluid stop-motion movements in a deserted nighttime warehouse district is a good visual representation of Flume and Faker's collaborative relationship: he moves to the beat and sometimes mouths Murphy's supple tenor, which catches and flows in all the right places over Streten's stuttering drums. "What About Us" showcases both artists' ranges, opening with the crackle of an old recording and Murphy's falsetto, eventually incorporating a saxophone bursting forth like an afterthought during the closing piano chords. It's no coincidence that the titular question of that song is a point of contention or forward motion in most relationships, including Flume and Chet Faker's. They work best together when Streten foregrounds Murphy's soulful intonation, which cultivates an intimacy that's made his opening slot on Flume's most recent tour more inviting than the headliner, who keeps graduating to bigger venues and drop-hungry audiences. When Flume's production dominates on Lockjaw, as on "This Song", it disrupts the EP's sultry, slowed-down aesthetic. Like any good producer, Streten has an ear for appropriate melodies and more often than not knows when to step back and let Murphy take the spotlight. And there's nothing wrong with experimentation this early in the game, so to speak—just as long as they don't drop it.

Artist: Flume, Chet Faker, Album: Lockjaw EP, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "After Chet Faker contributed vocals to “Left Alone”, a song from electronic producer Flume’s self-titled debut last year, the two Aussies discovered they make a good team. “His strengths are all my weaknesses and vice versa so we kinda complement each other,” said the former, whose real name is Harley Streten. “It’s a bit like a yin yang thing we’ve got going on.” (Even the video for “Left Alone”, in which a camera circles the pair playing drum pads and singing back-to-back, makes them appear almost Janus-like.) A subsequent collaboration seemed natural, so earlier this year Flume and Faker, aka Nicholas Murphy, holed up on Australia’s South Coast for a week of recording that culminated in the three-track Lockjaw EP. The Postal Service imitation "This Song Is Not About A Girl" (the title says it all, but the briskly driving hi-hats and light vocal effects certainly don’t help) is the EP's only misstep, which admittedly means more in the context of three songs than it would on a full-length. Still, Lockjaw is a solid statement of intent. Streten hasn't ruled out the possibility of a future album with Murphy, and the excellent singles "Drop the Game" and "What About Us" give listeners an idea of what that would look like. Despite Streten's insistence that the songs aren't like anything either has done before, not to mention both artists’ versatility—Flume remixes bangers for Mad Decent as easily as he builds pretty, twinkling tracks like “Star Eyes”, and Murphy adeptly covers both “No Diggity” and “Archangel”—Lockjaw succeeds when it doesn’t stray far from the template set by “Left Alone”. "Game" is probably the most fully realized track on the EP, complete with a painstakingly stylized video featuring Brooklyn dancer Storyboard P, whose unnervingly fluid stop-motion movements in a deserted nighttime warehouse district is a good visual representation of Flume and Faker's collaborative relationship: he moves to the beat and sometimes mouths Murphy's supple tenor, which catches and flows in all the right places over Streten's stuttering drums. "What About Us" showcases both artists' ranges, opening with the crackle of an old recording and Murphy's falsetto, eventually incorporating a saxophone bursting forth like an afterthought during the closing piano chords. It's no coincidence that the titular question of that song is a point of contention or forward motion in most relationships, including Flume and Chet Faker's. They work best together when Streten foregrounds Murphy's soulful intonation, which cultivates an intimacy that's made his opening slot on Flume's most recent tour more inviting than the headliner, who keeps graduating to bigger venues and drop-hungry audiences. When Flume's production dominates on Lockjaw, as on "This Song", it disrupts the EP's sultry, slowed-down aesthetic. Like any good producer, Streten has an ear for appropriate melodies and more often than not knows when to step back and let Murphy take the spotlight. And there's nothing wrong with experimentation this early in the game, so to speak—just as long as they don't drop it."

Various Artists

Pop Ambient 2006

Mark Richardson

Kompakt's Pop Ambient series, currently in its sixth edition, is a low-key affair all the way around. No one expects these round-ups to be barometers of a sub-genre's health, the way the label's Total comps can be; no ground is broken in terms of form or technology. The Pop Ambients arrive without much of fanfare and are consistently enjoyable if rarely revelatory. The differences from year to year are subtle and have more to do with curatorial whim than any overriding trends. Pop Ambient 2006 gets its particular flavor from artists that seem particularly enamored of the sound of traditional stringed instruments. More than half the tracks make prominent use of guitar or piano, often untreated, which often has an odd dating effect, drawing the mind back to sample-heavy ambient house of the early 90s. At its best, as on Uli Teichmann's opening "Piano Tec", the electro-acoustic blend conjures the gloriously adventurous Cluster in their mid-70s heyday. Elsewhere, the choice of sounds seems more formulaic. Markus Guentner & La Grande Illusion's static "Baghira", built around a simple loop of a plucked guitar chord, aims for poignancy and doesn't come close. The best moments come when producers step outside established templates. The Orb's "Edelgrün", with its guitar strum, piano chord loop, and bouncy rhythm, exits the background zone completely and serves as relaxed (and quite wonderful) instrumental pop. A stranger twist comes from the inclusion of two cover songs, an idea that would have been unthinkable on the vaporous and abstract Pop Ambient 2001. Sebastian Meissner's Klimek confronts one of the giants of the genre as he pairs with a harpist to tackle Satie's "Gymnopedie #1". It's a respectful deconstruction, with only a couple stutters and a smidge of digital noise to let us know we're not listening to the soundtrack to a credit card commercial; the melody is as detached and lovely as ever. Far more compelling is Justus Köhncke & Fred Heimermann take on Fleetwood Mac's laidback instrumental "Albatross", which brilliantly buries the original guitar refrain original under a sequence of percussive guitar plucks and a thick layer of frosted processing. Pass Into Silence's "Iceblink" and Mikkel Metal's "Decline" hearken back to Pop Ambient's original sonic inspiration, the percolating organic drone late-period work of Wolfgang Voigt's Gas project, but these cottony bliss-outs are few. Instead we get a more tuneful Pop Ambient with a slight classicist bent. Tasteful as ever, which cuts both ways.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: Pop Ambient 2006, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "Kompakt's Pop Ambient series, currently in its sixth edition, is a low-key affair all the way around. No one expects these round-ups to be barometers of a sub-genre's health, the way the label's Total comps can be; no ground is broken in terms of form or technology. The Pop Ambients arrive without much of fanfare and are consistently enjoyable if rarely revelatory. The differences from year to year are subtle and have more to do with curatorial whim than any overriding trends. Pop Ambient 2006 gets its particular flavor from artists that seem particularly enamored of the sound of traditional stringed instruments. More than half the tracks make prominent use of guitar or piano, often untreated, which often has an odd dating effect, drawing the mind back to sample-heavy ambient house of the early 90s. At its best, as on Uli Teichmann's opening "Piano Tec", the electro-acoustic blend conjures the gloriously adventurous Cluster in their mid-70s heyday. Elsewhere, the choice of sounds seems more formulaic. Markus Guentner & La Grande Illusion's static "Baghira", built around a simple loop of a plucked guitar chord, aims for poignancy and doesn't come close. The best moments come when producers step outside established templates. The Orb's "Edelgrün", with its guitar strum, piano chord loop, and bouncy rhythm, exits the background zone completely and serves as relaxed (and quite wonderful) instrumental pop. A stranger twist comes from the inclusion of two cover songs, an idea that would have been unthinkable on the vaporous and abstract Pop Ambient 2001. Sebastian Meissner's Klimek confronts one of the giants of the genre as he pairs with a harpist to tackle Satie's "Gymnopedie #1". It's a respectful deconstruction, with only a couple stutters and a smidge of digital noise to let us know we're not listening to the soundtrack to a credit card commercial; the melody is as detached and lovely as ever. Far more compelling is Justus Köhncke & Fred Heimermann take on Fleetwood Mac's laidback instrumental "Albatross", which brilliantly buries the original guitar refrain original under a sequence of percussive guitar plucks and a thick layer of frosted processing. Pass Into Silence's "Iceblink" and Mikkel Metal's "Decline" hearken back to Pop Ambient's original sonic inspiration, the percolating organic drone late-period work of Wolfgang Voigt's Gas project, but these cottony bliss-outs are few. Instead we get a more tuneful Pop Ambient with a slight classicist bent. Tasteful as ever, which cuts both ways."

Bonnie “Prince” Billy

Beware

Folk/Country

Andrew Gaerig

In his review of last year's exceptional Lie Down in the Light, Stephen Deusner noted just how consistent Will Oldham's output had become, bemoaning somewhat Oldham's inability to truly excite. But there's a yin to that yang, that being Oldham has amassed such an army of friends and co-conspirators that he can create an album of Lie Down's quality without excessive pressure or to-do. For the second year in a row, Oldham drops a fully-formed, gorgeously wrapped disc with little buildup, though Beware will receive a promotional bump (a small tour and, in some markets, local-cable commercials) that Oldham begged off of Lie Down. Beware moves Oldham closer still to proper country music, uprooting some of Lie Down's balmy Appalachian posts for robust, quivering compositions recorded with an almost entirely new group of musicians. So Beware is Oldham's "big" record (touring, promotion, etc.), but musically the album seems in many ways smaller-- or at least more level-- than Lie Down. Beware contains no sentiment as scintillating as "So Everyone"'s ode to public intimacy, no melody quite as curvaceous as "For Every Field There's a Mole", and its considerably more ominous artwork and lyrical content feel more in line with Oldham's norms. From its imperative title to "Afraid Ain't Me"'s final instructions to "Work, baby," Oldham seems more inclined than ever to instruct and guide, a move befitting his age, experience, and the role he plays in the indie-rock community. It's a role that, predictably, Oldham turns upside down within moments of the album's first lines, circling the title's sure-handed warning around himself: "Beware of me." Oldham acolytes already know this, as Oldham often fibs-- or "sings in character," to be judicious-- but Beware still stands as Oldham's sagest album yet, with many of its poignant moments arriving as knowing declarations. It's strange to suggest that Oldham is suddenly somehow wiser, but Beware doesn't lack for perspective. He talks lovingly of children, pokes fun at his physique, and receives an "unfinal call"-- a warning-- from an angel. When on the lover's hymn "My Life's Work" Oldham says, "I take this load on/ It is my life's work," he could just as easily be talking about the burdens of cult artistry. Elsewhere, the familial comforts of Lie Down have been replaced with ribald, cowboy promiscuity. Oldham's characters' relationships with women have developed into a loving, frustrating dependence: "It's kind of easy to have some fun/ When you don't belong to anyone." He occasionally aims for the type of woebegone romanticism Jack White's been hamming at for years, singing during the goofy horn-led rocker "You Don't Love Me", "You say my kissing rates a six on a scale of one to 10/ And you wouldn't pass the time with me 'cept you're tired of all your friends." When he commits, divulging that he wants to be your "only friend," he's immediately on the defensive: "Is that scary?" Beware's backing cast might lean a bit hard on conventional arrangements, but even when Oldham's not turning American musics on their heads, he paws at them playfully. Songs spire heartily upwards ("You Are Lost") or move in fits ("Heart's Arms"); buzzing slide guitars and plucked banjos don't sound laconic, they sound nervy. Sometimes the convention-chucking is more explicit, like the flutes and flanged guitars of the ropey "I Am Goodbye" or the twiddling marimba on "You Can't Hurt Me Now". The resultant songs have a familiarity that aims them toward the back of your brain but an internal energy that prods them into prominence with repeated listens. Oldham has once again surrounded himself with voices, lending credence to the characters and modes he slips in and out of. Unlike Lie Down's Ashley Webber or The Letting Go's Dawn McCarthy, Jennifer Hutt and Emmett Kelly (among others) serve less as foils than as gatherers, doubling and tripling Oldham's creak like some gospel-not-gospel choir. It is warm and well-felt music, to the point where the message of a song like "I Don't Belong to Anyone" might differ substantially had a younger Oldham performed it sans accompaniment ("Don't Belong" is followed, incidentally, by "There Is Something I Have to Say", the lone, croaky Beware track that might've fit on Master and Everyone). The sheer number of roles that Oldham inhabits, however, should prevent anyone from drawing hard conclusions about his state of mind. Beware feels more severe and less physical than Lie Down, but Oldham still talks about his tummy on two separate occasions. It feels wise, but there's Oldham, hooting and whooping during "I Am Goodbye". It feels content in its place, but there's the commercial during "Ellen" in the New Orleans market. When Oldham sings, "I know everyone knows the trouble I have seen/ That's the thing about trouble you can love," he might well be jiggling his belly at artist-audience relationships. Impossible to say whether Oldham's being candid or goofing on despair, but either way, he's earned the right.

Artist: Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Album: Beware, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "In his review of last year's exceptional Lie Down in the Light, Stephen Deusner noted just how consistent Will Oldham's output had become, bemoaning somewhat Oldham's inability to truly excite. But there's a yin to that yang, that being Oldham has amassed such an army of friends and co-conspirators that he can create an album of Lie Down's quality without excessive pressure or to-do. For the second year in a row, Oldham drops a fully-formed, gorgeously wrapped disc with little buildup, though Beware will receive a promotional bump (a small tour and, in some markets, local-cable commercials) that Oldham begged off of Lie Down. Beware moves Oldham closer still to proper country music, uprooting some of Lie Down's balmy Appalachian posts for robust, quivering compositions recorded with an almost entirely new group of musicians. So Beware is Oldham's "big" record (touring, promotion, etc.), but musically the album seems in many ways smaller-- or at least more level-- than Lie Down. Beware contains no sentiment as scintillating as "So Everyone"'s ode to public intimacy, no melody quite as curvaceous as "For Every Field There's a Mole", and its considerably more ominous artwork and lyrical content feel more in line with Oldham's norms. From its imperative title to "Afraid Ain't Me"'s final instructions to "Work, baby," Oldham seems more inclined than ever to instruct and guide, a move befitting his age, experience, and the role he plays in the indie-rock community. It's a role that, predictably, Oldham turns upside down within moments of the album's first lines, circling the title's sure-handed warning around himself: "Beware of me." Oldham acolytes already know this, as Oldham often fibs-- or "sings in character," to be judicious-- but Beware still stands as Oldham's sagest album yet, with many of its poignant moments arriving as knowing declarations. It's strange to suggest that Oldham is suddenly somehow wiser, but Beware doesn't lack for perspective. He talks lovingly of children, pokes fun at his physique, and receives an "unfinal call"-- a warning-- from an angel. When on the lover's hymn "My Life's Work" Oldham says, "I take this load on/ It is my life's work," he could just as easily be talking about the burdens of cult artistry. Elsewhere, the familial comforts of Lie Down have been replaced with ribald, cowboy promiscuity. Oldham's characters' relationships with women have developed into a loving, frustrating dependence: "It's kind of easy to have some fun/ When you don't belong to anyone." He occasionally aims for the type of woebegone romanticism Jack White's been hamming at for years, singing during the goofy horn-led rocker "You Don't Love Me", "You say my kissing rates a six on a scale of one to 10/ And you wouldn't pass the time with me 'cept you're tired of all your friends." When he commits, divulging that he wants to be your "only friend," he's immediately on the defensive: "Is that scary?" Beware's backing cast might lean a bit hard on conventional arrangements, but even when Oldham's not turning American musics on their heads, he paws at them playfully. Songs spire heartily upwards ("You Are Lost") or move in fits ("Heart's Arms"); buzzing slide guitars and plucked banjos don't sound laconic, they sound nervy. Sometimes the convention-chucking is more explicit, like the flutes and flanged guitars of the ropey "I Am Goodbye" or the twiddling marimba on "You Can't Hurt Me Now". The resultant songs have a familiarity that aims them toward the back of your brain but an internal energy that prods them into prominence with repeated listens. Oldham has once again surrounded himself with voices, lending credence to the characters and modes he slips in and out of. Unlike Lie Down's Ashley Webber or The Letting Go's Dawn McCarthy, Jennifer Hutt and Emmett Kelly (among others) serve less as foils than as gatherers, doubling and tripling Oldham's creak like some gospel-not-gospel choir. It is warm and well-felt music, to the point where the message of a song like "I Don't Belong to Anyone" might differ substantially had a younger Oldham performed it sans accompaniment ("Don't Belong" is followed, incidentally, by "There Is Something I Have to Say", the lone, croaky Beware track that might've fit on Master and Everyone). The sheer number of roles that Oldham inhabits, however, should prevent anyone from drawing hard conclusions about his state of mind. Beware feels more severe and less physical than Lie Down, but Oldham still talks about his tummy on two separate occasions. It feels wise, but there's Oldham, hooting and whooping during "I Am Goodbye". It feels content in its place, but there's the commercial during "Ellen" in the New Orleans market. When Oldham sings, "I know everyone knows the trouble I have seen/ That's the thing about trouble you can love," he might well be jiggling his belly at artist-audience relationships. Impossible to say whether Oldham's being candid or goofing on despair, but either way, he's earned the right."

Beach House

7

Rock

Jayson Greene

Over six albums, Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally of Beach House have offered the same enticement: There’s a place I want to take you; help me to name it. The implicit promise has always been that if you opened up entirely, gave enough of yourself, the nameless sensation they evoke would finally come into focus, and the shapes moving beneath the surface of their music would resolve. You would finally understand if you came closer, stayed longer, looked deeper. You could sense the now-venerable Baltimore duo playing this game in advance of their seventh album, simply called 7. The first single, Scally noted slyly to Pitchfork, came out on February 14—2/14, or two plus one plus four equals seven. The album brought their catalog to 77 songs, and the record’s initial issue number was 777. What did all this mystical numerology amount to when you squinted at it? Nothing of course, except to set the stage, light the incense. It’s the magician’s pre-trick pantomime, where he turns up his palms and rolls up his sleeves, for no other purpose than to make you lean in closer and grin harder. “We spend a lot of time creatively making mountains out of nothingness,” Scally added. Inducing indefinable yearnings, tracing patterns in the air—this is the essence of Beach House’s art. They usher us repeatedly into familiar territory and encourage us to notice the same things within it: the way a dim glow never surges or abates, how sensations burrow into the mind and color our memories. But with each album, they somehow render this terrain alien again, allowing us to run our hands over the same irregularities in fresh astonishment. With 7, they’ve parted ways with longtime producer Chris Coady and teamed with Panda Bear and MGMT producer and former Spacemen 3 member Peter Kember, who goes by Sonic Boom. The result is their heaviest and most immersive-sounding album. It’s darker, thicker, set at a deeper spot in the woods. The gentle drum programming of earlier records has been swept aside for thunderous crashes: The drums on opener “Dark Spring” have the resounding weight of My Bloody Valentine’s “Only Shallow,” and the mix has a smeared, heat-sick quality that brings all of Loveless to mind. Low-end sounds, like the thrumming guitar that pierces “Dive” have real menace: The insistent thud inside “Drunk in LA” is like a hand tapping your solar plexus. This is the first Beach House record that, in headphones, will make you feel buffeted. You are never quite sure about the size of the sounds on a Beach House song; intimate moments are massive, and vice versa. Most of the record feels recorded and mixed from a low spot gazing up, with sounds looming above, but then grass-blade details resolve themselves in the foreground. Legrand’s voice doubles on the chorus of “Pay No Mind,” transforming her from wisp to leviathan in an instant. On “Dive,” she sounds as imposing as the thumping drums, but a humming synth the size of a music box runs alongside her, confusing your sense of scale. On “L’Inconnue,” her vocal lines pan from left to right and pool in on themselves. Her breath fills every corner of space. When the track fills out—some guitars, resonant drums, a choral patch—they appear as if from inside her rib cage. She’s never sounded bigger, or less mortal, than she does here. These perspective tricks are the tools of film-making as much as of music, and Beach House’s music is full of cuts, dissolves, fades, super-imposures. You enter their records the way you settle into a movie seat, asking to be subsumed and bathed in light. Even Legrand’s lyrics function like rapturous, lingering takes. “Rolling clouds over cement,” she sings on “Drunk in LA” Like Stevie Nicks, to whom she is often compared, or Orson Welles, to whom she is never compared, she grasps how readily we latch onto rich, intoning voices, how we can’t help but find ourselves believing in what they say. A voice like hers is its own kind of authority, and she luxuriates in the sound of words leaving her mouth. Measuring Beach House albums against one another is tricky—how do you compare daydreams? But on a sensory level, you feel whether the spell is working, and how potent it remains. On 7, all the contrasts that mark their music are dialed up to blinding; you are plunged into darkness and then showered in light. The experience is so enveloping that you find yourself contending, once again, with that familiar itch to locate meaning. The secret at the heart of Beach House’s evocative music remains the same—there is no specific place Legrand wants to take you. But there will always be… someplace you’d rather be. Beach House will always help you dream of it.

Artist: Beach House, Album: 7, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.9 Album review: "Over six albums, Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally of Beach House have offered the same enticement: There’s a place I want to take you; help me to name it. The implicit promise has always been that if you opened up entirely, gave enough of yourself, the nameless sensation they evoke would finally come into focus, and the shapes moving beneath the surface of their music would resolve. You would finally understand if you came closer, stayed longer, looked deeper. You could sense the now-venerable Baltimore duo playing this game in advance of their seventh album, simply called 7. The first single, Scally noted slyly to Pitchfork, came out on February 14—2/14, or two plus one plus four equals seven. The album brought their catalog to 77 songs, and the record’s initial issue number was 777. What did all this mystical numerology amount to when you squinted at it? Nothing of course, except to set the stage, light the incense. It’s the magician’s pre-trick pantomime, where he turns up his palms and rolls up his sleeves, for no other purpose than to make you lean in closer and grin harder. “We spend a lot of time creatively making mountains out of nothingness,” Scally added. Inducing indefinable yearnings, tracing patterns in the air—this is the essence of Beach House’s art. They usher us repeatedly into familiar territory and encourage us to notice the same things within it: the way a dim glow never surges or abates, how sensations burrow into the mind and color our memories. But with each album, they somehow render this terrain alien again, allowing us to run our hands over the same irregularities in fresh astonishment. With 7, they’ve parted ways with longtime producer Chris Coady and teamed with Panda Bear and MGMT producer and former Spacemen 3 member Peter Kember, who goes by Sonic Boom. The result is their heaviest and most immersive-sounding album. It’s darker, thicker, set at a deeper spot in the woods. The gentle drum programming of earlier records has been swept aside for thunderous crashes: The drums on opener “Dark Spring” have the resounding weight of My Bloody Valentine’s “Only Shallow,” and the mix has a smeared, heat-sick quality that brings all of Loveless to mind. Low-end sounds, like the thrumming guitar that pierces “Dive” have real menace: The insistent thud inside “Drunk in LA” is like a hand tapping your solar plexus. This is the first Beach House record that, in headphones, will make you feel buffeted. You are never quite sure about the size of the sounds on a Beach House song; intimate moments are massive, and vice versa. Most of the record feels recorded and mixed from a low spot gazing up, with sounds looming above, but then grass-blade details resolve themselves in the foreground. Legrand’s voice doubles on the chorus of “Pay No Mind,” transforming her from wisp to leviathan in an instant. On “Dive,” she sounds as imposing as the thumping drums, but a humming synth the size of a music box runs alongside her, confusing your sense of scale. On “L’Inconnue,” her vocal lines pan from left to right and pool in on themselves. Her breath fills every corner of space. When the track fills out—some guitars, resonant drums, a choral patch—they appear as if from inside her rib cage. She’s never sounded bigger, or less mortal, than she does here. These perspective tricks are the tools of film-making as much as of music, and Beach House’s music is full of cuts, dissolves, fades, super-imposures. You enter their records the way you settle into a movie seat, asking to be subsumed and bathed in light. Even Legrand’s lyrics function like rapturous, lingering takes. “Rolling clouds over cement,” she sings on “Drunk in LA” Like Stevie Nicks, to whom she is often compared, or Orson Welles, to whom she is never compared, she grasps how readily we latch onto rich, intoning voices, how we can’t help but find ourselves believing in what they say. A voice like hers is its own kind of authority, and she luxuriates in the sound of words leaving her mouth. Measuring Beach House albums against one another is tricky—how do you compare daydreams? But on a sensory level, you feel whether the spell is working, and how potent it remains. On 7, all the contrasts that mark their music are dialed up to blinding; you are plunged into darkness and then showered in light. The experience is so enveloping that you find yourself contending, once again, with that familiar itch to locate meaning. The secret at the heart of Beach House’s evocative music remains the same—there is no specific place Legrand wants to take you. But there will always be… someplace you’d rather be. Beach House will always help you dream of it."

OOIOO

Shock City Shockers 2

Experimental,Rock

Dominique Leone

On your mark, get set. Akabushi, AOA, Audio Sports, Children Coup d'Etat, Concrete Octopus, Dendoba, Destroy 2, DMV, Dowser, the Dramatics, Elvis Dust, Flare, Free Kitten, the Geisha Girls, Gong Derby, Goonies, Grind Orchestra, Guillotine Kyodai, Guitoo, Dekoboko Hajime/Yamantaka Eye, Hanadensha, the Hanatarash, the Hattifatteners, Hijokaiden, Live Under the Sky, MC Hellshit & DJ Carhouse, Minga & Eye, Mystic Fugu Orchestra, Naked City, Nankai Hawkwind, Nimrod, Noise Ramones, Novo Tono, Oh!Moro Video Series, Shinro Ohtake + Eye, Omoide Hatoba, solo Yoshimi P-We, Rashinban, Rise from the Dead, Roughage, Rovo, Ruins-Hatoba, Alice Sailor, S.O.B.-Kaidan, Sound Hero, Standing Earth & Touching Air, Sun Kich, Tent, Three Day Stubble, Torture Garden, Tribal Circus, U.F.O. or Die, Universal Errors, the Vickly & the Ohdorockanize, Woods, XOX, solo Yamamoto Seiichi, solo Yamatsuka Eye, Yellowhouse, Z-Rock Hawaii and Karera Musication. Go. Go ahead and try to find all the Boredoms-related projects. I dare you. While you're at it, why don't you get another job, because most of the super-rare releases by these units will run you about $35 a pop. Boredoms Marketing has got the whole supply-and-demand thing down, so why would they ever bother with distribution? But that's overly cynical: as with most impulsively creative musicians, these people just never stop working. Oh yes, there's also OOIOO. The Boredoms connection here is drummer/trumpet player Yoshimi P-We. The O-band is something of a solo project for Yoshimi, as she produces everything and writes most of the music (along with her partners Kyoto, Maki and Yoshiko). They have three albums, and each one sounds progressively similar to recent Boredoms, with plenty of electronic fiddling and space-age sun-crash drum stomp-- but, with the major difference being Yoshimi doesn't take Eye's scenic route as a means, via extended warp drive exploration and jungle hunt. OOIOO's journey always ends up closer to pop than Boredoms, with a penchant for new wave chic and boisterous, sing-song melodies. Shock City Shockers 2 (on Eye's Shock City imprint) is comprised of remixes of tunes from the band's three previous albums, and one new tune, "Open Your Eyes You Can Fly" (which actually sticks out a little on this release, not featuring the electronic wizardry of the others). The cast assembled to re-stir the mixtures is itself a mixture of old Bore cohorts and new characters, but there's something that nags me about the release in general. It's not that the music isn't interesting to listen to-- there are lots of headphone-friendly details, and sonic logic games to play. It's just that I can't help but think that, since OOIOO's albums always seemed at least a step away from greatness, and since they always seemed to be in debt to the recent Boredoms sound rather than an extension of it, injecting them with electric steroids is misleading. For me, most of the music on this album sounds better than the originals. Take that as you will. "Tenkuteku Tune/Mountain Book" (two tunes from the 2000 release Gold and Green) is a very nice way to begin the album. We have a sine wave (courtesy of remixer Zak) floating over the top of the speakers, announcing the heady arrival of sunny, ambient flange-guitar and light synth. It's conceptually similar to the last track from Boredoms' Super Ae, and placing such an offhandedly warm track at the beginning is a daring move. How could you follow something so completely at ease? Hmmm. Later on, semi-hyperactivity rears its head. Another, very different version of "Mountain Book" (remixed by Chari Chari) features a kinetic drum loop, somewhat like a techno Indian raga beat, and Yoshimi's echo-ridden vocals sent to all corners of the mix. "Asozan" (from Feather Float) is given the rolling tom treatment by remixer Eye. Beginning with restless marimba, all cartoonish Steve Reich motives and insistent pulse, it moves on to a fairly detached double-tracked Yoshimi vocal, again sent to various points. "Kinorokujyouressya," reworked by frequent Bore-collaborator Kiyoshi Izumi, actually gets fairly close to straight techno with a bouncy, breakbeaten rhythm and all the hiccup glitch you could want on the dancefloor. Other tracks are quite restrained: "Unu" (Green and Gold), remixed by Woodman, is heavy on the 80s drum machine and delayed tremolo guitar, and is virtually without vocals. However, the beat is downplayed in favor of druggy atmospherics-- like the various atonal synthlines you can barely hear in the background-- but which nevertheless give the tune a very tangibly hazy quality. "Be Sure to Loop" (Feather Float), remixed by Tatsuki Masuko (of ASLN and Dub Squad fame) begins very similarly to the first tune: all warm, with bells, birds, and typically detached vocals. After several minutes of this, the drums come in, and bingo! It becomes like an outtake from Vision Creation Newsun, with the one-chord guitar vamp over pounding Neu drums and the omnipresent electric effects. Someone in this camp should apply for a patent on this sound, because it's going to get ripped off very soon. If pressed to place this album in a canon with other Boredoms' side projects, I'd reference three: firstly, Eye's DJ Pica Pica Pica release, with which Shock City Shockers 2 shares an affinity for offbeat combinations of melody and rhythm (though this record could never rule a party like the Pica); secondly, the first Shock City Shockers, which was a collection of remixes of several bands' music; and thirdly, Boredoms' 1996 release Super Roots 6, with which it shares a command of ambience and the juxtaposition of simplistic structures and melodies with seemingly complex studio techniques. And while OOIOO's remix album is nice, I would recommend those records first.

Artist: OOIOO, Album: Shock City Shockers 2, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "On your mark, get set. Akabushi, AOA, Audio Sports, Children Coup d'Etat, Concrete Octopus, Dendoba, Destroy 2, DMV, Dowser, the Dramatics, Elvis Dust, Flare, Free Kitten, the Geisha Girls, Gong Derby, Goonies, Grind Orchestra, Guillotine Kyodai, Guitoo, Dekoboko Hajime/Yamantaka Eye, Hanadensha, the Hanatarash, the Hattifatteners, Hijokaiden, Live Under the Sky, MC Hellshit & DJ Carhouse, Minga & Eye, Mystic Fugu Orchestra, Naked City, Nankai Hawkwind, Nimrod, Noise Ramones, Novo Tono, Oh!Moro Video Series, Shinro Ohtake + Eye, Omoide Hatoba, solo Yoshimi P-We, Rashinban, Rise from the Dead, Roughage, Rovo, Ruins-Hatoba, Alice Sailor, S.O.B.-Kaidan, Sound Hero, Standing Earth & Touching Air, Sun Kich, Tent, Three Day Stubble, Torture Garden, Tribal Circus, U.F.O. or Die, Universal Errors, the Vickly & the Ohdorockanize, Woods, XOX, solo Yamamoto Seiichi, solo Yamatsuka Eye, Yellowhouse, Z-Rock Hawaii and Karera Musication. Go. Go ahead and try to find all the Boredoms-related projects. I dare you. While you're at it, why don't you get another job, because most of the super-rare releases by these units will run you about $35 a pop. Boredoms Marketing has got the whole supply-and-demand thing down, so why would they ever bother with distribution? But that's overly cynical: as with most impulsively creative musicians, these people just never stop working. Oh yes, there's also OOIOO. The Boredoms connection here is drummer/trumpet player Yoshimi P-We. The O-band is something of a solo project for Yoshimi, as she produces everything and writes most of the music (along with her partners Kyoto, Maki and Yoshiko). They have three albums, and each one sounds progressively similar to recent Boredoms, with plenty of electronic fiddling and space-age sun-crash drum stomp-- but, with the major difference being Yoshimi doesn't take Eye's scenic route as a means, via extended warp drive exploration and jungle hunt. OOIOO's journey always ends up closer to pop than Boredoms, with a penchant for new wave chic and boisterous, sing-song melodies. Shock City Shockers 2 (on Eye's Shock City imprint) is comprised of remixes of tunes from the band's three previous albums, and one new tune, "Open Your Eyes You Can Fly" (which actually sticks out a little on this release, not featuring the electronic wizardry of the others). The cast assembled to re-stir the mixtures is itself a mixture of old Bore cohorts and new characters, but there's something that nags me about the release in general. It's not that the music isn't interesting to listen to-- there are lots of headphone-friendly details, and sonic logic games to play. It's just that I can't help but think that, since OOIOO's albums always seemed at least a step away from greatness, and since they always seemed to be in debt to the recent Boredoms sound rather than an extension of it, injecting them with electric steroids is misleading. For me, most of the music on this album sounds better than the originals. Take that as you will. "Tenkuteku Tune/Mountain Book" (two tunes from the 2000 release Gold and Green) is a very nice way to begin the album. We have a sine wave (courtesy of remixer Zak) floating over the top of the speakers, announcing the heady arrival of sunny, ambient flange-guitar and light synth. It's conceptually similar to the last track from Boredoms' Super Ae, and placing such an offhandedly warm track at the beginning is a daring move. How could you follow something so completely at ease? Hmmm. Later on, semi-hyperactivity rears its head. Another, very different version of "Mountain Book" (remixed by Chari Chari) features a kinetic drum loop, somewhat like a techno Indian raga beat, and Yoshimi's echo-ridden vocals sent to all corners of the mix. "Asozan" (from Feather Float) is given the rolling tom treatment by remixer Eye. Beginning with restless marimba, all cartoonish Steve Reich motives and insistent pulse, it moves on to a fairly detached double-tracked Yoshimi vocal, again sent to various points. "Kinorokujyouressya," reworked by frequent Bore-collaborator Kiyoshi Izumi, actually gets fairly close to straight techno with a bouncy, breakbeaten rhythm and all the hiccup glitch you could want on the dancefloor. Other tracks are quite restrained: "Unu" (Green and Gold), remixed by Woodman, is heavy on the 80s drum machine and delayed tremolo guitar, and is virtually without vocals. However, the beat is downplayed in favor of druggy atmospherics-- like the various atonal synthlines you can barely hear in the background-- but which nevertheless give the tune a very tangibly hazy quality. "Be Sure to Loop" (Feather Float), remixed by Tatsuki Masuko (of ASLN and Dub Squad fame) begins very similarly to the first tune: all warm, with bells, birds, and typically detached vocals. After several minutes of this, the drums come in, and bingo! It becomes like an outtake from Vision Creation Newsun, with the one-chord guitar vamp over pounding Neu drums and the omnipresent electric effects. Someone in this camp should apply for a patent on this sound, because it's going to get ripped off very soon. If pressed to place this album in a canon with other Boredoms' side projects, I'd reference three: firstly, Eye's DJ Pica Pica Pica release, with which Shock City Shockers 2 shares an affinity for offbeat combinations of melody and rhythm (though this record could never rule a party like the Pica); secondly, the first Shock City Shockers, which was a collection of remixes of several bands' music; and thirdly, Boredoms' 1996 release Super Roots 6, with which it shares a command of ambience and the juxtaposition of simplistic structures and melodies with seemingly complex studio techniques. And while OOIOO's remix album is nice, I would recommend those records first."

Stalley

Savage Journey to the American Dream

Rap

Jayson Greene

Rick Ross has a fascinating habit of signing rappers with infinitely less charisma and presence than himself. How else to explain his attraction to workhorses like Stalley? The talented but decidedly dazzle-averse Ohio rapper traffics in straight-ahead sincerity, rapping entirely in pained, vague clichés about making it through struggles, staying free of temptation, and striving for success. He has built up a dedicated fanbase with the same kind of dauntless diligence required to run for city alderman, and displays an equal level of magnetism. Ross collects these guys: Wale, Pill, now Stalley. He reupholstered Wale into a strip-club rapper and dropped Pill. What he's going to do with Stalley remains to be seen, but if this lushly appointed new mixtape is any indication, Stalley's having his moment in the boss' favor. Stalley's alliance with Ross makes for an interestingly muddled listening experience. Stalley has cut himself out as struggling everyman, but here he's rapping on behalf of an imprint named for a high-end car line so prohibitively expensive that it actually went out of business because so few could afford it. He tries to justify this dissonance on a song called, of all things, "Island Hopping": "I was underground then, still underground now/ Difference is I'm under palm trees, not trying to be found," he insists. Besides the fact that the line is nonsensical, it falls prey to what I call rap's "Stillmatic Rule": the minute a rapper has to claim they're "still" something, they're obviously no longer that thing. The production is where Stalley's Intelligent Bass Music most clearly meets up with his boss' Maybach Music. He has always relied on beats to do all the melodramatic work his small, boyish voice can't do, and here, he leans heavily on the work of the Huntsville duo Block Beattaz, who have spent years draping the humble, blue-collar sentiments of G-Side in 6,000 astral planes of glimmering synths. They provide the same sonic transformation here, deploying an arsenal of rippling harps and orchestral presets to lend weight to Stalley's abstracted musings. Their "Petrin Hill Peonies" starts with a straight chop of a gritty soul song by Charles Bradley, a James Brown impersonator-turned-belter signed to Daptone, before they smear the vibe with low, pummeling drums that move the track to woozier, druggier places. "Route 21" outfits Stalley in a sumptuous orchestral reimagining of Jay-Z's "Imaginary Player". Stalley picks judiciously from other producers, too: "Everything New" invites Chad Hugo, aka The Half of the Neptunes You Forgot Existed, to remind us of his brain-puncturing way with a Korg. As a collection of beats, this mixtape is impeccable. As a rapper, however, Stalley is a pretty reliable momentum-douser. He likes to dangle his rhymes just over the bar lines, like he's got one lazy leg draped over the track, but his voice carries the strained urgency of a baby Freeway. Pair this with his tendency to willfully mix up his gangsta-rap stock imagery (women are gold diggers, he will shoot you if pushed) with conscious-rap boilerplate (like Big K.R.I.T., Stalley's songs are full of nameless supporters thanking him for saving hip-hop, begging him not to lose his soul in the Big Old World), and you have one confused non-persona. His best moments are small, plainspoken observations that sound like they come from a singular, careful mind: "I keep my circle small, so I'm hard to leech from," he tells us on "Hammers and Vogues". Occasionally he roams across a nice image, but he has a distressing tendency to rattle off entire 32-bar verses without once pricking up your ears. Savage Journey ends with the song off of Rick Ross' Rich Forever mixtape that featured Stalley prominently, the left-field electro-rap jam "Party Heart", produced by Chuck Ingrish. It's one of this tape's more arresting moments, but on Rich Forever, it stopped the momentum dead. The contrast is telling.

Artist: Stalley, Album: Savage Journey to the American Dream, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 6.2 Album review: "Rick Ross has a fascinating habit of signing rappers with infinitely less charisma and presence than himself. How else to explain his attraction to workhorses like Stalley? The talented but decidedly dazzle-averse Ohio rapper traffics in straight-ahead sincerity, rapping entirely in pained, vague clichés about making it through struggles, staying free of temptation, and striving for success. He has built up a dedicated fanbase with the same kind of dauntless diligence required to run for city alderman, and displays an equal level of magnetism. Ross collects these guys: Wale, Pill, now Stalley. He reupholstered Wale into a strip-club rapper and dropped Pill. What he's going to do with Stalley remains to be seen, but if this lushly appointed new mixtape is any indication, Stalley's having his moment in the boss' favor. Stalley's alliance with Ross makes for an interestingly muddled listening experience. Stalley has cut himself out as struggling everyman, but here he's rapping on behalf of an imprint named for a high-end car line so prohibitively expensive that it actually went out of business because so few could afford it. He tries to justify this dissonance on a song called, of all things, "Island Hopping": "I was underground then, still underground now/ Difference is I'm under palm trees, not trying to be found," he insists. Besides the fact that the line is nonsensical, it falls prey to what I call rap's "Stillmatic Rule": the minute a rapper has to claim they're "still" something, they're obviously no longer that thing. The production is where Stalley's Intelligent Bass Music most clearly meets up with his boss' Maybach Music. He has always relied on beats to do all the melodramatic work his small, boyish voice can't do, and here, he leans heavily on the work of the Huntsville duo Block Beattaz, who have spent years draping the humble, blue-collar sentiments of G-Side in 6,000 astral planes of glimmering synths. They provide the same sonic transformation here, deploying an arsenal of rippling harps and orchestral presets to lend weight to Stalley's abstracted musings. Their "Petrin Hill Peonies" starts with a straight chop of a gritty soul song by Charles Bradley, a James Brown impersonator-turned-belter signed to Daptone, before they smear the vibe with low, pummeling drums that move the track to woozier, druggier places. "Route 21" outfits Stalley in a sumptuous orchestral reimagining of Jay-Z's "Imaginary Player". Stalley picks judiciously from other producers, too: "Everything New" invites Chad Hugo, aka The Half of the Neptunes You Forgot Existed, to remind us of his brain-puncturing way with a Korg. As a collection of beats, this mixtape is impeccable. As a rapper, however, Stalley is a pretty reliable momentum-douser. He likes to dangle his rhymes just over the bar lines, like he's got one lazy leg draped over the track, but his voice carries the strained urgency of a baby Freeway. Pair this with his tendency to willfully mix up his gangsta-rap stock imagery (women are gold diggers, he will shoot you if pushed) with conscious-rap boilerplate (like Big K.R.I.T., Stalley's songs are full of nameless supporters thanking him for saving hip-hop, begging him not to lose his soul in the Big Old World), and you have one confused non-persona. His best moments are small, plainspoken observations that sound like they come from a singular, careful mind: "I keep my circle small, so I'm hard to leech from," he tells us on "Hammers and Vogues". Occasionally he roams across a nice image, but he has a distressing tendency to rattle off entire 32-bar verses without once pricking up your ears. Savage Journey ends with the song off of Rick Ross' Rich Forever mixtape that featured Stalley prominently, the left-field electro-rap jam "Party Heart", produced by Chuck Ingrish. It's one of this tape's more arresting moments, but on Rich Forever, it stopped the momentum dead. The contrast is telling."

Fred Thomas

Aftering

Rock

Ian Cohen

On “Good Times Are Gone Again,” the first single from Fred Thomas’ new album, nobody’s talking about how incredible their summer’s been. Maybe they had an incredible summer, but they’re sure not gonna talk about it—what an insult that would be to everyone else suffering from this pervasive American malaise that makes enjoying a tall glass of lemonade seem like a willful act of ignorance. Because it’s 2018, we have to assume it’s probably about Donald Trump. Because it’s a Fred Thomas song, he sings “bad things are happening now,” because bad things are always happening to anxious, depressed people in his music, often himself. The song certainly could’ve appeared on All Are Saved and Changer, two albums written before the election that, with Aftering, form a kind of thematic trilogy. You know that famous Isaac Bashevis Singer quote about how if you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of becoming a prophet? By that metric, Thomas is a modern-day Nostradamus who’d quit the job if he wasn’t so damn good at it. The press release claims Aftering is loosely modeled after Neil Young’s bummer classic On the Beach, split between an emotional burnout’s last flares and long, desolate stretches of watching the smoke clear. Thomas teased it as, “Basically all of my deleted tweets and drafts I was too fearful to publish, just in song form” I’d say he’s got a better grasp of his music’s appeal. The word “aftering” is an apt coinage for the process Thomas has undergone over the past five years—reliving past mistakes with no intent to learn from them, breathing life into stale grudges and resentments, hitting “send tweet,” picking whatever poison that provides some modicum of immediate relief before dealing with how it made things much worse, just like it always does. Aftering is naturally the most hungover record of the trilogy, even more so than the one where Thomas threatened to hunker down in his apartment and drink a whole case of beer out of spite. And so much of it takes place on the most hungover day of the year: “January 1st, no one’s waiting for a shift in eras/No one’s waiting for the anxiety to dissipate because we all feel it daily,” Thomas sings halfway through the queasy eight-minute drunkalog, “House Show, Late December.” The narrator on “Alcohol Poisoning” flips the calendar with a three-day hangover while clinging to the saddest lie an addict can tell you: “I’m never doing this again.” “When you tried to make yourself puke/Well, it was no use/It was already in your bloodstream,” he taunts on the very next song, helpfully titled “Hopeless Ocean Drinker.” In the progression of addiction, we’re past the “fun with problems” stage and right into “problems.” The tuneful first half of Aftering could blur this distinction, but Thomas’ chipper melodies add insult to injury, a mocking reminder of what it felt like to get your hopes up in the first place. They can also inspire a feeling of actual injustice—how is it fair that a principled, respected indie rock lifer spends the most celebrated stretch of his career going into brutal, granular detail about playing another half-empty show and living check-to-check? Then again, this is the unique power source of Thomas’ music, accessing raw nerves to transmit these paralyzingly visceral feelings of bitterness, envy, and self-negation that most artists can’t bring themselves to admit and most listeners would rather turn a “shut up and play” deaf ear. On “Slow Waves,” a sleep-deprived Thomas speaks with grim resignation about “two shows outside of Philly that will pay my rent completely,” grateful for the opportunity but also not finding himself all that far removed from the hand-to-mouth existence of his first real tour with Aloha in 2000. “28 shows in 31 days/three hundred $1 bills in the band fund/U-Haul trailer dragging uphill,” Thomas recalls on “House Show” with a glimmer of nostalgia before fast-forwarding through nearly two decades of the “high fructose corn syrup corner stores,” “blunt wrap bodegas” and now, the depanneurs of his new home in Montreal: “17 years later, I’m still in the same jail/I’m still sending out these cassette tapes in the mail.” As a final chapter, Aftering promises some kind of resolution, maybe something approaching hope. But the closing “What the Sermon Said” offers no big reveal: Thomas recalls his parents taking him to a new church when he was 8 in a desperate and futile attempt to introduce him to new friends. Afterward, the family eats in awkward silence and Aftering becomes the most heartbreaking album to end in an Arby’s. Aftering’s second half of ambient tone poems puts Thomas in direct comparison with guys he’s been tangentially evoking over the span of the trilogy: Mark Kozelek and Phil Elverum, mercurial, prolific songwriters who made sharp pivots to pure logorrhea and somehow vaulted to higher levels of critical and popular acclaim than ever before. The irony here is after years of being perhaps too stubborn, too scattered, or too cynical for the aughts indie stardom that he deserved, Thomas might be too accessible, idiosyncratic and relatable in this mode to have his Benji or A Crow Looked At Me. The trilogy began with Thomas’ dog dying and ended up with him eating curly fries; in between, he vented about famous friends, old girlfriends, Olympia street punks, watching Sonic Youth videos, and working at American Apparel. None of it was meant to generate bigger points about the way we live or the way we die, it’s just the way we get by.

Artist: Fred Thomas, Album: Aftering, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "On “Good Times Are Gone Again,” the first single from Fred Thomas’ new album, nobody’s talking about how incredible their summer’s been. Maybe they had an incredible summer, but they’re sure not gonna talk about it—what an insult that would be to everyone else suffering from this pervasive American malaise that makes enjoying a tall glass of lemonade seem like a willful act of ignorance. Because it’s 2018, we have to assume it’s probably about Donald Trump. Because it’s a Fred Thomas song, he sings “bad things are happening now,” because bad things are always happening to anxious, depressed people in his music, often himself. The song certainly could’ve appeared on All Are Saved and Changer, two albums written before the election that, with Aftering, form a kind of thematic trilogy. You know that famous Isaac Bashevis Singer quote about how if you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of becoming a prophet? By that metric, Thomas is a modern-day Nostradamus who’d quit the job if he wasn’t so damn good at it. The press release claims Aftering is loosely modeled after Neil Young’s bummer classic On the Beach, split between an emotional burnout’s last flares and long, desolate stretches of watching the smoke clear. Thomas teased it as, “Basically all of my deleted tweets and drafts I was too fearful to publish, just in song form” I’d say he’s got a better grasp of his music’s appeal. The word “aftering” is an apt coinage for the process Thomas has undergone over the past five years—reliving past mistakes with no intent to learn from them, breathing life into stale grudges and resentments, hitting “send tweet,” picking whatever poison that provides some modicum of immediate relief before dealing with how it made things much worse, just like it always does. Aftering is naturally the most hungover record of the trilogy, even more so than the one where Thomas threatened to hunker down in his apartment and drink a whole case of beer out of spite. And so much of it takes place on the most hungover day of the year: “January 1st, no one’s waiting for a shift in eras/No one’s waiting for the anxiety to dissipate because we all feel it daily,” Thomas sings halfway through the queasy eight-minute drunkalog, “House Show, Late December.” The narrator on “Alcohol Poisoning” flips the calendar with a three-day hangover while clinging to the saddest lie an addict can tell you: “I’m never doing this again.” “When you tried to make yourself puke/Well, it was no use/It was already in your bloodstream,” he taunts on the very next song, helpfully titled “Hopeless Ocean Drinker.” In the progression of addiction, we’re past the “fun with problems” stage and right into “problems.” The tuneful first half of Aftering could blur this distinction, but Thomas’ chipper melodies add insult to injury, a mocking reminder of what it felt like to get your hopes up in the first place. They can also inspire a feeling of actual injustice—how is it fair that a principled, respected indie rock lifer spends the most celebrated stretch of his career going into brutal, granular detail about playing another half-empty show and living check-to-check? Then again, this is the unique power source of Thomas’ music, accessing raw nerves to transmit these paralyzingly visceral feelings of bitterness, envy, and self-negation that most artists can’t bring themselves to admit and most listeners would rather turn a “shut up and play” deaf ear. On “Slow Waves,” a sleep-deprived Thomas speaks with grim resignation about “two shows outside of Philly that will pay my rent completely,” grateful for the opportunity but also not finding himself all that far removed from the hand-to-mouth existence of his first real tour with Aloha in 2000. “28 shows in 31 days/three hundred $1 bills in the band fund/U-Haul trailer dragging uphill,” Thomas recalls on “House Show” with a glimmer of nostalgia before fast-forwarding through nearly two decades of the “high fructose corn syrup corner stores,” “blunt wrap bodegas” and now, the depanneurs of his new home in Montreal: “17 years later, I’m still in the same jail/I’m still sending out these cassette tapes in the mail.” As a final chapter, Aftering promises some kind of resolution, maybe something approaching hope. But the closing “What the Sermon Said” offers no big reveal: Thomas recalls his parents taking him to a new church when he was 8 in a desperate and futile attempt to introduce him to new friends. Afterward, the family eats in awkward silence and Aftering becomes the most heartbreaking album to end in an Arby’s. Aftering’s second half of ambient tone poems puts Thomas in direct comparison with guys he’s been tangentially evoking over the span of the trilogy: Mark Kozelek and Phil Elverum, mercurial, prolific songwriters who made sharp pivots to pure logorrhea and somehow vaulted to higher levels of critical and popular acclaim than ever before. The irony here is after years of being perhaps too stubborn, too scattered, or too cynical for the aughts indie stardom that he deserved, Thomas might be too accessible, idiosyncratic and relatable in this mode to have his Benji or A Crow Looked At Me. The trilogy began with Thomas’ dog dying and ended up with him eating curly fries; in between, he vented about famous friends, old girlfriends, Olympia street punks, watching Sonic Youth videos, and working at American Apparel. None of it was meant to generate bigger points about the way we live or the way we die, it’s just the way we get by."

The High Llamas

Snowbug

Rock

Nick Mirov

I'm dreaming; either that or I'm strung out on DMT. The hyperdimensional elves are here with me again, but they appear to be on a coffee break this time. Usually when I visit, they're hard at work weaving the fabric of the universe from superstrings; now, though, they're dancing amongst these wispy clouds that seem to have music emanating from them. It sounds like... well, like the kind of music that hyperdimensional elves would dance to. The clouds bounce around in a sort of Brownian motion as the elves dance, but when I try to reach out to touch one, it evaporates in a chilly mist. I try to ask one of the elves what the music is, but my mouth is made of foam, and the word bubbles float away without popping. Then I wake up and go to this party. It's one of those faux- classy casual- formal affairs that I feel compelled to attend because I'm supposedly an "adult" now. Anyway, the party's dull and I barely know anyone. At least the bar is fully stocked. As I mix myself my fourth Sidecar, I begin hearing it again... the music. I experience a brief moment of inward panic: am I having some sort of drug flashback? I follow the music to the huge speakers in the corner of the living room, but with each step I take towards the stereo, the music grows quieter. When I stand directly in front of the speakers, I hear nothing except the low- level chatter of the party. I feel the presence of a person next to me. "You like?" A woman's voice says. I pause. No one has spoken a single word to me since I arrived. Am I being hit on? Am I obviously so drunk as to be an easy target for some freakish desperate person? I don't turn to face her, but instead attempt to exude an exterior of detached cool. "What is it?" I ask offhandedly. "Guess," she says. "Hmm..." I hum. "I can't tell..." "You can't hear it because you're listening to it," she says. "You must learn not to listen to it in order to listen to it." My bluff was called. "Uh... how?" I ask. I feel someone take my hand. "Dance with me," she says. We dance. She holds me so closely that I still can't see her face. Her hair smells faintly of cookies. She whispers into my ear, "Now do you hear?" "I do," I say. It's some sort of retro- futuristic easy- listening lounge music, except it's very... strange. Chirpy, yet laid- back. "That singer sounds like Laetitia Sadier from Stereolab." "It is," she says. "But it's not Stereolab, because there's a guy singing too," I say. "No, it isn't Stereolab," she says. "Well, it's definitely not Combustible Edison," I say. We continue to dance, not listening to the music. "Why can't I hear the music when I try to listen to it?" I ask. She says, "Because it ceases to exist when you do. It's only meant to provide atmosphere, not to act as the center of attention. Is that not the nature of all music?" I am taken aback. "No, it isn't," I blurt out. "Music shouldn't exist as mere sonic punctuation unworthy of closer inspection." I feel her tense up slightly. "What are you saying?" she asks. "Are you saying you don't like this music?" I know I have offended her somehow, but keep talking nonetheless. "Well, what good is music if you can't listen to it? What good is it if you can only perceive it peripherally, but never directly?" "It's just fine the way it is," she says, a trace of anger in her voice. "No, no, it's not," I say. I don't know why I persist-- maybe I'm more drunk than I thought. "It's not that it's necessarily bad, I mean, it's pleasant enough to listen to like this, but it's really the only way to listen to it. It carries no emotional weight. It's pretty, but it's empty." "How dare you!" she says, casting me aside and stomping away. I lay on the floor, disoriented, looking up at the stern faces of the other partygoers. "Why did you have to do that? Do you realize you've ruined a perfectly good party again? Don't you know who that was?" Looking at the now-hazy figure storming from the room, I suddenly come to a horrific realization...

Artist: The High Llamas, Album: Snowbug, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.8 Album review: "I'm dreaming; either that or I'm strung out on DMT. The hyperdimensional elves are here with me again, but they appear to be on a coffee break this time. Usually when I visit, they're hard at work weaving the fabric of the universe from superstrings; now, though, they're dancing amongst these wispy clouds that seem to have music emanating from them. It sounds like... well, like the kind of music that hyperdimensional elves would dance to. The clouds bounce around in a sort of Brownian motion as the elves dance, but when I try to reach out to touch one, it evaporates in a chilly mist. I try to ask one of the elves what the music is, but my mouth is made of foam, and the word bubbles float away without popping. Then I wake up and go to this party. It's one of those faux- classy casual- formal affairs that I feel compelled to attend because I'm supposedly an "adult" now. Anyway, the party's dull and I barely know anyone. At least the bar is fully stocked. As I mix myself my fourth Sidecar, I begin hearing it again... the music. I experience a brief moment of inward panic: am I having some sort of drug flashback? I follow the music to the huge speakers in the corner of the living room, but with each step I take towards the stereo, the music grows quieter. When I stand directly in front of the speakers, I hear nothing except the low- level chatter of the party. I feel the presence of a person next to me. "You like?" A woman's voice says. I pause. No one has spoken a single word to me since I arrived. Am I being hit on? Am I obviously so drunk as to be an easy target for some freakish desperate person? I don't turn to face her, but instead attempt to exude an exterior of detached cool. "What is it?" I ask offhandedly. "Guess," she says. "Hmm..." I hum. "I can't tell..." "You can't hear it because you're listening to it," she says. "You must learn not to listen to it in order to listen to it." My bluff was called. "Uh... how?" I ask. I feel someone take my hand. "Dance with me," she says. We dance. She holds me so closely that I still can't see her face. Her hair smells faintly of cookies. She whispers into my ear, "Now do you hear?" "I do," I say. It's some sort of retro- futuristic easy- listening lounge music, except it's very... strange. Chirpy, yet laid- back. "That singer sounds like Laetitia Sadier from Stereolab." "It is," she says. "But it's not Stereolab, because there's a guy singing too," I say. "No, it isn't Stereolab," she says. "Well, it's definitely not Combustible Edison," I say. We continue to dance, not listening to the music. "Why can't I hear the music when I try to listen to it?" I ask. She says, "Because it ceases to exist when you do. It's only meant to provide atmosphere, not to act as the center of attention. Is that not the nature of all music?" I am taken aback. "No, it isn't," I blurt out. "Music shouldn't exist as mere sonic punctuation unworthy of closer inspection." I feel her tense up slightly. "What are you saying?" she asks. "Are you saying you don't like this music?" I know I have offended her somehow, but keep talking nonetheless. "Well, what good is music if you can't listen to it? What good is it if you can only perceive it peripherally, but never directly?" "It's just fine the way it is," she says, a trace of anger in her voice. "No, no, it's not," I say. I don't know why I persist-- maybe I'm more drunk than I thought. "It's not that it's necessarily bad, I mean, it's pleasant enough to listen to like this, but it's really the only way to listen to it. It carries no emotional weight. It's pretty, but it's empty." "How dare you!" she says, casting me aside and stomping away. I lay on the floor, disoriented, looking up at the stern faces of the other partygoers. "Why did you have to do that? Do you realize you've ruined a perfectly good party again? Don't you know who that was?" Looking at the now-hazy figure storming from the room, I suddenly come to a horrific realization..."

Bob Dylan

Fallen Angels

Rock

Winston Cook-Wilson

You can go all the way back to the beginning of “What the fuck is Bob Dylan doing now?” and find jazz. “Peggy Day” from Nashville Skyline—his first detour into melodic crooning—is snappy Western swing; following that was Self Portrait’s notorious take on Rodgers and Hart’s “Blue Moon,” and New Morning’s hepcat pastiche, “If Dogs Run Free.” Dylan’s earliest Frank Sinatra tribute dates back five decades and only found its first official release in 2014: the addled Basement Tapes-era riff on the Johnny Mercer classic “One for My Baby (One More for the Road).” None of this, however, made the advent of his Standards Period last year any less of a surprise. Some of the initial shock was the result of the growing stigma around the aging-rocker-does-the-American-songbook format, not the fact that Dylan would offer his own version. As he himself acknowledged in his labyrinthine Musicares acceptance speech last year, this sort of record has become a convention—a profitable one. At this point, any new release in this vein scans as something more sordid than a stocking-stuffer: an empty money grab. Dylan’s particular, oddball point in bringing up the trend was to illustrate the absurd degree to which he was still viewed as a man apart. Why did people pore over Shadows in the Night any more than Rod Stewart’s latest compilation? “In their reviews no one says anything,” Dylan demurred. “In my reviews, they’ve got to look under every stone and report about it.” But his point doesn’t quite land. After all, Shadows, and Dylan’s second standards set, Fallen Angels, don’t bear much resemblance to the market standard. The latter’s arrangements recall a time and place that never existed—a mythical dive halfway between a resurrected smoky East Village club and, when drooping pedal steel figures dominate the action, a Texas barroom. When creaky cellos and horn soloists crop up, Tom Waits’ more muted '00s output comes to mind. But this atmosphere sounds like a byproduct of who could make it to the session, how much rehearsal they had time for between tour dates, what Dylan ate yesterday; it doesn’t come over as carefully cultivated. Dylan doesn’t put a clear twist on this music; it twists him. Devotees judge performers of early–20th-century standards on their ability to interpret—whether they can shape and communicate a song’s meaning with some degree of musical cleverness. But Dylan simply delivers them. In the process, he tends to draw out the strangeness inherent in the compositions rather than making them sound effusive and natural. On opener “Young at Heart,” the close rhyme schemes and overstuffed lines (“Look at all you’ll derive out of being alive…”) draw attention to themselves. On the ubiquitous “Come Rain or Come Shine,” there’s so much precedent for logical ways to approach this song that one can't help but feel like Dylan is deliberately trying to muck it up. “We’re in or we’re out of the money” is faxed out mechanically, the contrast inherent in the line absent. The languid pacing—often, as down-tempo you could reasonably take these songs—often improves matters. So while Dylan’s breezy take on Hoagy Carmichael’s greatest triumph “Skylark” is a dead-eyed, aberrant disaster, his pliable, conversational intro to the Casablanca/When Harry Met Sally…-famous “It Had to Be You” feels inviting. But some shifts in pacing work. Blonde on Blonde’s amphetamines are a things of decades past, but perhaps some young engineer handed Dylan his first 5-hour Energy to carry off “That Old Black Magic," Angels’ closest thing to a barnburner. Here, words spring off Dylan’s lips, rather than becoming saltwater in his throat; his ever-odder, geographically indeterminate accent stays out of the way. He chuckles a bit on the final triumphant release, as if he’s stunned even himself. The axioms in the songs on Fallen Angels were written to speak to various familiar moments of the human experience. With Dylan, though, the universal “truth” in these compositions—that word is littered throughout his Musicares tirade—doesn’t reflect easily, or even deliberately uneasily, back on him. In his muse Sinatra’s case, of course, such truth came easy: The singer was at the bar until last call in both the tabloids and on his albums, probably bemoaning Ava Gardner’s latest tryst. But there’s no clear through-line to Fallen Angels’ subject matter, no point of view. The final product, then, feels adrift: just off the coast of delivering a discrete emotional impact, offering a sporadic, self-reflexive charm for fans who smile at Dylan’s every left turn, whether in spite of themselves or on principle. In other words, it’s a new Dylan album: the product of a life ritual no one can fathom, but which is doubtless way more typical than one might think; perennially modest; worth a faithful fan’s money.

Artist: Bob Dylan, Album: Fallen Angels, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.4 Album review: "You can go all the way back to the beginning of “What the fuck is Bob Dylan doing now?” and find jazz. “Peggy Day” from Nashville Skyline—his first detour into melodic crooning—is snappy Western swing; following that was Self Portrait’s notorious take on Rodgers and Hart’s “Blue Moon,” and New Morning’s hepcat pastiche, “If Dogs Run Free.” Dylan’s earliest Frank Sinatra tribute dates back five decades and only found its first official release in 2014: the addled Basement Tapes-era riff on the Johnny Mercer classic “One for My Baby (One More for the Road).” None of this, however, made the advent of his Standards Period last year any less of a surprise. Some of the initial shock was the result of the growing stigma around the aging-rocker-does-the-American-songbook format, not the fact that Dylan would offer his own version. As he himself acknowledged in his labyrinthine Musicares acceptance speech last year, this sort of record has become a convention—a profitable one. At this point, any new release in this vein scans as something more sordid than a stocking-stuffer: an empty money grab. Dylan’s particular, oddball point in bringing up the trend was to illustrate the absurd degree to which he was still viewed as a man apart. Why did people pore over Shadows in the Night any more than Rod Stewart’s latest compilation? “In their reviews no one says anything,” Dylan demurred. “In my reviews, they’ve got to look under every stone and report about it.” But his point doesn’t quite land. After all, Shadows, and Dylan’s second standards set, Fallen Angels, don’t bear much resemblance to the market standard. The latter’s arrangements recall a time and place that never existed—a mythical dive halfway between a resurrected smoky East Village club and, when drooping pedal steel figures dominate the action, a Texas barroom. When creaky cellos and horn soloists crop up, Tom Waits’ more muted '00s output comes to mind. But this atmosphere sounds like a byproduct of who could make it to the session, how much rehearsal they had time for between tour dates, what Dylan ate yesterday; it doesn’t come over as carefully cultivated. Dylan doesn’t put a clear twist on this music; it twists him. Devotees judge performers of early–20th-century standards on their ability to interpret—whether they can shape and communicate a song’s meaning with some degree of musical cleverness. But Dylan simply delivers them. In the process, he tends to draw out the strangeness inherent in the compositions rather than making them sound effusive and natural. On opener “Young at Heart,” the close rhyme schemes and overstuffed lines (“Look at all you’ll derive out of being alive…”) draw attention to themselves. On the ubiquitous “Come Rain or Come Shine,” there’s so much precedent for logical ways to approach this song that one can't help but feel like Dylan is deliberately trying to muck it up. “We’re in or we’re out of the money” is faxed out mechanically, the contrast inherent in the line absent. The languid pacing—often, as down-tempo you could reasonably take these songs—often improves matters. So while Dylan’s breezy take on Hoagy Carmichael’s greatest triumph “Skylark” is a dead-eyed, aberrant disaster, his pliable, conversational intro to the Casablanca/When Harry Met Sally…-famous “It Had to Be You” feels inviting. But some shifts in pacing work. Blonde on Blonde’s amphetamines are a things of decades past, but perhaps some young engineer handed Dylan his first 5-hour Energy to carry off “That Old Black Magic," Angels’ closest thing to a barnburner. Here, words spring off Dylan’s lips, rather than becoming saltwater in his throat; his ever-odder, geographically indeterminate accent stays out of the way. He chuckles a bit on the final triumphant release, as if he’s stunned even himself. The axioms in the songs on Fallen Angels were written to speak to various familiar moments of the human experience. With Dylan, though, the universal “truth” in these compositions—that word is littered throughout his Musicares tirade—doesn’t reflect easily, or even deliberately uneasily, back on him. In his muse Sinatra’s case, of course, such truth came easy: The singer was at the bar until last call in both the tabloids and on his albums, probably bemoaning Ava Gardner’s latest tryst. But there’s no clear through-line to Fallen Angels’ subject matter, no point of view. The final product, then, feels adrift: just off the coast of delivering a discrete emotional impact, offering a sporadic, self-reflexive charm for fans who smile at Dylan’s every left turn, whether in spite of themselves or on principle. In other words, it’s a new Dylan album: the product of a life ritual no one can fathom, but which is doubtless way more typical than one might think; perennially modest; worth a faithful fan’s money."

Urge Overkill

Rock & Roll Submarine

Rock

Ian Cohen

For some, Urge Overkill earned their place in history as gadflies in Chicago's indie rock scene during the turn of the 1990s-- releasing LPs on Touch and Go, coining the term "Guyville," being on the receiving end of Steve Albini's most withering insults. But then, their masterful 1993 sellout bid Saturation proved that their true talents were wasted on indie rock's ideals. As the opening act on both the era-defining Vs. and Nevermind tours, UO incongruously embraced the pursuit of fame and groupies. They rocked leisure suits, wore dinner-plate logo medallions, and crafted ostentatious Cheap Trick hooks. Much like the Hives or the Darkness a decade later, many wondered, "Do they really mean it?" but their stylized image was less cynical branding than a necessary multimedia confluence. Their music simply wouldn't have been convincing coming from guys in jeans and t-shirts. Unfortunately, the bummed burnout of the underrated 1995 album Exit the Dragon proved prophetic, and it was the last thing we'd hear from them until now. That was 16 years ago. Unlike Windy City lightning rods Liz Phair and Billy Corgan, Urge can essentially show up in 2011 as if nothing happened in the interim, their legacy almost completely unaffected one way or the other. And Rock & Roll Submarine finds them sounding like themselves, which is refreshing if only because no one else does. Nash Kato once sang, "only booze improves with age," on all-time tearjerker "View of the Rain", but as vocalists, he and King Roeser come off the rack perfectly intact. And while the studio session lifers taking over the rhythm section surely lack the Q rating drummer Blackie Onassis brought to the table, in terms of sheer musicianship, he was replaceable. In a surprising move for a band that always made space for in-jokes and grand self-mythology, Rock & Roll Submarine makes no reference whatsoever to the hiatus or gives any indication that the decade and a half was spent fussing over the material or anticipating a kingmaking comeback. Though of a much higher fidelity than their T&G releases, Submarine charges head-down with one-take immediacy, lean and strictly business. It's workmanlike and yet unlabored, with most tracks clocking under three and a half minutes and little thought given to overdubs, solos, or their often affecting acoustic side. Still, Submarine is saddled with an uncharacteristic lack of flair both lyrically and musically. Strip away goofy set pieces like "The Candidate" and "Erica Kane" and the swaggering "Sister Havana", and Urge too convincingly dress down to blue-collar classic rockers-- strong character actors without much material to work with. It's hard not to wish that more was at stake. Even something as seemingly obvious as the barely metaphoric "She's My Ride" can't really commit itself to a properly horndog premise. If it's any consolation, the songs are interchangeable and accomplished enough that long-time fans will be relieved that they didn't embarrass themselves. Newcomers, if any, will almost certainly wonder what the big deal was. Which is a shame. Last year's re-emergence of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, a band similarly derided as ironists during the 90s, felt like it could've set the table for Urge to prove that indie rock's attitudes toward showmanship have hardly changed in the past 20 years. Rock & Roll Submarine is a reminder to thank Nash and King for the memories, but as an album, it seems unlikely to inspire new ones.

Artist: Urge Overkill, Album: Rock & Roll Submarine, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.8 Album review: "For some, Urge Overkill earned their place in history as gadflies in Chicago's indie rock scene during the turn of the 1990s-- releasing LPs on Touch and Go, coining the term "Guyville," being on the receiving end of Steve Albini's most withering insults. But then, their masterful 1993 sellout bid Saturation proved that their true talents were wasted on indie rock's ideals. As the opening act on both the era-defining Vs. and Nevermind tours, UO incongruously embraced the pursuit of fame and groupies. They rocked leisure suits, wore dinner-plate logo medallions, and crafted ostentatious Cheap Trick hooks. Much like the Hives or the Darkness a decade later, many wondered, "Do they really mean it?" but their stylized image was less cynical branding than a necessary multimedia confluence. Their music simply wouldn't have been convincing coming from guys in jeans and t-shirts. Unfortunately, the bummed burnout of the underrated 1995 album Exit the Dragon proved prophetic, and it was the last thing we'd hear from them until now. That was 16 years ago. Unlike Windy City lightning rods Liz Phair and Billy Corgan, Urge can essentially show up in 2011 as if nothing happened in the interim, their legacy almost completely unaffected one way or the other. And Rock & Roll Submarine finds them sounding like themselves, which is refreshing if only because no one else does. Nash Kato once sang, "only booze improves with age," on all-time tearjerker "View of the Rain", but as vocalists, he and King Roeser come off the rack perfectly intact. And while the studio session lifers taking over the rhythm section surely lack the Q rating drummer Blackie Onassis brought to the table, in terms of sheer musicianship, he was replaceable. In a surprising move for a band that always made space for in-jokes and grand self-mythology, Rock & Roll Submarine makes no reference whatsoever to the hiatus or gives any indication that the decade and a half was spent fussing over the material or anticipating a kingmaking comeback. Though of a much higher fidelity than their T&G releases, Submarine charges head-down with one-take immediacy, lean and strictly business. It's workmanlike and yet unlabored, with most tracks clocking under three and a half minutes and little thought given to overdubs, solos, or their often affecting acoustic side. Still, Submarine is saddled with an uncharacteristic lack of flair both lyrically and musically. Strip away goofy set pieces like "The Candidate" and "Erica Kane" and the swaggering "Sister Havana", and Urge too convincingly dress down to blue-collar classic rockers-- strong character actors without much material to work with. It's hard not to wish that more was at stake. Even something as seemingly obvious as the barely metaphoric "She's My Ride" can't really commit itself to a properly horndog premise. If it's any consolation, the songs are interchangeable and accomplished enough that long-time fans will be relieved that they didn't embarrass themselves. Newcomers, if any, will almost certainly wonder what the big deal was. Which is a shame. Last year's re-emergence of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, a band similarly derided as ironists during the 90s, felt like it could've set the table for Urge to prove that indie rock's attitudes toward showmanship have hardly changed in the past 20 years. Rock & Roll Submarine is a reminder to thank Nash and King for the memories, but as an album, it seems unlikely to inspire new ones."

For Stars

Airline People EP

Rock

Ryan Kearney

There are only two kinds of music fans: those who focus on lyrics, and those who focus on sound. The former are willing to accept sub-par instrumentation for the sake of strong lyricism, while the latter are willing to ignore poor lyrics, so long as they're accompanied by strong instrumentation. From The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan to Kid A, this has been a major source of division in the music world. This, of course, is one of music criticism's worst myths, perpetuated no doubt by fans of Maya Angelou. But let's pretend, for the sake of this review, that the myth is true. Then For Stars are for all you "sound" people. During the opener, "At the End of the World," you'll notice an innocent acoustic guitar, tentative percussion that includes a maraca, and a subtle glockenspiel. It's all very nice-- too consciously nice, in fact. But then frontman Carlos Forster and a set of more feminine pipes join together for the opening lines: "At the end of the world/ I am yours, you are mine/ When the walls come caving in/ I am yours, you are mine." "Lyrics" people worldwide are using Dylan for cotton balls, while "sound" people are rocking back and forth in feigned ignorance. The rest of this five-song EP-- a collection of outtakes from the band's first two U.S. albums-- is more of the same: a quaint indie-folk band stuck in Frisco circa Scott McKenzie's suggestion to hippie pilgrims that they "be sure to wear some flowers in [their] hair." If I were a "sound" person, I'd invoke rainy days or summer's twilight. I might even use words like "bittersweet" and "heartfelt." But I must be a "lyrics" person, because I can't help but point out the revelatory chorus of the next track, "Brown Skin Saint": "We have dreams, they make us laugh/ We have guns, they make us cry/ We have cars, we'll get there fast/ We have airplanes, for the sky." And sung in a whiny falsetto, even! The one true bright spot on Airline People is "The Racecar Driving Scene," where the Belle and Sebastian influence is, as opposed to the other tracks, more palpable in the lyrics than the music. "I got involved with the racecar driving scene/ We'd act like heroes, and smell like gasoline," sings Forster, the more subdued vocal route serving him well. Over the course of 4\xBD minutes, the song builds into a crescendo of distorted guitars and roused drums that signals an awakening-- literally-- of band and listener alike. But even this song raises the question: why does it takes five guys to make music this sparse and simple? No one may ever know why, but here's a question you should be able to answer: are you a "lyrics" person or a "sound" person? Don't know? Here's how you can tell: if you've found the horrible pun in their name, then you're the former; if you haven't, then maybe For Stars are four you.

Artist: For Stars, Album: Airline People EP, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 4.9 Album review: "There are only two kinds of music fans: those who focus on lyrics, and those who focus on sound. The former are willing to accept sub-par instrumentation for the sake of strong lyricism, while the latter are willing to ignore poor lyrics, so long as they're accompanied by strong instrumentation. From The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan to Kid A, this has been a major source of division in the music world. This, of course, is one of music criticism's worst myths, perpetuated no doubt by fans of Maya Angelou. But let's pretend, for the sake of this review, that the myth is true. Then For Stars are for all you "sound" people. During the opener, "At the End of the World," you'll notice an innocent acoustic guitar, tentative percussion that includes a maraca, and a subtle glockenspiel. It's all very nice-- too consciously nice, in fact. But then frontman Carlos Forster and a set of more feminine pipes join together for the opening lines: "At the end of the world/ I am yours, you are mine/ When the walls come caving in/ I am yours, you are mine." "Lyrics" people worldwide are using Dylan for cotton balls, while "sound" people are rocking back and forth in feigned ignorance. The rest of this five-song EP-- a collection of outtakes from the band's first two U.S. albums-- is more of the same: a quaint indie-folk band stuck in Frisco circa Scott McKenzie's suggestion to hippie pilgrims that they "be sure to wear some flowers in [their] hair." If I were a "sound" person, I'd invoke rainy days or summer's twilight. I might even use words like "bittersweet" and "heartfelt." But I must be a "lyrics" person, because I can't help but point out the revelatory chorus of the next track, "Brown Skin Saint": "We have dreams, they make us laugh/ We have guns, they make us cry/ We have cars, we'll get there fast/ We have airplanes, for the sky." And sung in a whiny falsetto, even! The one true bright spot on Airline People is "The Racecar Driving Scene," where the Belle and Sebastian influence is, as opposed to the other tracks, more palpable in the lyrics than the music. "I got involved with the racecar driving scene/ We'd act like heroes, and smell like gasoline," sings Forster, the more subdued vocal route serving him well. Over the course of 4\xBD minutes, the song builds into a crescendo of distorted guitars and roused drums that signals an awakening-- literally-- of band and listener alike. But even this song raises the question: why does it takes five guys to make music this sparse and simple? No one may ever know why, but here's a question you should be able to answer: are you a "lyrics" person or a "sound" person? Don't know? Here's how you can tell: if you've found the horrible pun in their name, then you're the former; if you haven't, then maybe For Stars are four you."

Topaz Jones

Arcade

Rap

Matthew Ramirez

At first, Topaz Jones sounds like the sort of young, positive-thinking emcee who should pay tithes to Chance the Rapper on an annual basis. But repeated listens to the 23-year-old New York rapper’s Arcade reveal the intricacy and subtleties of Jones—he’s not the earnest pup sniffing around your ankles, but a fully formed personality, an approachable everyman rapper who’s more Oddisee and Open Mike Eagle than Vic Mensa. Jones’ persona is enriched by a deep love of old funk and soul music (his father Curtis played guitar for the influential band Slave), and he frequently uses live instrumentation. “Grass (Survivor’s Guilt)” transitions from light adult-contemporary guitar to thudding boom-bap, mashing together conflicting thoughts in the same way Jones weaves a love song into a thought about romance as a “great distraction from checking the evening news and staying up on what’s happening.” “Tropicana” occupies the same fleet-footed space as other intoxicating, breezy singles from this year, like Joey Purp’s “Girls @” and Amine’s “Caroline.” But Jones manages to weave details and asides in the lyrics that require repeated, close listens (it also proves he’s more than capable of double-time raps and old-school flows). “He killing but you still say, ‘free my bro,’ truth be told he should do his time/but hey that’s another song,” he offers casually, hinting at a larger world than he has time to get to inside a two-and-a-half minute toe-tapper. It’s a reminder of the potency that a flighty, sub-three minute rap song can contain, and the depths rap often plunders through beats that fill floors with joyous dancing bodies. Jones is also an excellent hook writer, transforming the fantasy of the funky “Powerball” with a gospel-hued, reality-crashing bridge of: “What’s going on/nothing but the rent, nothing but the rent, nothing but the rent.” The song's cheeky “what if I won the lottery” concept is fleshed out by his chuckling reminiscence: “I graduated all they gave me was a piece of paper/no ‘good job’/no goodbye/not even ‘see you later.’” The humanity of the moment is telling: How else could you expect to “move up” in life without the aide of the lotto, while dealing with the quotidian reality that education rarely provides a pragmatic leg-up? The piano ballad “Untitled” showcases his soulful voice, framing the song as a declaration to his mother he’s moving out while sneaking a tender autobiography. He calls back to this “hidden track” a few songs later, trading the piano for guitar (again, no drums) and offering a few more personal details: “My prom date just got engaged, I’m happy for you Marissa/that night in June I was probably just too nervous to kiss you,” he sighs, seconds after noting the colors of his childhood home were painted as the house gets put on the market. These moments are affecting because they are the work of an empathetic writer—he gives everyone in his stories autonomy: Jones has searched himself for the story and held onto the moments he thinks matter, not merely assumed he is the story. With Arcade, he makes you a part of the story, too.

Artist: Topaz Jones, Album: Arcade, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "At first, Topaz Jones sounds like the sort of young, positive-thinking emcee who should pay tithes to Chance the Rapper on an annual basis. But repeated listens to the 23-year-old New York rapper’s Arcade reveal the intricacy and subtleties of Jones—he’s not the earnest pup sniffing around your ankles, but a fully formed personality, an approachable everyman rapper who’s more Oddisee and Open Mike Eagle than Vic Mensa. Jones’ persona is enriched by a deep love of old funk and soul music (his father Curtis played guitar for the influential band Slave), and he frequently uses live instrumentation. “Grass (Survivor’s Guilt)” transitions from light adult-contemporary guitar to thudding boom-bap, mashing together conflicting thoughts in the same way Jones weaves a love song into a thought about romance as a “great distraction from checking the evening news and staying up on what’s happening.” “Tropicana” occupies the same fleet-footed space as other intoxicating, breezy singles from this year, like Joey Purp’s “Girls @” and Amine’s “Caroline.” But Jones manages to weave details and asides in the lyrics that require repeated, close listens (it also proves he’s more than capable of double-time raps and old-school flows). “He killing but you still say, ‘free my bro,’ truth be told he should do his time/but hey that’s another song,” he offers casually, hinting at a larger world than he has time to get to inside a two-and-a-half minute toe-tapper. It’s a reminder of the potency that a flighty, sub-three minute rap song can contain, and the depths rap often plunders through beats that fill floors with joyous dancing bodies. Jones is also an excellent hook writer, transforming the fantasy of the funky “Powerball” with a gospel-hued, reality-crashing bridge of: “What’s going on/nothing but the rent, nothing but the rent, nothing but the rent.” The song's cheeky “what if I won the lottery” concept is fleshed out by his chuckling reminiscence: “I graduated all they gave me was a piece of paper/no ‘good job’/no goodbye/not even ‘see you later.’” The humanity of the moment is telling: How else could you expect to “move up” in life without the aide of the lotto, while dealing with the quotidian reality that education rarely provides a pragmatic leg-up? The piano ballad “Untitled” showcases his soulful voice, framing the song as a declaration to his mother he’s moving out while sneaking a tender autobiography. He calls back to this “hidden track” a few songs later, trading the piano for guitar (again, no drums) and offering a few more personal details: “My prom date just got engaged, I’m happy for you Marissa/that night in June I was probably just too nervous to kiss you,” he sighs, seconds after noting the colors of his childhood home were painted as the house gets put on the market. These moments are affecting because they are the work of an empathetic writer—he gives everyone in his stories autonomy: Jones has searched himself for the story and held onto the moments he thinks matter, not merely assumed he is the story. With Arcade, he makes you a part of the story, too."

Mike Doughty

Golden Delicious

Rock

Ben Westhoff

Mike Doughty, formerly M. Doughty, not to be confused with American Idol's Daughtry, was once my idol, playing music with Soul Coughing that was as similar to rap as could be expected from a white Army brat, and writing for the New York Press. Fortunately I never lived up to my dream of being him, because then I'd have to be signed to Dave Matthew's ATO Records and probably practicing Matthews' lines with him for the next time he's on House. One tries not to judge Doughty by the company he keeps, of course, and though his singing is sometimes compared to Matthews', their voices are actually quite distinct. Matthews' sounds like roofies, while Doughty's just wants to invite you up for a couple beers and get to know you. (He understands that no means no.) Moving on: Golden Delicious's first two tracks are among the best I've heard from him. Both borrow ditties from outside sources, "Fort Hood" from Hair's "The Flesh Failures (Let The Sunshine In)," and "I Just Want the Girl in the Blue Dress to Keep on Dancing" from "The Little Drummer Boy"'s "ba-rum-ba-bum-bum"-type thing. Hell, the third track, "Put It Down," is full of nonsensical, recycled-feeling sing-along tidbits ("put it downtown, put it down, down" "let it go go, let it go go," "drop it in the mail, drop it in the sauce, bottle up the sauce") and it's good, too. Doughty's former hip-hop mentality is probably what allows him to engage in this free-association, homage/rip-off technique, and there's no reason why more earnest singer-songwriters shouldn't adopt pastiche approaches. Things are actually tighter here musically than his last album, Haughty Melodic, which this website complained was "full of jam-band percussion, vanilla-funk basslines, and the occasional strings and horns, played with an affected worldliness." It surely helps that ever-unpretentious producer and Semisonic alum Dan Wilson-- who also produced Haughty and won a Grammy with the Dixie Chicks-- has had three years to step his game up. Production-wise, Golden Delicious splits the difference between Haughty and Free Life, Wilson's solo debut from last year which strayed far too close to the adult contemporary flame. Only 37 minutes long and mostly recorded live, Golden Delicious has crowd-pleasing on its mind, so much that it even features "The Final Countdown"-style solos from keyboardist John Kirby. Doughty's solo career trajectory is clearly headed skyward since the days of his first two solo works, * Skittish* and Rockity Roll, fairly granola affairs both. Why, then, have the powers-that-be (Matthews?) chosen a Rockity Roll outtake as Golden Delicious' first single, the boring "27 Jennifers"? It sounds just like the old version, which was no fun to begin with. (Perhaps it has some sort of subliminal commercial appeal I can't hear. A young Texas girl in hot pants has a YouTube video of herself vamping to it, after all.) But "27 Jennifers" isn't the worst song on the album -- that would be "More Bacon Than the Pan Can Handle," a self-consciously weird clunker which retreats from the album's "hum first, think later" ethos. The ship is righted by the efficient, na-na-na-y "I Wrote a Song About Your Car", but riffing and borrowing aren't going to work for him forever, just as Soul Coughing's (I almost said Soul Asylum's) beat-poetry and upright-bass oeuvre sounds ridiculously dated nowadays. Eventually Doughty is going to have to do something about his lyrics, because "The moonlight shines like a luminous girl tonight/ Yeah, Jesus Christ like a luminous girl tonight" isn't going to hack it. My advice: stick with Wilson, but hire Pharoahe Monch to ghostwrite.

Artist: Mike Doughty, Album: Golden Delicious, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.0 Album review: "Mike Doughty, formerly M. Doughty, not to be confused with American Idol's Daughtry, was once my idol, playing music with Soul Coughing that was as similar to rap as could be expected from a white Army brat, and writing for the New York Press. Fortunately I never lived up to my dream of being him, because then I'd have to be signed to Dave Matthew's ATO Records and probably practicing Matthews' lines with him for the next time he's on House. One tries not to judge Doughty by the company he keeps, of course, and though his singing is sometimes compared to Matthews', their voices are actually quite distinct. Matthews' sounds like roofies, while Doughty's just wants to invite you up for a couple beers and get to know you. (He understands that no means no.) Moving on: Golden Delicious's first two tracks are among the best I've heard from him. Both borrow ditties from outside sources, "Fort Hood" from Hair's "The Flesh Failures (Let The Sunshine In)," and "I Just Want the Girl in the Blue Dress to Keep on Dancing" from "The Little Drummer Boy"'s "ba-rum-ba-bum-bum"-type thing. Hell, the third track, "Put It Down," is full of nonsensical, recycled-feeling sing-along tidbits ("put it downtown, put it down, down" "let it go go, let it go go," "drop it in the mail, drop it in the sauce, bottle up the sauce") and it's good, too. Doughty's former hip-hop mentality is probably what allows him to engage in this free-association, homage/rip-off technique, and there's no reason why more earnest singer-songwriters shouldn't adopt pastiche approaches. Things are actually tighter here musically than his last album, Haughty Melodic, which this website complained was "full of jam-band percussion, vanilla-funk basslines, and the occasional strings and horns, played with an affected worldliness." It surely helps that ever-unpretentious producer and Semisonic alum Dan Wilson-- who also produced Haughty and won a Grammy with the Dixie Chicks-- has had three years to step his game up. Production-wise, Golden Delicious splits the difference between Haughty and Free Life, Wilson's solo debut from last year which strayed far too close to the adult contemporary flame. Only 37 minutes long and mostly recorded live, Golden Delicious has crowd-pleasing on its mind, so much that it even features "The Final Countdown"-style solos from keyboardist John Kirby. Doughty's solo career trajectory is clearly headed skyward since the days of his first two solo works, * Skittish* and Rockity Roll, fairly granola affairs both. Why, then, have the powers-that-be (Matthews?) chosen a Rockity Roll outtake as Golden Delicious' first single, the boring "27 Jennifers"? It sounds just like the old version, which was no fun to begin with. (Perhaps it has some sort of subliminal commercial appeal I can't hear. A young Texas girl in hot pants has a YouTube video of herself vamping to it, after all.) But "27 Jennifers" isn't the worst song on the album -- that would be "More Bacon Than the Pan Can Handle," a self-consciously weird clunker which retreats from the album's "hum first, think later" ethos. The ship is righted by the efficient, na-na-na-y "I Wrote a Song About Your Car", but riffing and borrowing aren't going to work for him forever, just as Soul Coughing's (I almost said Soul Asylum's) beat-poetry and upright-bass oeuvre sounds ridiculously dated nowadays. Eventually Doughty is going to have to do something about his lyrics, because "The moonlight shines like a luminous girl tonight/ Yeah, Jesus Christ like a luminous girl tonight" isn't going to hack it. My advice: stick with Wilson, but hire Pharoahe Monch to ghostwrite."

Yellow Swans & Birchville Cat Motel

Yellow Swans & Birchville Cat Motel

Grayson Currin

Portland, Ore.'s Yellow Swans-- Gabriel Mindel Salomon and Pete Swanson-- run a record label and produce experimental schizophrenia that either clicks slowly from pedals or swarms from vengeful circuits; New Zealand's Birchville Cat Motel-- Campbell Kneale-- has created two decades worth of post-Black Sabbath sludge. But, while both artists have distinctive sounds, they've often challenged themselves and expectations with prolificacy, range, and collaboration. This two-track album-- recorded on stage and in a New Zealand studio after a Swans tour organized by Kneale-- finds these two artists trading in their senses of dynamics for demonstrations of brute force. The bands' goal seems to be to impress with how much sound can be made by three people. It was easy to expect that Yellow Swans and Birchville Cat Motel, when together, would launch an offensive. But this uniform, full-frontal assault is all force and no finesse. Opener "Terminal Saints"'s grating electronic sustains smother everything that tries to take shape beneath. When it begins to settle 14 minutes in, it's too little, too late. Problem is there seems to be little communication in the execution. Take, for instance, the stream of white noise that covers most of "Terminal Carcass", the album's second track. It's a colossal sound, but-- held largely constant for most of the track-- it makes for a miserable foundation. Everything pushing beneath and against it-- cavity-splitting analogue screeches, a lumbering bass line, industrial metal flotsam-- has little to no effect. It's as though Kneale, Swanson, and Salomon's guiding principles for these improvisations was simply: get loud quickly, stay that way, and see what interesting stuff happens next. While that's a fine plan for a session between such juggernauts, it precludes success if every move directed toward step three-- see what interesting stuff happens next-- seems like an afterthought. Here, that happens twice, and the result is two largely uninteresting stalemates. This is powerful, at least: The album's gambit is to unleash a cascade of sound that pins the audience against a wall. That works. Kneale has been doing the same thing for decades in Birchville, but he's always had a way of bringing things back to rest, of offering a chair to the exhausted listener. And Yellow Swans have always mustered a confounding appreciation for detail, no matter the maximal wail or non-event creep of the sessions. For last year's Mudsuckers album with Robert Horton and Tom Carter, the Swans launched into a full-scale, multipart fury. They led, however, with a sense of their sound as a whole. This collaboration benefits from neither of the above. Instead, it's two behemoths, gritting their teeth and flexing at one another, missing an opportunity to do more.

Artist: Yellow Swans & Birchville Cat Motel, Album: Yellow Swans & Birchville Cat Motel, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 4.4 Album review: "Portland, Ore.'s Yellow Swans-- Gabriel Mindel Salomon and Pete Swanson-- run a record label and produce experimental schizophrenia that either clicks slowly from pedals or swarms from vengeful circuits; New Zealand's Birchville Cat Motel-- Campbell Kneale-- has created two decades worth of post-Black Sabbath sludge. But, while both artists have distinctive sounds, they've often challenged themselves and expectations with prolificacy, range, and collaboration. This two-track album-- recorded on stage and in a New Zealand studio after a Swans tour organized by Kneale-- finds these two artists trading in their senses of dynamics for demonstrations of brute force. The bands' goal seems to be to impress with how much sound can be made by three people. It was easy to expect that Yellow Swans and Birchville Cat Motel, when together, would launch an offensive. But this uniform, full-frontal assault is all force and no finesse. Opener "Terminal Saints"'s grating electronic sustains smother everything that tries to take shape beneath. When it begins to settle 14 minutes in, it's too little, too late. Problem is there seems to be little communication in the execution. Take, for instance, the stream of white noise that covers most of "Terminal Carcass", the album's second track. It's a colossal sound, but-- held largely constant for most of the track-- it makes for a miserable foundation. Everything pushing beneath and against it-- cavity-splitting analogue screeches, a lumbering bass line, industrial metal flotsam-- has little to no effect. It's as though Kneale, Swanson, and Salomon's guiding principles for these improvisations was simply: get loud quickly, stay that way, and see what interesting stuff happens next. While that's a fine plan for a session between such juggernauts, it precludes success if every move directed toward step three-- see what interesting stuff happens next-- seems like an afterthought. Here, that happens twice, and the result is two largely uninteresting stalemates. This is powerful, at least: The album's gambit is to unleash a cascade of sound that pins the audience against a wall. That works. Kneale has been doing the same thing for decades in Birchville, but he's always had a way of bringing things back to rest, of offering a chair to the exhausted listener. And Yellow Swans have always mustered a confounding appreciation for detail, no matter the maximal wail or non-event creep of the sessions. For last year's Mudsuckers album with Robert Horton and Tom Carter, the Swans launched into a full-scale, multipart fury. They led, however, with a sense of their sound as a whole. This collaboration benefits from neither of the above. Instead, it's two behemoths, gritting their teeth and flexing at one another, missing an opportunity to do more."

The Fall

The Complete Peel Sessions, 1978-2004

Rock

Joe Tangari

The most poignant aspect of this six-disc set is that it is now a document of the past, a finite thing that can no longer be built upon. When the Fall and their labels began work on the compilation, this was not the case-- at that time, it was a document of a living, ongoing relationship between one of Britain's greatest bands and its most legendary DJ, John Peel. But Peel passed away last year, ending a seemingly effortless decades-long run as one of the coolest people on earth, and this six-disc document of his favorite band's appearances on his show instead serves as a sort of encomium. It's at once a tribute to the brilliance of Mark E. Smith and his "always different, always the same" band, and to the dedication of a man who never stopped being a fan and never stopped loving new and challenging music. The Fall recorded 24 four-song sessions for Peel over the course of 26 years, capturing nearly every one of the band's many configurations in all their sloppy precision, and this sprawling, amazing release makes the case that every one of them had at least something interesting to offer, including the less-appreciated Fall line-ups of the mid-to-late-90s. The case could even be made that this is the definitive look at the Fall's career to date-- even more than last year's very well-considered 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong compilation. Of course, at six discs and more than seven hours, it's not the place to start, but anyone with more than four or five Fall albums would be doing themselves a huge service picking this up. To touch on all of the highlights, I'd have to devote a full paragraph to each individual session included on the set, so let's just say that this thing is absolutely loaded, with performances that frequently eclipse the studio versions. The 1980 version of "New Face In Hell" is thunderous and Smith's cracking, hysterical vocal is hilariously psychotic-- the band's oft-hidden sense of humor easy to spot. Smith actually laughs on "Beatle Bones 'n' Smokin' Stones", and the band's December 1994 piss-take on "Jingle Bell Rock" is a case study in sarcastic destruction. Elsewhere, you get two 1983 sessions from the band's mighty double-drummer lineup and a generous offering from the unstoppable mid-80s lineup that produced This Nation's Saving Grace and the Wonderful & Frightening World of the Fall. The TNSG songs hit like a hammer to the head, with a borderline out-of-control take on "Spilt Victorian Child" (my favorite Fall song) and a crunching, hypnotic reinvention of "L.A." leading the way. As one might expect, the first three discs, which reach up through 1987, are the strongest and most consistent, with the last three discs veering through ever more rapid line-up shifts and wider stylistic ground. What's shocking is the way those last three discs paint a picture of the band's late career as nearly as vital as what preceded it. Fiddler Kenny Brady brings a stronger melodic underpinning to the 1989 and 1991 recordings, without compromising the band's signature rough groove, while some of the band's more electronic 90s material comes off much rawer and crunchier in the live setting. "Immortality" in particular becomes fire-breathing, heavy death funk of a caliber the Fall only sporadically achieved in the studio during that phase of their career. The Complete Peel Sessions, 1978-2004 is one of the most straightforward titles a Fall compilation has ever had, and the execution of the package is similarly no-nonsense: The recordings are sequenced in strict chronological order and the remastering is uniformly crisp and sharp, something that's not always the case with retrospectives of this band. It's an embarrassment of riches for the Fall's devoted cult of fans, none of whom should pass this up, and it works surprisingly well for more casual fans who've only just begun to delve into the band's bewildering back catalog.

Artist: The Fall, Album: The Complete Peel Sessions, 1978-2004, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 9.3 Album review: "The most poignant aspect of this six-disc set is that it is now a document of the past, a finite thing that can no longer be built upon. When the Fall and their labels began work on the compilation, this was not the case-- at that time, it was a document of a living, ongoing relationship between one of Britain's greatest bands and its most legendary DJ, John Peel. But Peel passed away last year, ending a seemingly effortless decades-long run as one of the coolest people on earth, and this six-disc document of his favorite band's appearances on his show instead serves as a sort of encomium. It's at once a tribute to the brilliance of Mark E. Smith and his "always different, always the same" band, and to the dedication of a man who never stopped being a fan and never stopped loving new and challenging music. The Fall recorded 24 four-song sessions for Peel over the course of 26 years, capturing nearly every one of the band's many configurations in all their sloppy precision, and this sprawling, amazing release makes the case that every one of them had at least something interesting to offer, including the less-appreciated Fall line-ups of the mid-to-late-90s. The case could even be made that this is the definitive look at the Fall's career to date-- even more than last year's very well-considered 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong compilation. Of course, at six discs and more than seven hours, it's not the place to start, but anyone with more than four or five Fall albums would be doing themselves a huge service picking this up. To touch on all of the highlights, I'd have to devote a full paragraph to each individual session included on the set, so let's just say that this thing is absolutely loaded, with performances that frequently eclipse the studio versions. The 1980 version of "New Face In Hell" is thunderous and Smith's cracking, hysterical vocal is hilariously psychotic-- the band's oft-hidden sense of humor easy to spot. Smith actually laughs on "Beatle Bones 'n' Smokin' Stones", and the band's December 1994 piss-take on "Jingle Bell Rock" is a case study in sarcastic destruction. Elsewhere, you get two 1983 sessions from the band's mighty double-drummer lineup and a generous offering from the unstoppable mid-80s lineup that produced This Nation's Saving Grace and the Wonderful & Frightening World of the Fall. The TNSG songs hit like a hammer to the head, with a borderline out-of-control take on "Spilt Victorian Child" (my favorite Fall song) and a crunching, hypnotic reinvention of "L.A." leading the way. As one might expect, the first three discs, which reach up through 1987, are the strongest and most consistent, with the last three discs veering through ever more rapid line-up shifts and wider stylistic ground. What's shocking is the way those last three discs paint a picture of the band's late career as nearly as vital as what preceded it. Fiddler Kenny Brady brings a stronger melodic underpinning to the 1989 and 1991 recordings, without compromising the band's signature rough groove, while some of the band's more electronic 90s material comes off much rawer and crunchier in the live setting. "Immortality" in particular becomes fire-breathing, heavy death funk of a caliber the Fall only sporadically achieved in the studio during that phase of their career. The Complete Peel Sessions, 1978-2004 is one of the most straightforward titles a Fall compilation has ever had, and the execution of the package is similarly no-nonsense: The recordings are sequenced in strict chronological order and the remastering is uniformly crisp and sharp, something that's not always the case with retrospectives of this band. It's an embarrassment of riches for the Fall's devoted cult of fans, none of whom should pass this up, and it works surprisingly well for more casual fans who've only just begun to delve into the band's bewildering back catalog."

Various Artists

The Tone of the Universe (= The Tone of the Earth)

Brent S. Sirota

Drone is liturgy. Since its mid-century installation in the repertoire of experimental music, drone has been coded with naked aspirations: people looking to the holy East; people looking to the archaic; people looking into deep space, into the pure machine, into the stranger mind. Drone has always been enamored of the faraway. The sacred, as always, must be imported from there. Its devotees are few but fervent. But the faith has always seemed strangely incommunicable: It doesn't seem to get many converts, just initiates and infidels and no commerce between them. Missionary work is a slog. Those who have made stabs at evangelization know the response is usually incredulity rather than hostility. Minimalist classics have been returned to me with a blankness bordering on incomprehension, as if I'd handed out videotapes of television snow and demanded an assessment of character arcs. So it is rare to find yourself born again to a random airing of You Are My Everlovin'/Celestial Power. If you own it, chances are you've already been saved by it. But the seekers of the world owe a just debt of gratitude to Antony Milton's PseudoArcana label for offering up a fine little hymnal for our headphone communions. True to form, the call to prayer comes by way of the Perseus Cluster, a gathering of galaxies some 250 million light years away, which astronomers believe has been humming a steady B-flat drone since the universe was a toddler. Marshalling the extensive and shadowy networks developed between NASA and the New Zealand free noise scene in the wane of the Carter administration, a tribute album to the bass cluster has emerged. And though of dubious scientific merit and obscure political import, The Tone of the Universe (=The Tone of the Earth) is a monumental collection of music. Appropriate to a work of intergalactic negotiation, the compilation draws from the farthest flung reaches of terrestrial drone: New Zealand, the UK, Italy, Argentina, Finland, and the U.S. have sent delegates, like some kind of very slow and poorly-lit Olympiad. This geographical variety translates brilliantly into sound, every contributor seemingly speaking in his or her own musical language, and none falling back on the ponderous immobility that can render minimalism so oppressive. On "Map of Dusk", the Blithe Sons, charter members of San Francisco's illustrious Jewelled Antler collective, dispense with their California pastorals and backyard musique concrete for something less humane: a pestilential little cloud of harmonium evaporations and feedback expanding and compressing like an iron lung. Peter Wright's idyllic "Haboob"-- one of the collection's high points-- is barely drone in any sense of the word, a lyrical 12-string guitar prayer plucked over delicately tremulous strings. The heavy trappings of bow-and-scrape drone are eschewed in Finnish experimentalist Keijo's "Stellar Wind", a weirdly rollicking folk blues ramble. Even shot through with warbling treated winds and chirpy electronica, the track seems more suited to the high plains than the higher nebulae. And for those somehow not satiated by last year's sprawling 3xCD set, Pontiac Lady, the mighty Vibracathedral Orchestra add a short jagged slab of noise-rock much more uproarious than their usual skittering ceremony. "3 Bb Moods" lurches into Acid Mothers territory with shrapnel guitar lines exploding over psilocybin raga. Vibracathedral's explosive excursion into electric heavyland resolves into Hands of Satisfaction's long "Version 1", 11 minutes of noise pointillism, where dead guitar bursts punctuate soft clatter and glitch. Expansive and not entirely successful, "Version 1" flags early and doesn't vary its formula. The second disc of the collection is dominated by contributions from the Celebrate Psi Phenomenon crowd. C/Psi/P label head Campbell Kneale's own Birchville Cat Motel serves up a behemoth of bright and majestic skree "I Am But Dust". Few practitioners of the art have the natural virtuosity of Kneale, who, like surgeons and serial killers, succeeds by sheer dint of patience. Kneale trusts his own ideas and is unafraid to let them unfold over great durations; and the eight-minutes of washed-out organs and screaming guitars in "I am But Dust" proceed with the pomp and circumstance of a coronation procession. Seht's unnerving and appropriately titled "Antarctica Download (Edit)" turns warm analog cold, with bright keyboards dripped as icicles ominously from all directions. The piercing scrapes and gongs of 1/3 Octave Band's "Dominion", on the other hand, are harsh and unpleasant, albeit mercifully brief. The Tone of the Universe concludes with the grand galactica of the brothers Opalio, the Italian sonic cosmonauts better known as My Cat is an Alien. Amidst bells and phasers and dubious space opera sound effects, an accented continental repeatedly urges us to "hear the voice of the cosmos." But to his credit he does not say precisely where one must listen for it. Even with the odd failed experiment or heavy-handed concoction, The Tone of the Universe on the whole succeeds brilliantly, not by paying homage to heavenly bodies resonating 57 octaves below the limits of human hearing, but by bringing the cold and scattered outskirts of the musical galaxy a little closer to hand. There is great solace in hearing that there are still strange goings-on abroad on this planet. And that, brothers and sisters, is truly the good news.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: The Tone of the Universe (= The Tone of the Earth), Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Drone is liturgy. Since its mid-century installation in the repertoire of experimental music, drone has been coded with naked aspirations: people looking to the holy East; people looking to the archaic; people looking into deep space, into the pure machine, into the stranger mind. Drone has always been enamored of the faraway. The sacred, as always, must be imported from there. Its devotees are few but fervent. But the faith has always seemed strangely incommunicable: It doesn't seem to get many converts, just initiates and infidels and no commerce between them. Missionary work is a slog. Those who have made stabs at evangelization know the response is usually incredulity rather than hostility. Minimalist classics have been returned to me with a blankness bordering on incomprehension, as if I'd handed out videotapes of television snow and demanded an assessment of character arcs. So it is rare to find yourself born again to a random airing of You Are My Everlovin'/Celestial Power. If you own it, chances are you've already been saved by it. But the seekers of the world owe a just debt of gratitude to Antony Milton's PseudoArcana label for offering up a fine little hymnal for our headphone communions. True to form, the call to prayer comes by way of the Perseus Cluster, a gathering of galaxies some 250 million light years away, which astronomers believe has been humming a steady B-flat drone since the universe was a toddler. Marshalling the extensive and shadowy networks developed between NASA and the New Zealand free noise scene in the wane of the Carter administration, a tribute album to the bass cluster has emerged. And though of dubious scientific merit and obscure political import, The Tone of the Universe (=The Tone of the Earth) is a monumental collection of music. Appropriate to a work of intergalactic negotiation, the compilation draws from the farthest flung reaches of terrestrial drone: New Zealand, the UK, Italy, Argentina, Finland, and the U.S. have sent delegates, like some kind of very slow and poorly-lit Olympiad. This geographical variety translates brilliantly into sound, every contributor seemingly speaking in his or her own musical language, and none falling back on the ponderous immobility that can render minimalism so oppressive. On "Map of Dusk", the Blithe Sons, charter members of San Francisco's illustrious Jewelled Antler collective, dispense with their California pastorals and backyard musique concrete for something less humane: a pestilential little cloud of harmonium evaporations and feedback expanding and compressing like an iron lung. Peter Wright's idyllic "Haboob"-- one of the collection's high points-- is barely drone in any sense of the word, a lyrical 12-string guitar prayer plucked over delicately tremulous strings. The heavy trappings of bow-and-scrape drone are eschewed in Finnish experimentalist Keijo's "Stellar Wind", a weirdly rollicking folk blues ramble. Even shot through with warbling treated winds and chirpy electronica, the track seems more suited to the high plains than the higher nebulae. And for those somehow not satiated by last year's sprawling 3xCD set, Pontiac Lady, the mighty Vibracathedral Orchestra add a short jagged slab of noise-rock much more uproarious than their usual skittering ceremony. "3 Bb Moods" lurches into Acid Mothers territory with shrapnel guitar lines exploding over psilocybin raga. Vibracathedral's explosive excursion into electric heavyland resolves into Hands of Satisfaction's long "Version 1", 11 minutes of noise pointillism, where dead guitar bursts punctuate soft clatter and glitch. Expansive and not entirely successful, "Version 1" flags early and doesn't vary its formula. The second disc of the collection is dominated by contributions from the Celebrate Psi Phenomenon crowd. C/Psi/P label head Campbell Kneale's own Birchville Cat Motel serves up a behemoth of bright and majestic skree "I Am But Dust". Few practitioners of the art have the natural virtuosity of Kneale, who, like surgeons and serial killers, succeeds by sheer dint of patience. Kneale trusts his own ideas and is unafraid to let them unfold over great durations; and the eight-minutes of washed-out organs and screaming guitars in "I am But Dust" proceed with the pomp and circumstance of a coronation procession. Seht's unnerving and appropriately titled "Antarctica Download (Edit)" turns warm analog cold, with bright keyboards dripped as icicles ominously from all directions. The piercing scrapes and gongs of 1/3 Octave Band's "Dominion", on the other hand, are harsh and unpleasant, albeit mercifully brief. The Tone of the Universe concludes with the grand galactica of the brothers Opalio, the Italian sonic cosmonauts better known as My Cat is an Alien. Amidst bells and phasers and dubious space opera sound effects, an accented continental repeatedly urges us to "hear the voice of the cosmos." But to his credit he does not say precisely where one must listen for it. Even with the odd failed experiment or heavy-handed concoction, The Tone of the Universe on the whole succeeds brilliantly, not by paying homage to heavenly bodies resonating 57 octaves below the limits of human hearing, but by bringing the cold and scattered outskirts of the musical galaxy a little closer to hand. There is great solace in hearing that there are still strange goings-on abroad on this planet. And that, brothers and sisters, is truly the good news."

James Brown

The Singles, Vol. 9: 1973-1975

Rock

Douglas Wolk

In the Watergate era and its aftermath, James Brown was like a heavyweight champion fighting blindfolded. When he hit, he hit hard enough to shatter bone: this volume in Hip-O's mail-order series includes three consecutive #1 R&B hits (the murderously heavy, slow funk grooves of "The Payback", "My Thang", and "Papa Don't Take No Mess"), and a few other spectacular jams. But when Brown missed, he flailed just as hard. Sometimes he realized it in time. Volume Nine begins with three scheduled-and-canceled singles, including several awkward duets with Lyn Collins (one of them a bizarre Latin version of "Let It Be Me"). "I Got a Good Thing (And I Ain't Gonna Let It Go)" is a pro forma jam with Brown double-tracked-- playing his own Bobby Byrd, effectively, since Byrd had left his revue. The canceled single was replaced by a new recording less than two weeks later: "Stoned to the Bone", more casual but distinctly superior, and a solid hit. This period also saw Brown developing a bizarre weakness for scattering his records with overdubbed sound effects and drop-ins. Adding bits of Jesse Jackson's "I am somebody" speech to the Fred Wesley & the J.B.'s single "Same Beat Pt. 1" was a great idea. Adding a disc jockey announcing "This is for Atlanta!" and "This record is too much!" all over "The Payback" was not-- the familiar mix, without Hank Spann's interjections, was actually a promotional version demanded by radio. Lyn Collins' smoking "Rock Me Again & Again & Again & Again & Again & Again" is not so much a duet with Brown as the boss staring over her shoulder and butting in on almost every line, then dumping in some extra sound effects and grafting the first minute of the track on again at the end. It's pretty amazing anyway. Brown was an aging, eccentric king, but he was still the king: "Funky President (People It's Bad)" was easily the hottest pop response to the American politics of the 1970s. And then, all of a sudden, disco was king. For the first time in years, R&B was dominated by rhythms way outside Brown's own idiom, and the last four singles here are the sound of Brown hitting the wall. First, there's a sloppy remake of his 1970 breakthrough "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine". That's followed by a halfway-there J.B.'s instrumental that Brown decided to grace with the title (and chant) "Thank You For Lettin' Me Be Myself, and You Be Yours"-- was he claiming that Sly Stone had ripped him off, or just ripping off Sly Stone? "Dead On It" is one of the strangest records Brown ever released: it opens with two beatless minutes of belching synth noises and occasional sour guitar chords, over which the Godfather rambles about how he's not as good as he used to be but demands respect anyway, before finally breaking into a cautious combination of some riffs he'd been flogging for years. Brown almost immediately withdrew it and replaced it with the similar-only-in-name "Hustle!!! (Dead On It)"-- a carbon copy of Cameroonian musician André-Marie Tala's 1973 record "Hot Koki", and a bald-faced attempt to cash in on the success of Van McCoy's "The Hustle". It's not a bad piece of music, but it was a thoroughly embarrassing gesture. Over the course of 1975, drummer Jabo Starks, trombonist/arranger Fred Wesley and saxophonist Maceo Parker all quit working with Brown, effectively dissolving his last classic band. He still had dozens of major and minor hits ahead of him, but he'd never again rule R&B the way he had for a decade.

Artist: James Brown, Album: The Singles, Vol. 9: 1973-1975, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "In the Watergate era and its aftermath, James Brown was like a heavyweight champion fighting blindfolded. When he hit, he hit hard enough to shatter bone: this volume in Hip-O's mail-order series includes three consecutive #1 R&B hits (the murderously heavy, slow funk grooves of "The Payback", "My Thang", and "Papa Don't Take No Mess"), and a few other spectacular jams. But when Brown missed, he flailed just as hard. Sometimes he realized it in time. Volume Nine begins with three scheduled-and-canceled singles, including several awkward duets with Lyn Collins (one of them a bizarre Latin version of "Let It Be Me"). "I Got a Good Thing (And I Ain't Gonna Let It Go)" is a pro forma jam with Brown double-tracked-- playing his own Bobby Byrd, effectively, since Byrd had left his revue. The canceled single was replaced by a new recording less than two weeks later: "Stoned to the Bone", more casual but distinctly superior, and a solid hit. This period also saw Brown developing a bizarre weakness for scattering his records with overdubbed sound effects and drop-ins. Adding bits of Jesse Jackson's "I am somebody" speech to the Fred Wesley & the J.B.'s single "Same Beat Pt. 1" was a great idea. Adding a disc jockey announcing "This is for Atlanta!" and "This record is too much!" all over "The Payback" was not-- the familiar mix, without Hank Spann's interjections, was actually a promotional version demanded by radio. Lyn Collins' smoking "Rock Me Again & Again & Again & Again & Again & Again" is not so much a duet with Brown as the boss staring over her shoulder and butting in on almost every line, then dumping in some extra sound effects and grafting the first minute of the track on again at the end. It's pretty amazing anyway. Brown was an aging, eccentric king, but he was still the king: "Funky President (People It's Bad)" was easily the hottest pop response to the American politics of the 1970s. And then, all of a sudden, disco was king. For the first time in years, R&B was dominated by rhythms way outside Brown's own idiom, and the last four singles here are the sound of Brown hitting the wall. First, there's a sloppy remake of his 1970 breakthrough "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine". That's followed by a halfway-there J.B.'s instrumental that Brown decided to grace with the title (and chant) "Thank You For Lettin' Me Be Myself, and You Be Yours"-- was he claiming that Sly Stone had ripped him off, or just ripping off Sly Stone? "Dead On It" is one of the strangest records Brown ever released: it opens with two beatless minutes of belching synth noises and occasional sour guitar chords, over which the Godfather rambles about how he's not as good as he used to be but demands respect anyway, before finally breaking into a cautious combination of some riffs he'd been flogging for years. Brown almost immediately withdrew it and replaced it with the similar-only-in-name "Hustle!!! (Dead On It)"-- a carbon copy of Cameroonian musician André-Marie Tala's 1973 record "Hot Koki", and a bald-faced attempt to cash in on the success of Van McCoy's "The Hustle". It's not a bad piece of music, but it was a thoroughly embarrassing gesture. Over the course of 1975, drummer Jabo Starks, trombonist/arranger Fred Wesley and saxophonist Maceo Parker all quit working with Brown, effectively dissolving his last classic band. He still had dozens of major and minor hits ahead of him, but he'd never again rule R&B the way he had for a decade."

Richard Swift

The Atlantic Ocean

Rock

Jayson Greene

A former keyboard player in the vaguely Catherine Wheel-ish contemporary Christian group Starflyer 59, Richard Swift struck out on his own at the turn of the decade. His first two records, Walking Without Effort and The Novelist, came out on as a double album in 2005 on Secretly Canadian, and he's been putting out music in dribs and drabs ever since then. All of it has been perfectly competent but a little dull, suggesting an MOR-indie mind-meld of Ron Sexsmith, Michael Penn, and Andrew Bird. On last year's head-turning Ground Trouble Jaw EP, however, Swift switched things up, ditching the midtempo piano ballads for strutting, ersatz blue-eyed soul and warbling in a killer, outrageously goofy Frank Zappa-meets-Bobby Darrin falsetto over loving recreations of Spencer Davis Group oldies. The EP was slight but unexpectedly winning, and it signaled a shift in direction that sets the stage nicely for the grander affair that is The Atlantic Ocean, his first proper full-length since 2007's Dressed Up For the Letdown. Wisely keeping the looseness he found on Ground Trouble Jaw, Swift spruces everything else up with the sort of painstaking classicist touches that overly ambitious singer/songwriters have spent hours in the studio refining since at least Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything?. Rundgren's soft-rock opus actually makes for a decent entry point into The Atlantic Ocean. Like Rundgren, Swift slips a surprising amount of bitterness and acrid observation into his smooth AM-radio soul songs, which are built on the laid-back earthiness and jazzy chord voicings of 1970s Carole King. "Spend your prayers, I'm an unbeliever and I don't feel right/ I can barely sleep at night/ Got no one to make me cry/ And everyone knows when they're gonna die," he croons beautifully on "R.I.P." (Man, that Starflyer 59 breakup must have been brutal.) Both have a fondness for injecting blurts of "wacky" studio noise into their compositions; see the quivering jello mold of keyboards perched atop "The Original Thought". Also like Rundgren, Swift spends a lot of time honing the most devastating takedown of his exes he can manage while finding the prettiest way to couch it. "It's already gone, hang your head, hold your tongue/ Because it's nobody's fault but our own," he sings sweetly over the lilting waltz rhythms of "Already Gone". Rundgren isn't the only obsessive studio rat Swift will remind you of, though. "Ballad of Old What's His Name" is a nice compendium of all of Swift's touchpoints: slide guitar lines that ape George Harrison's tone and cadence so closely that you almost check to make sure you didn't accidentally put on "Savoy Truffle"; barrelhouse piano and an airy vocal melody that evokes Harry Nilsson; a harmonizing backup choir of sweetly sighing Swifts; and an outbreak of horn charts at the bridge. "The First Time", on the other hand, opens with a chugging little drum machine and a single plunking banjo, sounding before the verse begins for all the world like the work of the blonder, prettier Swift. "The End of an Age", meanwhile, has a sweetly autumnal horn coda that could have been ported in from a Burt Bacharach song. All of this namechecking, by the way, tends to pop up in reviews when the album in question isn't quite vivid enough to stand on its own terms, and, well, check: Swift is hugely talented musician and a meticulous craftsman, but his voice isn't terribly distinct, and as a result his albums usually end up being a bundle of good ideas lacking an animating force. Swift has figured out how to make pretty music, but he hasn't found anything compelling to say through it. "I got the right LPs, I got the Lou Reed and all the Blondie you'll never need," he sings on the title track, and it illustrates, once again, the wide gulf separating an immaculate record collection from the ability to do anything interesting with it.

Artist: Richard Swift, Album: The Atlantic Ocean, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.3 Album review: "A former keyboard player in the vaguely Catherine Wheel-ish contemporary Christian group Starflyer 59, Richard Swift struck out on his own at the turn of the decade. His first two records, Walking Without Effort and The Novelist, came out on as a double album in 2005 on Secretly Canadian, and he's been putting out music in dribs and drabs ever since then. All of it has been perfectly competent but a little dull, suggesting an MOR-indie mind-meld of Ron Sexsmith, Michael Penn, and Andrew Bird. On last year's head-turning Ground Trouble Jaw EP, however, Swift switched things up, ditching the midtempo piano ballads for strutting, ersatz blue-eyed soul and warbling in a killer, outrageously goofy Frank Zappa-meets-Bobby Darrin falsetto over loving recreations of Spencer Davis Group oldies. The EP was slight but unexpectedly winning, and it signaled a shift in direction that sets the stage nicely for the grander affair that is The Atlantic Ocean, his first proper full-length since 2007's Dressed Up For the Letdown. Wisely keeping the looseness he found on Ground Trouble Jaw, Swift spruces everything else up with the sort of painstaking classicist touches that overly ambitious singer/songwriters have spent hours in the studio refining since at least Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything?. Rundgren's soft-rock opus actually makes for a decent entry point into The Atlantic Ocean. Like Rundgren, Swift slips a surprising amount of bitterness and acrid observation into his smooth AM-radio soul songs, which are built on the laid-back earthiness and jazzy chord voicings of 1970s Carole King. "Spend your prayers, I'm an unbeliever and I don't feel right/ I can barely sleep at night/ Got no one to make me cry/ And everyone knows when they're gonna die," he croons beautifully on "R.I.P." (Man, that Starflyer 59 breakup must have been brutal.) Both have a fondness for injecting blurts of "wacky" studio noise into their compositions; see the quivering jello mold of keyboards perched atop "The Original Thought". Also like Rundgren, Swift spends a lot of time honing the most devastating takedown of his exes he can manage while finding the prettiest way to couch it. "It's already gone, hang your head, hold your tongue/ Because it's nobody's fault but our own," he sings sweetly over the lilting waltz rhythms of "Already Gone". Rundgren isn't the only obsessive studio rat Swift will remind you of, though. "Ballad of Old What's His Name" is a nice compendium of all of Swift's touchpoints: slide guitar lines that ape George Harrison's tone and cadence so closely that you almost check to make sure you didn't accidentally put on "Savoy Truffle"; barrelhouse piano and an airy vocal melody that evokes Harry Nilsson; a harmonizing backup choir of sweetly sighing Swifts; and an outbreak of horn charts at the bridge. "The First Time", on the other hand, opens with a chugging little drum machine and a single plunking banjo, sounding before the verse begins for all the world like the work of the blonder, prettier Swift. "The End of an Age", meanwhile, has a sweetly autumnal horn coda that could have been ported in from a Burt Bacharach song. All of this namechecking, by the way, tends to pop up in reviews when the album in question isn't quite vivid enough to stand on its own terms, and, well, check: Swift is hugely talented musician and a meticulous craftsman, but his voice isn't terribly distinct, and as a result his albums usually end up being a bundle of good ideas lacking an animating force. Swift has figured out how to make pretty music, but he hasn't found anything compelling to say through it. "I got the right LPs, I got the Lou Reed and all the Blondie you'll never need," he sings on the title track, and it illustrates, once again, the wide gulf separating an immaculate record collection from the ability to do anything interesting with it."

Metric

Grow Up and Blow Away

Rock

Brian Howe

Metric are a band of geopolitical extremes. Frontperson Emily Haines was born in India, raised in Canada, and eventually wound up splitting her time between London and Brooklyn, where she and Metric guitarist James Shaw once lived with future members of Liars and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Haines, a vocal critic of consumer society, also licenses her songs to television dramas and Polaroid commercials (a bowdlerized version of the title track from Grow Up and Blow Away was used to promote I-Zone film). In fact, Metric's songs are often characterized by a commercial sheen-- they're smart little packets that, even as anti-consumerism screeds, have a compact luster that makes you feel like getting online to price experimental shelving units from Ikea or browsing all-over print hoodies at H&M. None of this is to criticize Metric for hypocrisy, it's simply to position them as a band that has no qualms about jockeying for visibility-- in the process amassing reams of the sort of context that can sometimes drown out a band's music. So you might know Metric for any of the reasons above, or from Emily Haines' solo project, Emily Haines and Soft Skeleton, or from her otherworldly vocal turn on Broken Social Scene's beloved "Anthem for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl". And yeah, you might also know them as yet another band in the Broken Social Scene constellation, although they more closely resemble the glossy electro-pop of Stars. But this album, Metric's lost debut of sorts, gives us a chance to get to know them more intimately-- as a charming singer/songwriterly band poised to arrive a little too late for the 1990s alterna-rock boom, when they would have fit in snugly with bubble-poppers, like Letters to Cleo, and scorers of imaginary films, like Self. While both of Metric's official LPs, 2003's Old World Underground, Where are You Now? and 2005's Live it Out were met with a generally favorable critical reception (the latter was nominated for the Polaris Prize and the Juno), the negative responses often took the band to task for bloat and clutter. Grow Up and Blow Away was recorded between 1999 and 2001, and was meant to be Metric's debut LP, but it got lost in the shuffle when their label, Reckless Records, was purchased by Rykodisc. The album has been available on the internet for years, but this marks its first hard release, and it showcases Metric as a two-piece, before bassist Josh Winstead and drummer Joules Scott-Key became permanent members. As such, there's less leeway for clutter, and Haines' arresting songwriting (not to mention her fertile rapport with Shaw) shines through. The album is fully a product of Metric's signature style, where electro-pop, trip-hop, and good old indie rock underpin Haines' effortless charisma. Despite its textural richness, it's feather-light; it's also comely and stylish. In fact, Metric's neophyte effort might be their best. Grow Up and Blow Away's phrasing is redolent of another album that was being recorded around the same time, which also felt like it could have made some mainstream waves had it appeared a few years earlier and shed a few experimental tendencies: Dismemberment Plan's Change. It's stiffly funky, with prickly mechanical drums, supple bass lines, and skittering piano loops as its propulsive grist. Guitars are present, but they take a backseat to the pianos, and when the do appear, they're often deployed so texturally they sound more like guiros. It's structured more like disco than indie rock: simple, striking passages that would be easy to retrofit for an extended mix loop and shuffle. Like Travis Morrison, Haines is more attuned to the stylized melodies of modern r&b than indie rock's more naturalistic, colloquial singing style. She swings with a simple yet elegant dexterity from syllable to bell-clear syllable. This especially comes to the fore on "The Twist", a dreamy r&b synth dirge that sounds like a mannered precursor to Cocorosie's "Werewolf". Haines' lyrics are also remindful of Morrison's, with their pithy, existential inclinations. The title track, a meditation on suburban ennui set to an ice-blue ribbon of fizzy synths, gives us the first of the album's many modern koans: "If this is the life, why does it feel so good to die today?" (or "fly away," as Polaroid would have it). "Hardwire", sultry and chiming, gives us the skyscraping chorus "You are everything; you are nothing at all." And "Rock Me Now", a spoken-word piece about burning out in Vegas, is almost hard to swallow, but Haines really sells it. Perhaps her confidence stems from having Paul Haines, a poet who often collaborated with jazz muscians, for a father, most notably on Escalator Over the Hill with Carla Bley. But that work was dark and impenetrable in the Scott Walker mold, while "Rock Me Now" is a jazzbo wisp, breezy and trim. It's a manicured lawn to her father's impenetrable weeds. "His value declined when he offered his name," Haines breathes, slipping into a staccato backing harmony as Shaw echoes her in eerie falsetto over a disco churn. "My old flame broke the 12-bar blues just to prove he could," Haines coos amid the splashy drums and mincing pianos of "On the Sly". "He pays the airline DJs now; he is everywhere," while the kids "get high and eat TV." With evocative lines like these, Haines roughs out the proportions of her subjective world, focusing on whatever details command her attention from her post in its very center. And she doesn't take this subjectivity for granted: "Climb the wall to make the sun rise in time," she sings on "Soft Rock Star" (which appears here in two distinct yet complementary versions). This drive to render the world not as a set of facts, but as a phantasmagorical realm wholly contingent on the presence of a viewer, gives the album its lyrical heft and specific personality. Paired with early Metric's less-is-more approach, it makes for an immersive record that feels much fresher than its long incubation period would seem to warrant.

Artist: Metric, Album: Grow Up and Blow Away, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "Metric are a band of geopolitical extremes. Frontperson Emily Haines was born in India, raised in Canada, and eventually wound up splitting her time between London and Brooklyn, where she and Metric guitarist James Shaw once lived with future members of Liars and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Haines, a vocal critic of consumer society, also licenses her songs to television dramas and Polaroid commercials (a bowdlerized version of the title track from Grow Up and Blow Away was used to promote I-Zone film). In fact, Metric's songs are often characterized by a commercial sheen-- they're smart little packets that, even as anti-consumerism screeds, have a compact luster that makes you feel like getting online to price experimental shelving units from Ikea or browsing all-over print hoodies at H&M. None of this is to criticize Metric for hypocrisy, it's simply to position them as a band that has no qualms about jockeying for visibility-- in the process amassing reams of the sort of context that can sometimes drown out a band's music. So you might know Metric for any of the reasons above, or from Emily Haines' solo project, Emily Haines and Soft Skeleton, or from her otherworldly vocal turn on Broken Social Scene's beloved "Anthem for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl". And yeah, you might also know them as yet another band in the Broken Social Scene constellation, although they more closely resemble the glossy electro-pop of Stars. But this album, Metric's lost debut of sorts, gives us a chance to get to know them more intimately-- as a charming singer/songwriterly band poised to arrive a little too late for the 1990s alterna-rock boom, when they would have fit in snugly with bubble-poppers, like Letters to Cleo, and scorers of imaginary films, like Self. While both of Metric's official LPs, 2003's Old World Underground, Where are You Now? and 2005's Live it Out were met with a generally favorable critical reception (the latter was nominated for the Polaris Prize and the Juno), the negative responses often took the band to task for bloat and clutter. Grow Up and Blow Away was recorded between 1999 and 2001, and was meant to be Metric's debut LP, but it got lost in the shuffle when their label, Reckless Records, was purchased by Rykodisc. The album has been available on the internet for years, but this marks its first hard release, and it showcases Metric as a two-piece, before bassist Josh Winstead and drummer Joules Scott-Key became permanent members. As such, there's less leeway for clutter, and Haines' arresting songwriting (not to mention her fertile rapport with Shaw) shines through. The album is fully a product of Metric's signature style, where electro-pop, trip-hop, and good old indie rock underpin Haines' effortless charisma. Despite its textural richness, it's feather-light; it's also comely and stylish. In fact, Metric's neophyte effort might be their best. Grow Up and Blow Away's phrasing is redolent of another album that was being recorded around the same time, which also felt like it could have made some mainstream waves had it appeared a few years earlier and shed a few experimental tendencies: Dismemberment Plan's Change. It's stiffly funky, with prickly mechanical drums, supple bass lines, and skittering piano loops as its propulsive grist. Guitars are present, but they take a backseat to the pianos, and when the do appear, they're often deployed so texturally they sound more like guiros. It's structured more like disco than indie rock: simple, striking passages that would be easy to retrofit for an extended mix loop and shuffle. Like Travis Morrison, Haines is more attuned to the stylized melodies of modern r&b than indie rock's more naturalistic, colloquial singing style. She swings with a simple yet elegant dexterity from syllable to bell-clear syllable. This especially comes to the fore on "The Twist", a dreamy r&b synth dirge that sounds like a mannered precursor to Cocorosie's "Werewolf". Haines' lyrics are also remindful of Morrison's, with their pithy, existential inclinations. The title track, a meditation on suburban ennui set to an ice-blue ribbon of fizzy synths, gives us the first of the album's many modern koans: "If this is the life, why does it feel so good to die today?" (or "fly away," as Polaroid would have it). "Hardwire", sultry and chiming, gives us the skyscraping chorus "You are everything; you are nothing at all." And "Rock Me Now", a spoken-word piece about burning out in Vegas, is almost hard to swallow, but Haines really sells it. Perhaps her confidence stems from having Paul Haines, a poet who often collaborated with jazz muscians, for a father, most notably on Escalator Over the Hill with Carla Bley. But that work was dark and impenetrable in the Scott Walker mold, while "Rock Me Now" is a jazzbo wisp, breezy and trim. It's a manicured lawn to her father's impenetrable weeds. "His value declined when he offered his name," Haines breathes, slipping into a staccato backing harmony as Shaw echoes her in eerie falsetto over a disco churn. "My old flame broke the 12-bar blues just to prove he could," Haines coos amid the splashy drums and mincing pianos of "On the Sly". "He pays the airline DJs now; he is everywhere," while the kids "get high and eat TV." With evocative lines like these, Haines roughs out the proportions of her subjective world, focusing on whatever details command her attention from her post in its very center. And she doesn't take this subjectivity for granted: "Climb the wall to make the sun rise in time," she sings on "Soft Rock Star" (which appears here in two distinct yet complementary versions). This drive to render the world not as a set of facts, but as a phantasmagorical realm wholly contingent on the presence of a viewer, gives the album its lyrical heft and specific personality. Paired with early Metric's less-is-more approach, it makes for an immersive record that feels much fresher than its long incubation period would seem to warrant."

f(x)

4 Walls

Pop/R&B

Sheldon Pearce

Over the last couple of years, f(x) have become one of the few K-pop groups with real international appeal and a sizable fan base in the States. The group's sophomore album, 2013’s Pink Tape, was a pop collage of ambitious sounds and ideas that tinkered with K-pop formulas, and it still stands as one of the best records the genre has ever produced. Last year’s Red Light offered a decidedly edgier synthpop sound that leaned more toward the club, though it didn’t quite meet the standard set by its predecessor. And during the promo for Red Light, group member Sulli, an actress and star for the conglomerate S.M. Entertainment, was noticeably absent from scheduled media events. After talk of mental exhaustion and a temporary f(x) hiatus, Sulli officially withdrew from the group in August, leaving K-pop’s most consistent act in a state of flux. 4 Walls is f(x)'s fourth album and first with four members—hence the name—and it lands right where Pink Tape and Red Light intersect, creating a sleek electropop fun-house filled with an eclectic group of generation-spanning pop singles that fit together as a long-playing piece. It’s also the first K-pop comeback to fully acknowledge a lineup change—going as far as incorporating it into the album's marketing and lyrics—but it doesn't change much about the group’s sound. This is a superficial rebirth; though the album’s lead single and title track has veiled references to changing and becoming new, f(x)’s synthpop bounce remains steadfast and uncompromised. And though Sulli was undoubtedly a standout among the group, her departure allows others to grab the spotlight: Now, not only does rapper Amber have the opportunity to rap more, she also gets the chance to use her alto range to flesh out harmonies and bring greater balance to records like "Rude Love", an ambitious, hook-heavy tune that rivals the group's most infectious songs. Many tracks on 4 Walls are sourced through Jam Factory, a music publisher that uses American musicians to create lyrics and melodies for Asian markets. The company’s strength lies in penning sounds without borders, and some of 4 Walls’ strongest collaborations involve producer LDN Noise, who creates pop songs with bridges that function as hooks and transitions that overlap to keep songs stimulating. Album closer "When I’m Alone", meanwhile, was originally co-written by Carly Rae Jepsen for her recent E•MO•TION album. But the real X-factor is longtime f(x) collaborator, writer, and K-pop superproducer Kenzie, who wrote two of the album's most curious songs: "Papi" and "Cash Me Out". A Berklee School of Music grad, Kenzie navigates the cultural divide better than anyone. Listening to any K-pop record (or any foreign language record, really) can prove to be a challenging experience for casual listeners simply due to the added communication barrier. You can also lose some key information in translation—even when you know what's being said, there's a layer of context missing. Still, just like any other type of music, a listener has the opportunity to fill in some of that context on their own; stripping Korean of its code is no different than reinterpreting a really dense English lyric. 4 Walls is even more accessible because f(x) songs tend to have a lot of Western cues: Many of the melodies recall songs from the American pop canon and, as with many K-pop songs, there are English lyrics spliced in throughout (at one point, Amber raps, "I was low key/ That’s the old me/ Now there’s Top 10 honeys tryna phone me"). Western pop fans don’t need to be heavily invested in the K-pop world to get the appeal of f(x)’s music, and 4 Walls is an enjoyable listen even for those not looking to broach the language gap. Korean is a beautiful language with long multi-syllabic words that unspool in clumps and it carries American-stylized pop melodies fluently, breaking up long vowel sounds to fit into sonic phrases. There are few better introductions to K-pop than f(x), and 4 Walls is a strong introduction to f(x) 2.0.

Artist: f(x), Album: 4 Walls, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "Over the last couple of years, f(x) have become one of the few K-pop groups with real international appeal and a sizable fan base in the States. The group's sophomore album, 2013’s Pink Tape, was a pop collage of ambitious sounds and ideas that tinkered with K-pop formulas, and it still stands as one of the best records the genre has ever produced. Last year’s Red Light offered a decidedly edgier synthpop sound that leaned more toward the club, though it didn’t quite meet the standard set by its predecessor. And during the promo for Red Light, group member Sulli, an actress and star for the conglomerate S.M. Entertainment, was noticeably absent from scheduled media events. After talk of mental exhaustion and a temporary f(x) hiatus, Sulli officially withdrew from the group in August, leaving K-pop’s most consistent act in a state of flux. 4 Walls is f(x)'s fourth album and first with four members—hence the name—and it lands right where Pink Tape and Red Light intersect, creating a sleek electropop fun-house filled with an eclectic group of generation-spanning pop singles that fit together as a long-playing piece. It’s also the first K-pop comeback to fully acknowledge a lineup change—going as far as incorporating it into the album's marketing and lyrics—but it doesn't change much about the group’s sound. This is a superficial rebirth; though the album’s lead single and title track has veiled references to changing and becoming new, f(x)’s synthpop bounce remains steadfast and uncompromised. And though Sulli was undoubtedly a standout among the group, her departure allows others to grab the spotlight: Now, not only does rapper Amber have the opportunity to rap more, she also gets the chance to use her alto range to flesh out harmonies and bring greater balance to records like "Rude Love", an ambitious, hook-heavy tune that rivals the group's most infectious songs. Many tracks on 4 Walls are sourced through Jam Factory, a music publisher that uses American musicians to create lyrics and melodies for Asian markets. The company’s strength lies in penning sounds without borders, and some of 4 Walls’ strongest collaborations involve producer LDN Noise, who creates pop songs with bridges that function as hooks and transitions that overlap to keep songs stimulating. Album closer "When I’m Alone", meanwhile, was originally co-written by Carly Rae Jepsen for her recent E•MO•TION album. But the real X-factor is longtime f(x) collaborator, writer, and K-pop superproducer Kenzie, who wrote two of the album's most curious songs: "Papi" and "Cash Me Out". A Berklee School of Music grad, Kenzie navigates the cultural divide better than anyone. Listening to any K-pop record (or any foreign language record, really) can prove to be a challenging experience for casual listeners simply due to the added communication barrier. You can also lose some key information in translation—even when you know what's being said, there's a layer of context missing. Still, just like any other type of music, a listener has the opportunity to fill in some of that context on their own; stripping Korean of its code is no different than reinterpreting a really dense English lyric. 4 Walls is even more accessible because f(x) songs tend to have a lot of Western cues: Many of the melodies recall songs from the American pop canon and, as with many K-pop songs, there are English lyrics spliced in throughout (at one point, Amber raps, "I was low key/ That’s the old me/ Now there’s Top 10 honeys tryna phone me"). Western pop fans don’t need to be heavily invested in the K-pop world to get the appeal of f(x)’s music, and 4 Walls is an enjoyable listen even for those not looking to broach the language gap. Korean is a beautiful language with long multi-syllabic words that unspool in clumps and it carries American-stylized pop melodies fluently, breaking up long vowel sounds to fit into sonic phrases. There are few better introductions to K-pop than f(x), and 4 Walls is a strong introduction to f(x) 2.0."

AlunaGeorge

Body Music

Pop/R&B

Carrie Battan

Music fandom often follows a slow boomerang trajectory: listen to top-40 radio through your tween and early teen years, reject those impulses in favor of more cerebral, left-of-center music as you're growing up, lean back toward pop as you settle into adulthood. The last couple of years have found a crop of young independent artists boldly attempting to reconcile those stages of their own listening life cycles, walking a tightrope of poptimism and experimentalism to create confectionary, homespun electronic music that’s sometimes described as future-pop. Grimes gushes about Mariah Carey and Aphex Twin in the same breath; Canadian duo Purity Ring have listed “Justin Timberlake, Clams Casino, and Holy Other” as inspirational forces behind their prismatic fairy tales; Glaswegian electro trio Chvrches have spoken about loving Fugazi and the Cure in interviews before divulging plans to cover Whitney Houston’s “It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay” in live shows. These omnivorous tendencies-- along with the breakdown of genre boundaries and advancement of affordable home recording technology-- have created inviting territory for the cleverest and most enterprising young musicians to explore. Another intriguing act within the growing corral of future-pop artists is AlunaGeorge, a UK duo comprised of vocalist Aluna Francis and producer George Reid. When the two began giving interviews last year, they mentioned their love of old Timbaland and Neptunes-produced hits along with affinities for Radiohead, the Knife, and Joanna Newsom. Together the pair have adeptly synthesized those tastes and perfected a futuristic sound that blends wonky, wobbly beats drawn from 2-step and glitch with the irresistible hooks of “TRL”-era pop and the 90s R&B it was heavily indebted to. A decade ago, Aluna Francis might have been a long-lost member of Dream, the all-girl group behind the sleeper hit “He Loves U Not”, or a contestant on Diddy’s ill-fated “Making the Band”. The pair’s lyrics can even feel as though they were written for young teens of an era before smartphones and social media platforms mediated pubescent growing pains. “I usually wait for you to call/ But it’s getting closer between me and you,” Francis laments on the balladesque new song “Friends to Lovers”. “How do you make the change from friends to lovers/ When you risk looking like a fool?” Following last year’s EP on Brooklyn label Tri Angle, their debut album Body Music arrives on a major (Island in the UK, the indie Vagrant in the U.S.); about half of its songs are new. The collection is a remarkably seamless extension of their early songs, an expert execution of a concept and aesthetic that felt perfectly crystallized even before anyone knew who the duo were. While there’s nothing on Body Music that hits quite as hard as their breakout hit, the crystalline R&B song “You Know You Like It”, there’s hardly a weak track to be found (save a misguided bonus cover of Montell Jordan’s “This Is How We Do It”). They tinker with a bit of balladry (“Friends to Lovers”), niche dance genres (“Lost & Found”), and lite disco-funk (“Kaleidescope Love”), but everything retains a uniformly slick veneer, propelled by Francis’ slightly warped, nasal vocals and ice-princess posture. There’s an enticing liquidity that carries over from the earlier material-- beyond lyrics like “I want to be a diver into the sea” and “I've been treading water for your love”, the songs can sound like water hitting hard, shiny surfaces, or like ice chips being shot though narrow chrome tubes. The entire album is sexy and strange and sugary all at once. That these songs were recorded over the course of a couple years (straddling a major-label deal) and still maintain total fluidity throughout speaks to the strength and maturity of the duo’s initial formula. But there, in the word formula, lies the catch. There's not much wrong with Body Music, but its constellation of contemporary electro-pop elements can sometimes feel too slick for its own good. Francis and Reid almost do themselves a disservice by being so competent, by executing a single, well-defined sound so consistently and so tidily that the record can begin to create a lull. That’s been the fate of some of AlunaGeorge’s peers as well: Purity Ring’s 2012 debut possessed the same paradoxically frustrating one-note perfection; Chvrches’ sound is crisp and singular enough that they could face a similar challenge. It’s also possible that the sheer number of artists springing up and inhabiting this sphere slackens the future angle in all this future-pop. For Francis and Reid, one possible escape from their shiny little box might be to further experiment with blossoming dance music trends-- something they successfully tried their hand at on a recent collaboration with Disclosure, another UK duo doing exciting, retro-futuristic things with newly malleable genre boundaries. But for now, it's hard to complain about AlunaGeorge being a little bit too focused.

Artist: AlunaGeorge, Album: Body Music, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "Music fandom often follows a slow boomerang trajectory: listen to top-40 radio through your tween and early teen years, reject those impulses in favor of more cerebral, left-of-center music as you're growing up, lean back toward pop as you settle into adulthood. The last couple of years have found a crop of young independent artists boldly attempting to reconcile those stages of their own listening life cycles, walking a tightrope of poptimism and experimentalism to create confectionary, homespun electronic music that’s sometimes described as future-pop. Grimes gushes about Mariah Carey and Aphex Twin in the same breath; Canadian duo Purity Ring have listed “Justin Timberlake, Clams Casino, and Holy Other” as inspirational forces behind their prismatic fairy tales; Glaswegian electro trio Chvrches have spoken about loving Fugazi and the Cure in interviews before divulging plans to cover Whitney Houston’s “It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay” in live shows. These omnivorous tendencies-- along with the breakdown of genre boundaries and advancement of affordable home recording technology-- have created inviting territory for the cleverest and most enterprising young musicians to explore. Another intriguing act within the growing corral of future-pop artists is AlunaGeorge, a UK duo comprised of vocalist Aluna Francis and producer George Reid. When the two began giving interviews last year, they mentioned their love of old Timbaland and Neptunes-produced hits along with affinities for Radiohead, the Knife, and Joanna Newsom. Together the pair have adeptly synthesized those tastes and perfected a futuristic sound that blends wonky, wobbly beats drawn from 2-step and glitch with the irresistible hooks of “TRL”-era pop and the 90s R&B it was heavily indebted to. A decade ago, Aluna Francis might have been a long-lost member of Dream, the all-girl group behind the sleeper hit “He Loves U Not”, or a contestant on Diddy’s ill-fated “Making the Band”. The pair’s lyrics can even feel as though they were written for young teens of an era before smartphones and social media platforms mediated pubescent growing pains. “I usually wait for you to call/ But it’s getting closer between me and you,” Francis laments on the balladesque new song “Friends to Lovers”. “How do you make the change from friends to lovers/ When you risk looking like a fool?” Following last year’s EP on Brooklyn label Tri Angle, their debut album Body Music arrives on a major (Island in the UK, the indie Vagrant in the U.S.); about half of its songs are new. The collection is a remarkably seamless extension of their early songs, an expert execution of a concept and aesthetic that felt perfectly crystallized even before anyone knew who the duo were. While there’s nothing on Body Music that hits quite as hard as their breakout hit, the crystalline R&B song “You Know You Like It”, there’s hardly a weak track to be found (save a misguided bonus cover of Montell Jordan’s “This Is How We Do It”). They tinker with a bit of balladry (“Friends to Lovers”), niche dance genres (“Lost & Found”), and lite disco-funk (“Kaleidescope Love”), but everything retains a uniformly slick veneer, propelled by Francis’ slightly warped, nasal vocals and ice-princess posture. There’s an enticing liquidity that carries over from the earlier material-- beyond lyrics like “I want to be a diver into the sea” and “I've been treading water for your love”, the songs can sound like water hitting hard, shiny surfaces, or like ice chips being shot though narrow chrome tubes. The entire album is sexy and strange and sugary all at once. That these songs were recorded over the course of a couple years (straddling a major-label deal) and still maintain total fluidity throughout speaks to the strength and maturity of the duo’s initial formula. But there, in the word formula, lies the catch. There's not much wrong with Body Music, but its constellation of contemporary electro-pop elements can sometimes feel too slick for its own good. Francis and Reid almost do themselves a disservice by being so competent, by executing a single, well-defined sound so consistently and so tidily that the record can begin to create a lull. That’s been the fate of some of AlunaGeorge’s peers as well: Purity Ring’s 2012 debut possessed the same paradoxically frustrating one-note perfection; Chvrches’ sound is crisp and singular enough that they could face a similar challenge. It’s also possible that the sheer number of artists springing up and inhabiting this sphere slackens the future angle in all this future-pop. For Francis and Reid, one possible escape from their shiny little box might be to further experiment with blossoming dance music trends-- something they successfully tried their hand at on a recent collaboration with Disclosure, another UK duo doing exciting, retro-futuristic things with newly malleable genre boundaries. But for now, it's hard to complain about AlunaGeorge being a little bit too focused."

Helado Negro

Island Universe Story: Selected Works

Electronic

Philip Sherburne

When Roberto Lange performs as Helado Negro, there's not a lot to watch. He's an engaging singer and performer, but aside from the occasional knob tweak, his backing tracks stream from his laptop and assorted electronic gizmos with little intervention. Where another electronic musician might overcompensate with garish videos, Lange has come up with a curious, low-key solution that is a perfect fit for his curious, low-key music: He's flanked onstage by three figures who don't do much more than sway back and forth, ever so gently, dressed head to toe in tinsel. When your eye wanders from Lange's person, they're there to catch your gaze, reflecting the light like disco balls run through a shredder. Those mute, cryptic figures make an appearance on Island Universe Story*: Selected Works*: Bits of their tinsel are mixed right into the clear vinyl on which the records are pressed. I like to think of the sparkly strands a little like religious relics, imbued with the aura of each show and each wearer. The unusual presentation suits the album, a condensed edition of Helado Negro's three-volume Island Universe Story cassette series, released between 2012 and 2014. The series is itself unusual. Lange has described its songs, which encompass a variety of experiments and one-off techniques, as a kind of shadow narrative within his catalog—not "outtakes or afterthoughts or byproducts or B-sides," but something "like the dark side of the moon: always present but… just out of sight." Invisibility has always been of special interest to Lange, who was born in Florida to Ecuadorian immigrants and often sings, in Spanish and English, of slipping between worlds. His 2013 album was titled Invisible Life, and there's a song called "Invisible Heartbeat" on 2014's Double Youth**. On "We Will You," the first song on the new collection, he sings, "There's a future that doesn't see me." It's an immediate highlight of the record, with a deep-diving vocoder melody that recalls Basic Channel's underwater dub. "Enfocando" ("Focusing"), which follows, is another standout, with an odd collection of sounds—harpsichord-like synth melody, reggae-inspired guitar backbeat, jaunty whistling—that he rolls around like a palmful of jewel-toned baubles. "Enfocando," he sings, over and over, in his throaty almost-whisper, allowing each contrapuntal strand to zoom briefly into focus. One of the stumbling blocks on Helado Negro's last two albums has been their relatively uniform palettes, so it's gratifying to hear him trying out so many different sounds and styles and moods here. Richmond, Virginia's Trey Pollard, a collaborator of Matthew E. White and Natalie Prass, lends watery pedal steel to "Mitad de Tu Mundo," a sort of ambient dub lullaby. "Stop Living Dead," which features Pollard's arrangements for string octet, has something of the dissonant, plastic feel of Arca's Mutant, as the acoustic source material is stretched into strange, synthetic shapes. "Enters," the album's most atypical cut, pairs major-key vocoder with 160-BPM electro rhythms, like a fuzzy Drexciyan daydream. And while most of the album is dominated by Lange's cool voice, which lingers over koan-like statements in a drowsy sing-song cadence, one of the album's most affecting tracks, "Detroit," is a slow-motion electro-funk instrumental where Lange's vocals are limited to background breaths and coos. Yet Island Universe Story also coheres surprisingly well, given its scattered provenance. As a front to back listen, it may be more satisfying than any of his "real" albums. In a text accompanying the first cassette, Lange wrote of using the tapes to explore "subconscious whisperings, [a] deep labyrinth of dot-connecting"—a prescient approach, given the way that playlists, in the streaming era, have supposedly supplanted albums as the primary mode of long form listening. In putting together this Island Universe Story collection, Lange has made his own playlist of his subconscious whisperings, and it's the tinsel that serves as the connective tissue between them all.

Artist: Helado Negro, Album: Island Universe Story: Selected Works, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "When Roberto Lange performs as Helado Negro, there's not a lot to watch. He's an engaging singer and performer, but aside from the occasional knob tweak, his backing tracks stream from his laptop and assorted electronic gizmos with little intervention. Where another electronic musician might overcompensate with garish videos, Lange has come up with a curious, low-key solution that is a perfect fit for his curious, low-key music: He's flanked onstage by three figures who don't do much more than sway back and forth, ever so gently, dressed head to toe in tinsel. When your eye wanders from Lange's person, they're there to catch your gaze, reflecting the light like disco balls run through a shredder. Those mute, cryptic figures make an appearance on Island Universe Story*: Selected Works*: Bits of their tinsel are mixed right into the clear vinyl on which the records are pressed. I like to think of the sparkly strands a little like religious relics, imbued with the aura of each show and each wearer. The unusual presentation suits the album, a condensed edition of Helado Negro's three-volume Island Universe Story cassette series, released between 2012 and 2014. The series is itself unusual. Lange has described its songs, which encompass a variety of experiments and one-off techniques, as a kind of shadow narrative within his catalog—not "outtakes or afterthoughts or byproducts or B-sides," but something "like the dark side of the moon: always present but… just out of sight." Invisibility has always been of special interest to Lange, who was born in Florida to Ecuadorian immigrants and often sings, in Spanish and English, of slipping between worlds. His 2013 album was titled Invisible Life, and there's a song called "Invisible Heartbeat" on 2014's Double Youth**. On "We Will You," the first song on the new collection, he sings, "There's a future that doesn't see me." It's an immediate highlight of the record, with a deep-diving vocoder melody that recalls Basic Channel's underwater dub. "Enfocando" ("Focusing"), which follows, is another standout, with an odd collection of sounds—harpsichord-like synth melody, reggae-inspired guitar backbeat, jaunty whistling—that he rolls around like a palmful of jewel-toned baubles. "Enfocando," he sings, over and over, in his throaty almost-whisper, allowing each contrapuntal strand to zoom briefly into focus. One of the stumbling blocks on Helado Negro's last two albums has been their relatively uniform palettes, so it's gratifying to hear him trying out so many different sounds and styles and moods here. Richmond, Virginia's Trey Pollard, a collaborator of Matthew E. White and Natalie Prass, lends watery pedal steel to "Mitad de Tu Mundo," a sort of ambient dub lullaby. "Stop Living Dead," which features Pollard's arrangements for string octet, has something of the dissonant, plastic feel of Arca's Mutant, as the acoustic source material is stretched into strange, synthetic shapes. "Enters," the album's most atypical cut, pairs major-key vocoder with 160-BPM electro rhythms, like a fuzzy Drexciyan daydream. And while most of the album is dominated by Lange's cool voice, which lingers over koan-like statements in a drowsy sing-song cadence, one of the album's most affecting tracks, "Detroit," is a slow-motion electro-funk instrumental where Lange's vocals are limited to background breaths and coos. Yet Island Universe Story also coheres surprisingly well, given its scattered provenance. As a front to back listen, it may be more satisfying than any of his "real" albums. In a text accompanying the first cassette, Lange wrote of using the tapes to explore "subconscious whisperings, [a] deep labyrinth of dot-connecting"—a prescient approach, given the way that playlists, in the streaming era, have supposedly supplanted albums as the primary mode of long form listening. In putting together this Island Universe Story collection, Lange has made his own playlist of his subconscious whisperings, and it's the tinsel that serves as the connective tissue between them all."

The Strokes

Room on Fire

Rock

Rob Mitchum

Okay, can someone please remind me why The Strokes were such a polarizing force about two years ago? Listening to Is This It last week had me scratching my head over how it managed to become the Roe vs. Wade of the rock crit world in 2001, with everyone forced to choose sides: "saviors of rock!" or "everything that's wrong with music today!" At the time, I found myself in the latter category, ironically earning myself a spot on this very staff with a lengthy diatribe against the band's hype machine, socioeconomic background, and rampant influence-pilfering. You know, basically everything but the music. I feel pretty silly about such grandstanding nowadays, having finally listened to, and embraced, at least the show-stopping middle third of The Strokes' debut. But with the release of Room on Fire, both sides of The Great Strokes Debate look a little foolish; NYC's finest have all but given birth to an identical twin. In the interim, a perplexing flirtation with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich ("you know, 'Last Nite' was just a few lasers away from being perfect!") was scrapped, and the band's relentless touring failed to lead them down the cockier, arena-rock path some suspected they'd travel. Instead, Room on Fire is eleven songs sharing DNA with its predecessor, a follow-up of more sleepy, contagious mono-pop that doesn't sound diligently recorded so much as yawned out. This is far from a bad thing, largely because The Strokes seem almost pathologically unable to write a song that isn't immediately catchy. Tracks like "Reptilia", "Meet Me in the Bathroom", and "Under Control" take their place alongside the highlights of the band's debut, all hitting that perfect contrast of woozy nonchalance and taut guitar work that appears to be the alpha and omega of their stylistic inventory. That there's nothing new or innovative to be found here is sure to be a common complaint, though only those who prize evolution over knowing one's strengths will cry fraud. Speaking of the originality quotient-- and not to add more historical tinder to the fire of what bands The Strokes supposedly owe a debt to, but-- lead guitarist Nick Valensi is sweating The Pixies' Joey Santiago something fierce here. His development is the only newish detail I can detect on Room on Fire, and it's an inspiration that lends improvement; Santiago's beautifully simple lead lines were The Pixies' secret weapon, and Valensi employs a similar humble style to lend a melodic counterpoint to the proceedings. Whether showing up at the Halloween party as The Cars' keyboard on "12:51" or contributing slow-hand solos to "What Ever Happened?" and "You Talk Way Too Much", it's an extra spritz of tuneship that only assists The Strokes' infectious ways. Of course, Julian Casablancas is a far cry from Frank Black as vocalists go, but it can at least be said that he knows his place through Room on Fire. Wisely avoiding the unbecoming screaminess of subpar Is This It tracks like "Take It or Leave It" and "New York City Cops", he instead applies a cough syrupy croon to "Under Control" and "The End Is No End", its bum notes smoothed out by his payphone vocal effect addiction. Casablancas also appears to have moved beyond the smirking misogyny of his early lyrics, just as the cover art is sagely chosen to continue the abstract graphic theme of the Stateside edition of Is This It rather than the Smell the Glove-style UK version. Meanwhile, the rhythm section, the band's Achilles' heel, continues to miraculously scrape by, lending these tracks a vaguely new wave air despite slack-limp playing (hey guys, trade Godrich's number for the DFA's and you might be onto something). Drummer Fabrizio Moretti has always tended to sound a bit like a drum machine, and here his best work happens when he shares the drummer's stool with a sampler-- "The Way It Is" and "Meet Me in the Bathroom" shuffle with the best technology 1983 had to offer. Bassman Nikolai Fraiture, mostly relegated to backbone status on this outing, carries less of the band's melodic weight than he did on Is This It but gets a front-of-stage moment on the perfectly choreographed breakdown of "Reptilia". It remains to be seen whether old white men will continue to trumpet The Strokes as leading the cause of hiphopicide, and if young white idealists will stand firm on the opposite side, regarding the band as the Nike of indie rock (and no doubt fixating their conspiracy theories on Casablancas' sarcastic aside "keepin' down the underground, oh no!"); what's clear is that The Fab(rizio) Five neither deserve, nor desire, either status-- their goals are about as unpretentious and uncomplicated as possible. They may not be able to get away with milking this formula for many more albums, but for now, Room on Fire's eleven songs find them drowsily getting away with what they do best.

Artist: The Strokes, Album: Room on Fire, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "Okay, can someone please remind me why The Strokes were such a polarizing force about two years ago? Listening to Is This It last week had me scratching my head over how it managed to become the Roe vs. Wade of the rock crit world in 2001, with everyone forced to choose sides: "saviors of rock!" or "everything that's wrong with music today!" At the time, I found myself in the latter category, ironically earning myself a spot on this very staff with a lengthy diatribe against the band's hype machine, socioeconomic background, and rampant influence-pilfering. You know, basically everything but the music. I feel pretty silly about such grandstanding nowadays, having finally listened to, and embraced, at least the show-stopping middle third of The Strokes' debut. But with the release of Room on Fire, both sides of The Great Strokes Debate look a little foolish; NYC's finest have all but given birth to an identical twin. In the interim, a perplexing flirtation with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich ("you know, 'Last Nite' was just a few lasers away from being perfect!") was scrapped, and the band's relentless touring failed to lead them down the cockier, arena-rock path some suspected they'd travel. Instead, Room on Fire is eleven songs sharing DNA with its predecessor, a follow-up of more sleepy, contagious mono-pop that doesn't sound diligently recorded so much as yawned out. This is far from a bad thing, largely because The Strokes seem almost pathologically unable to write a song that isn't immediately catchy. Tracks like "Reptilia", "Meet Me in the Bathroom", and "Under Control" take their place alongside the highlights of the band's debut, all hitting that perfect contrast of woozy nonchalance and taut guitar work that appears to be the alpha and omega of their stylistic inventory. That there's nothing new or innovative to be found here is sure to be a common complaint, though only those who prize evolution over knowing one's strengths will cry fraud. Speaking of the originality quotient-- and not to add more historical tinder to the fire of what bands The Strokes supposedly owe a debt to, but-- lead guitarist Nick Valensi is sweating The Pixies' Joey Santiago something fierce here. His development is the only newish detail I can detect on Room on Fire, and it's an inspiration that lends improvement; Santiago's beautifully simple lead lines were The Pixies' secret weapon, and Valensi employs a similar humble style to lend a melodic counterpoint to the proceedings. Whether showing up at the Halloween party as The Cars' keyboard on "12:51" or contributing slow-hand solos to "What Ever Happened?" and "You Talk Way Too Much", it's an extra spritz of tuneship that only assists The Strokes' infectious ways. Of course, Julian Casablancas is a far cry from Frank Black as vocalists go, but it can at least be said that he knows his place through Room on Fire. Wisely avoiding the unbecoming screaminess of subpar Is This It tracks like "Take It or Leave It" and "New York City Cops", he instead applies a cough syrupy croon to "Under Control" and "The End Is No End", its bum notes smoothed out by his payphone vocal effect addiction. Casablancas also appears to have moved beyond the smirking misogyny of his early lyrics, just as the cover art is sagely chosen to continue the abstract graphic theme of the Stateside edition of Is This It rather than the Smell the Glove-style UK version. Meanwhile, the rhythm section, the band's Achilles' heel, continues to miraculously scrape by, lending these tracks a vaguely new wave air despite slack-limp playing (hey guys, trade Godrich's number for the DFA's and you might be onto something). Drummer Fabrizio Moretti has always tended to sound a bit like a drum machine, and here his best work happens when he shares the drummer's stool with a sampler-- "The Way It Is" and "Meet Me in the Bathroom" shuffle with the best technology 1983 had to offer. Bassman Nikolai Fraiture, mostly relegated to backbone status on this outing, carries less of the band's melodic weight than he did on Is This It but gets a front-of-stage moment on the perfectly choreographed breakdown of "Reptilia". It remains to be seen whether old white men will continue to trumpet The Strokes as leading the cause of hiphopicide, and if young white idealists will stand firm on the opposite side, regarding the band as the Nike of indie rock (and no doubt fixating their conspiracy theories on Casablancas' sarcastic aside "keepin' down the underground, oh no!"); what's clear is that The Fab(rizio) Five neither deserve, nor desire, either status-- their goals are about as unpretentious and uncomplicated as possible. They may not be able to get away with milking this formula for many more albums, but for now, Room on Fire's eleven songs find them drowsily getting away with what they do best."

Horse Lords

Interventions

Experimental

Philip Sherburne

Horse Lords make music with guitar, bass, drums, and sometimes saxophone, but you couldn't really call what they do rock music. Rock is just a small piece of the greater amalgamation—a simple-yet-complex affair that welds repetitive riffing in strange time signatures to microtonal harmonies that glint like flecks of mica. It might be tempting to call it math rock, but these aren't problems to be solved—they're patterns that unfold as if of their own accord. Maybe "biology rock" would be more apt. It's fluid, not angular, and instead of architecture, branches and rivers and spiraling sunflower heads feel like its analogues in the physical world. The Baltimore band has released two albums up to this point, both of which alternate switchbacking studies in rhythm and drone with noisy, knotty studio experiments. They've also released three freeform "mixtapes" containing sidelong collages of full-throttle rave-ups, modular synth sketches, and live recordings whose audio fidelity suggests that they may have been recorded to a Dictaphone at the bottom of someone's gym bag. Interventions marks a major step forward in every way: The jams are both more focused and more hypnotic, while the quality of the recordings has a newfound clarity and fullness that does wonders for the music. Guitarist Owen Gardner and bassist Max Eilbacher play instruments re-fretted according to the principles of just intonation, and their curious tuning—intermingled with saxophonist Andrew Bernstein's complementary bleat—yields an unusual and visceral sound. It's subtle, but you can feel it vibrating in the air all around you. "Truthers," which opens the album, plunges you straight into the band's muscular minimalism. Drummer Sam Haberman doles out a lurching rhythm in 6/8 time while guitar, bass, and saxophone pile up in teetering heaps. Their scales have an odd, in-between quality, neither major nor minor, that makes me think of Sahara Desert blues crossed with the smoldering skronk of the Stooges' Fun House. Throughout the album, they'll return again and again to the same essential themes, and the fact that "Toward the Omega Point," "Time Slip," and "Bending to the Lash" sound like they are in the same key as "Truthers" lends to Interventions' deep sense of structural integrity. But they never stop pushing forward: The unhinged "Toward the Omega Point," in which Bernstein sets aside his saxophone in order to lay down complex polyrhythms on percussion, veers into an unexpected country blues before pivoting back into Glenn Branca territory, while the brooding "Time Slip" overdubs guitars and sax in creamy waves over a toe-scuffing groove in five. Much like their mixtapes, the excellently sequenced album is broken up by shorter, sketch-like pieces. "Encounter I / Transfinite Flow" braids taut guitar plucks and staccato sax blasts around one another like the strands of a double helix; "Intervention I" is a chiming modular synth miniature that feels like standing in the lobby of a Reno casino; and "Encounter II / Intervention II," the album's still center, is a mournful saxophone solo, suffused in reverb, that sounds like it was recorded in a dank underground chamber. Following the punishing onslaught of "Bending to the Lash," the album closes with "Never Ended," a disorienting swirl of chants and street noise recorded at the Baltimore protests following the death of Freddie Gray. You wouldn't necessarily recognize the source material, but knowing its provenance helps explain some of the album's urgency. This is a band that believes that experimental music has the potential to be more than merely aesthetic, and every one of their choices—like taking apart their instruments and rebuilding them according to an alternate musical logic—speaks to a desire to upend the status quo. Sometimes difficult and always thrilling, Interventions asks listeners to meet it halfway—and rewards them copiously when they do.

Artist: Horse Lords, Album: Interventions, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "Horse Lords make music with guitar, bass, drums, and sometimes saxophone, but you couldn't really call what they do rock music. Rock is just a small piece of the greater amalgamation—a simple-yet-complex affair that welds repetitive riffing in strange time signatures to microtonal harmonies that glint like flecks of mica. It might be tempting to call it math rock, but these aren't problems to be solved—they're patterns that unfold as if of their own accord. Maybe "biology rock" would be more apt. It's fluid, not angular, and instead of architecture, branches and rivers and spiraling sunflower heads feel like its analogues in the physical world. The Baltimore band has released two albums up to this point, both of which alternate switchbacking studies in rhythm and drone with noisy, knotty studio experiments. They've also released three freeform "mixtapes" containing sidelong collages of full-throttle rave-ups, modular synth sketches, and live recordings whose audio fidelity suggests that they may have been recorded to a Dictaphone at the bottom of someone's gym bag. Interventions marks a major step forward in every way: The jams are both more focused and more hypnotic, while the quality of the recordings has a newfound clarity and fullness that does wonders for the music. Guitarist Owen Gardner and bassist Max Eilbacher play instruments re-fretted according to the principles of just intonation, and their curious tuning—intermingled with saxophonist Andrew Bernstein's complementary bleat—yields an unusual and visceral sound. It's subtle, but you can feel it vibrating in the air all around you. "Truthers," which opens the album, plunges you straight into the band's muscular minimalism. Drummer Sam Haberman doles out a lurching rhythm in 6/8 time while guitar, bass, and saxophone pile up in teetering heaps. Their scales have an odd, in-between quality, neither major nor minor, that makes me think of Sahara Desert blues crossed with the smoldering skronk of the Stooges' Fun House. Throughout the album, they'll return again and again to the same essential themes, and the fact that "Toward the Omega Point," "Time Slip," and "Bending to the Lash" sound like they are in the same key as "Truthers" lends to Interventions' deep sense of structural integrity. But they never stop pushing forward: The unhinged "Toward the Omega Point," in which Bernstein sets aside his saxophone in order to lay down complex polyrhythms on percussion, veers into an unexpected country blues before pivoting back into Glenn Branca territory, while the brooding "Time Slip" overdubs guitars and sax in creamy waves over a toe-scuffing groove in five. Much like their mixtapes, the excellently sequenced album is broken up by shorter, sketch-like pieces. "Encounter I / Transfinite Flow" braids taut guitar plucks and staccato sax blasts around one another like the strands of a double helix; "Intervention I" is a chiming modular synth miniature that feels like standing in the lobby of a Reno casino; and "Encounter II / Intervention II," the album's still center, is a mournful saxophone solo, suffused in reverb, that sounds like it was recorded in a dank underground chamber. Following the punishing onslaught of "Bending to the Lash," the album closes with "Never Ended," a disorienting swirl of chants and street noise recorded at the Baltimore protests following the death of Freddie Gray. You wouldn't necessarily recognize the source material, but knowing its provenance helps explain some of the album's urgency. This is a band that believes that experimental music has the potential to be more than merely aesthetic, and every one of their choices—like taking apart their instruments and rebuilding them according to an alternate musical logic—speaks to a desire to upend the status quo. Sometimes difficult and always thrilling, Interventions asks listeners to meet it halfway—and rewards them copiously when they do."

Young L

Praktica

Rap

Jordan Sargent

It's funny now, knowing what we know about Lil B, to go back and watch the video for the Pack's 2006 track "Vans", which features a then-17-year-old Based God tentatively slurring a perfectly amateurish verse about the importance of wearing skate shoes. Lil B is not completely a different person now-- he's retained a good amount of the intense goofiness present in both "Vans" and its video-- but he's obviously mutated into a much different and more singular artist since his days with the Pack. The song's producer, Young L (he also raps the third verse), has also grown into his own since "Vans". But where Lil B's turned into a bizarre rap savant, L has stuck to the slaps of hyphy that were the song's backbone, gravitating toward construction and sounds that are less pop and more outwardly showy, with rapping that often sounds like it's merely cruising along for the ride. This has presented a bit of a problem at times for Young L, who, across various mixtapes in the past few years, has hit on some great tracks but generally had trouble matching the quality of his rapping to the quality of his producing. With Praktica, his most recent tape, he comes as close as ever to accomplishing that, and the result is a record that feels for the first time like he's found the formula for making consistently good solo songs. His rapping is still more about charisma, charm, and knowing how to ride his own beats than about lyrics, and the one song here that's tagged as a freestyle is indistinguishable from everything else on the tape. His rapping is both dumb and dumb, and it's a style that works for him here because there's a youthful brashness and confidence in his delivery, something that allows L to sell his rapping without coming off as trying too hard. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the beats are uniformly great. L's production has always been spare, heavy on keyboard beeps, and equally reliant on bass and open space. On Praktica he cannibalizes sounds from Mario and Pac-Man in a way that is inspired and novel instead of gimmicky. At a crucially digestible nine tracks, there is no overextension of the idea, and the sounds of classic video games are so harmonious with the production style Young L's cultivated that you wouldn't even bat an eye if the samples he pulls weren't so immediately identifiable. As befits an internet-savvy artist who had a hit song in his teens and also owns his own clothing line, L has always seemed filled to the brim with ideas, and the tricks he pulls on songs like "Arcade Pussy" and "Super Nintendo" are some of his best yet. There is still something very raw about Praktica, and L in general, that will turn some people off, and you almost have to be willing to approach his verses as if they're choruses-- where small phrases and snatches of melody will embed themselves in your head-- to fully appreciate his rapping. But there is something undeniably kinetic about this cocky, self-assured artist honing his sound and skill level that helps make up for much of the tape's shortcomings. There may be a disappointing 20-track tape on the way, but if L continues in this direction, we may bizarrely look back on "Vans" as the breeding ground for a few of the most distinctive young voices in West Coast hip-hop.

Artist: Young L, Album: Praktica, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.1 Album review: "It's funny now, knowing what we know about Lil B, to go back and watch the video for the Pack's 2006 track "Vans", which features a then-17-year-old Based God tentatively slurring a perfectly amateurish verse about the importance of wearing skate shoes. Lil B is not completely a different person now-- he's retained a good amount of the intense goofiness present in both "Vans" and its video-- but he's obviously mutated into a much different and more singular artist since his days with the Pack. The song's producer, Young L (he also raps the third verse), has also grown into his own since "Vans". But where Lil B's turned into a bizarre rap savant, L has stuck to the slaps of hyphy that were the song's backbone, gravitating toward construction and sounds that are less pop and more outwardly showy, with rapping that often sounds like it's merely cruising along for the ride. This has presented a bit of a problem at times for Young L, who, across various mixtapes in the past few years, has hit on some great tracks but generally had trouble matching the quality of his rapping to the quality of his producing. With Praktica, his most recent tape, he comes as close as ever to accomplishing that, and the result is a record that feels for the first time like he's found the formula for making consistently good solo songs. His rapping is still more about charisma, charm, and knowing how to ride his own beats than about lyrics, and the one song here that's tagged as a freestyle is indistinguishable from everything else on the tape. His rapping is both dumb and dumb, and it's a style that works for him here because there's a youthful brashness and confidence in his delivery, something that allows L to sell his rapping without coming off as trying too hard. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the beats are uniformly great. L's production has always been spare, heavy on keyboard beeps, and equally reliant on bass and open space. On Praktica he cannibalizes sounds from Mario and Pac-Man in a way that is inspired and novel instead of gimmicky. At a crucially digestible nine tracks, there is no overextension of the idea, and the sounds of classic video games are so harmonious with the production style Young L's cultivated that you wouldn't even bat an eye if the samples he pulls weren't so immediately identifiable. As befits an internet-savvy artist who had a hit song in his teens and also owns his own clothing line, L has always seemed filled to the brim with ideas, and the tricks he pulls on songs like "Arcade Pussy" and "Super Nintendo" are some of his best yet. There is still something very raw about Praktica, and L in general, that will turn some people off, and you almost have to be willing to approach his verses as if they're choruses-- where small phrases and snatches of melody will embed themselves in your head-- to fully appreciate his rapping. But there is something undeniably kinetic about this cocky, self-assured artist honing his sound and skill level that helps make up for much of the tape's shortcomings. There may be a disappointing 20-track tape on the way, but if L continues in this direction, we may bizarrely look back on "Vans" as the breeding ground for a few of the most distinctive young voices in West Coast hip-hop."

Spaceghostpurrp

B.M.W. EP

Rap

Corban Goble

In a year where rap label brass scrambled to sign buzzy talent, Miami rapper SpaceGhostPurrp ended up in a pretty weird place-- on powerhouse British indie 4AD, folded up into a roster that included Grimes and Purity Ring. He responded with the assured and detailed Mysterious Phonk: The Chronicles of SpaceGhostPurrp, an album that found him inhabiting a smartly chosen array of styles, zoning in on concrete-colored street montages and further articulating his own bleak worldview. The hedonistic, violent lyrical free association that had colored early tapes like Blvcklvnd Rvdix 66.6 (1991) and Nasa the Mixtape was exchanged for more focus, nuance, and space. Around the same time, SGP was also becoming tight with one of 2012's fastest rising rappers, A$AP Rocky, with whom he collaborated to produce frequent A$AP set-opener, "Pretty Flacko". SGP is an unconventional, sinisterly-minded MC, to be sure, but he was becoming a small star on his own terms, aligning with folks angled upward, and business blossoming thanks to continued placement and allure of his hypnotic, druggy production. Soon, Rocky and SpaceGhost's relationship disintegrated-- the reasons why depend on who you ask, but just witness the hardly-veiled menace in Rocky's "Jodye"-- and SGP returned to his native Florida, re-engaging the music of his emergence with B.M.W., an EP in name only, clocking in a hair shy of 50 minutes. Though SGP has never never broken too far from the droning, chorus-free stripper anthems of his earliest work, here he retreats fully into the world of his former nome de plume, Muney Jordan, snapping lines like, "I gotta whole lotta ice/ I'm gonna take you wife" over rattling, carsick production outfitted with 8-bit blips and samples of women moaning sexually. Notably absent is the relative clear-mindedness of calculated, dark cult fare thoroughly referenced on Chronicles--  cuts like "The Black God", a track (and a visual aesthetic) that wouldn't feel out of place rolled up on an iconic Wu-Tang Clan solo release. While B.M.W. is filled with polished versions of some SpaceGhostPurrp's hallmarks-- the drugged-up soul sample on "Cum & Git Yuh Some," the venomous chants on "Rep FLA (Flawda)"-- it's the work of an artist who isn't quite sure what he wants to say or how he wants to say it. The largely unnotable posse Raider Klan don't add much. SpaceGhostPurrp is a hard guy to figure out and it seems like he's trying to keep it that way. The primer that accompanies the official download-- "Instructions before listening to this EP : 1. Get yo weed 2. Get yo drank 3. Get yo pillz 4. Get yo coke 5. Get yo bitch 6. Get Phucked up 7. Then blast this shit "-- jives with whatever message SGP is feeling at the moment; at one point, he raps "I ain't a hypocrite but I ain't perfect/ There is a higher power / Man I used to be an atheist / Until God made me reminisce / That the faith is the key to self, I keep forgettin' it," but then immediately recedes into his default, desolate objectification. It all adds up to an uneven listen, to say the least.

Artist: Spaceghostpurrp, Album: B.M.W. EP, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 5.4 Album review: "In a year where rap label brass scrambled to sign buzzy talent, Miami rapper SpaceGhostPurrp ended up in a pretty weird place-- on powerhouse British indie 4AD, folded up into a roster that included Grimes and Purity Ring. He responded with the assured and detailed Mysterious Phonk: The Chronicles of SpaceGhostPurrp, an album that found him inhabiting a smartly chosen array of styles, zoning in on concrete-colored street montages and further articulating his own bleak worldview. The hedonistic, violent lyrical free association that had colored early tapes like Blvcklvnd Rvdix 66.6 (1991) and Nasa the Mixtape was exchanged for more focus, nuance, and space. Around the same time, SGP was also becoming tight with one of 2012's fastest rising rappers, A$AP Rocky, with whom he collaborated to produce frequent A$AP set-opener, "Pretty Flacko". SGP is an unconventional, sinisterly-minded MC, to be sure, but he was becoming a small star on his own terms, aligning with folks angled upward, and business blossoming thanks to continued placement and allure of his hypnotic, druggy production. Soon, Rocky and SpaceGhost's relationship disintegrated-- the reasons why depend on who you ask, but just witness the hardly-veiled menace in Rocky's "Jodye"-- and SGP returned to his native Florida, re-engaging the music of his emergence with B.M.W., an EP in name only, clocking in a hair shy of 50 minutes. Though SGP has never never broken too far from the droning, chorus-free stripper anthems of his earliest work, here he retreats fully into the world of his former nome de plume, Muney Jordan, snapping lines like, "I gotta whole lotta ice/ I'm gonna take you wife" over rattling, carsick production outfitted with 8-bit blips and samples of women moaning sexually. Notably absent is the relative clear-mindedness of calculated, dark cult fare thoroughly referenced on Chronicles--  cuts like "The Black God", a track (and a visual aesthetic) that wouldn't feel out of place rolled up on an iconic Wu-Tang Clan solo release. While B.M.W. is filled with polished versions of some SpaceGhostPurrp's hallmarks-- the drugged-up soul sample on "Cum & Git Yuh Some," the venomous chants on "Rep FLA (Flawda)"-- it's the work of an artist who isn't quite sure what he wants to say or how he wants to say it. The largely unnotable posse Raider Klan don't add much. SpaceGhostPurrp is a hard guy to figure out and it seems like he's trying to keep it that way. The primer that accompanies the official download-- "Instructions before listening to this EP : 1. Get yo weed 2. Get yo drank 3. Get yo pillz 4. Get yo coke 5. Get yo bitch 6. Get Phucked up 7. Then blast this shit "-- jives with whatever message SGP is feeling at the moment; at one point, he raps "I ain't a hypocrite but I ain't perfect/ There is a higher power / Man I used to be an atheist / Until God made me reminisce / That the faith is the key to self, I keep forgettin' it," but then immediately recedes into his default, desolate objectification. It all adds up to an uneven listen, to say the least."

Nine Inch Nails

Not the Actual Events EP

Rock

Benjamin Scheim

Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor has spent decades griping about the music business, dating back to his complaints about TVT in 1992 and his resulting “secret recording sessions” of the Broken EP. Now in some ways, he is the music business, a power player whose pioneering moves—surprise releases, extreme secrecy, fanbase cultivation, big budget commercial soundtrack jobs—have become global-pop-star S.O.P. So when he boldly introduces his surprise new EP Not the Actual Events as “an unfriendly, fairly impenetrable record that we needed to make” there is some cause for both intrigue and healthy skepticism. For longtime followers of Reznor, a few scenarios suggest themselves. Maybe he's hoping to stoke enthusiasm for a slight, 21-minute EP that mainly serves as a promotional tool for a trove of concurrent reissues. Maybe he thinks he's done something remarkable, because he still sees himself as an innovator, even though his output since reforming NIN in 2005 has been well-textured but either comfortably formulaic (With Teeth, Hesitation Marks, The Slip's first half) or uncomfortably ambitious (Ghosts I-IV, the second half of The Slip, parts of Year Zero). Optimists and diehards might wish for a third option: Maybe he's legitimately produced powerful and fresh music under the Nine Inch Nails banner. To Reznor’s credit and detriment, he's managed to touch on each scenario. There are only a handful of examples in Reznor’s post-millennial NIN output where the group have departed from their turbulent, sturm-und-drang industrialism. There’s the piano and Vocoder-driven disco barnburner “All The Love In the World,” opener to the otherwise-toothless With Teeth; the gloomy, overlong and under-baked instrumentals-only closet-cleaner Ghosts I-IV; and on 2013’s Hesitation Marks, the baffling, sunny “Everything,” a rare major-key tune in the band’s catalog. The more interesting of these, “All the Love in the World” and “Everything,” are the opposite of “unfriendly” or “impenetrable”—their disarming warmth is what makes them memorable. Nine Inch Nails have spent nearly thirty years trading on a signature type of abrasive, parents-repelling industrial melancholia—they’ve provided decades’ worth of precedent in this style, and it would be it pretty damned difficult to release anything that could notably set itself apart on these terms. The band’s most “impenetrable” release so far is Ghosts, which demonstrates how that word can frequently mean “boring.” Despite its rough-edges production, Not the Actual Events is neither unfriendly nor is it inaccessible, especially for fans. It does, however, deliver a kind of visceral fury that NIN hasn’t recreated since its mid-’90s Downward Spiral heyday. “Burning Bright (Field on Fire)” begins with a detuned, overdrive-saturated guitar riff reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine rather than the crunchy, sharp riffs of standard NIN before erupting into a swarm of shimmering guitars that give the synesthesiastic effect of being inside the field aflame. The song doesn’t necessarily go anywhere, but its crude, unhinged force feels vital. On “Branches/Bones,” the band stays truer to their post-2005 form. A textbook post-Fragile NIN single, it follows in the efficient and winning form of The Slip’s “1,000,000” and “Discipline” or the Nirvana-meets-NIN 2009 single “Not So Pretty Now,” tracks that show Reznor as a biting pop songwriter rather than a brooding noisemaker. However, his decisions to wedge in a chorus of “It’s like I’ve been here before!” and cut the proceedings off abruptly after less than two minutes feel perverse, suggesting a desire to tease what’s worked in the past but deny the full-on pleasure of nostalgia. Unfortunately, the album’s other three tracks don’t bring enough new ideas or fun to justify that denial. The burbling synth number “Dear World,” goes nowhere and says little, while cacophonous album centerpiece “She’s Gone Away” is a spiritual sister to “Burning Bright” but plods rather than runs; at six minutes of churning sludge, you wish Reznor would have lopped off two and half and added them to the opener. Penultimate headbanger “The Idea of You” resembles a Broken-era track updated for 1997’s Reznor-produced Lost Highway soundtrack, with ear-shredding trebly guitar riffs reminiscent of (gulp) NIN-lovers Rammstein and the clear, plaintively struck piano notes from Reznor solo cut “Driver Down.” It’s disappointing that after a four-year wait—let alone the pretension of “[it’s] a record we needed to make”—Not the Actual Events turns out to be so slight, at just five tracks with no dramatic shift in form. It’s the least essential non-instrumental album the band has released. But with the subsequent announcement that “two major events” for NIN in 2017 are now also promised, perhaps Reznor himself knows this already, and it will turn out that that this slight record was in fact, not the actual event.

Artist: Nine Inch Nails, Album: Not the Actual Events EP, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.3 Album review: "Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor has spent decades griping about the music business, dating back to his complaints about TVT in 1992 and his resulting “secret recording sessions” of the Broken EP. Now in some ways, he is the music business, a power player whose pioneering moves—surprise releases, extreme secrecy, fanbase cultivation, big budget commercial soundtrack jobs—have become global-pop-star S.O.P. So when he boldly introduces his surprise new EP Not the Actual Events as “an unfriendly, fairly impenetrable record that we needed to make” there is some cause for both intrigue and healthy skepticism. For longtime followers of Reznor, a few scenarios suggest themselves. Maybe he's hoping to stoke enthusiasm for a slight, 21-minute EP that mainly serves as a promotional tool for a trove of concurrent reissues. Maybe he thinks he's done something remarkable, because he still sees himself as an innovator, even though his output since reforming NIN in 2005 has been well-textured but either comfortably formulaic (With Teeth, Hesitation Marks, The Slip's first half) or uncomfortably ambitious (Ghosts I-IV, the second half of The Slip, parts of Year Zero). Optimists and diehards might wish for a third option: Maybe he's legitimately produced powerful and fresh music under the Nine Inch Nails banner. To Reznor’s credit and detriment, he's managed to touch on each scenario. There are only a handful of examples in Reznor’s post-millennial NIN output where the group have departed from their turbulent, sturm-und-drang industrialism. There’s the piano and Vocoder-driven disco barnburner “All The Love In the World,” opener to the otherwise-toothless With Teeth; the gloomy, overlong and under-baked instrumentals-only closet-cleaner Ghosts I-IV; and on 2013’s Hesitation Marks, the baffling, sunny “Everything,” a rare major-key tune in the band’s catalog. The more interesting of these, “All the Love in the World” and “Everything,” are the opposite of “unfriendly” or “impenetrable”—their disarming warmth is what makes them memorable. Nine Inch Nails have spent nearly thirty years trading on a signature type of abrasive, parents-repelling industrial melancholia—they’ve provided decades’ worth of precedent in this style, and it would be it pretty damned difficult to release anything that could notably set itself apart on these terms. The band’s most “impenetrable” release so far is Ghosts, which demonstrates how that word can frequently mean “boring.” Despite its rough-edges production, Not the Actual Events is neither unfriendly nor is it inaccessible, especially for fans. It does, however, deliver a kind of visceral fury that NIN hasn’t recreated since its mid-’90s Downward Spiral heyday. “Burning Bright (Field on Fire)” begins with a detuned, overdrive-saturated guitar riff reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine rather than the crunchy, sharp riffs of standard NIN before erupting into a swarm of shimmering guitars that give the synesthesiastic effect of being inside the field aflame. The song doesn’t necessarily go anywhere, but its crude, unhinged force feels vital. On “Branches/Bones,” the band stays truer to their post-2005 form. A textbook post-Fragile NIN single, it follows in the efficient and winning form of The Slip’s “1,000,000” and “Discipline” or the Nirvana-meets-NIN 2009 single “Not So Pretty Now,” tracks that show Reznor as a biting pop songwriter rather than a brooding noisemaker. However, his decisions to wedge in a chorus of “It’s like I’ve been here before!” and cut the proceedings off abruptly after less than two minutes feel perverse, suggesting a desire to tease what’s worked in the past but deny the full-on pleasure of nostalgia. Unfortunately, the album’s other three tracks don’t bring enough new ideas or fun to justify that denial. The burbling synth number “Dear World,” goes nowhere and says little, while cacophonous album centerpiece “She’s Gone Away” is a spiritual sister to “Burning Bright” but plods rather than runs; at six minutes of churning sludge, you wish Reznor would have lopped off two and half and added them to the opener. Penultimate headbanger “The Idea of You” resembles a Broken-era track updated for 1997’s Reznor-produced Lost Highway soundtrack, with ear-shredding trebly guitar riffs reminiscent of (gulp) NIN-lovers Rammstein and the clear, plaintively struck piano notes from Reznor solo cut “Driver Down.” It’s disappointing that after a four-year wait—let alone the pretension of “[it’s] a record we needed to make”—Not the Actual Events turns out to be so slight, at just five tracks with no dramatic shift in form. It’s the least essential non-instrumental album the band has released. But with the subsequent announcement that “two major events” for NIN in 2017 are now also promised, perhaps Reznor himself knows this already, and it will turn out that that this slight record was in fact, not the actual event."

Bob Drake

13 Songs and a Thing

Rock

Dominique Leone

Musicians don't exist on desert islands, isolated from human contact, any more than other folks. This piece of (seeming) common sense sometimes gets lost in the shuffle when discussing the effects of music: It's often described in similar terms as a natural disaster-- "it moved me"; "the music blew me away"; "it destroyed all my expectations". Thus, the creators of the stuff are indirectly positioned as only semi-mortal figures, working "magic" with our hearts and souls-- or worse, the cult of celebrity claims their bodies entirely, elevating what was probably a humbling creative experience into the work of gods. And while that pays excellent tribute to the mysticism of inspiration, it probably distances the artists from the rest of the pack (i.e., us) more than necessary. Bob Drake plays distant music (literally, from the south of France), but apparently takes no pleasure in abstractions that might, in the hands of a lesser musician, quickly alienate an audience. An abashed fan of olde-thyme pompasaurs like Yes and Uriah Heep, he rarely shies away from extroverted splashes of sound, be they cacophonous guitar solos or wailing vocal harmonies. Yet, these moments seem less like flashes-in-the-pan than merely broader strokes on his palette. In fact, where you might expect his songs to erupt into classical arcana, his underlying forms appear to be closer to traditional folk, albeit murder ballads and nursery tale night beasts. It's almost as if Drake's relentless attention to detail and humility, even when obscured by a few layers of feedback, keeps whatever pretensions he has in check. 13 Songs and a Thing is Drake's fifth solo record, and continues in a similarly eclectic vein as last year's excellent The Skull Mailbox and Other Horrors. However, where that album was a song-cycle of short stories, 13 Songs doesn't have a running narrative to tie it together. Fans of his work shouldn't be disappointed, though, as per usual, there is no mistaking his sound. The opener "Chase", written by Dominic Frontiere (theme composer for the 60s horror show The Outer Limits) and arranged by Drake, would actually fit well on the last album, as its frenzied, claustrophobic terror is hammered home via an aggressive acoustic guitar jag and nervous violin. It's a junk symphony that would make as much sense coming from Tom Waits as Danny Elfman. Similarly, "Ten for a Dime" uses intricate guitar figures and bowed double bass to create an atmosphere not far from an Alfred Hitchcock soundtrack, yet Drake's later juxtaposition of strange bluegrass riffs and Mellotron-soaked goth place it in a realm of his own design. Acoustic textures lend understated warmth to most of this music, as do the omnipresent trad-American folk references. The fractured waltz "In Case the Insulator Fails" could almost be an outtake from O Brother, Where Art Thou were it not for the offhandedly dissonant asides from violin and electric guitar. It leads into the brief "Griffin", which is musically akin to Bela Bartok's take on The Beatles' "I've Just Seen a Face", but detailing Drake's erotic fascination with a museum statue places it well outside either folk-pop or modern classical music. The most striking moments on 13 Songs come when comparisons are much harder to make. "And the Sun" is a gorgeous piece featuring distant classical piano and a barely audible gauze of ambient noise, punctuated by random bursts of radio static. It's an almost perfect realization of almost forgotten mental imagery, as if years of life and music have obscured the original beauty of the piano music-- and in fact, Drake notes that part of the piece was recorded in the early 80s. Guest vocalist Dick Verdult carries both "Foam I" and "Rtuuf" with throaty Spanish, and lends the former tune elegance not far removed from Paul Simon's buoyant work on Graceland. Of course, Drake throws in a cavernous echo and expansive, almost overburdened arrangement of deep bass and primal, thudding percussion to knock it off center. And then there's "Building with Bones", aka "A Thing": an epic backbreaker that sounds pretty close to the ground beneath my house caving in for about 13 straight minutes. Despite repeated demonstrations of idiosyncrasy and an apparent dedication to turning left when a right is expected, 13 Songs is hardly an exclusive experience. I'd argue that Drake might even be approaching a hybrid of folk and avant-garde music that includes the most engaging characteristics of both without ever really betraying one for the other. Maybe that leaves him alone in music circles (though I might make similar claims for the aforementioned Simon and Waits), but should be all the easier to pick his brand of noise from a crowd for listeners. Sometimes it doesn't pay to look for links to the outside world, and his tunes are inviting enough that it may never occur to you to do so anyway.

Artist: Bob Drake, Album: 13 Songs and a Thing, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.3 Album review: "Musicians don't exist on desert islands, isolated from human contact, any more than other folks. This piece of (seeming) common sense sometimes gets lost in the shuffle when discussing the effects of music: It's often described in similar terms as a natural disaster-- "it moved me"; "the music blew me away"; "it destroyed all my expectations". Thus, the creators of the stuff are indirectly positioned as only semi-mortal figures, working "magic" with our hearts and souls-- or worse, the cult of celebrity claims their bodies entirely, elevating what was probably a humbling creative experience into the work of gods. And while that pays excellent tribute to the mysticism of inspiration, it probably distances the artists from the rest of the pack (i.e., us) more than necessary. Bob Drake plays distant music (literally, from the south of France), but apparently takes no pleasure in abstractions that might, in the hands of a lesser musician, quickly alienate an audience. An abashed fan of olde-thyme pompasaurs like Yes and Uriah Heep, he rarely shies away from extroverted splashes of sound, be they cacophonous guitar solos or wailing vocal harmonies. Yet, these moments seem less like flashes-in-the-pan than merely broader strokes on his palette. In fact, where you might expect his songs to erupt into classical arcana, his underlying forms appear to be closer to traditional folk, albeit murder ballads and nursery tale night beasts. It's almost as if Drake's relentless attention to detail and humility, even when obscured by a few layers of feedback, keeps whatever pretensions he has in check. 13 Songs and a Thing is Drake's fifth solo record, and continues in a similarly eclectic vein as last year's excellent The Skull Mailbox and Other Horrors. However, where that album was a song-cycle of short stories, 13 Songs doesn't have a running narrative to tie it together. Fans of his work shouldn't be disappointed, though, as per usual, there is no mistaking his sound. The opener "Chase", written by Dominic Frontiere (theme composer for the 60s horror show The Outer Limits) and arranged by Drake, would actually fit well on the last album, as its frenzied, claustrophobic terror is hammered home via an aggressive acoustic guitar jag and nervous violin. It's a junk symphony that would make as much sense coming from Tom Waits as Danny Elfman. Similarly, "Ten for a Dime" uses intricate guitar figures and bowed double bass to create an atmosphere not far from an Alfred Hitchcock soundtrack, yet Drake's later juxtaposition of strange bluegrass riffs and Mellotron-soaked goth place it in a realm of his own design. Acoustic textures lend understated warmth to most of this music, as do the omnipresent trad-American folk references. The fractured waltz "In Case the Insulator Fails" could almost be an outtake from O Brother, Where Art Thou were it not for the offhandedly dissonant asides from violin and electric guitar. It leads into the brief "Griffin", which is musically akin to Bela Bartok's take on The Beatles' "I've Just Seen a Face", but detailing Drake's erotic fascination with a museum statue places it well outside either folk-pop or modern classical music. The most striking moments on 13 Songs come when comparisons are much harder to make. "And the Sun" is a gorgeous piece featuring distant classical piano and a barely audible gauze of ambient noise, punctuated by random bursts of radio static. It's an almost perfect realization of almost forgotten mental imagery, as if years of life and music have obscured the original beauty of the piano music-- and in fact, Drake notes that part of the piece was recorded in the early 80s. Guest vocalist Dick Verdult carries both "Foam I" and "Rtuuf" with throaty Spanish, and lends the former tune elegance not far removed from Paul Simon's buoyant work on Graceland. Of course, Drake throws in a cavernous echo and expansive, almost overburdened arrangement of deep bass and primal, thudding percussion to knock it off center. And then there's "Building with Bones", aka "A Thing": an epic backbreaker that sounds pretty close to the ground beneath my house caving in for about 13 straight minutes. Despite repeated demonstrations of idiosyncrasy and an apparent dedication to turning left when a right is expected, 13 Songs is hardly an exclusive experience. I'd argue that Drake might even be approaching a hybrid of folk and avant-garde music that includes the most engaging characteristics of both without ever really betraying one for the other. Maybe that leaves him alone in music circles (though I might make similar claims for the aforementioned Simon and Waits), but should be all the easier to pick his brand of noise from a crowd for listeners. Sometimes it doesn't pay to look for links to the outside world, and his tunes are inviting enough that it may never occur to you to do so anyway."

Global Goon

Vatican Nitez

Electronic

Paul Cooper

Rephlex have never got beyond being recognized as the label that Aphex helped to build. Though he's not released anything significant on the label, the Aphex ghost wanders nightly through its halls. Sometimes that spectral presence is so strong that people are ready to mistake artists entirely unrelated to Aphex as being him by another name. Johnny Hawk, who records under the wahoo Global Goon alias is a victim of mistaken identity. Hawk's debut album, 1996's Goon, was widely credited to Aphex. Guess it didn't bug him. But just a cursory listen to Goon would have let the secret out that Global Goon and Aphex were not born from the same pod; Hawk doesn't share Aphex's appreciation for modern composition and freak-out. That album, while absurd, owes more to the slo-mo wing of Braindance than to the splattercore cadre. Its opening track, "St. Michael" is the IDM cousin of the Fall's "Birmingham School of Business School"-- both share a straight-faced Dadaist's reading of university course catalogs. "Synchropeet" is a ploddingly accompanied vocal raga for the Mogadon-dependent. Hawk's follow-up to Goon, Cradle of History, collected twenty Casio melodies and confirmed his position within the lightly comic section of the Braindance organization. Now, with his third album, Vatican Nitez, Hawk deftly combines these two threads together to produce an amalgam of absurdly faux-naif tuneful IDM. Vatican Nitez doesn't waste time with an intro (hooray!)-- it's straight into "Business Man" and into forty minutes of smile-inducing nuttiness. One of the first noticeable differences between this and earlier works is that it sounds as though Hawk's got access to much better equipment these days. The album doesn't sound cheap-- a gimmick that long ago lost its currency. Because he's no longer obscured by hiss, I can fully appreciate the Goon's concealed artistry. "Jerky Dharma" turns a dalliance with vaguely Asian tonalities into something much less patronizing. During "I'm on the 73," Hawk attempts to conceal his invention by sending every musical element through an immense echo chamber. Despite his most ardent efforts, you can easily discern his idiosyncratic skill. "Kreem Ballet" sums up in five minutes all seven studio volumes of Pete Namlook's Dark Side of the Moog series, and further slaps down Namlook with a first-rate No Pussyfooting impression. The mid-tempo mystery named "Stan's Slaves" possesses such a powerful undertow that I'd love to hear what Hawk could do in collaboration with Goldfrapp. "!" carries on the exploration of tidal currents, adding whistling and woodblock percussion. But by the time the album gets to "Scott Cronce Is the CEO," Hawk has lost steam. The swathes of ambience and the rope-thick Tubeway Army tune totally crush the generic hip-hop beats underneath. Hawk heaps some analog squiggles on top in a vain effort to distinguish the track. "Globy Dubes, Champeen of All Americky" nearly suffers from the same malady. But Hawk ends up correcting previous error by shooting nervy break-neck sequencer lines through the plodding hip-hop and the squiggles. Though Hawk's latest suggests that spending some chill-out time with John Paul II isn't as awkward as I'd have suspected, Vatican Nitez is far from revolutionary. Unlike former labelmate, Leila, Hawk isn't trying to redefine a sound. If you're satisfied with that, Vatican Nitez is a satisfying enough means of cerebral exertion.

Artist: Global Goon, Album: Vatican Nitez, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "Rephlex have never got beyond being recognized as the label that Aphex helped to build. Though he's not released anything significant on the label, the Aphex ghost wanders nightly through its halls. Sometimes that spectral presence is so strong that people are ready to mistake artists entirely unrelated to Aphex as being him by another name. Johnny Hawk, who records under the wahoo Global Goon alias is a victim of mistaken identity. Hawk's debut album, 1996's Goon, was widely credited to Aphex. Guess it didn't bug him. But just a cursory listen to Goon would have let the secret out that Global Goon and Aphex were not born from the same pod; Hawk doesn't share Aphex's appreciation for modern composition and freak-out. That album, while absurd, owes more to the slo-mo wing of Braindance than to the splattercore cadre. Its opening track, "St. Michael" is the IDM cousin of the Fall's "Birmingham School of Business School"-- both share a straight-faced Dadaist's reading of university course catalogs. "Synchropeet" is a ploddingly accompanied vocal raga for the Mogadon-dependent. Hawk's follow-up to Goon, Cradle of History, collected twenty Casio melodies and confirmed his position within the lightly comic section of the Braindance organization. Now, with his third album, Vatican Nitez, Hawk deftly combines these two threads together to produce an amalgam of absurdly faux-naif tuneful IDM. Vatican Nitez doesn't waste time with an intro (hooray!)-- it's straight into "Business Man" and into forty minutes of smile-inducing nuttiness. One of the first noticeable differences between this and earlier works is that it sounds as though Hawk's got access to much better equipment these days. The album doesn't sound cheap-- a gimmick that long ago lost its currency. Because he's no longer obscured by hiss, I can fully appreciate the Goon's concealed artistry. "Jerky Dharma" turns a dalliance with vaguely Asian tonalities into something much less patronizing. During "I'm on the 73," Hawk attempts to conceal his invention by sending every musical element through an immense echo chamber. Despite his most ardent efforts, you can easily discern his idiosyncratic skill. "Kreem Ballet" sums up in five minutes all seven studio volumes of Pete Namlook's Dark Side of the Moog series, and further slaps down Namlook with a first-rate No Pussyfooting impression. The mid-tempo mystery named "Stan's Slaves" possesses such a powerful undertow that I'd love to hear what Hawk could do in collaboration with Goldfrapp. "!" carries on the exploration of tidal currents, adding whistling and woodblock percussion. But by the time the album gets to "Scott Cronce Is the CEO," Hawk has lost steam. The swathes of ambience and the rope-thick Tubeway Army tune totally crush the generic hip-hop beats underneath. Hawk heaps some analog squiggles on top in a vain effort to distinguish the track. "Globy Dubes, Champeen of All Americky" nearly suffers from the same malady. But Hawk ends up correcting previous error by shooting nervy break-neck sequencer lines through the plodding hip-hop and the squiggles. Though Hawk's latest suggests that spending some chill-out time with John Paul II isn't as awkward as I'd have suspected, Vatican Nitez is far from revolutionary. Unlike former labelmate, Leila, Hawk isn't trying to redefine a sound. If you're satisfied with that, Vatican Nitez is a satisfying enough means of cerebral exertion."

Lady Lamb the Beekeeper

After

Rock

Sasha Geffen

Aly Spaltro isn't a teenager anymore, but she was when she wrote much of her Lady Lamb the Beekeeper debut, 2013's Ripely Pine. That album didn't sound like the emergence of a college-aged songwriter so much as it played like an experiment from someone who had already gotten good at putting music together. Full of nerves and breath and blood, Ripely Pine whipped folk tropes into rock'n'roll rambunctiousness, giving her plenty of space to sound precocious. On her second album, After, Spaltro hits one of the unexpected truths of your twenties: that embracing your repressed childlike instincts is one of the more adult things you can do. Ripely Pine struck out big, with elegant metaphors rooted in the natural world. After's track list includes a song called "Milk Duds", suggesting that Lady Lamb's tone has shifted from Ripely's seven-minute ballad "You Are the Apple". "We fell asleep on a box of Milk Duds," she sings on the new song. "They melted into the clubhouse cushions/ I never loved another person/ More than I loved you when I woke that morning." That sticky mess doesn't make the prettiest image in the traditional sense, but Spaltro's probably the first songwriter to find a symbol of her love in a pile of chocolate and caramel and polyester. She's getting braver. After is heartsick to its core—the title seems to eulogize a love affair in a single word—but it's much rowdier than its lyrics alone would imply. On opener "Vena Cava", Spaltro looks at her sleeping partner and sees the fiery death of their relationship as though it's already happening in slow motion all around her. "I can feel how the seams of your ribs will separate from the seams of my ribs," she sings. "I know already how much TV will fail to comfort me in your absence." She switches from two ribcages unraveling to a melancholic Netflix binge in one line. And the song's a jam to boot. Her lyrical muscle lets Lady Lamb oscillate between the visceral and the mundane without so much as a knowing lilt in her voice. Both modes come easily to her, and the tension between them is fertile. There's a parallel tension in the music, too: The strongest songs on After verge on acoustic despondency only to break into a big, crunchy chorus. You can always weep out the pain, but sometimes it's so much more fun to mosh it off. There are plenty of startling moments full of guts and gristle in Lady Lamb's dense lyrics, and then there are the moments when she wanders. The fingerpicked "Sunday Shoes" stretches out between the shoegaze-inflected "Heretic" and "Spat Out Spit", injecting a weird bubble of space into the album's flow. The rousing coda on "Penny Licks" almost feels like an Arcade Fire climax, even though it only arrives in the seventh song. Like Ripely Pine, After clocks in at a solid hour—and it's an hour you'll feel, because while After boasts a stacked lineup of well-crafted songs, it's a choppy ride to make it through them all.

Artist: Lady Lamb the Beekeeper, Album: After, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Aly Spaltro isn't a teenager anymore, but she was when she wrote much of her Lady Lamb the Beekeeper debut, 2013's Ripely Pine. That album didn't sound like the emergence of a college-aged songwriter so much as it played like an experiment from someone who had already gotten good at putting music together. Full of nerves and breath and blood, Ripely Pine whipped folk tropes into rock'n'roll rambunctiousness, giving her plenty of space to sound precocious. On her second album, After, Spaltro hits one of the unexpected truths of your twenties: that embracing your repressed childlike instincts is one of the more adult things you can do. Ripely Pine struck out big, with elegant metaphors rooted in the natural world. After's track list includes a song called "Milk Duds", suggesting that Lady Lamb's tone has shifted from Ripely's seven-minute ballad "You Are the Apple". "We fell asleep on a box of Milk Duds," she sings on the new song. "They melted into the clubhouse cushions/ I never loved another person/ More than I loved you when I woke that morning." That sticky mess doesn't make the prettiest image in the traditional sense, but Spaltro's probably the first songwriter to find a symbol of her love in a pile of chocolate and caramel and polyester. She's getting braver. After is heartsick to its core—the title seems to eulogize a love affair in a single word—but it's much rowdier than its lyrics alone would imply. On opener "Vena Cava", Spaltro looks at her sleeping partner and sees the fiery death of their relationship as though it's already happening in slow motion all around her. "I can feel how the seams of your ribs will separate from the seams of my ribs," she sings. "I know already how much TV will fail to comfort me in your absence." She switches from two ribcages unraveling to a melancholic Netflix binge in one line. And the song's a jam to boot. Her lyrical muscle lets Lady Lamb oscillate between the visceral and the mundane without so much as a knowing lilt in her voice. Both modes come easily to her, and the tension between them is fertile. There's a parallel tension in the music, too: The strongest songs on After verge on acoustic despondency only to break into a big, crunchy chorus. You can always weep out the pain, but sometimes it's so much more fun to mosh it off. There are plenty of startling moments full of guts and gristle in Lady Lamb's dense lyrics, and then there are the moments when she wanders. The fingerpicked "Sunday Shoes" stretches out between the shoegaze-inflected "Heretic" and "Spat Out Spit", injecting a weird bubble of space into the album's flow. The rousing coda on "Penny Licks" almost feels like an Arcade Fire climax, even though it only arrives in the seventh song. Like Ripely Pine, After clocks in at a solid hour—and it's an hour you'll feel, because while After boasts a stacked lineup of well-crafted songs, it's a choppy ride to make it through them all."

Harry Styles

Harry Styles

Pop/R&B

Jamieson Cox

Harry Styles is a master of the middle distance. Look at him turning his right cheek to the camera, strands of wet hair hanging lank, a rogue petal clinging to a clump above his ear: “Sweet Creature is available now. Album is available in ten days. I am available always.” He remains an enigma after spending a half-decade in the world’s most popular boy band and dating one of the world’s biggest pop stars. And yet there’s something about Styles’ combination of roguish charm and eagerness to please that renders him exactly that: available. Leave the right Instagram comment at the right time, and he might show up on your doorstep the next morning with a bag of bagels and coffee with room. The ability to tap into this liminal space between intimacy and detachment is what makes Styles—and Harry Styles, the solo debut he’s releasing about a year and a half after One Direction’s dissolution—so captivating. If you only know one thing about Harry Styles, it’s probably that the album bucks the established trends governing bids for young male solo pop stardom. Styles is uninterested in walking the trail blazed 15 years ago by Justin Timberlake’s Justified, the one along which young male stars signal their newfound maturity by embracing hip-hop, R&B, and overt libidinousness (c.f. Justin Bieber, Nick Jonas, Zayn Malik). He doesn’t seem to care for the Sheeranesque stadium-folk being churned out by One Direction bandmate Niall Horan, either. Instead, Harry Styles wants to be a rock star—your father’s rock star, or maybe even your grandparents’ rock star. And so this sounds like the work of a musician whose desert island discs include Revolver, Tattoo You, and Vinyl: Music From the HBO Original Series - Vol. 1. Styles’ debut isn’t subject to the same pressures that defined late-period One Direction, and its songs don’t need to hold up over a year-long stadium tour. It’s still exceedingly easy to hear Styles and his band—spearheaded by jack-of-all-trades executive producer Jeff Bhasker—tip their caps to a wide variety of rock legends and also-rans. “Sweet Creature” catches Styles taking a crack at his very own version of “Blackbird”; the laughable “Woman” opens with a piano flourish out of Prince’s “Do Me, Baby” before settling down into an Elton John strut. Styles’ stabs at hard rock (the one-two punch of “Only Angel” and “Kiwi”) sound like the Rolling Stones and Wolfmother, respectively. And lead single “Sign of the Times” is a skyscraping Bowie ballad that manages to sound like both fun.’s “We Are Young”—one of Bhasker’s biggest hits—and Coldplay’s “The Scientist.” Take issue with Styles’ taste at your leisure, but there’s no denying his comprehensiveness. His vocal performances are invariably the best parts of these songs. Styles has described his stint in One Direction as “a democracy,” and every song featured a fight for breathing room between four or five hungry young singers. Here, he has space he can use. “Sign of the Times” jumps out of your speakers when he shifts into his thin falsetto, and it climaxes with a series of desperate howls. He makes a convincing alt-country troubadour on “Two Ghosts” and “Ever Since New York” by throwing on a little twang and a healthy helping of world-weariness. The down-home boogie of “Carolina” tests the limits of his nascent swagger. And I’ve never heard someone record their own backing vocals with the enthusiasm and panache Styles brings to Harry Styles. Every hoot, yelp, and chant are delivered with an impish grin, one that makes it hard not to crack a smile of your own. Going it alone gives Styles the space he needs to soar as a vocalist, but it also throws his shortcomings as a writer into sharp relief. Vague allusions, stock characters, and cliché turns of phrase aside, Styles struggles most with writing about women, a shame given that *Harry Styles *is supposed to be “a song cycle about women and relationships.” The subject of “Only Angel” turns out to be a “devil in between the sheets.” The irrepressible Southern flame at the heart of “Carolina” ends up a “good girl” out of the Drake playbook. “Kiwi” is devoted to a “pretty face on a pretty neck” with a “Holland Tunnel for a nose” (because it’s “always backed up,” he quips). “Two Ghosts” only succeeds because it leans on a handful of references to Styles’ most famous ex, and it’s not even the best Taylor Swift song in his catalogue. This parade of sexy badasses is amusing but unmemorable, and Styles’ reliance on trite depictions of wild women is disappointing in part because he seems otherwise unbothered by the demands of traditional masculinity. He shrugs off his imagined secret love affairs with other members of One Direction and wins plaudits for the respect he shows his largely female, largely teenage fanbase. *Harry Styles *might tell you plenty about its namesake’s aesthetic interests and his grown-up turn-ons, but it’s lacking the emotional depth that’s so readily ascribed to him. You finish the album waiting for his pen to catch up with his persona. There’s one moment in which *Harry Styles *transcends its big-name influences. Closer “From the Dining Table” opens with a startling scene: a horny, lonely Styles, jerking off in an opulent hotel room before falling back asleep and getting wasted. “I’ve never felt less cool,” he admits. The writing is frank and economic; it sounds like Styles is singing softly into your ear, a bashful mess. It’s the only song on the album that invites you to consider what it must be like to *be *Harry Styles: unfathomably famous since before you could drive, subjected to unrelenting attention everywhere except bunker-like studios and secluded beaches, forced to zip around and around the world for half a decade when you’re supposed to be figuring out who you are and what you want. And yet “From the Dining Table” sounds less like a complaint than a confession meant for you and you alone. It’s intoxicating, and it ends *Harry Styles *on the most promising possible note.

Artist: Harry Styles, Album: Harry Styles, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "Harry Styles is a master of the middle distance. Look at him turning his right cheek to the camera, strands of wet hair hanging lank, a rogue petal clinging to a clump above his ear: “Sweet Creature is available now. Album is available in ten days. I am available always.” He remains an enigma after spending a half-decade in the world’s most popular boy band and dating one of the world’s biggest pop stars. And yet there’s something about Styles’ combination of roguish charm and eagerness to please that renders him exactly that: available. Leave the right Instagram comment at the right time, and he might show up on your doorstep the next morning with a bag of bagels and coffee with room. The ability to tap into this liminal space between intimacy and detachment is what makes Styles—and Harry Styles, the solo debut he’s releasing about a year and a half after One Direction’s dissolution—so captivating. If you only know one thing about Harry Styles, it’s probably that the album bucks the established trends governing bids for young male solo pop stardom. Styles is uninterested in walking the trail blazed 15 years ago by Justin Timberlake’s Justified, the one along which young male stars signal their newfound maturity by embracing hip-hop, R&B, and overt libidinousness (c.f. Justin Bieber, Nick Jonas, Zayn Malik). He doesn’t seem to care for the Sheeranesque stadium-folk being churned out by One Direction bandmate Niall Horan, either. Instead, Harry Styles wants to be a rock star—your father’s rock star, or maybe even your grandparents’ rock star. And so this sounds like the work of a musician whose desert island discs include Revolver, Tattoo You, and Vinyl: Music From the HBO Original Series - Vol. 1. Styles’ debut isn’t subject to the same pressures that defined late-period One Direction, and its songs don’t need to hold up over a year-long stadium tour. It’s still exceedingly easy to hear Styles and his band—spearheaded by jack-of-all-trades executive producer Jeff Bhasker—tip their caps to a wide variety of rock legends and also-rans. “Sweet Creature” catches Styles taking a crack at his very own version of “Blackbird”; the laughable “Woman” opens with a piano flourish out of Prince’s “Do Me, Baby” before settling down into an Elton John strut. Styles’ stabs at hard rock (the one-two punch of “Only Angel” and “Kiwi”) sound like the Rolling Stones and Wolfmother, respectively. And lead single “Sign of the Times” is a skyscraping Bowie ballad that manages to sound like both fun.’s “We Are Young”—one of Bhasker’s biggest hits—and Coldplay’s “The Scientist.” Take issue with Styles’ taste at your leisure, but there’s no denying his comprehensiveness. His vocal performances are invariably the best parts of these songs. Styles has described his stint in One Direction as “a democracy,” and every song featured a fight for breathing room between four or five hungry young singers. Here, he has space he can use. “Sign of the Times” jumps out of your speakers when he shifts into his thin falsetto, and it climaxes with a series of desperate howls. He makes a convincing alt-country troubadour on “Two Ghosts” and “Ever Since New York” by throwing on a little twang and a healthy helping of world-weariness. The down-home boogie of “Carolina” tests the limits of his nascent swagger. And I’ve never heard someone record their own backing vocals with the enthusiasm and panache Styles brings to Harry Styles. Every hoot, yelp, and chant are delivered with an impish grin, one that makes it hard not to crack a smile of your own. Going it alone gives Styles the space he needs to soar as a vocalist, but it also throws his shortcomings as a writer into sharp relief. Vague allusions, stock characters, and cliché turns of phrase aside, Styles struggles most with writing about women, a shame given that *Harry Styles *is supposed to be “a song cycle about women and relationships.” The subject of “Only Angel” turns out to be a “devil in between the sheets.” The irrepressible Southern flame at the heart of “Carolina” ends up a “good girl” out of the Drake playbook. “Kiwi” is devoted to a “pretty face on a pretty neck” with a “Holland Tunnel for a nose” (because it’s “always backed up,” he quips). “Two Ghosts” only succeeds because it leans on a handful of references to Styles’ most famous ex, and it’s not even the best Taylor Swift song in his catalogue. This parade of sexy badasses is amusing but unmemorable, and Styles’ reliance on trite depictions of wild women is disappointing in part because he seems otherwise unbothered by the demands of traditional masculinity. He shrugs off his imagined secret love affairs with other members of One Direction and wins plaudits for the respect he shows his largely female, largely teenage fanbase. *Harry Styles *might tell you plenty about its namesake’s aesthetic interests and his grown-up turn-ons, but it’s lacking the emotional depth that’s so readily ascribed to him. You finish the album waiting for his pen to catch up with his persona. There’s one moment in which *Harry Styles *transcends its big-name influences. Closer “From the Dining Table” opens with a startling scene: a horny, lonely Styles, jerking off in an opulent hotel room before falling back asleep and getting wasted. “I’ve never felt less cool,” he admits. The writing is frank and economic; it sounds like Styles is singing softly into your ear, a bashful mess. It’s the only song on the album that invites you to consider what it must be like to *be *Harry Styles: unfathomably famous since before you could drive, subjected to unrelenting attention everywhere except bunker-like studios and secluded beaches, forced to zip around and around the world for half a decade when you’re supposed to be figuring out who you are and what you want. And yet “From the Dining Table” sounds less like a complaint than a confession meant for you and you alone. It’s intoxicating, and it ends *Harry Styles *on the most promising possible note."

Metro Boomin

Not All Heroes Wear Capes

Rap

Alphonse Pierre

Fake retirements are hip-hop. Can an artist even be considered a rap icon if they have never bowed out of the game, and then come back months later with a new album? Metro Boomin, aware that it was time for this rite of passage, called it quits in April after remaining mostly silent since December’s Double or Nothing with Big Sean. But the rap world knew Metro would return, they just didn’t know how or when. Would it be on a new Future project? Would he hit the swerve button and release an album with a pop artist? Maybe a Perfect Timing 2, one could only hope? Instead, Metro dropped Not All Heroes Wear Capes, a high-profile guest-filled album that builds on and creates a bigger version of the dark, hard-hitting production that has turned Metro into rap’s definitive producer of the last five years. Since 2013, when Metro established himself with 19 & Boomin, the St. Louis-bred producer flew through the beat-making ranks. From the jump, he impacted the genre with his, “Metro Boomin want some more, nigga” tag, all but making the producer tag a necessity. But where Metro really shined was an ability to elevate the artists he collaborated with—like so many of the beat-making legends. Metro’s beats would become the key in unleashing the creativity in some of rap’s greatest talents: He helped Future tap into his lean-drenched emotions on DS2, transformed Travis Scott into our Auto-Tune overlord on Days Before Rodeo, and managed to scratch one of the last great musical moments out of Kanye West on “Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1.” Not All Heroes Wear Capes doesn’t just broaden Metro’s sound, it’s a showcase for artists relieved to be working with Metro again, because that’s when they are at their most creative. Right now, there is no better case for Metro bringing the most out of an artist than 21 Savage. The East Atlanta rapper finds himself on three of the album’s tracks with the first “Don’t Come Out the House,” using a sinister half-whisper flow to reciprocate the horror score energy felt by Metro’s piano keys and the drums of Memphis’ Tay Keith. The track feels like a pump of adrenaline as the melody cuts out leaving only the rumbling bass of Tay Keith and 21’s villainous whisper. But 21 smartly doesn’t overuse the flow, returning to his standard creaky-voice when Metro’s keys kick back in. He then spits a hurtful bar that will crush the hearts of all of his denim-wearing supporters, “Levi jeans, low self-esteem, he on BlackPeopleMeet.” Then, on “10 Freaky Girls,” Metro shows off how he refined his sampling skills during his hiatus, flipping an ’80s R&B song into a two-stepper spearheaded by 21. He manages to be both comedic and chilling, as his personality feels free, flexing his Ubereats account and using the song’s harmonica outro to speak about the pleasant experience he had when he ran into a guy he robbed from way back. Metro extends his life-giving to guests throughout the album. “Up to Something” with Young Thug and Travis Scott is an instrumental that could fit into an older era of Metro, and Thug and Travis comfortably let their vocal quirks loose. On “Space Cadet,” Metro ushers Gunna into “The Twilight Zone” with a twinkling instrumental, and Gunna responds with one of the album’s bounciest hooks. The “Space Cadet” instrumental, like so much of the album’s production, feels cinematic but thankfully not far removed from his Atlanta-built sound. Metro stumbles a bit when he deviates from that Atlanta sound. “Only You” is a desperate swing from Metro, aimed for the thriving Afrobeats and reggaeton markets, handcuffing WizKid and J Balvin to a beat. Metro remedies that slip up with “Borrowed Love,” a crossover attempt that creates a muddy dance track for the calming vocals of Swae Lee to levitate and WizKid to show why he has become the must-know name in Afrobeats. When rappers hear that Metro Boomin tag, it’s like they’re possessed. It’s why Not All Heroes Wear Capes doesn’t feel like the typical producer album, filled with mixtape leftovers and owed favors. This is Metro Boomin laying the groundwork for his next phase, which at times feels like it could be film scores. When you’ve done it all at 25 years old, some may lose the motivation, but Metro seems ready to keep going, continuing to define the new sound of hip-hop.

Artist: Metro Boomin, Album: Not All Heroes Wear Capes, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "Fake retirements are hip-hop. Can an artist even be considered a rap icon if they have never bowed out of the game, and then come back months later with a new album? Metro Boomin, aware that it was time for this rite of passage, called it quits in April after remaining mostly silent since December’s Double or Nothing with Big Sean. But the rap world knew Metro would return, they just didn’t know how or when. Would it be on a new Future project? Would he hit the swerve button and release an album with a pop artist? Maybe a Perfect Timing 2, one could only hope? Instead, Metro dropped Not All Heroes Wear Capes, a high-profile guest-filled album that builds on and creates a bigger version of the dark, hard-hitting production that has turned Metro into rap’s definitive producer of the last five years. Since 2013, when Metro established himself with 19 & Boomin, the St. Louis-bred producer flew through the beat-making ranks. From the jump, he impacted the genre with his, “Metro Boomin want some more, nigga” tag, all but making the producer tag a necessity. But where Metro really shined was an ability to elevate the artists he collaborated with—like so many of the beat-making legends. Metro’s beats would become the key in unleashing the creativity in some of rap’s greatest talents: He helped Future tap into his lean-drenched emotions on DS2, transformed Travis Scott into our Auto-Tune overlord on Days Before Rodeo, and managed to scratch one of the last great musical moments out of Kanye West on “Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1.” Not All Heroes Wear Capes doesn’t just broaden Metro’s sound, it’s a showcase for artists relieved to be working with Metro again, because that’s when they are at their most creative. Right now, there is no better case for Metro bringing the most out of an artist than 21 Savage. The East Atlanta rapper finds himself on three of the album’s tracks with the first “Don’t Come Out the House,” using a sinister half-whisper flow to reciprocate the horror score energy felt by Metro’s piano keys and the drums of Memphis’ Tay Keith. The track feels like a pump of adrenaline as the melody cuts out leaving only the rumbling bass of Tay Keith and 21’s villainous whisper. But 21 smartly doesn’t overuse the flow, returning to his standard creaky-voice when Metro’s keys kick back in. He then spits a hurtful bar that will crush the hearts of all of his denim-wearing supporters, “Levi jeans, low self-esteem, he on BlackPeopleMeet.” Then, on “10 Freaky Girls,” Metro shows off how he refined his sampling skills during his hiatus, flipping an ’80s R&B song into a two-stepper spearheaded by 21. He manages to be both comedic and chilling, as his personality feels free, flexing his Ubereats account and using the song’s harmonica outro to speak about the pleasant experience he had when he ran into a guy he robbed from way back. Metro extends his life-giving to guests throughout the album. “Up to Something” with Young Thug and Travis Scott is an instrumental that could fit into an older era of Metro, and Thug and Travis comfortably let their vocal quirks loose. On “Space Cadet,” Metro ushers Gunna into “The Twilight Zone” with a twinkling instrumental, and Gunna responds with one of the album’s bounciest hooks. The “Space Cadet” instrumental, like so much of the album’s production, feels cinematic but thankfully not far removed from his Atlanta-built sound. Metro stumbles a bit when he deviates from that Atlanta sound. “Only You” is a desperate swing from Metro, aimed for the thriving Afrobeats and reggaeton markets, handcuffing WizKid and J Balvin to a beat. Metro remedies that slip up with “Borrowed Love,” a crossover attempt that creates a muddy dance track for the calming vocals of Swae Lee to levitate and WizKid to show why he has become the must-know name in Afrobeats. When rappers hear that Metro Boomin tag, it’s like they’re possessed. It’s why Not All Heroes Wear Capes doesn’t feel like the typical producer album, filled with mixtape leftovers and owed favors. This is Metro Boomin laying the groundwork for his next phase, which at times feels like it could be film scores. When you’ve done it all at 25 years old, some may lose the motivation, but Metro seems ready to keep going, continuing to define the new sound of hip-hop."

Twin Sister

Color Your Life

Pop/R&B

Sean Fennessey

Twin Sister are a Brooklyn-by-way-of-Long Island quintet that do so much so well. Their songs have a remarkable sense of atmosphere and romanticism. They nod at their heroes-- maybe Stereolab and Björk, maybe Cocteau Twins or 1980s pop-- without overtly stealing. They seem to know they are capable of great things; perhaps ostentatiously, they released a trailer for Color Your Life, just their second EP (following November 2008's brief but occasionally stunning Vampires With Dreaming Kids). The EP features six songs, one of which is the instrumental "Galaxy Plateau", a stormy, harmonium-lead bit of futzing that is completely inessential. Even then, it's handled with such grace, it never feels presumptuous. Almost earned. Twin Sister's singer, the mousily enchanting Andrea Estella, has the sort of breathy, committed voice that untangles knots. It sits all over the mix on Color Your Life, a significant, if not monumental leap forward for the band. Sometimes Estella is high up, as on "Milk & Honey", a wrenching ballad about what so many of their songs are about: the promise of love and the confusing moments at the beginning and end of every relationship. It's a gorgeous song that quakes and quivers before abruptly ending. The respite is brief before they sharply enter the best thing they have done to date. "All Around and Away We Go" is a magical thing, driving and relaxed at once. Pitchfork's Ryan Schreiber recently compared the song to Andrea True Connection's disco chestnut "More, More, More", and despite the seeming incongruity, that's right on. Twin Sister thrive when things are hushed, as on Vampires' arresting "I Want a House" but they seem unhappy with those simple moves. "All Around" takes them to a new and better place. The rest of Color Your Life weaves in and out with little urgency. "Lady Daydream" is similarly lush, and full of heartfelt declarations-- "If you can't find the sea, I will take you there," Estella sings on the chorus. Seven-minute opener "The Other Side of Your Face" seems to be the unfinished cousin of "All Around and Away We Go"-- it never quite leaves the launching pad. Closer "Phenomenons" is polished and, strangely, almost radio-ready if it had an actual chorus. But that's not who this band is, either. In full, this is a mood record from a band that is still perfecting how to be not-too quiet. Power and volume often come easily to young bands. If things are reversed for Twin Sister, then they probably don't have very much to worry about.

Artist: Twin Sister, Album: Color Your Life, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "Twin Sister are a Brooklyn-by-way-of-Long Island quintet that do so much so well. Their songs have a remarkable sense of atmosphere and romanticism. They nod at their heroes-- maybe Stereolab and Björk, maybe Cocteau Twins or 1980s pop-- without overtly stealing. They seem to know they are capable of great things; perhaps ostentatiously, they released a trailer for Color Your Life, just their second EP (following November 2008's brief but occasionally stunning Vampires With Dreaming Kids). The EP features six songs, one of which is the instrumental "Galaxy Plateau", a stormy, harmonium-lead bit of futzing that is completely inessential. Even then, it's handled with such grace, it never feels presumptuous. Almost earned. Twin Sister's singer, the mousily enchanting Andrea Estella, has the sort of breathy, committed voice that untangles knots. It sits all over the mix on Color Your Life, a significant, if not monumental leap forward for the band. Sometimes Estella is high up, as on "Milk & Honey", a wrenching ballad about what so many of their songs are about: the promise of love and the confusing moments at the beginning and end of every relationship. It's a gorgeous song that quakes and quivers before abruptly ending. The respite is brief before they sharply enter the best thing they have done to date. "All Around and Away We Go" is a magical thing, driving and relaxed at once. Pitchfork's Ryan Schreiber recently compared the song to Andrea True Connection's disco chestnut "More, More, More", and despite the seeming incongruity, that's right on. Twin Sister thrive when things are hushed, as on Vampires' arresting "I Want a House" but they seem unhappy with those simple moves. "All Around" takes them to a new and better place. The rest of Color Your Life weaves in and out with little urgency. "Lady Daydream" is similarly lush, and full of heartfelt declarations-- "If you can't find the sea, I will take you there," Estella sings on the chorus. Seven-minute opener "The Other Side of Your Face" seems to be the unfinished cousin of "All Around and Away We Go"-- it never quite leaves the launching pad. Closer "Phenomenons" is polished and, strangely, almost radio-ready if it had an actual chorus. But that's not who this band is, either. In full, this is a mood record from a band that is still perfecting how to be not-too quiet. Power and volume often come easily to young bands. If things are reversed for Twin Sister, then they probably don't have very much to worry about."

Bomb the Bass

Back to Light

Electronic

Joshua Klein

For much of the 1980s and early 90s, Tim Simenon-- both under his own name and as Bomb the Bass-- worked his way up the UK producer food chain, through his work with Neneh Cherry and later producing Depeche Mode's Ultra. The troubled and trying DM album work apparently took so much out of Simenon that he spent several of the ensuing years recovering. In fact, Bomb the Bass went largely quiet after 1995's On-U Sound clash Clear, with no new album released until 2008's Future Chaos. After a 13-year gap between previous Bomb the Bass records, the announcement of Back to Light was a slight surprise. The new record refines the Bomb the Bass relaunch with the addition of Gui Boratto as co-producer. On paper, this is just what Simenon needed. Bomb the Bass have rarely been about exploring the outer edges of dance music, and indeed the mundane Future Chaos boasted only the barest of nods to then-contemporary trends. Boratto, on the other hand, one of the stars of the Kompakt stable, is a savvy pick to bring Simenon up to date. Boratto's addition seems to have inspired Simenon to loosen up. The blueprint of the record remains familiar to anyone who's heard Bomb the Bass, but the tempos have been slightly upped, the beats aren't quite all weighed down by a shared dour gravity, and the songs given an almost dreamy nuance. Yet the album still mostly mines the same analog gloom of Future Chaos, which in turn recalled Simenon's decade-old work with Depeche Mode. Indeed, DM's Martin Gore even pops up on the instrumental album closer "Milakia", adding keyboards to a track Simenon concedes had been sitting around unfinished for over ten years. That the song fits right in really says it all about the Bomb the Bass disc as a whole-- solid and mostly serviceable. Simenon and Boratto keep the dynamics so even and consistent that very little jumps out. There are glimmers of Boratto's playful light-touch gifts simmering beneath the surface of songs such as "Up the Mountain" (featuring singer Sarah O'Shura of Portland's the Battle of Land and Sea), "Blindspot", or "Burn Less Brighter" (the latter two of which feature Gore-y BtB regular Paul Conboy, as do two other tracks), but they're largely subsumed by Simenon's moodiness. There's nothing wrong with being down, and Simenon does it well. But what Back to Light boasts in studio acumen it lacks in personality. One even suspects Kelley Polar and Richard Davis were also tapped as guest vocalists because their sensibilities were already so in line with what Simenon wanted to achieve and not because they had anything particularly unique or original to offer. From a pioneer like Simenon, the decision to tread water is puzzling, since he remains capable of so much more. After all, not many producers have as strong a grasp of songs as they do sounds, and Simenon has always been one of those few. Hopefully his renewed activity continues apace, and next time his instincts and collaborators encourage him to risk the unfamiliar rather than settle for safety and comfort.

Artist: Bomb the Bass, Album: Back to Light, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 5.0 Album review: "For much of the 1980s and early 90s, Tim Simenon-- both under his own name and as Bomb the Bass-- worked his way up the UK producer food chain, through his work with Neneh Cherry and later producing Depeche Mode's Ultra. The troubled and trying DM album work apparently took so much out of Simenon that he spent several of the ensuing years recovering. In fact, Bomb the Bass went largely quiet after 1995's On-U Sound clash Clear, with no new album released until 2008's Future Chaos. After a 13-year gap between previous Bomb the Bass records, the announcement of Back to Light was a slight surprise. The new record refines the Bomb the Bass relaunch with the addition of Gui Boratto as co-producer. On paper, this is just what Simenon needed. Bomb the Bass have rarely been about exploring the outer edges of dance music, and indeed the mundane Future Chaos boasted only the barest of nods to then-contemporary trends. Boratto, on the other hand, one of the stars of the Kompakt stable, is a savvy pick to bring Simenon up to date. Boratto's addition seems to have inspired Simenon to loosen up. The blueprint of the record remains familiar to anyone who's heard Bomb the Bass, but the tempos have been slightly upped, the beats aren't quite all weighed down by a shared dour gravity, and the songs given an almost dreamy nuance. Yet the album still mostly mines the same analog gloom of Future Chaos, which in turn recalled Simenon's decade-old work with Depeche Mode. Indeed, DM's Martin Gore even pops up on the instrumental album closer "Milakia", adding keyboards to a track Simenon concedes had been sitting around unfinished for over ten years. That the song fits right in really says it all about the Bomb the Bass disc as a whole-- solid and mostly serviceable. Simenon and Boratto keep the dynamics so even and consistent that very little jumps out. There are glimmers of Boratto's playful light-touch gifts simmering beneath the surface of songs such as "Up the Mountain" (featuring singer Sarah O'Shura of Portland's the Battle of Land and Sea), "Blindspot", or "Burn Less Brighter" (the latter two of which feature Gore-y BtB regular Paul Conboy, as do two other tracks), but they're largely subsumed by Simenon's moodiness. There's nothing wrong with being down, and Simenon does it well. But what Back to Light boasts in studio acumen it lacks in personality. One even suspects Kelley Polar and Richard Davis were also tapped as guest vocalists because their sensibilities were already so in line with what Simenon wanted to achieve and not because they had anything particularly unique or original to offer. From a pioneer like Simenon, the decision to tread water is puzzling, since he remains capable of so much more. After all, not many producers have as strong a grasp of songs as they do sounds, and Simenon has always been one of those few. Hopefully his renewed activity continues apace, and next time his instincts and collaborators encourage him to risk the unfamiliar rather than settle for safety and comfort."

David Byrne, St. Vincent

Love This Giant

Rock

Eric Harvey

This past June, the first song we heard from David Byrne and St. Vincent's collaborative project was titled "Who".  With its firm acoustic strumming, clear delineation of two vocal parts, and repetition of the word "who?" at the beginning of each line, it recalled one of Byrne's best duets: his collaboration with Tejano pop star Selena on the slinky, slow-burning 1995 song "God's Child". Though not quite as moving (or danceable) as "Child", "Who" was an encouraging sign for the duo's Love This Giant project. St. Vincent's Annie Clark fit well amidst a few of Byrne's favorite tricks: lyrics doubling as a series of philosophical questions, a croony curiosity about the wider world, and an arrangement loaded with the brazen brass blurts (Clark's idea, actually) that Byrne first fell for via his Knee Plays album. A few months later, "Who" opens the duo's full-length album, which falls short of both the single's early promise, and the on-paper perfection of the pairing. You could argue that David Byrne and Annie Clark collaborating on an album in 2012 is better framed by the question immediately asked of any such high-profile pairing: "Why?" On the surface, the two have quite a few commonalities. Both Byrne and Clark are equally fascinated by the theatricality of everyday life: the scripts and performances that drive our days and raise the stakes of our mundane interactions to the level of high drama or (for this duo) dark comedy. Both performers are known for their thousand-yard stares (compare the covers of Byrne's Feelings with St. Vincent's Actor) that suggest a quiet intensity merged with a playful approach to self-presentation. More generally, much of the power of Clark's and Byrne's music relies on the tension between being trapped and letting go. The primary narrative arc of Talking Heads' legendary live concert Stop Making Sense sees the reluctantly public shut-in character of the jittery "Psycho Killer" gradually learn to embrace his eccentricities, leading to the effusive gospel of closer "Take Me to the River". In her five-plus years as St. Vincent, Annie Clark has set and broken pre-determined molds from every conceivable direction-- at her best, she can go from "Psycho Killer" to "River" in a single song. It makes sense, then, that much of Love This Giant is taken with the idea of human transformation, as evidenced by the album's prosthetically-enhanced cover art. On "The One Who Broke Your Heart", we hear of "the beautiful people" who "did some work on your face." Clark sings of the hopeful revelations of a gradual thawing process on "Ice Age". On "I Am an Ape", Byrne playfully reverse-engineers evolution. But at the same time, collaborations aren't always as simple as pairing two smart artists cut from the same cloth. Because they're so taken with the idiosyncrasies of others' behaviors and interactions, Byrne and Clark constantly run the risk of their music tipping over into obsessiveness, of living up to the lifeless caricatures they're ostensibly picking apart. Especially considering the expectations attending a project created by two kindred spirits with ideas and talent to spare, Love This Giant is a disappointment. With precious few exceptions, neither Clark nor Byrne seems willing to push the other into new musical territory that might contain revelations about either. The songs merely stand apart from life and dryly comment on its strangeness, while the arrangements-- most prominently featuring the work of several conservatory-level brass players-- are suffused with the sterility that always threatens long-distance collaborations. "Dinner for Two" is representative in this regard. The narrator spends the song contemplating the sad fact that he's never able to enjoy a quiet, intimate time with his lover, because both are too busy with such nuisances as dinner parties with possibly famous authors milling about. The song's arid brass arrangement and bland percussion do it no favors (elsewhere on the album, John Congleton handles drum programming duties, and seems intent on dragging the music kicking and screaming into 2001). Later, there's "I Should Watch TV", which whooshes Byrne right past the clever engagement with popular culture that made a song like "Found a Job" such a quirky joy, and plops him straight into a self-important deconstruction of his own silly impulses. He's admitting that he really should watch more TV, because it would offer him insight into the minds of the nameless bodies he sees moving around himself everyday. But he resists, and instead sets off quoting Whitman's "Song of Myself" as if to convince himself of his own uniqueness. As for St. Vincent, it's hard to imagine too many people discovering her through this collaboration, but either way, she's responsible for Giant's best moments. In her own way, she's downright soulful on the refrains of "Weekend in the Dust", a style that serves as a compelling counterpoint to the icy, aristocratic lilt she inhabits on the verses. Though "Ice Age" may not count among the highlights of Actor or Strange Mercy, it shows Clark's skill at shifting gears mid-song without disturbing the cargo, and at employing elements strategically-- here, *Giant'*s omnipresent (and stiflingly monochromatic) brass is mostly reduced to subtle color and minimalist chorus additions, until blooming during the song's well-earned coda. It's not exactly high praise, I know: Here are the two best songs on a strange flop of a high-profile collaboration. In retrospect, it seems Giant will function less as a career highpoint for either artist, and more as a historical marker of the career trajectories of each participant. Byrne plays the wandering dilettante, content to transform his old ideas anew, while Clark upstages her mentor, convinced she still has a lot more to prove.

Artist: David Byrne, St. Vincent, Album: Love This Giant, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.9 Album review: "This past June, the first song we heard from David Byrne and St. Vincent's collaborative project was titled "Who".  With its firm acoustic strumming, clear delineation of two vocal parts, and repetition of the word "who?" at the beginning of each line, it recalled one of Byrne's best duets: his collaboration with Tejano pop star Selena on the slinky, slow-burning 1995 song "God's Child". Though not quite as moving (or danceable) as "Child", "Who" was an encouraging sign for the duo's Love This Giant project. St. Vincent's Annie Clark fit well amidst a few of Byrne's favorite tricks: lyrics doubling as a series of philosophical questions, a croony curiosity about the wider world, and an arrangement loaded with the brazen brass blurts (Clark's idea, actually) that Byrne first fell for via his Knee Plays album. A few months later, "Who" opens the duo's full-length album, which falls short of both the single's early promise, and the on-paper perfection of the pairing. You could argue that David Byrne and Annie Clark collaborating on an album in 2012 is better framed by the question immediately asked of any such high-profile pairing: "Why?" On the surface, the two have quite a few commonalities. Both Byrne and Clark are equally fascinated by the theatricality of everyday life: the scripts and performances that drive our days and raise the stakes of our mundane interactions to the level of high drama or (for this duo) dark comedy. Both performers are known for their thousand-yard stares (compare the covers of Byrne's Feelings with St. Vincent's Actor) that suggest a quiet intensity merged with a playful approach to self-presentation. More generally, much of the power of Clark's and Byrne's music relies on the tension between being trapped and letting go. The primary narrative arc of Talking Heads' legendary live concert Stop Making Sense sees the reluctantly public shut-in character of the jittery "Psycho Killer" gradually learn to embrace his eccentricities, leading to the effusive gospel of closer "Take Me to the River". In her five-plus years as St. Vincent, Annie Clark has set and broken pre-determined molds from every conceivable direction-- at her best, she can go from "Psycho Killer" to "River" in a single song. It makes sense, then, that much of Love This Giant is taken with the idea of human transformation, as evidenced by the album's prosthetically-enhanced cover art. On "The One Who Broke Your Heart", we hear of "the beautiful people" who "did some work on your face." Clark sings of the hopeful revelations of a gradual thawing process on "Ice Age". On "I Am an Ape", Byrne playfully reverse-engineers evolution. But at the same time, collaborations aren't always as simple as pairing two smart artists cut from the same cloth. Because they're so taken with the idiosyncrasies of others' behaviors and interactions, Byrne and Clark constantly run the risk of their music tipping over into obsessiveness, of living up to the lifeless caricatures they're ostensibly picking apart. Especially considering the expectations attending a project created by two kindred spirits with ideas and talent to spare, Love This Giant is a disappointment. With precious few exceptions, neither Clark nor Byrne seems willing to push the other into new musical territory that might contain revelations about either. The songs merely stand apart from life and dryly comment on its strangeness, while the arrangements-- most prominently featuring the work of several conservatory-level brass players-- are suffused with the sterility that always threatens long-distance collaborations. "Dinner for Two" is representative in this regard. The narrator spends the song contemplating the sad fact that he's never able to enjoy a quiet, intimate time with his lover, because both are too busy with such nuisances as dinner parties with possibly famous authors milling about. The song's arid brass arrangement and bland percussion do it no favors (elsewhere on the album, John Congleton handles drum programming duties, and seems intent on dragging the music kicking and screaming into 2001). Later, there's "I Should Watch TV", which whooshes Byrne right past the clever engagement with popular culture that made a song like "Found a Job" such a quirky joy, and plops him straight into a self-important deconstruction of his own silly impulses. He's admitting that he really should watch more TV, because it would offer him insight into the minds of the nameless bodies he sees moving around himself everyday. But he resists, and instead sets off quoting Whitman's "Song of Myself" as if to convince himself of his own uniqueness. As for St. Vincent, it's hard to imagine too many people discovering her through this collaboration, but either way, she's responsible for Giant's best moments. In her own way, she's downright soulful on the refrains of "Weekend in the Dust", a style that serves as a compelling counterpoint to the icy, aristocratic lilt she inhabits on the verses. Though "Ice Age" may not count among the highlights of Actor or Strange Mercy, it shows Clark's skill at shifting gears mid-song without disturbing the cargo, and at employing elements strategically-- here, *Giant'*s omnipresent (and stiflingly monochromatic) brass is mostly reduced to subtle color and minimalist chorus additions, until blooming during the song's well-earned coda. It's not exactly high praise, I know: Here are the two best songs on a strange flop of a high-profile collaboration. In retrospect, it seems Giant will function less as a career highpoint for either artist, and more as a historical marker of the career trajectories of each participant. Byrne plays the wandering dilettante, content to transform his old ideas anew, while Clark upstages her mentor, convinced she still has a lot more to prove."

Alpha

The Impossible Thrill

Electronic,Rock

Rich Juzwiak

Like most people, I hate being bored. I'm shackled to whim, a slave to fancy, perpetually impatient, high strung, and terrified of tedium. As a makeshift cure, I've developed an attention span that rivals a hyperactive prepubescent Christian Scientist. It's not ideal, but at least I'm occupied most of the time. Of course, the key word there is "most." Snags are hit every time I'm forced to stand in hellish lines, endure overlong anecdotes from friends and strangers alike, and withstand multiple listens of records I would otherwise turn off before the first track was finished. Alpha's sophomore album, The Impossible Thrill, is emblematic of the latter example. If having to write about Bristolian trip-hop is taxing, having to listen to it enough to get to that step is brutal-- especially when the material in question makes unintentional strides toward epitomizing dullness. By bombarding the listener with innocuousness, Alpha forge a test to determine exactly when the pedestrian becomes excruciating. By the third track, they more or less have their answer. The Impossible Thrill is so pig-headed in its goal to evoke mood that conventions like variation, song structure and memorable songwriting are completely forgone. The album's redundancy is particularly inappropriate because of its premise. Instead of continuing on a beat-heavy, electronic path to atmosphere, Alpha employ mostly live instrumentation to augment the rich, bluesy arrangements. Layers of strings glaze the songs, and are heavily depended upon to set the dour, spacy tone. The Impossible Thrill sifts through the constituents of pop trip-hop, exploits its darkness, and ultimately lacks any semblance of groove. A song stringed as manipulatively as "Dim" plays like a reject Blaxploitation theme. And, when the occasional dank beat from a drum machine does pop up, like on "South," it only retreads the same sterile fare we've heard a million times before from artists like Hooverphonic and Morcheeba. The vocalists on the record, Helen White, Wendy Stubbs, and Martin Barnard, only contribute to the drabness. The interchangeable White and Stubbs both exhibit the conviction of mumbling somnambulists. Though aiming to recall a more drugged-out Beth Gibbons, the two never muster anything greater than "wispy." Barnard's approach is more affected, but just as unmoving. With the vocals low in the mix, it's hard to hear exactly what he's (seemingly) complaining about. And, when the rest of the content is taken into account, it's even harder to care. The Impossible Thrill is utterly pedestrian and overwrought. Though the songs are mostly composed gracefully, with each part impeccably interlocking, this ultimately can't erase the record's inherent mundaneness. But at least the album lives up to its name; with the knowledge that the thrill is indeed unattainable, it's clear that adventure is best sought in virtually any other outlet.

Artist: Alpha, Album: The Impossible Thrill, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 3.0 Album review: "Like most people, I hate being bored. I'm shackled to whim, a slave to fancy, perpetually impatient, high strung, and terrified of tedium. As a makeshift cure, I've developed an attention span that rivals a hyperactive prepubescent Christian Scientist. It's not ideal, but at least I'm occupied most of the time. Of course, the key word there is "most." Snags are hit every time I'm forced to stand in hellish lines, endure overlong anecdotes from friends and strangers alike, and withstand multiple listens of records I would otherwise turn off before the first track was finished. Alpha's sophomore album, The Impossible Thrill, is emblematic of the latter example. If having to write about Bristolian trip-hop is taxing, having to listen to it enough to get to that step is brutal-- especially when the material in question makes unintentional strides toward epitomizing dullness. By bombarding the listener with innocuousness, Alpha forge a test to determine exactly when the pedestrian becomes excruciating. By the third track, they more or less have their answer. The Impossible Thrill is so pig-headed in its goal to evoke mood that conventions like variation, song structure and memorable songwriting are completely forgone. The album's redundancy is particularly inappropriate because of its premise. Instead of continuing on a beat-heavy, electronic path to atmosphere, Alpha employ mostly live instrumentation to augment the rich, bluesy arrangements. Layers of strings glaze the songs, and are heavily depended upon to set the dour, spacy tone. The Impossible Thrill sifts through the constituents of pop trip-hop, exploits its darkness, and ultimately lacks any semblance of groove. A song stringed as manipulatively as "Dim" plays like a reject Blaxploitation theme. And, when the occasional dank beat from a drum machine does pop up, like on "South," it only retreads the same sterile fare we've heard a million times before from artists like Hooverphonic and Morcheeba. The vocalists on the record, Helen White, Wendy Stubbs, and Martin Barnard, only contribute to the drabness. The interchangeable White and Stubbs both exhibit the conviction of mumbling somnambulists. Though aiming to recall a more drugged-out Beth Gibbons, the two never muster anything greater than "wispy." Barnard's approach is more affected, but just as unmoving. With the vocals low in the mix, it's hard to hear exactly what he's (seemingly) complaining about. And, when the rest of the content is taken into account, it's even harder to care. The Impossible Thrill is utterly pedestrian and overwrought. Though the songs are mostly composed gracefully, with each part impeccably interlocking, this ultimately can't erase the record's inherent mundaneness. But at least the album lives up to its name; with the knowledge that the thrill is indeed unattainable, it's clear that adventure is best sought in virtually any other outlet."

Iggy Pop

Skull Ring

Rock

Eric Carr

I take no pleasure in this, waiting to review Skull Ring. Lust for Life is on its third spin, I'm biting my nails, looking at Iggy's outstretched tongue in the liners to his latest, and wondering what happened to the guy. To forestall the inevitable, I figure I ought to at least get my good friend Lou on the phone, get his opinion on the elder Mr. Pop; very few people know Ig better, after all. I hit the speed-dial and wait; eventually the ringing stops, and with no word of greeting, only the icy breath coming through the receiver tells me he's on the line. "Howdy, Lou." "What." Should be a question, sounds like a statement. "Just wondering if maybe you had a chance to listen to Iggy's latest album. He probably sent you an advance, right?" "Iggy who?" "Pop." A pause. "Isn't he dead?" "Doctors tell me he's not." "Have you listened to Beat 'Em Up?" Clever guy, that Lou. "Naw, man, if he's still hangin' on, I guess I didn't get a copy of Mood Ring, but I struggled through his last couple, and I'll say again what I told Bangs about Iggy: If he'd listened to David [Bowie] or Me, if he'd asked questions every once in a while... I'd say, 'Man, just make a one-five change, and I'll put it together for you, and you can take all the credit. It's so simple, but the way you're doin' it now you're just makin' a fool out of yourself. And it's just gonna get worse and worse...' And this was in 1975. Stop calling." Lou walked away from the receiver; his contempt hung it up. 1975: still two years prior to The Idiot and Lust for Life; Lou sure had that call wrong. Of course, Bowie was still working with Iggy in Berlin for those, and if Lou was predicting a messy post-Stooges, post-Bowie end for the guy, he wasn't too far off. Still, I don't think he expected it would be dragged out across a handful of decades. Having listened to him languish since the release of the canned, thinly veiled jock jams of his 1990 "comeback" Brick by Brick (and even further back than that, if you ask me, though at least that one had "Candy") hasn't been easy for his fans, but after being sent to the mat hard-- twice in a row-- with the misplaced world-rock of 1999's Avenue B and the hard rock of 2001's Beat 'Em Up, you keep hoping he'll stay down, for chrissakes. At least on Avenue B, he failed while making a concerted effort to branch out away from the so-very-tired power chord cliches he'd been riding for years; Beat 'Em Up showed him crawling back, making his old-school rock "xFC" again, and failing at that, too. If he can't even pull off "tough" anymore, what's left? If the recent Peaches collaboration on her Fatherfucker doesn't prove that Ig's grasping at straws to attach himself to someone who approximates the controversy-driven "nothing's sacred" attitude he used to be known for, her contributions to Skull Ring ought to drive the point home. I don't care about any mutual admiration, or who asked who; this is simply embarrassing. The hypno-robotic buzz of "Motor Inn" might get the adrenaline flowing, but Iggy's desperate attempts at innuendo ("Her booty's got a rise/ Soon my hands will be/ Where I'm putting my eyes") make it hard to take seriously. Similarly, Pop's cover of Peaches' "Rock Show"-- especially the core "rap"-- sounds stilted and forced, even with her conviction backing him up. His cool-by-association dalliance with the newest icon of image-over-talent is too hard to swallow given his recent falterings; a third trip to the canvas should be a T.K.O. But one look at Pop's grizzled, life-wracked frame proves he's resilient and ready to go down swinging. In fact, his perseverance in the face of self-created adversity is one of his most endearing qualities; it's hard to listen to "Dum Dum Boys" without a sympathetic ear to the various excesses of his time with The Stooges. Speaking of: You've probably already heard that Ron and Scotty Asheton contribute to a few songs on this record, making it as close to an official Stooges reunion as anyone's likely to see. And you know, they might've lost some of the breakneck tempo they once possessed, but the thin, treble-heavy grind of Ron's strings is still nearly as vicious now as it was then. Compared to the over-compensatory grandstanding of the other bands backing up Iggy here-- The Trolls, Green Day (!), and perhaps by the hand of Satan himself, Sum 41-- The Stooges get by with nothing but rattling, smoldering vitriol. Green Day (!) turn in a few notably driving riffs on "Private Hell", but the rest falls flat as overproduced, under-written, swaggering nonsense, as basic as rubbing three chords together. Of course, the one truth that's remained unchanged since 1977 is that The Stooges ain't nothin' without the Pop, and as misfortune would have it, he's nowhere to be found on Skull Ring. Sure, there's a guy singing who calls himself Iggy, but the similarities end at the name; like the drowned rat that he is, Iggy's fled this sinking ship and left a cantankerous shell to captain the wreckage. I believe Iggy himself is back walking the mean streets of Detroit, living on the edge of the night in a never-ending replay of his psychotic days hanging with the MC5, trading his body heroin for blood, and spraying the exchange on the walls; his replacement for now and ever more is James Osterberg, an aging approximation of one of history's greatest all-time rock stars. As recently as last album, Pop at least turned in a righteous snarl or two; here Osterberg sounds distant and lost. He nearly rips off his very own "Search and Destroy" with the line, "I'm the kid that no one knows/ I live a life I never chose," and in doing so sounds utterly defeated. Iggy had a heart full of napalm; Osterberg is just cranky. People can moan about how it's unfair to hold artists up to the magnitude of past accomplishments, and they're right. But Stooges or not, this is a dismal, unengaging rock record by any standards-- one that absolutely wilts in the light of such past brilliance. It might not be fair, but you know what, Iggy? I still miss you.

Artist: Iggy Pop, Album: Skull Ring, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 4.1 Album review: "I take no pleasure in this, waiting to review Skull Ring. Lust for Life is on its third spin, I'm biting my nails, looking at Iggy's outstretched tongue in the liners to his latest, and wondering what happened to the guy. To forestall the inevitable, I figure I ought to at least get my good friend Lou on the phone, get his opinion on the elder Mr. Pop; very few people know Ig better, after all. I hit the speed-dial and wait; eventually the ringing stops, and with no word of greeting, only the icy breath coming through the receiver tells me he's on the line. "Howdy, Lou." "What." Should be a question, sounds like a statement. "Just wondering if maybe you had a chance to listen to Iggy's latest album. He probably sent you an advance, right?" "Iggy who?" "Pop." A pause. "Isn't he dead?" "Doctors tell me he's not." "Have you listened to Beat 'Em Up?" Clever guy, that Lou. "Naw, man, if he's still hangin' on, I guess I didn't get a copy of Mood Ring, but I struggled through his last couple, and I'll say again what I told Bangs about Iggy: If he'd listened to David [Bowie] or Me, if he'd asked questions every once in a while... I'd say, 'Man, just make a one-five change, and I'll put it together for you, and you can take all the credit. It's so simple, but the way you're doin' it now you're just makin' a fool out of yourself. And it's just gonna get worse and worse...' And this was in 1975. Stop calling." Lou walked away from the receiver; his contempt hung it up. 1975: still two years prior to The Idiot and Lust for Life; Lou sure had that call wrong. Of course, Bowie was still working with Iggy in Berlin for those, and if Lou was predicting a messy post-Stooges, post-Bowie end for the guy, he wasn't too far off. Still, I don't think he expected it would be dragged out across a handful of decades. Having listened to him languish since the release of the canned, thinly veiled jock jams of his 1990 "comeback" Brick by Brick (and even further back than that, if you ask me, though at least that one had "Candy") hasn't been easy for his fans, but after being sent to the mat hard-- twice in a row-- with the misplaced world-rock of 1999's Avenue B and the hard rock of 2001's Beat 'Em Up, you keep hoping he'll stay down, for chrissakes. At least on Avenue B, he failed while making a concerted effort to branch out away from the so-very-tired power chord cliches he'd been riding for years; Beat 'Em Up showed him crawling back, making his old-school rock "xFC" again, and failing at that, too. If he can't even pull off "tough" anymore, what's left? If the recent Peaches collaboration on her Fatherfucker doesn't prove that Ig's grasping at straws to attach himself to someone who approximates the controversy-driven "nothing's sacred" attitude he used to be known for, her contributions to Skull Ring ought to drive the point home. I don't care about any mutual admiration, or who asked who; this is simply embarrassing. The hypno-robotic buzz of "Motor Inn" might get the adrenaline flowing, but Iggy's desperate attempts at innuendo ("Her booty's got a rise/ Soon my hands will be/ Where I'm putting my eyes") make it hard to take seriously. Similarly, Pop's cover of Peaches' "Rock Show"-- especially the core "rap"-- sounds stilted and forced, even with her conviction backing him up. His cool-by-association dalliance with the newest icon of image-over-talent is too hard to swallow given his recent falterings; a third trip to the canvas should be a T.K.O. But one look at Pop's grizzled, life-wracked frame proves he's resilient and ready to go down swinging. In fact, his perseverance in the face of self-created adversity is one of his most endearing qualities; it's hard to listen to "Dum Dum Boys" without a sympathetic ear to the various excesses of his time with The Stooges. Speaking of: You've probably already heard that Ron and Scotty Asheton contribute to a few songs on this record, making it as close to an official Stooges reunion as anyone's likely to see. And you know, they might've lost some of the breakneck tempo they once possessed, but the thin, treble-heavy grind of Ron's strings is still nearly as vicious now as it was then. Compared to the over-compensatory grandstanding of the other bands backing up Iggy here-- The Trolls, Green Day (!), and perhaps by the hand of Satan himself, Sum 41-- The Stooges get by with nothing but rattling, smoldering vitriol. Green Day (!) turn in a few notably driving riffs on "Private Hell", but the rest falls flat as overproduced, under-written, swaggering nonsense, as basic as rubbing three chords together. Of course, the one truth that's remained unchanged since 1977 is that The Stooges ain't nothin' without the Pop, and as misfortune would have it, he's nowhere to be found on Skull Ring. Sure, there's a guy singing who calls himself Iggy, but the similarities end at the name; like the drowned rat that he is, Iggy's fled this sinking ship and left a cantankerous shell to captain the wreckage. I believe Iggy himself is back walking the mean streets of Detroit, living on the edge of the night in a never-ending replay of his psychotic days hanging with the MC5, trading his body heroin for blood, and spraying the exchange on the walls; his replacement for now and ever more is James Osterberg, an aging approximation of one of history's greatest all-time rock stars. As recently as last album, Pop at least turned in a righteous snarl or two; here Osterberg sounds distant and lost. He nearly rips off his very own "Search and Destroy" with the line, "I'm the kid that no one knows/ I live a life I never chose," and in doing so sounds utterly defeated. Iggy had a heart full of napalm; Osterberg is just cranky. People can moan about how it's unfair to hold artists up to the magnitude of past accomplishments, and they're right. But Stooges or not, this is a dismal, unengaging rock record by any standards-- one that absolutely wilts in the light of such past brilliance. It might not be fair, but you know what, Iggy? I still miss you."

The Wedding Present

The Complete Peel Sessions

Experimental,Rock

Nitsuh Abebe

The idea of devoting a 6xCD radio-session box set to a band as unglamorous as the Wedding Present is mildly counterintuitive at first, a bit like keeping your everyday Bic pen in a fancy gold case. These Leeds guys were never really among the pathbreakers, innovators, or celebrated stars of British indie; they were the workhorse and the house band. Fierce but straightforward, steady and prolific, love-them-or-don't-mind-them: For quite a while there, this was the flagship example of what an ordinary, damned-good UK indie rock band sounded like-- the Spoon of another place and time. But it's exactly that quality that makes it possible to assemble six discs of their BBC radio performances, something you couldn't manage for a lot of better-remembered bands. This workhorse was reliable enough-- and well enough loved-- to come back again and again, playing ever more shows for another beloved indie standard-bearer: John Peel, one of the band's great supporters. Expect few surprises on these discs, then: No extended noise jams, no surprise alternate versions, not even that many rare tracks or covers. (The one exception won't be a surprise to long-time fans: The set contains about a dozen tracks of the Slavic folk music the band played as the Ukrainians. This is the sole respect in which the Weddoes were multiple decades ahead of their time.) What you get here is just the tight and frantic live act you can infer from any given Wedding Present album, and with about the same band-in-a-room production style. It's a fan bonanza of great performances-- which, for six discs, it had kinda better be-- with the Easter eggs limited to stuff like radio chat, a TV theme cover, and a few new tricks during their 2004 reformation: exactly as straightforward as the band has always been. That's 12 radio sessions, a John Peel birthday bash, and three full-length concerts, stretching over a decade (plus that 2004 re-start) of incredibly involving guitar music. And these guys do love their guitars. Early on, back in 1986, they made them jangle as fast as they could manage, always racing ahead in a grand celebration of the very existence of amplifiers. (The very first thing that set them apart from their indie peers was having a drummer who could actually keep up.) Like the Buzzcocks before them, their rousing post-punk blur managed to be tense, scrappy, and still relentlessly poppy. What made this pop so involving, though, tended to be bandleader David Gedge, whose surprisingly conversational clenched-teeth bark falls into that low range most people use when pretending to be stern for comic effect, and whose lyrics navigated cleverly around all the bitter, childish things most people eventually laugh at themselves for thinking. (When more emo singers figure out the difference between irony and just puns, this might actually become a second respect in which the band was 20 years ahead of schedule.) These are mostly love songs-- expressed not in lovers' talk, but in the petty thought-bubbles and subtitles that might linger around it. Something about that pairing-- celebratory bitterness?-- turns out marvelous, if maybe a little slanted toward the empathy of boys. The first seven sessions here capture its pop phase (and its Ukrainian one), including wild, joyous covers of "Felicity" (Orange Juice), "Getting Nowhere Fast" (Girls at our Best), and "Happy Birthday" (Altered Images): Put this stuff on one disc, and it'd be a must-buy. It's with the amazing eighth session, previewing songs from 1991's Seamonsters, that things change, and the music catches up with the lyrics: The guitars start winding between purposeful creeps and glorious, cathartic squalls, Gedge starts play-acting some serious no-joking break-up bitterness, and from there on, this band has a lot more dynamics-- and a lot more dramatic weight-- in its arsenal. That makes for a decent number of stand-out performances. There are furious takes on the already-furious "Kennedy". There's the ease with which they shift between the snarky verses of "So Long, Baby", which sound like the Fall, to the apologetic chorus, which sounds like the Buzzcocks: "In spite of all that, I still think you're dreamy." There's a concert version of the Seamonsters bonus "Fleshworld", where we get to hear yet another power drummer nail down the flurry of snares-- occupying half of every other bar-- that makes the song so fearsome. There's a Peel's-birthday version of "What Have I Said Now?" that seems to capture the peak of this band's grim, heavy romance, and an early apex of clenched teeth and high-speed exasperation on "All About Eve". Most of this stuff is impressive enough that you won't even mind the tepid concert version of "Brassneck", or the fact that the three full-length shows are all from 1995/96, the band's comfortable middle age, or how cutting this box down to the first few non-Ukrainian Peel sessions would actually make it look more substantial. When you're spending box-set money, though, it's easy to notice that "great" performances aren't necessarily "revelatory" ones; passionately nailing down the parts ceases to sound like some huge triumph, and Wedding Present songs don't exactly lend themselves to grand reinterpretations. The point of collections like this, of course, has to do with how easily you can burn out a favorite act's back catalog, making it all so familiar that your ears hardly register what's passing by: Even a mildly different live version can bring everything back to life again, and plenty of people-- English ones especially-- will appreciate this alternate history. The Wedding Present are the kind of band that can bear that level of involvement, and it's a testament to their skills and their work ethic that nearly every track here lives up to its studio counterpart. It's a sign of their workhorse nature, though, that not too many can aspire to do any more than that.

Artist: The Wedding Present, Album: The Complete Peel Sessions, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.1 Album review: "The idea of devoting a 6xCD radio-session box set to a band as unglamorous as the Wedding Present is mildly counterintuitive at first, a bit like keeping your everyday Bic pen in a fancy gold case. These Leeds guys were never really among the pathbreakers, innovators, or celebrated stars of British indie; they were the workhorse and the house band. Fierce but straightforward, steady and prolific, love-them-or-don't-mind-them: For quite a while there, this was the flagship example of what an ordinary, damned-good UK indie rock band sounded like-- the Spoon of another place and time. But it's exactly that quality that makes it possible to assemble six discs of their BBC radio performances, something you couldn't manage for a lot of better-remembered bands. This workhorse was reliable enough-- and well enough loved-- to come back again and again, playing ever more shows for another beloved indie standard-bearer: John Peel, one of the band's great supporters. Expect few surprises on these discs, then: No extended noise jams, no surprise alternate versions, not even that many rare tracks or covers. (The one exception won't be a surprise to long-time fans: The set contains about a dozen tracks of the Slavic folk music the band played as the Ukrainians. This is the sole respect in which the Weddoes were multiple decades ahead of their time.) What you get here is just the tight and frantic live act you can infer from any given Wedding Present album, and with about the same band-in-a-room production style. It's a fan bonanza of great performances-- which, for six discs, it had kinda better be-- with the Easter eggs limited to stuff like radio chat, a TV theme cover, and a few new tricks during their 2004 reformation: exactly as straightforward as the band has always been. That's 12 radio sessions, a John Peel birthday bash, and three full-length concerts, stretching over a decade (plus that 2004 re-start) of incredibly involving guitar music. And these guys do love their guitars. Early on, back in 1986, they made them jangle as fast as they could manage, always racing ahead in a grand celebration of the very existence of amplifiers. (The very first thing that set them apart from their indie peers was having a drummer who could actually keep up.) Like the Buzzcocks before them, their rousing post-punk blur managed to be tense, scrappy, and still relentlessly poppy. What made this pop so involving, though, tended to be bandleader David Gedge, whose surprisingly conversational clenched-teeth bark falls into that low range most people use when pretending to be stern for comic effect, and whose lyrics navigated cleverly around all the bitter, childish things most people eventually laugh at themselves for thinking. (When more emo singers figure out the difference between irony and just puns, this might actually become a second respect in which the band was 20 years ahead of schedule.) These are mostly love songs-- expressed not in lovers' talk, but in the petty thought-bubbles and subtitles that might linger around it. Something about that pairing-- celebratory bitterness?-- turns out marvelous, if maybe a little slanted toward the empathy of boys. The first seven sessions here capture its pop phase (and its Ukrainian one), including wild, joyous covers of "Felicity" (Orange Juice), "Getting Nowhere Fast" (Girls at our Best), and "Happy Birthday" (Altered Images): Put this stuff on one disc, and it'd be a must-buy. It's with the amazing eighth session, previewing songs from 1991's Seamonsters, that things change, and the music catches up with the lyrics: The guitars start winding between purposeful creeps and glorious, cathartic squalls, Gedge starts play-acting some serious no-joking break-up bitterness, and from there on, this band has a lot more dynamics-- and a lot more dramatic weight-- in its arsenal. That makes for a decent number of stand-out performances. There are furious takes on the already-furious "Kennedy". There's the ease with which they shift between the snarky verses of "So Long, Baby", which sound like the Fall, to the apologetic chorus, which sounds like the Buzzcocks: "In spite of all that, I still think you're dreamy." There's a concert version of the Seamonsters bonus "Fleshworld", where we get to hear yet another power drummer nail down the flurry of snares-- occupying half of every other bar-- that makes the song so fearsome. There's a Peel's-birthday version of "What Have I Said Now?" that seems to capture the peak of this band's grim, heavy romance, and an early apex of clenched teeth and high-speed exasperation on "All About Eve". Most of this stuff is impressive enough that you won't even mind the tepid concert version of "Brassneck", or the fact that the three full-length shows are all from 1995/96, the band's comfortable middle age, or how cutting this box down to the first few non-Ukrainian Peel sessions would actually make it look more substantial. When you're spending box-set money, though, it's easy to notice that "great" performances aren't necessarily "revelatory" ones; passionately nailing down the parts ceases to sound like some huge triumph, and Wedding Present songs don't exactly lend themselves to grand reinterpretations. The point of collections like this, of course, has to do with how easily you can burn out a favorite act's back catalog, making it all so familiar that your ears hardly register what's passing by: Even a mildly different live version can bring everything back to life again, and plenty of people-- English ones especially-- will appreciate this alternate history. The Wedding Present are the kind of band that can bear that level of involvement, and it's a testament to their skills and their work ethic that nearly every track here lives up to its studio counterpart. It's a sign of their workhorse nature, though, that not too many can aspire to do any more than that."

Sera Cahoone

Deer Creek Canyon

Rock

Rachael Maddux

Some people feel most alive in April, when everything's blooming and heavy with pollen, or in July, when the heat forces off the shackles of human decency and frees us to loll around in full flesh. But I imagine Sera Cahoone is more of a September person. Something about this month, like her songs, is so beautiful and so sad and so right. It's a tricky balance, this feeling. On Cahoone's first two records, quietly released by Sub Pop in 2007 and 2008, she almost got there; the songs were woozy and weary, reckless and heartsick. (Earlier, she'd played drums with Seattle band Carissa's Wierd, which spun off Band of Horses; she played on BoH's 2006 debut, too.) But her new record, Deer Creek Canyon, finds her turning a corner. Cahoone keeps close to a standard core of acoustic guitar, drums, and some very faint bass; a banjo makes its way into most of the tracks, and strings sidle up sometimes too, joined often by a wiry pedal steel. Her voice is familiar in flashes-- shards of Gillian Welch and Jenny Lewis and Sarah McLachlan occasionally catch the light, then flicker away-- but mostly it sits in a set-jawed, dusky register. It's stronger on this album, richer, more sure of itself through practice or sheer will. She even vocalizes carefully, saving her "ooohs" to accentuate particular lines ("I'm feeling naked," "Feel like I waited all night for you") like little shivers of pain or joy. These are songs that touch on the difficulty in finding certainty and resolution. "Naked" is a dispatch from some emotional no-man's land ("Until it's right for now/ I don't want you around") and the title track, a hometown ode ticking along like a slow-moving mountain train, could be about either familial or romantic love. Cahoone has a way of lasering in, of making one image or feeling the focus of a song, while allowing herself room to dress the scene. "Here in your house, it's been a while/ All the trees and weeds are overgrown," begins "Rumpshaker", and the reunion's only downhill from there ("For years I bent the way your wind would blow/ Then you turn around and say I didn't give enough"). "Shakin' Hands" is more hopeful, though it may well be a flashback to how the previous affair began: "My friends are all here having a good time, but I just want to get lost in you/ For days." Even when she's consumed with longing, her demands are direct: arms around waists, hands running down spines. Deer Creek Canyon is a deft fine-tuning of her meandering rustic tendencies, the tweaks so minor and carefully placed they're at first nearly imperceptible. But there's a stronger focus to the collection, a sense of tones and textures chosen carefully and wisely. But for all the forthrightness, there's something a bit askew about Cahoone's delivery, as if it's not directed to a specific listener or any particular "you" but instead something overheard-- from another room, perhaps, or through a screen door open on some late-September afternoon.

Artist: Sera Cahoone, Album: Deer Creek Canyon, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Some people feel most alive in April, when everything's blooming and heavy with pollen, or in July, when the heat forces off the shackles of human decency and frees us to loll around in full flesh. But I imagine Sera Cahoone is more of a September person. Something about this month, like her songs, is so beautiful and so sad and so right. It's a tricky balance, this feeling. On Cahoone's first two records, quietly released by Sub Pop in 2007 and 2008, she almost got there; the songs were woozy and weary, reckless and heartsick. (Earlier, she'd played drums with Seattle band Carissa's Wierd, which spun off Band of Horses; she played on BoH's 2006 debut, too.) But her new record, Deer Creek Canyon, finds her turning a corner. Cahoone keeps close to a standard core of acoustic guitar, drums, and some very faint bass; a banjo makes its way into most of the tracks, and strings sidle up sometimes too, joined often by a wiry pedal steel. Her voice is familiar in flashes-- shards of Gillian Welch and Jenny Lewis and Sarah McLachlan occasionally catch the light, then flicker away-- but mostly it sits in a set-jawed, dusky register. It's stronger on this album, richer, more sure of itself through practice or sheer will. She even vocalizes carefully, saving her "ooohs" to accentuate particular lines ("I'm feeling naked," "Feel like I waited all night for you") like little shivers of pain or joy. These are songs that touch on the difficulty in finding certainty and resolution. "Naked" is a dispatch from some emotional no-man's land ("Until it's right for now/ I don't want you around") and the title track, a hometown ode ticking along like a slow-moving mountain train, could be about either familial or romantic love. Cahoone has a way of lasering in, of making one image or feeling the focus of a song, while allowing herself room to dress the scene. "Here in your house, it's been a while/ All the trees and weeds are overgrown," begins "Rumpshaker", and the reunion's only downhill from there ("For years I bent the way your wind would blow/ Then you turn around and say I didn't give enough"). "Shakin' Hands" is more hopeful, though it may well be a flashback to how the previous affair began: "My friends are all here having a good time, but I just want to get lost in you/ For days." Even when she's consumed with longing, her demands are direct: arms around waists, hands running down spines. Deer Creek Canyon is a deft fine-tuning of her meandering rustic tendencies, the tweaks so minor and carefully placed they're at first nearly imperceptible. But there's a stronger focus to the collection, a sense of tones and textures chosen carefully and wisely. But for all the forthrightness, there's something a bit askew about Cahoone's delivery, as if it's not directed to a specific listener or any particular "you" but instead something overheard-- from another room, perhaps, or through a screen door open on some late-September afternoon."

Gonjasufi

Callus

Rock

Nate Patrin

Ever since A Sufi and a Killer sent his scarred wail out into a wider world, Gonjasufi’s future has seemed pretty open-ended. What path would his hip-hop-influenced psych take?  Subsequent releases—especially 2012’s *MU.ZZ.LE**—*veered closer to a series of confrontational wake-up calls than the inner voyage of the mind than “psychedelia” typically suggests. Jay Z’s “Nickels and Dimes” might have lifted the hook from the Gonjasufi cut of the (almost) same name, but its mournfully introspective spirit was something too bare-nerved to co-opt, the catharsis of *MU.ZZ.LE *pared it down to just the “psych-” and laid bare just how many far more unsettling things could be attached to it as a suffix. *Callus *is deliberately abrasive proof of this: an album that’s disorienting at its catchiest, harrowing at its ugliest, and more than willing to run both of those modes at the same time. Gonjasufi’s described this album as a document of his effort to embrace hate and pain, not out of nihilism or defeatism but as a way to endure what he sees as a surplus of the stuff getting dumped on everybody’s heads so he can return it as love. The album title says as much—it literally suggests growing a thicker skin—and the record’s mode feels like a much-needed endurance test in turn. It’s harsh and raucous and even oppressive, despite the fact that it ventures only rarely (and briefly) into uptempo trad-aggro turf. It’s both a call for confrontation and a search of positivity. And there’s more “we” than “I” in that confrontation. Gonjasufi’s lyrics feel more than ever like they’re sung in his characteristic wobbly, mutating wail because that piercing tone is the best way to reach out to people. Entreaties like “Is anyone else tired/From working on a slave ship?” (from opening cut “Your Maker”), declarations that “Babylon hates me/And they want me killed” (“The Kill”), and demands to “Forget your story and fake glory/Get your devils off of me” (“The Conspiracy”) are the words of someone reckoning with his fears and traumas in public to feel less alone. “Everything’s fucked” isn’t exactly a rare sentiment this year, though, and some stress is better empathized with when it’s felt rather than spoken, so he’s still riding on a tendency to show-not-tell his through tone. There’s a lot of distortion and overblown, in-the-red bass smothering the clarity of his words—even as it boosts the intensity of the voice delivering them. (The way his breathless, fuzz-drenched repetition of “stay out” melts into a caustically dissolving analog synth is borderline horrifying.) The mood of *Callus *comes off as embattled and mercurial as the mindstate of anyone trying to get their shit together and find a way through. And the music, filled with reverb and fuzz and gristle and the smell of ozone, demands both your attention and your resilience. Some fuss has been made about the appearance of former Cure guitarist Pearl Thompson, who shows up a few times (heard best on “The Kill”) to grind out some fuzz-toned squalls of noise. But it’s all of a piece, with the Special Guest Star moments subsumed into a bigger wall of noise. There’s King Tubby dub bleeps echoing into the distance (“Your Maker”), lo-fi guitar sludge lodged somewhere between Neu!’s “Super 16” and the murkier reaches of early Sub Pop (“Maniac Depressant”),  industrial machine-gun synth-drums (“Afrikan Spaceship”), EWF kalimbas swamped by doom-metal bass/organ churns (“The Jinx”), and a bonafide modern-day goth dancefloor filler (“Vinaigrette”). The atmosphere might get oppressive, but it never feels stuck. Besides handily proving that it’s a fairly straight line from Gaslamp Killer-style acid-funk crate-digging to the grimier pages in Adrian Sherwood’s portfolio, *Callus *is also a healthy reminder that it takes some strikingly noisy stuff to actually hold up against his voice. Get used to it; even when it sandpapers your ears, it just makes the path to your mind that much clearer.

Artist: Gonjasufi, Album: Callus, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "Ever since A Sufi and a Killer sent his scarred wail out into a wider world, Gonjasufi’s future has seemed pretty open-ended. What path would his hip-hop-influenced psych take?  Subsequent releases—especially 2012’s *MU.ZZ.LE**—*veered closer to a series of confrontational wake-up calls than the inner voyage of the mind than “psychedelia” typically suggests. Jay Z’s “Nickels and Dimes” might have lifted the hook from the Gonjasufi cut of the (almost) same name, but its mournfully introspective spirit was something too bare-nerved to co-opt, the catharsis of *MU.ZZ.LE *pared it down to just the “psych-” and laid bare just how many far more unsettling things could be attached to it as a suffix. *Callus *is deliberately abrasive proof of this: an album that’s disorienting at its catchiest, harrowing at its ugliest, and more than willing to run both of those modes at the same time. Gonjasufi’s described this album as a document of his effort to embrace hate and pain, not out of nihilism or defeatism but as a way to endure what he sees as a surplus of the stuff getting dumped on everybody’s heads so he can return it as love. The album title says as much—it literally suggests growing a thicker skin—and the record’s mode feels like a much-needed endurance test in turn. It’s harsh and raucous and even oppressive, despite the fact that it ventures only rarely (and briefly) into uptempo trad-aggro turf. It’s both a call for confrontation and a search of positivity. And there’s more “we” than “I” in that confrontation. Gonjasufi’s lyrics feel more than ever like they’re sung in his characteristic wobbly, mutating wail because that piercing tone is the best way to reach out to people. Entreaties like “Is anyone else tired/From working on a slave ship?” (from opening cut “Your Maker”), declarations that “Babylon hates me/And they want me killed” (“The Kill”), and demands to “Forget your story and fake glory/Get your devils off of me” (“The Conspiracy”) are the words of someone reckoning with his fears and traumas in public to feel less alone. “Everything’s fucked” isn’t exactly a rare sentiment this year, though, and some stress is better empathized with when it’s felt rather than spoken, so he’s still riding on a tendency to show-not-tell his through tone. There’s a lot of distortion and overblown, in-the-red bass smothering the clarity of his words—even as it boosts the intensity of the voice delivering them. (The way his breathless, fuzz-drenched repetition of “stay out” melts into a caustically dissolving analog synth is borderline horrifying.) The mood of *Callus *comes off as embattled and mercurial as the mindstate of anyone trying to get their shit together and find a way through. And the music, filled with reverb and fuzz and gristle and the smell of ozone, demands both your attention and your resilience. Some fuss has been made about the appearance of former Cure guitarist Pearl Thompson, who shows up a few times (heard best on “The Kill”) to grind out some fuzz-toned squalls of noise. But it’s all of a piece, with the Special Guest Star moments subsumed into a bigger wall of noise. There’s King Tubby dub bleeps echoing into the distance (“Your Maker”), lo-fi guitar sludge lodged somewhere between Neu!’s “Super 16” and the murkier reaches of early Sub Pop (“Maniac Depressant”),  industrial machine-gun synth-drums (“Afrikan Spaceship”), EWF kalimbas swamped by doom-metal bass/organ churns (“The Jinx”), and a bonafide modern-day goth dancefloor filler (“Vinaigrette”). The atmosphere might get oppressive, but it never feels stuck. Besides handily proving that it’s a fairly straight line from Gaslamp Killer-style acid-funk crate-digging to the grimier pages in Adrian Sherwood’s portfolio, *Callus *is also a healthy reminder that it takes some strikingly noisy stuff to actually hold up against his voice. Get used to it; even when it sandpapers your ears, it just makes the path to your mind that much clearer."

Bellini

Snowing Sun

Rock

Brad Haywood

For a band that worked within math-rock, which many consider to be the most limited of genres, Don Caballero never made the same album twice. Credit that accomplishment to the dual geniuses whose constant interpersonal tension powered and drove the band: drummer-cum-hulking brute Damon Che, and calc-minded guitar hero Ian Williams. Up until their final studio effort, American Don, Che and Williams continued to push and innovate upon an unparalleled brand of energetic, artistic and unpredictable math-rock. But like all good things that I never had the chance to see live, Don Cab came to a premature end, punctuated symbolically by a dramatic van wreck just before the band were to play their coda in Detroit. As they say, what burns never returns. Since parting ways with Don Cab, Damon Che has teamed up with two veterans of the noise-rock scene-- guitarist Agostina Tilotta and vocalist Giovanna Cacciola of the Sicilian group Uzeda-- and bassist Matthew Taylor to form his new band, Bellini. After adding some songs, and producer Steve Albini (who previously worked on Don Cab's For Respect and American Don, and Uzeda's Different Section Wires), the quartet had recorded Snowing Sun. And despite the noteworthy artistic legacy preceding it, the record manages to set itself apart from its history and make a compelling statement of its own. The general approach of Snowing Sun resembles the technicality of Don Cab, simplified and blended with the shrill tones and avant-garde delivery of Uzeda. The guitar/drum/bass interplay is tight, but far less painstakingly composed and complex than that of Don Cab, and far less frantic. What you have instead is something a bit rougher tonally, but easier on the attention span. Rather than seven different sections with five different riffs, four time-changes, and an unsettling morass of polyrhythms, Bellini hits you with only a few jagged, biting, hand-picked riffs. It's still herky-jerky, but you immediately get a feel for what the band is doing-- it doesn't require multiple listens to figure out. With Bellini, Che isn't quite the focus of attention that he was with his former band; although he doesn't exactly stay in the pocket, his playing is much more restrained. The point instead seems to be to lock-in with Tilotta and Taylor, which they manage with great success on tracks like "Furious", which warms up slowly until the band reaches a rolling, mathy-Sabbath energy. Still, Che has his own reel of flailing highlights, as on "We Crossed the Ocean to See the Snowing Sun", where he swiftly pounds out a double-pedaled bridge into the final closing jam, and "The Best Song on the Starship", which itself closes with a full-band freak-out. Much of the simplified approach can be blamed on the presence of a vocalist. After all, it's damn nigh impossible to sing-- even whistle-- along to math-rock. Not that Cacciola really sings. Hers is more of an accented, Björkish scream-sing approach, a theatrical vector for her oblique, poetic lyrics ("That's my offer, that's all I have/ Coral, starfishes, seahorses"; "It seems like blood, but it's the water of a flame/ It'll turn into skin and breath for my rebirth"). Because of her accent, Cacciola's bizarre lyrics are indecipherable without a lyric sheet. Oddly, though, it lends Bellini an inexplicable artistic credibility-- sort of like subtitles. Besides for the aforementioned "We Crossed the Ocean" and "Furious", "Rut Row" and "Patience and Passion in Brown Gloves" stand out as bullseyes. "Rut Row" opens with a sharp, treble-heavy guitar riff and rolling, propulsive drum accompaniment, leaving little empty space. The busy opening sequence sets up a syncopated breakdown, with Cacciola shouting the appropriately aggressive chorus, "Out of here, out of his cage/ Totally naked, uncovered and insane." "Patience and Passion in Brown Gloves", meanwhile, winds through an off-center, midtempo math-verse until all four musicians find a funky lock-step to drive home a cathartic set of rhythmic jabs. Put all of the pieces together, and this is one cohesive, coherent son of a bitch. Eccentric and avant-garde, with a kick in the ass courtesy of the drummer. It's an incredibly rare thing for ex-members of genre-defining bands to release records that rival the ones released by their former groups, but Snowing Sun has easily trumped anything Uzeda ever released, and it comes damn close to equaling Don Cab's earliest material. Provided that Bellini continue to refine and master their sound, they may prove to be more vital than either.

Artist: Bellini, Album: Snowing Sun, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "For a band that worked within math-rock, which many consider to be the most limited of genres, Don Caballero never made the same album twice. Credit that accomplishment to the dual geniuses whose constant interpersonal tension powered and drove the band: drummer-cum-hulking brute Damon Che, and calc-minded guitar hero Ian Williams. Up until their final studio effort, American Don, Che and Williams continued to push and innovate upon an unparalleled brand of energetic, artistic and unpredictable math-rock. But like all good things that I never had the chance to see live, Don Cab came to a premature end, punctuated symbolically by a dramatic van wreck just before the band were to play their coda in Detroit. As they say, what burns never returns. Since parting ways with Don Cab, Damon Che has teamed up with two veterans of the noise-rock scene-- guitarist Agostina Tilotta and vocalist Giovanna Cacciola of the Sicilian group Uzeda-- and bassist Matthew Taylor to form his new band, Bellini. After adding some songs, and producer Steve Albini (who previously worked on Don Cab's For Respect and American Don, and Uzeda's Different Section Wires), the quartet had recorded Snowing Sun. And despite the noteworthy artistic legacy preceding it, the record manages to set itself apart from its history and make a compelling statement of its own. The general approach of Snowing Sun resembles the technicality of Don Cab, simplified and blended with the shrill tones and avant-garde delivery of Uzeda. The guitar/drum/bass interplay is tight, but far less painstakingly composed and complex than that of Don Cab, and far less frantic. What you have instead is something a bit rougher tonally, but easier on the attention span. Rather than seven different sections with five different riffs, four time-changes, and an unsettling morass of polyrhythms, Bellini hits you with only a few jagged, biting, hand-picked riffs. It's still herky-jerky, but you immediately get a feel for what the band is doing-- it doesn't require multiple listens to figure out. With Bellini, Che isn't quite the focus of attention that he was with his former band; although he doesn't exactly stay in the pocket, his playing is much more restrained. The point instead seems to be to lock-in with Tilotta and Taylor, which they manage with great success on tracks like "Furious", which warms up slowly until the band reaches a rolling, mathy-Sabbath energy. Still, Che has his own reel of flailing highlights, as on "We Crossed the Ocean to See the Snowing Sun", where he swiftly pounds out a double-pedaled bridge into the final closing jam, and "The Best Song on the Starship", which itself closes with a full-band freak-out. Much of the simplified approach can be blamed on the presence of a vocalist. After all, it's damn nigh impossible to sing-- even whistle-- along to math-rock. Not that Cacciola really sings. Hers is more of an accented, Björkish scream-sing approach, a theatrical vector for her oblique, poetic lyrics ("That's my offer, that's all I have/ Coral, starfishes, seahorses"; "It seems like blood, but it's the water of a flame/ It'll turn into skin and breath for my rebirth"). Because of her accent, Cacciola's bizarre lyrics are indecipherable without a lyric sheet. Oddly, though, it lends Bellini an inexplicable artistic credibility-- sort of like subtitles. Besides for the aforementioned "We Crossed the Ocean" and "Furious", "Rut Row" and "Patience and Passion in Brown Gloves" stand out as bullseyes. "Rut Row" opens with a sharp, treble-heavy guitar riff and rolling, propulsive drum accompaniment, leaving little empty space. The busy opening sequence sets up a syncopated breakdown, with Cacciola shouting the appropriately aggressive chorus, "Out of here, out of his cage/ Totally naked, uncovered and insane." "Patience and Passion in Brown Gloves", meanwhile, winds through an off-center, midtempo math-verse until all four musicians find a funky lock-step to drive home a cathartic set of rhythmic jabs. Put all of the pieces together, and this is one cohesive, coherent son of a bitch. Eccentric and avant-garde, with a kick in the ass courtesy of the drummer. It's an incredibly rare thing for ex-members of genre-defining bands to release records that rival the ones released by their former groups, but Snowing Sun has easily trumped anything Uzeda ever released, and it comes damn close to equaling Don Cab's earliest material. Provided that Bellini continue to refine and master their sound, they may prove to be more vital than either."

Masayoshi Fujita

Book of Life

Experimental

Andy Beta

“Before the solid-body electric guitar, the vibraphone was the ultimate modernist instrument, [a] technology of struck metal and vibrating air, percussion and melody,” writes David Toop in his 1999 musical survey Exotica, which traces “the art of ruins” through everyone from Martin Denny to the Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.. Developed in the late 1920s, the vibraphone became a staple of exotica and cool jazz after the war, its timbre hovering in a fuzzy space between rhythm and ambience, “primitive” and sophisticated. While there have been some titans on the vibes, like Bobby Hutcherson and Roy Ayers, it’s generally perceived as an accompanying rather than lead instrument. Over the course of a decade—spanning a series of solo albums and a long-standing collaboration with experimental producer Jan Jelinek—the Berlin-based vibraphonist Masayoshi Fujita has strived to make his instrument the primary focus, even as he blurs its edges. Fujita uses all manner of manipulation to make it sound like anything but a vibraphone, from electronics to bowing the bars to preparing his pipes with kitchen foil or a string of beads. For Book of Life, he doesn’t need so many tactics. Instead, he emphasizes his heart-stirring melodic gifts, often pairing mallets with violin, cello, flute, and voice. Fujita calls it his most “human” release, but considering the organic, woozy, at times alien atmospheres that arose from his previous efforts, such warmth feels slightly less idiosyncratic than before. On the stirring opener “Snowy Night Tale,” his instrument glows softly as strings swirl, conjuring the wistfulness and intimacy of the title. And if the cello-and-vibraphone elegance of “It’s Magical” doesn’t lead to Fujita fielding calls for soundtrack work in the near future (perhaps for the next Hayao Miyazaki film), it will be cinema’s loss. Achingly poignant, it soon gives way to more anxious tones, conveying an unusually complex emotional state in the span of just a few minutes. But every once in a while, Fujita and cohorts get uncomfortably close to the mawkish, as on the precious “Mountain Deer.” It’s when Fujita moves unaccompanied that he ascends to a more contemplative and numinous realm. Despite the relative straightforwardness of their titles, “Fog” and “Sadness” reveal the spacious terrain that Fujita can traverse with only vibraphone. The slow-blooming resonance of his instrument imparts an uncanny sense of both depth and weightlessness as Fujita allows enough space for each overtone to expand, spiral upwards, and decay before the next note arises. On the gorgeous “Harp,” Fujita seems to mimic the peaceful, unpredictable flow of a body of water, moving this way and then drifting in another direction, his playing evoking flower petals landing on a pond, rippling outwards. If Milt Jackson or Bobby Hutcherson ever had the chance to step away from the jazz idiom to record a new-age album, it would sound as blissful as this. As Fujita moves through closer “Cloud of Light,” his touch is so light that the sound of mallet on metal starts to give way. The piece grows more hushed until it seems that, rather than playing vibraphone, Fujita is simply vibrating the air.

Artist: Masayoshi Fujita, Album: Book of Life, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "“Before the solid-body electric guitar, the vibraphone was the ultimate modernist instrument, [a] technology of struck metal and vibrating air, percussion and melody,” writes David Toop in his 1999 musical survey Exotica, which traces “the art of ruins” through everyone from Martin Denny to the Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.. Developed in the late 1920s, the vibraphone became a staple of exotica and cool jazz after the war, its timbre hovering in a fuzzy space between rhythm and ambience, “primitive” and sophisticated. While there have been some titans on the vibes, like Bobby Hutcherson and Roy Ayers, it’s generally perceived as an accompanying rather than lead instrument. Over the course of a decade—spanning a series of solo albums and a long-standing collaboration with experimental producer Jan Jelinek—the Berlin-based vibraphonist Masayoshi Fujita has strived to make his instrument the primary focus, even as he blurs its edges. Fujita uses all manner of manipulation to make it sound like anything but a vibraphone, from electronics to bowing the bars to preparing his pipes with kitchen foil or a string of beads. For Book of Life, he doesn’t need so many tactics. Instead, he emphasizes his heart-stirring melodic gifts, often pairing mallets with violin, cello, flute, and voice. Fujita calls it his most “human” release, but considering the organic, woozy, at times alien atmospheres that arose from his previous efforts, such warmth feels slightly less idiosyncratic than before. On the stirring opener “Snowy Night Tale,” his instrument glows softly as strings swirl, conjuring the wistfulness and intimacy of the title. And if the cello-and-vibraphone elegance of “It’s Magical” doesn’t lead to Fujita fielding calls for soundtrack work in the near future (perhaps for the next Hayao Miyazaki film), it will be cinema’s loss. Achingly poignant, it soon gives way to more anxious tones, conveying an unusually complex emotional state in the span of just a few minutes. But every once in a while, Fujita and cohorts get uncomfortably close to the mawkish, as on the precious “Mountain Deer.” It’s when Fujita moves unaccompanied that he ascends to a more contemplative and numinous realm. Despite the relative straightforwardness of their titles, “Fog” and “Sadness” reveal the spacious terrain that Fujita can traverse with only vibraphone. The slow-blooming resonance of his instrument imparts an uncanny sense of both depth and weightlessness as Fujita allows enough space for each overtone to expand, spiral upwards, and decay before the next note arises. On the gorgeous “Harp,” Fujita seems to mimic the peaceful, unpredictable flow of a body of water, moving this way and then drifting in another direction, his playing evoking flower petals landing on a pond, rippling outwards. If Milt Jackson or Bobby Hutcherson ever had the chance to step away from the jazz idiom to record a new-age album, it would sound as blissful as this. As Fujita moves through closer “Cloud of Light,” his touch is so light that the sound of mallet on metal starts to give way. The piece grows more hushed until it seems that, rather than playing vibraphone, Fujita is simply vibrating the air."

Atmosphere

The Family Sign

Rap

Nate Patrin

Lots of indie-rap figures wallow in self-pity, bemoan their own bad habits, snap at those who make life hard for them, and somehow find a way to wrap all those emotions up into a resilient shell. But Atmopshere's Slug established a particular knack for it when he broke outside the Twin Cities about a decade back-- every heartfelt line about lonely people or fractured relations was offset by an offhand remark that took some the sting out of his lamentations. Atmosphere got tagged as "emo rap" because there wasn't an easier go-to term for a barfly raconteur with female troubles, but while Slug's lyrics spoke to the same sour impulses that drove teenage misery, they did so through the experiences of someone who discovers to that misery when you grow up. The catch is that growing up also means growing out of a few things, and The Family Sign catches Slug at a point where he seems to be tilting more towards plainspoken sincerity. The hard-drinking, love-stressed, party-fatigued persona that made him a breakout cult figure 10 years ago might sound somewhere between disingenuous and ridiculous coming from a 38-year-old today. But in stripping some of the more larger-than-life traits of misspent youth away from his approach, he's also lost some of the outsized arrogance and aw-shucks smartassedness that gave his more po-faced moments a three-dimensional context or sharp emotional counterpoint. While The Family Sign has a specific titular focus on loved (and formerly loved) ones and the way people define themselves through them, the real conceptual leap on this album is how patriarch maturity means less jokiness, more earnestness, and a traveled perspective that doesn't leave much room for not giving a fuck. What room is left winds up parceled out over a couple of highlights. As blunt as the premise is, the negligent alky father meets stoner pickpockets of "Bad Bad Daddy" has a certain caustic bite to it. And the road-ravaged, detail-rich narrative of "Millennium Dodo" evokes the same harebrained excitement-slash-disorientation that made the best moments of 2003's fantastic Seven's Travels stand out. Pointing out his car's mirror-ball décor as an homage to Escape From New York or noting the resemblance between a Best Western clerk and "WKRP in Cincinnati" nebbish Les Nessman is the sort of pop-culture debris that's evocative enough to transcend reference-dropping and hint at the metaphorical reserves in Slug's brain. But the track also starts out with a couplet-- "I only act like an asshole/ Why don't ch'y'all stand back, let the man grow"-- that explains the rest of the album's almost total lack of sardonic edge. Heartfelt moments haven't necessarily been beyond Slug's grasp-- When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold highlight "Wild Wild Horses" and "Lifter Puller" off Seven's Travels are genuinely moving in a way that few indie-rap love songs are. But here love songs are deployed a bit blank-facedly, strings of clichés, shrugging platitudes and half-thoughts drawn together into a husk of what used to be a compellingly contradictory personality. The idea of a banal yet subtly tense reunion with a long-forgotten ex in "Your Name Here" is undercut by the fact that there's not enough interesting personal details to make Slug's rejected reconnection come across like anything more than a petty dismissal. And while "The Last to Say" is 100% worth hearing if it convinces just one woman to leave the abusive asshole that blackens her eyes, it's weird that it sounds less emotionally invested than the sharp-spitting breakup kissoff "Just for Show". As Slug's performative role dials down the emotional resonance, the beats have followed suit into a low-intensity churn, one that undercuts what could've been a set of adventurous live-band hip-hop with a uniform lethargy that tops out at mid-tempo. While the instrumentation of When Life Gives You Lemons signaled a wealth of potential new directions for Atmosphere's production, The Family Sign runs almost entirely on gloomy ballads heavy on maudlin piano chords and keening guitar riffs. That latter instrument's maybe the most interesting sonic component of Ant's post-sampling compositional phase, and Nate Collis cranks out Black Keys-ian twang ("Bad Bad Daddy"), psychedelic noir ("My Key"), and eerie slide ("The Last to Say") with versatile ease. And if Erick Anderson's keyboards tend to provide more texture than melody, at least he's as handy with Jackie Mittoo reggae riffs ("Just for Show") as he is with new wave glow ("I Don't Need Brighter Days"). But there's little to cut through the fog-- with the exception of the joy-buzzer jolt of "She's Enough" and the flailing attempt at Nilsson-style AM pop on "Ain't Nobody", this is music that conflates maturity with exhaustion.

Artist: Atmosphere, Album: The Family Sign, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 5.8 Album review: "Lots of indie-rap figures wallow in self-pity, bemoan their own bad habits, snap at those who make life hard for them, and somehow find a way to wrap all those emotions up into a resilient shell. But Atmopshere's Slug established a particular knack for it when he broke outside the Twin Cities about a decade back-- every heartfelt line about lonely people or fractured relations was offset by an offhand remark that took some the sting out of his lamentations. Atmosphere got tagged as "emo rap" because there wasn't an easier go-to term for a barfly raconteur with female troubles, but while Slug's lyrics spoke to the same sour impulses that drove teenage misery, they did so through the experiences of someone who discovers to that misery when you grow up. The catch is that growing up also means growing out of a few things, and The Family Sign catches Slug at a point where he seems to be tilting more towards plainspoken sincerity. The hard-drinking, love-stressed, party-fatigued persona that made him a breakout cult figure 10 years ago might sound somewhere between disingenuous and ridiculous coming from a 38-year-old today. But in stripping some of the more larger-than-life traits of misspent youth away from his approach, he's also lost some of the outsized arrogance and aw-shucks smartassedness that gave his more po-faced moments a three-dimensional context or sharp emotional counterpoint. While The Family Sign has a specific titular focus on loved (and formerly loved) ones and the way people define themselves through them, the real conceptual leap on this album is how patriarch maturity means less jokiness, more earnestness, and a traveled perspective that doesn't leave much room for not giving a fuck. What room is left winds up parceled out over a couple of highlights. As blunt as the premise is, the negligent alky father meets stoner pickpockets of "Bad Bad Daddy" has a certain caustic bite to it. And the road-ravaged, detail-rich narrative of "Millennium Dodo" evokes the same harebrained excitement-slash-disorientation that made the best moments of 2003's fantastic Seven's Travels stand out. Pointing out his car's mirror-ball décor as an homage to Escape From New York or noting the resemblance between a Best Western clerk and "WKRP in Cincinnati" nebbish Les Nessman is the sort of pop-culture debris that's evocative enough to transcend reference-dropping and hint at the metaphorical reserves in Slug's brain. But the track also starts out with a couplet-- "I only act like an asshole/ Why don't ch'y'all stand back, let the man grow"-- that explains the rest of the album's almost total lack of sardonic edge. Heartfelt moments haven't necessarily been beyond Slug's grasp-- When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold highlight "Wild Wild Horses" and "Lifter Puller" off Seven's Travels are genuinely moving in a way that few indie-rap love songs are. But here love songs are deployed a bit blank-facedly, strings of clichés, shrugging platitudes and half-thoughts drawn together into a husk of what used to be a compellingly contradictory personality. The idea of a banal yet subtly tense reunion with a long-forgotten ex in "Your Name Here" is undercut by the fact that there's not enough interesting personal details to make Slug's rejected reconnection come across like anything more than a petty dismissal. And while "The Last to Say" is 100% worth hearing if it convinces just one woman to leave the abusive asshole that blackens her eyes, it's weird that it sounds less emotionally invested than the sharp-spitting breakup kissoff "Just for Show". As Slug's performative role dials down the emotional resonance, the beats have followed suit into a low-intensity churn, one that undercuts what could've been a set of adventurous live-band hip-hop with a uniform lethargy that tops out at mid-tempo. While the instrumentation of When Life Gives You Lemons signaled a wealth of potential new directions for Atmosphere's production, The Family Sign runs almost entirely on gloomy ballads heavy on maudlin piano chords and keening guitar riffs. That latter instrument's maybe the most interesting sonic component of Ant's post-sampling compositional phase, and Nate Collis cranks out Black Keys-ian twang ("Bad Bad Daddy"), psychedelic noir ("My Key"), and eerie slide ("The Last to Say") with versatile ease. And if Erick Anderson's keyboards tend to provide more texture than melody, at least he's as handy with Jackie Mittoo reggae riffs ("Just for Show") as he is with new wave glow ("I Don't Need Brighter Days"). But there's little to cut through the fog-- with the exception of the joy-buzzer jolt of "She's Enough" and the flailing attempt at Nilsson-style AM pop on "Ain't Nobody", this is music that conflates maturity with exhaustion."

Collections of Colonies of Bees

Birds

Rock

Roque Strew

The birds and the bees: it's rock's quintessential subject. But is it a post-rock subject? In a way, it turns out. The name Collections of Colonies of Bees may call to mind spreadsheets, microscope slides, caffeinated Poindexters in white frocks, and, of course, the honey-bearing fairies that grace Cheerios boxes and a Rimsky-Korsakov interlude. The suggestions of the scientific and the imaginative fit this Milwaukee quintet to a T. Clearly, these people pay attention to names-- words carry heavy burdens, after all, in the taciturn deserts of post-rock. So when small winged creatures pop up on their fifth full-length, Birds, we take note. Given the name "Flocks", the record's four movements have a sense not only of flight, but of a group moving gracefully in unison. Formed in 1998, the Bees have spent a decade polishing their act and aesthetic. This is especially obvious in their renowned live sets (recently gushed over in Bon Iver's Guest List), which form the basis of Birds. These are not straightforward jam sessions. Organic and intricate as their compositions can be, the Bees clearly appreciate the emotional power of simple, thoughtfully tiered rhythms, as the opening movement "Flocks I" attests. Sometimes these rhythms are crafted out of crunchy guitar riffs, sometimes they are pieced together out of digital fragments, a technique they perfected on 2004's Customer. The amalgam falls somewhere between the drawn-out drama of Explosions in the Sky and Eno's furniture music, the concept-art relaxant. "Flocks II" begins as a gorgeous vista snapping in and out of view. Sublimity is drawn with tiny flecks of digital noise, cut-up keyboards, and softly shimmering tides of sound, giving the impression of a misty metropolis, the frenzy of light and noise glimpsed from the top of a skyscraper. The neon-pastoral ambiance is broken by Jon Mueller's majestic kit work. Thankfully, his drumming survives the band's slice-and-dice, collage instinct-- the Bees have learned the if-it-ain't-broke principle. Later in the song, unassuming riffs and keyboard figures enter the scene, cozying up to each other and easing into soothing grooves. Capturing the band's dual loyalty to the computer's possibilities and to rock's apparatus, this movement outshines the first. With a similarly tentative intro, "Flocks III" tiptoes in the midst of fluttery, manipulated guitars, its air of wind-chime serenity torn up by the percussion: a clockwork kick drum announcing that meditation time is over. The song picks up as the cymbals rattle, more and more violently. Abruptly at the four-minute mark, everything settles down, the silence surrendering to a few lonely plinks, then an equally lonely strum, then a jaunty and jazzily martial snare. Soon a full-blown song emerges, a moonlit wash of cymbals and guitars built on top of the drumbeat. You could say the tension between the dreamy surface and the more robotic, more rational undercurrents, marks the entire album. The interplay also links Birds back to the early avant-folk of their career, as two former members of Pele sought to update bluegrass with technology. Airy, slack, the beginning of "Flocks IV" gives off a soft-focus, 1970s glow. As it repeats hypnotically, a squiggle of guitar, bent into a funky, Oriental shape, distracts the listener from the less interesting theatrics in the background. Two thirds into the song, as the tempo climbs upward, the Bees offer a welcome (and less literal) change of pace. A sharper-edged, ragged guitar maneuvers into the picture as a Rhodes chimes and floats above and, briefly, an army of bongos quarter noisily underneath. As this Reichian moment slips away into static, the album ends on an uplifting note. Never lapsing into the doom and gloom of their stylistic peers, the Bees have eased into a mature, mesmerizing style that is finally and wholly their own.

Artist: Collections of Colonies of Bees, Album: Birds, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "The birds and the bees: it's rock's quintessential subject. But is it a post-rock subject? In a way, it turns out. The name Collections of Colonies of Bees may call to mind spreadsheets, microscope slides, caffeinated Poindexters in white frocks, and, of course, the honey-bearing fairies that grace Cheerios boxes and a Rimsky-Korsakov interlude. The suggestions of the scientific and the imaginative fit this Milwaukee quintet to a T. Clearly, these people pay attention to names-- words carry heavy burdens, after all, in the taciturn deserts of post-rock. So when small winged creatures pop up on their fifth full-length, Birds, we take note. Given the name "Flocks", the record's four movements have a sense not only of flight, but of a group moving gracefully in unison. Formed in 1998, the Bees have spent a decade polishing their act and aesthetic. This is especially obvious in their renowned live sets (recently gushed over in Bon Iver's Guest List), which form the basis of Birds. These are not straightforward jam sessions. Organic and intricate as their compositions can be, the Bees clearly appreciate the emotional power of simple, thoughtfully tiered rhythms, as the opening movement "Flocks I" attests. Sometimes these rhythms are crafted out of crunchy guitar riffs, sometimes they are pieced together out of digital fragments, a technique they perfected on 2004's Customer. The amalgam falls somewhere between the drawn-out drama of Explosions in the Sky and Eno's furniture music, the concept-art relaxant. "Flocks II" begins as a gorgeous vista snapping in and out of view. Sublimity is drawn with tiny flecks of digital noise, cut-up keyboards, and softly shimmering tides of sound, giving the impression of a misty metropolis, the frenzy of light and noise glimpsed from the top of a skyscraper. The neon-pastoral ambiance is broken by Jon Mueller's majestic kit work. Thankfully, his drumming survives the band's slice-and-dice, collage instinct-- the Bees have learned the if-it-ain't-broke principle. Later in the song, unassuming riffs and keyboard figures enter the scene, cozying up to each other and easing into soothing grooves. Capturing the band's dual loyalty to the computer's possibilities and to rock's apparatus, this movement outshines the first. With a similarly tentative intro, "Flocks III" tiptoes in the midst of fluttery, manipulated guitars, its air of wind-chime serenity torn up by the percussion: a clockwork kick drum announcing that meditation time is over. The song picks up as the cymbals rattle, more and more violently. Abruptly at the four-minute mark, everything settles down, the silence surrendering to a few lonely plinks, then an equally lonely strum, then a jaunty and jazzily martial snare. Soon a full-blown song emerges, a moonlit wash of cymbals and guitars built on top of the drumbeat. You could say the tension between the dreamy surface and the more robotic, more rational undercurrents, marks the entire album. The interplay also links Birds back to the early avant-folk of their career, as two former members of Pele sought to update bluegrass with technology. Airy, slack, the beginning of "Flocks IV" gives off a soft-focus, 1970s glow. As it repeats hypnotically, a squiggle of guitar, bent into a funky, Oriental shape, distracts the listener from the less interesting theatrics in the background. Two thirds into the song, as the tempo climbs upward, the Bees offer a welcome (and less literal) change of pace. A sharper-edged, ragged guitar maneuvers into the picture as a Rhodes chimes and floats above and, briefly, an army of bongos quarter noisily underneath. As this Reichian moment slips away into static, the album ends on an uplifting note. Never lapsing into the doom and gloom of their stylistic peers, the Bees have eased into a mature, mesmerizing style that is finally and wholly their own."

Release the Sunbird

Come Back to Us

Rock

Ian Cohen

When a frontman decides to make a record outside of his main gig, the first order of business is to justify its existence. This is particularly true in the case of Zach Rogue's stepping out as Release the Sunbird: though Rogue Wave grew from a solo project to a full-time band in a matter of months, I imagine a guy who sorta named the band after himself maintains as much songwriting autonomy as he wants. But upon holing up in a Bloomington, Ind., studio with a batch of unfinished songs after a grueling tour stint, you could assume that Rogue wanted to pump the brakes on a band that was getting bigger and not necessarily better. Of all the records from the past decade accurately likened to the Shins, Out of the Shadow and Descended Like Vultures are pretty much the only two that still hold up. But attempts to muscle up for amphitheaters (Asleep at Heaven's Gate) and dancefloors (Permalight) proved Rogue Wave's charming indie pop wasn't really scalable. On the title track here, Rogue sings, "I'm already able to cut myself down if I need to," and Come Back to Us goes out of its way to be accommodating to those unconvinced by the direction Rogue had been taking. Described as a "solo project, yet not," it brings him back to the Out of the Shadow days where the bulk of the songs were just him and his guitar, occasional production touches applied after the fact. Opener "It's All Around You" is more of a purposeful mantra than song, the single titular lyric doubling seeping Farfisa (courtesy of the Wave's Pat Spurgeon) and surprisingly loud drums for an enveloping, you-are-there sound. Come Back to Us never rocks that hard again ("rocks" being relative), but the homey warmth is maintained through an au naturel recording where every scrape of fingernails on guitar strings, bounce of room echo, and imperfect harmony is kept intact. Even the more surprising studio touches-- a distorted percussive effect on "Come Back to Us", guiro, the unsettling reverb of "A New You"-- come off like natural found sound amidst rumpled folk-pop that doesn't sound composed so much as snuggled into wakefulness. Yet for all of its dewy production and dog-eared melodies, Rogue's words themselves sag with the burden of addiction, death, and fatherhood: It sounds like early morning music for people who've been up all night struggling with something heavy. Though it's not addressed to anyone specific, "Always Like the Son" carries devastating weight, the passing of a brother or one's closest friend being used as a reflection for one's own personal shortcomings. "Why Can't You Look at Yourself" instantly recalls an unplugged version of Descended Like Vulture's "Bird on a Wire", but forgoes its lighter-waving to seek relief from the powerlessness of watching an alcoholic waste away. If not so much a sharp turn for Rogue sonically ("California" and "Christians in Black" come to my mind), it's unquestionably the most personal and direct he's ever been-- a lyric like "all this emotion, can't help myself" might read cloying, but it's the purest distillation of a record that thrives on straightforwardness and honesty. But while Come Back to Us isn't Rogue's longest release, it's got the longest tracklist and it's a little too good at establishing mood: The cumulative effect of 12 straight ballads of misty eyes and resigned acceptance after "It's All Around You" saps the individual effect of each. Or maybe the most powerful of the songs all come in the first half, and as Come Back to Us pushes toward its disappointingly vague closer, "Outlook's Anonymous", Rogue's words get more terse and emotionally illegible without offering any compensation in volume or melody. Still, it's a shame that the songs on Come Back to Us weren't available to Rogue previously, since "A New You" or "Why Can't You Look at Yourself" could've certainly counterbalanced some of his more awkwardly ambitious moments of late. So even if it's a pointedly despondent record, it actually makes me hopeful that Rogue hasn't wholly lost touch with the humble charm of his best work.

Artist: Release the Sunbird, Album: Come Back to Us, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.2 Album review: "When a frontman decides to make a record outside of his main gig, the first order of business is to justify its existence. This is particularly true in the case of Zach Rogue's stepping out as Release the Sunbird: though Rogue Wave grew from a solo project to a full-time band in a matter of months, I imagine a guy who sorta named the band after himself maintains as much songwriting autonomy as he wants. But upon holing up in a Bloomington, Ind., studio with a batch of unfinished songs after a grueling tour stint, you could assume that Rogue wanted to pump the brakes on a band that was getting bigger and not necessarily better. Of all the records from the past decade accurately likened to the Shins, Out of the Shadow and Descended Like Vultures are pretty much the only two that still hold up. But attempts to muscle up for amphitheaters (Asleep at Heaven's Gate) and dancefloors (Permalight) proved Rogue Wave's charming indie pop wasn't really scalable. On the title track here, Rogue sings, "I'm already able to cut myself down if I need to," and Come Back to Us goes out of its way to be accommodating to those unconvinced by the direction Rogue had been taking. Described as a "solo project, yet not," it brings him back to the Out of the Shadow days where the bulk of the songs were just him and his guitar, occasional production touches applied after the fact. Opener "It's All Around You" is more of a purposeful mantra than song, the single titular lyric doubling seeping Farfisa (courtesy of the Wave's Pat Spurgeon) and surprisingly loud drums for an enveloping, you-are-there sound. Come Back to Us never rocks that hard again ("rocks" being relative), but the homey warmth is maintained through an au naturel recording where every scrape of fingernails on guitar strings, bounce of room echo, and imperfect harmony is kept intact. Even the more surprising studio touches-- a distorted percussive effect on "Come Back to Us", guiro, the unsettling reverb of "A New You"-- come off like natural found sound amidst rumpled folk-pop that doesn't sound composed so much as snuggled into wakefulness. Yet for all of its dewy production and dog-eared melodies, Rogue's words themselves sag with the burden of addiction, death, and fatherhood: It sounds like early morning music for people who've been up all night struggling with something heavy. Though it's not addressed to anyone specific, "Always Like the Son" carries devastating weight, the passing of a brother or one's closest friend being used as a reflection for one's own personal shortcomings. "Why Can't You Look at Yourself" instantly recalls an unplugged version of Descended Like Vulture's "Bird on a Wire", but forgoes its lighter-waving to seek relief from the powerlessness of watching an alcoholic waste away. If not so much a sharp turn for Rogue sonically ("California" and "Christians in Black" come to my mind), it's unquestionably the most personal and direct he's ever been-- a lyric like "all this emotion, can't help myself" might read cloying, but it's the purest distillation of a record that thrives on straightforwardness and honesty. But while Come Back to Us isn't Rogue's longest release, it's got the longest tracklist and it's a little too good at establishing mood: The cumulative effect of 12 straight ballads of misty eyes and resigned acceptance after "It's All Around You" saps the individual effect of each. Or maybe the most powerful of the songs all come in the first half, and as Come Back to Us pushes toward its disappointingly vague closer, "Outlook's Anonymous", Rogue's words get more terse and emotionally illegible without offering any compensation in volume or melody. Still, it's a shame that the songs on Come Back to Us weren't available to Rogue previously, since "A New You" or "Why Can't You Look at Yourself" could've certainly counterbalanced some of his more awkwardly ambitious moments of late. So even if it's a pointedly despondent record, it actually makes me hopeful that Rogue hasn't wholly lost touch with the humble charm of his best work."

Lukestar

Lake Toba

Rock

Stephen M. Deusner

My first impression of Truls Heggero was neither positive nor, fortunately, reliable. Moments after I popped in Truls & the Trees' debut album, Ailanthus, into my computer, I unfolded the CD insert and found the poster of the Norwegian singer/songwriter/mastermind dressed in full Boy Scout garb (or the Scandinavian equivalent), holding an acoustic guitar and looking pensively into the distance-- a visionary in arrested development. Initially I feared this would be just another indie-cute collective with overly twee hooks and lyrics that could have come from The Dangerous Book for Boys, but soon realized how off base I was. Heggero may be a prodigiously ambitious musician with a gift for witty, sprawling arrangements full of offbeat instrumentation and plenty of musical gambits (not unlike fellow Scout uniform wearer Sufjan Stevens), but his songs rarely announce themselves as particularly over the top or elaborate. He wants to deliver the goods directly to the listener-- the demonstrative hook, the headlong jam, the thrumming ambience, the unexpected coda-- and it only helps that his vocals range from androgynous and adenoidal (think Isaac Brock via Placebo's Brian Molko) to a stage-whisper falsetto suggestive of Sigur Rós's Jon Thor Birgisson. Apparently, Heggero's brain runneth over, such that he needs not one, but two bands to get all his ideas out there. Releasing albums just months apart, the spacier Lukestar and the earthier Truls & the Trees show off slightly different aspects of his musical personality. Of the two, Lukestar's Lake Toba, the follow-up to 2004's Alpine Unit, has received more attention and is slated for a U.S. release this fall on Flameshovel. The title refers to the Sumatran volcanic lake that erupted eons ago and may have changed the course of human evolution. So much for modesty. Nevertheless, it's perhaps the more accessible, if not necessarily the more enjoyable, of the two albums, a solid collection of pulsing indie-rock songs with half-shouted hooks and guitars unwinding like fractal art. Opener "White Shade" and "The Shade You Hide" are Wrensy frenzies of manic guitars propelled by drummer Jørgen Smådal Larsen's tricky rhythms and imaginative fills. "The Clouds Tell" offers a floating-in-space interlude before the band blast off again on the zig-zagging "In a Hologram". Still, the album winds down as it proceeds: Lukestar can't maintain that creative intensity, letting the hooks soften and the arrangements lose some of their purposefulness. Conceptually, Truls & the Trees works as a rustic flipside-project to Lukestar: Instead of a firm five-piece, it's a loosely defined collective ranging from six to sixteen members, depending on the time and place. To call the group an earthy counterpart doesn't mean the Trees are strictly acoustic or folksy, just less streamlined and more grounded. They even open their debut, Ailanthus (named for the fast-growing deciduous often referred to as the "tree of heaven"), with "Aim Vs. Signal", a full minute of squiggling synths. Similarly, these songs squirm away from expectations. Dag Stiberg's saxophone opens up the halting "Mystaxxx", making its dreamy atmospherics sound all the richer as drummer Larsen taps out Morse code rhythms on his snare rim, and "Count Your Steps" and the title track both race impatiently, doing somersaults as they run downhill. Stand-out "Upside Journey" sports an emphatic hook and a barreling momentum, then crashes into a Dexy's Midnight Runners breakdown on the coda. The one real joykill is closer "Topquark Journey to the Center of the Universe", which revisits "Upside Journey" but in a stiffly electronic style that ends the album on an uncharacteristically humdrum note. Still, while Lukestar's rock-band format necessarily limits their range, Truls & the Trees aren't quite a rock band or quite anything else, and with that unsettledness comes the freedom to do anything they want.

Artist: Lukestar, Album: Lake Toba, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "My first impression of Truls Heggero was neither positive nor, fortunately, reliable. Moments after I popped in Truls & the Trees' debut album, Ailanthus, into my computer, I unfolded the CD insert and found the poster of the Norwegian singer/songwriter/mastermind dressed in full Boy Scout garb (or the Scandinavian equivalent), holding an acoustic guitar and looking pensively into the distance-- a visionary in arrested development. Initially I feared this would be just another indie-cute collective with overly twee hooks and lyrics that could have come from The Dangerous Book for Boys, but soon realized how off base I was. Heggero may be a prodigiously ambitious musician with a gift for witty, sprawling arrangements full of offbeat instrumentation and plenty of musical gambits (not unlike fellow Scout uniform wearer Sufjan Stevens), but his songs rarely announce themselves as particularly over the top or elaborate. He wants to deliver the goods directly to the listener-- the demonstrative hook, the headlong jam, the thrumming ambience, the unexpected coda-- and it only helps that his vocals range from androgynous and adenoidal (think Isaac Brock via Placebo's Brian Molko) to a stage-whisper falsetto suggestive of Sigur Rós's Jon Thor Birgisson. Apparently, Heggero's brain runneth over, such that he needs not one, but two bands to get all his ideas out there. Releasing albums just months apart, the spacier Lukestar and the earthier Truls & the Trees show off slightly different aspects of his musical personality. Of the two, Lukestar's Lake Toba, the follow-up to 2004's Alpine Unit, has received more attention and is slated for a U.S. release this fall on Flameshovel. The title refers to the Sumatran volcanic lake that erupted eons ago and may have changed the course of human evolution. So much for modesty. Nevertheless, it's perhaps the more accessible, if not necessarily the more enjoyable, of the two albums, a solid collection of pulsing indie-rock songs with half-shouted hooks and guitars unwinding like fractal art. Opener "White Shade" and "The Shade You Hide" are Wrensy frenzies of manic guitars propelled by drummer Jørgen Smådal Larsen's tricky rhythms and imaginative fills. "The Clouds Tell" offers a floating-in-space interlude before the band blast off again on the zig-zagging "In a Hologram". Still, the album winds down as it proceeds: Lukestar can't maintain that creative intensity, letting the hooks soften and the arrangements lose some of their purposefulness. Conceptually, Truls & the Trees works as a rustic flipside-project to Lukestar: Instead of a firm five-piece, it's a loosely defined collective ranging from six to sixteen members, depending on the time and place. To call the group an earthy counterpart doesn't mean the Trees are strictly acoustic or folksy, just less streamlined and more grounded. They even open their debut, Ailanthus (named for the fast-growing deciduous often referred to as the "tree of heaven"), with "Aim Vs. Signal", a full minute of squiggling synths. Similarly, these songs squirm away from expectations. Dag Stiberg's saxophone opens up the halting "Mystaxxx", making its dreamy atmospherics sound all the richer as drummer Larsen taps out Morse code rhythms on his snare rim, and "Count Your Steps" and the title track both race impatiently, doing somersaults as they run downhill. Stand-out "Upside Journey" sports an emphatic hook and a barreling momentum, then crashes into a Dexy's Midnight Runners breakdown on the coda. The one real joykill is closer "Topquark Journey to the Center of the Universe", which revisits "Upside Journey" but in a stiffly electronic style that ends the album on an uncharacteristically humdrum note. Still, while Lukestar's rock-band format necessarily limits their range, Truls & the Trees aren't quite a rock band or quite anything else, and with that unsettledness comes the freedom to do anything they want."

Of Montreal

White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood

Rock

Judy Berman

Did you hear the one about how reality is an illusion and what we think of as “human life” and “the universe” are just lines of code in some superior being’s cosmic computer simulation? Although it has the ring of stoner mysticism, simulated reality is an actual theory that scientists and philosophers have seriously entertained. At a debate on the subject a couple of years ago, moderator Neil deGrasse Tyson confessed, “It is easy for me to imagine that everything in our lives is just a creation of some other entity for their entertainment.” The theory gained currency, for obvious reasons, after Brexit, the 2016 election, and the odd best picture mix-up at last year’s Oscars. It also made quite the impression on Of Montreal mastermind Kevin Barnes, who cites months of Trump-related “simulated reality paranoid” as a chief influence on his new album, White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood. On the chorus of the best track, “Plateau Phase/No Careerism No Corruption,” he suggests that what we think of as reality is so fragile and fluid that, “If we put our ear to the ceiling, we can hear the multiverse seeding, we can hear the simulation wheezing.” Not that Barnes—a maximalist in all things, from songwriting to character creation to performance style—could ever confine himself to a single inspiration. For more than a decade, he’s been documenting his emotional crises on Of Montreal albums that double as catalogs of his recent obsessions. Along with referencing Germaine Greer, James Salter, and classic European art films like Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, Barnes increasingly conceives each LP as a genre study. False Priest, from 2010, was his Prince-inspired foray into plastic funk. His most recent album, 2016’s Innocence Reaches, filtered contemporary EDM sounds and internet/social justice jargon through vintage synthesizers. Now, each almost-yearly release plays like a new season of an ongoing Kevin Barnes anthology series; the styles, characters, and themes change, but the auteurist creator and his intellectual voracity remain the same. With White Is Relic, Danceteria season approaches. Barnes includes a list of influences that features ’80s-era extended club mixes, the late chopped-and-screwed pioneer DJ Screw, and the colorful gender fuckery of films by Pedro Almodóvar. On a personal level, Barnes says he’s finally forgiven himself for the failure of his well-documented marriage to former bandmate Nina Aimee Grøttland and fallen in love again. But it’s simulated reality that makes these apparently unrelated sounds and ideas hang together, in one of the most cohesive Of Montreal albums since their 2007 masterpiece, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? It’s to Barnes’ credit that, despite his experimentation, every song he records has his stamp—those churning melodies, the faintly androgynous vocals, the comically vast lyrical vocabulary. Still, White Is Relic goes a step beyond even his recent genre studies, stretching the typical four-minute Of Montreal single so that only six tracks fill its 41-minute runtime. Punctuated by fluttery horns and synths that recall zippers on nylon, the long instrumental passages really do give the impression that Barnes has remixed his own compositions. Cribbing from DJ Screw, Barnes often slows down just one element of a song, creating the spooky sensation that it’s playing in two different dimensions at once. In the outro to “Paranoiac Intervals/Body Dysmorphia,” his vocals are pulled thin like taffy over increasingly arpeggiated drum beats. “Body dysmorphia, I know how it feels,” he chants, as the music translates that perceptual distortion into aural terms. The overall impression is of some outside force—perhaps an alien species with next-level programming skills and a sick sense of humor—adjusting each track as it plays. In fact, Barnes did compose the album as a sort of disembodied intelligence, incorporating the contributions of remote collaborators instead of gathering a band in the studio. If Kevin Barnes the songwriter is playing god, then Kevin Barnes the singer is all too human, a digital ant like everyone else desperate to stay sane in this darkest computer-simulated timeline. Love is one source of transcendence. It gives us a glimpse of the dirty-minded, late-’00s Of Montreal on “Sophie Calle Private Game/Every Person Is a Pussy, Every Pussy Is a Star!,” a mid-tempo sex jam that name-drops Sappho and recounts all-night Almodóvar binges, alongside erotically asphyxiated saxophones. Like so many of us fragile aesthetes, Barnes has spent the past two years looking to political art for inspiration to resist America’s new dystopian regime. That’s where he channels the work of Angela Davis, Ta-Nehisi Coates, James Baldwin, as well as the words “white is relic,” for better and worse. On the ghostly “Writing the Circles/Orgone Tropics,” the compulsively self-dramatizing singer seems to be chiding himself with the observation, “This acute loneliness that you feel has nothing to do with other people.” But even if your tolerance for white artists discovering racism two decades into their career is high, it’s sure to be tested by some of Barnes’ more self-indulgent lyrics. The dreamy opening track “Soft Music/Juno Portraits of the Jovian Sky” finds him complaining, “Soft music drains the oxygen from besieged Bushwick streets reflexively retching Anglo influx” and resolving that “there will be no gentrificating our graffitied warship of summer love.” It’s easy to miss the album’s sonic and conceptual ingenuity amid the lyrical bloat. The thing is, even Barnes’ worst clunkers serve a purpose. When they give way to one of the devastatingly plainspoken lines he’s also capable of writing—“It’s good for us depressives to keep someone else alive” on “Sophie Calle,” for example—it’s like he’s lifting a curtain to reveal a shaft of midday sunlight. Whether that blackout shade is Kevin Barnes’ tortured psyche, America in 2018, or our entire, allegedly simulated universe, everything is briefly, brilliantly illuminated when White Is Relic pulls it back.

Artist: Of Montreal, Album: White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "Did you hear the one about how reality is an illusion and what we think of as “human life” and “the universe” are just lines of code in some superior being’s cosmic computer simulation? Although it has the ring of stoner mysticism, simulated reality is an actual theory that scientists and philosophers have seriously entertained. At a debate on the subject a couple of years ago, moderator Neil deGrasse Tyson confessed, “It is easy for me to imagine that everything in our lives is just a creation of some other entity for their entertainment.” The theory gained currency, for obvious reasons, after Brexit, the 2016 election, and the odd best picture mix-up at last year’s Oscars. It also made quite the impression on Of Montreal mastermind Kevin Barnes, who cites months of Trump-related “simulated reality paranoid” as a chief influence on his new album, White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood. On the chorus of the best track, “Plateau Phase/No Careerism No Corruption,” he suggests that what we think of as reality is so fragile and fluid that, “If we put our ear to the ceiling, we can hear the multiverse seeding, we can hear the simulation wheezing.” Not that Barnes—a maximalist in all things, from songwriting to character creation to performance style—could ever confine himself to a single inspiration. For more than a decade, he’s been documenting his emotional crises on Of Montreal albums that double as catalogs of his recent obsessions. Along with referencing Germaine Greer, James Salter, and classic European art films like Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, Barnes increasingly conceives each LP as a genre study. False Priest, from 2010, was his Prince-inspired foray into plastic funk. His most recent album, 2016’s Innocence Reaches, filtered contemporary EDM sounds and internet/social justice jargon through vintage synthesizers. Now, each almost-yearly release plays like a new season of an ongoing Kevin Barnes anthology series; the styles, characters, and themes change, but the auteurist creator and his intellectual voracity remain the same. With White Is Relic, Danceteria season approaches. Barnes includes a list of influences that features ’80s-era extended club mixes, the late chopped-and-screwed pioneer DJ Screw, and the colorful gender fuckery of films by Pedro Almodóvar. On a personal level, Barnes says he’s finally forgiven himself for the failure of his well-documented marriage to former bandmate Nina Aimee Grøttland and fallen in love again. But it’s simulated reality that makes these apparently unrelated sounds and ideas hang together, in one of the most cohesive Of Montreal albums since their 2007 masterpiece, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? It’s to Barnes’ credit that, despite his experimentation, every song he records has his stamp—those churning melodies, the faintly androgynous vocals, the comically vast lyrical vocabulary. Still, White Is Relic goes a step beyond even his recent genre studies, stretching the typical four-minute Of Montreal single so that only six tracks fill its 41-minute runtime. Punctuated by fluttery horns and synths that recall zippers on nylon, the long instrumental passages really do give the impression that Barnes has remixed his own compositions. Cribbing from DJ Screw, Barnes often slows down just one element of a song, creating the spooky sensation that it’s playing in two different dimensions at once. In the outro to “Paranoiac Intervals/Body Dysmorphia,” his vocals are pulled thin like taffy over increasingly arpeggiated drum beats. “Body dysmorphia, I know how it feels,” he chants, as the music translates that perceptual distortion into aural terms. The overall impression is of some outside force—perhaps an alien species with next-level programming skills and a sick sense of humor—adjusting each track as it plays. In fact, Barnes did compose the album as a sort of disembodied intelligence, incorporating the contributions of remote collaborators instead of gathering a band in the studio. If Kevin Barnes the songwriter is playing god, then Kevin Barnes the singer is all too human, a digital ant like everyone else desperate to stay sane in this darkest computer-simulated timeline. Love is one source of transcendence. It gives us a glimpse of the dirty-minded, late-’00s Of Montreal on “Sophie Calle Private Game/Every Person Is a Pussy, Every Pussy Is a Star!,” a mid-tempo sex jam that name-drops Sappho and recounts all-night Almodóvar binges, alongside erotically asphyxiated saxophones. Like so many of us fragile aesthetes, Barnes has spent the past two years looking to political art for inspiration to resist America’s new dystopian regime. That’s where he channels the work of Angela Davis, Ta-Nehisi Coates, James Baldwin, as well as the words “white is relic,” for better and worse. On the ghostly “Writing the Circles/Orgone Tropics,” the compulsively self-dramatizing singer seems to be chiding himself with the observation, “This acute loneliness that you feel has nothing to do with other people.” But even if your tolerance for white artists discovering racism two decades into their career is high, it’s sure to be tested by some of Barnes’ more self-indulgent lyrics. The dreamy opening track “Soft Music/Juno Portraits of the Jovian Sky” finds him complaining, “Soft music drains the oxygen from besieged Bushwick streets reflexively retching Anglo influx” and resolving that “there will be no gentrificating our graffitied warship of summer love.” It’s easy to miss the album’s sonic and conceptual ingenuity amid the lyrical bloat. The thing is, even Barnes’ worst clunkers serve a purpose. When they give way to one of the devastatingly plainspoken lines he’s also capable of writing—“It’s good for us depressives to keep someone else alive” on “Sophie Calle,” for example—it’s like he’s lifting a curtain to reveal a shaft of midday sunlight. Whether that blackout shade is Kevin Barnes’ tortured psyche, America in 2018, or our entire, allegedly simulated universe, everything is briefly, brilliantly illuminated when White Is Relic pulls it back."

Danger Mouse, Daniele Luppi

Rome

Rap,Experimental

Jess Harvell

The "soundtrack without a movie" album, an attempt to recreate the evocative sweep of a film score away from the screen, has a long and mostly ignoble history. The concept was flogged so hard in the 1990s, usually by dance producers desperate to break out of the club scene, that it was almost left for dead. It didn't help that most of these records were limp pastiches of old-school Hollywood orchestration that paled next to 99% of either actual film scores or real-deal pop albums. All that bad product doesn't make the movie-less soundtrack a bad idea, of course. It's just that few of these projects have had the talent pool, or the commitment, to pull off a Rome. You can hear composer Daniele Luppi's love and respect for the brooding romanticism, fragile delicacy, and almost psychedelic spaceiness of classic Italian soundtracks in just about every note. In his partner Danger Mouse, he's found not only a similarly smitten collaborator, but a producer who's made a career out of accurately capturing the atmosphere of old records without (usually) coming off sterile. And they've got the moody vibe of those 60s soundtracks down on Rome, as much due to the vintage recording touches as to the Italian movie industry O.G.'s the duo drafted in to lend their hard-earned feel for this music. But Rome isn't just about faithfully recreating a much-loved period in film history. It'd be a much more boring, if beautifully produced, record if it were. In addition to his work as a composer for film, Luppi's lent his talents as arranger and player to various pop acts, and Danger Mouse has spent much of his career using his crate-digger's ear to craft retro-minded albums that still work for a modern rock audience. Rome's real coup is that, despite its concept hook, you don't have to listen to it as if it were a potential film score. What the duo's made is a beguiling and true hybrid, halfway between pop album and soundtrack-minus-the-movie. If you've got no familiarity with the music Rome pays homage to, you can take comfort that much of it sounds, coincidentally, very similar to the gentle-but-dark 60s psych-pop Danger Mouse makes with Broken Bells, sans a singer. And while it's true that the bulk of the album is instrumental, more concerned with mood than hooks, it's sequenced masterfully, including a handful of well-placed (if purposefully subdued) songs. Luppi and Danger Mouse cannily snagged two talented but obviously very different voices in Jack White and Norah Jones. White's natural eeriness and Jones' diffident eroticism certainly fit a sound built around mystical melodrama and chilly Euro heartbreak, but their voices are such complimentary opposites that they turn out to be what gives Rome much of its distinctness, keep it from being just another record collector (or film collector) exercise in getting everything period-perfect. And true to the album's slippery not-quite-an-album/not-quite-a-score form, their contributions can either work as the big showcase moments for pop fans, or just as part of the soundtrack-like flow. And whether or not the album succeeds for you as a score to your own invisible flick, inducing images of fog-swept villas and sigaretta-chomping villains in fedoras as the organs swell and the guitars pluck mournfully away, it's purely gorgeous.

Artist: Danger Mouse, Daniele Luppi, Album: Rome, Genre: Rap,Experimental, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "The "soundtrack without a movie" album, an attempt to recreate the evocative sweep of a film score away from the screen, has a long and mostly ignoble history. The concept was flogged so hard in the 1990s, usually by dance producers desperate to break out of the club scene, that it was almost left for dead. It didn't help that most of these records were limp pastiches of old-school Hollywood orchestration that paled next to 99% of either actual film scores or real-deal pop albums. All that bad product doesn't make the movie-less soundtrack a bad idea, of course. It's just that few of these projects have had the talent pool, or the commitment, to pull off a Rome. You can hear composer Daniele Luppi's love and respect for the brooding romanticism, fragile delicacy, and almost psychedelic spaceiness of classic Italian soundtracks in just about every note. In his partner Danger Mouse, he's found not only a similarly smitten collaborator, but a producer who's made a career out of accurately capturing the atmosphere of old records without (usually) coming off sterile. And they've got the moody vibe of those 60s soundtracks down on Rome, as much due to the vintage recording touches as to the Italian movie industry O.G.'s the duo drafted in to lend their hard-earned feel for this music. But Rome isn't just about faithfully recreating a much-loved period in film history. It'd be a much more boring, if beautifully produced, record if it were. In addition to his work as a composer for film, Luppi's lent his talents as arranger and player to various pop acts, and Danger Mouse has spent much of his career using his crate-digger's ear to craft retro-minded albums that still work for a modern rock audience. Rome's real coup is that, despite its concept hook, you don't have to listen to it as if it were a potential film score. What the duo's made is a beguiling and true hybrid, halfway between pop album and soundtrack-minus-the-movie. If you've got no familiarity with the music Rome pays homage to, you can take comfort that much of it sounds, coincidentally, very similar to the gentle-but-dark 60s psych-pop Danger Mouse makes with Broken Bells, sans a singer. And while it's true that the bulk of the album is instrumental, more concerned with mood than hooks, it's sequenced masterfully, including a handful of well-placed (if purposefully subdued) songs. Luppi and Danger Mouse cannily snagged two talented but obviously very different voices in Jack White and Norah Jones. White's natural eeriness and Jones' diffident eroticism certainly fit a sound built around mystical melodrama and chilly Euro heartbreak, but their voices are such complimentary opposites that they turn out to be what gives Rome much of its distinctness, keep it from being just another record collector (or film collector) exercise in getting everything period-perfect. And true to the album's slippery not-quite-an-album/not-quite-a-score form, their contributions can either work as the big showcase moments for pop fans, or just as part of the soundtrack-like flow. And whether or not the album succeeds for you as a score to your own invisible flick, inducing images of fog-swept villas and sigaretta-chomping villains in fedoras as the organs swell and the guitars pluck mournfully away, it's purely gorgeous."

Metro Area

Metro Area

Electronic,Pop/R&B

Mark Richardson

I bought this album in New York City and listened to it for the first time while walking around Brooklyn on a cold afternoon three weeks ago. This went down without my realizing that Metro Area at present call the one-time "Fourth Largest City in America" home, but I wasn't surprised when I got back to Virginia a few days later and picked up the biographical details online. Metro Area is two guys, producers Morgan Geist and Darshan Jesrani, who've been working together since the mid-90s. Beginning in 1999, they released a string of highly sought-after and limited 12-inch singles on their own Environ label. And now we have their first full-length, which collects edited versions of six of those 12-inch sides, in addition to new material. Even in my ignorance, with nothing to go on but enthusiastic recommendations from a few people I respect, Metro Area seemed the perfect soundtrack to an afternoon stroll through the brownstones. This is city music through and through; Metro Area's musical history is one of confined spaces, close proximity, and mingled breath, a world drawn from and immersed in club culture. These sounds have no place on the front porch or in the car deck. Beginning their musical references around 1977, Metro Area combine heavy doses of disco, dollops of funk, a dash of new wave and synth-pop, and then remove just about everything but each track's most essential elements. It's no surprise that one of the best tracks here, the plucky and P-funkish "Miura", wound up on Force Tracks' recent Digital Disco compilation (well worth checking out, by the way). Despite the association with some of the microhouse mavens and a shared commitment to musical economy, Metro Area carries no theoretical baggage aboard this plane. These guys would never allow a glitch to sully their pristine productions. They're more interested in the warmth of the picked nylon string guitar (on the Latin shuffle "Piña"), the purity of the flute (the almost painfully funky "Machine Vibes") and the timeless swell of horns ("Orange Alert"). The Kelley Polar String Quartet appears on three tracks, imparting rhythmic stabs, romantic swells, and melodramatic sweeps, all hallmarks of the disco tradition. The care taken in recording and balancing the organic instruments pays off in spades and gives Metro Area an edge over the Reaktor and Cubase set. This is beautifully recorded and endlessly rhythmic music. Actually, these tracks sound so nice and draw so masterfully from a variety of dance music traditions that I can't help but wish Metro Area would incorporate some vocals into the mix. It's not that the tracks don't work well on their own-- you can certainly absorb all the delicious space and admire the rhythmic interplay better this way-- but some of these chord productions and beats are just too pop to leave the voice out entirely. It's almost scary to think how good they could be in that context. It's not hard to imagine a couple of these six-minute plus tracks, which drag just a tad by the end as they repeat themselves (forgivable when you consider many were created with DJs in mind), seeming too short with a few verses added. Still, though I dream about Metro Area paying homage to disco's vocal pop history, I really have very little to complain about. First rate.

Artist: Metro Area, Album: Metro Area, Genre: Electronic,Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "I bought this album in New York City and listened to it for the first time while walking around Brooklyn on a cold afternoon three weeks ago. This went down without my realizing that Metro Area at present call the one-time "Fourth Largest City in America" home, but I wasn't surprised when I got back to Virginia a few days later and picked up the biographical details online. Metro Area is two guys, producers Morgan Geist and Darshan Jesrani, who've been working together since the mid-90s. Beginning in 1999, they released a string of highly sought-after and limited 12-inch singles on their own Environ label. And now we have their first full-length, which collects edited versions of six of those 12-inch sides, in addition to new material. Even in my ignorance, with nothing to go on but enthusiastic recommendations from a few people I respect, Metro Area seemed the perfect soundtrack to an afternoon stroll through the brownstones. This is city music through and through; Metro Area's musical history is one of confined spaces, close proximity, and mingled breath, a world drawn from and immersed in club culture. These sounds have no place on the front porch or in the car deck. Beginning their musical references around 1977, Metro Area combine heavy doses of disco, dollops of funk, a dash of new wave and synth-pop, and then remove just about everything but each track's most essential elements. It's no surprise that one of the best tracks here, the plucky and P-funkish "Miura", wound up on Force Tracks' recent Digital Disco compilation (well worth checking out, by the way). Despite the association with some of the microhouse mavens and a shared commitment to musical economy, Metro Area carries no theoretical baggage aboard this plane. These guys would never allow a glitch to sully their pristine productions. They're more interested in the warmth of the picked nylon string guitar (on the Latin shuffle "Piña"), the purity of the flute (the almost painfully funky "Machine Vibes") and the timeless swell of horns ("Orange Alert"). The Kelley Polar String Quartet appears on three tracks, imparting rhythmic stabs, romantic swells, and melodramatic sweeps, all hallmarks of the disco tradition. The care taken in recording and balancing the organic instruments pays off in spades and gives Metro Area an edge over the Reaktor and Cubase set. This is beautifully recorded and endlessly rhythmic music. Actually, these tracks sound so nice and draw so masterfully from a variety of dance music traditions that I can't help but wish Metro Area would incorporate some vocals into the mix. It's not that the tracks don't work well on their own-- you can certainly absorb all the delicious space and admire the rhythmic interplay better this way-- but some of these chord productions and beats are just too pop to leave the voice out entirely. It's almost scary to think how good they could be in that context. It's not hard to imagine a couple of these six-minute plus tracks, which drag just a tad by the end as they repeat themselves (forgivable when you consider many were created with DJs in mind), seeming too short with a few verses added. Still, though I dream about Metro Area paying homage to disco's vocal pop history, I really have very little to complain about. First rate."

David Grubbs, Taku Unami

Failed Celestial Creatures

Experimental

Philip Sherburne

David Grubbs has the instincts of a gardener who prefers the thorns to the blossom. In a career that spans more than three decades, he has developed a unique language for the guitar, one that flickers between consonance and dissonance; his hooks are barbs bent at odd angles, his melodies unreliable narrators. His quirks are difficult to describe, which might be why his reviewers over the years have favored adjectives like “elliptical,” “slanted,” and “spidery” (all absolutely correct, by the way). Grubbs attacks his songwriting in roundabout fashion. Though coherent, it tends to be slightly off, as though he’s taken rock’s classic song forms and run them through a kid’s cereal-box decoder ring. His music flows strangely, a Cubist river of hard lefts and sudden interruptions. It doesn’t sound abstracted so much as distracted, as though you were listening in on a particularly absent-minded thought process in real time. When he sings, Grubbs favors knotty prose constructions and halting cadences delivered in a genial tone that reveals faint traces of his Louisville upbringing. This style emerged a quarter-century ago on The Serpentine Similar, the first album from Grubbs’ band Gastr del Sol, and he has since pursued it across 14 solo records and appearances on nearly 200 more. His new album, Failed Celestial Creatures, is a duo project, recorded over the course of two days in August 2017 with the Japanese guitarist and electronic musician Taku Unami. But it feels of a piece with Grubbs’ last two records under his own name, Creep Mission and Primrose, both nominal solo releases that each features a handful of guests. On all three albums, Grubbs uses the presence of collaborators to play with drones, repetition, and improvisatory interplay, taking his style to a more intuitive place. The bulk of Failed Celestial Creatures is given over to the title track, a 21-minute meditation inspired by the musicians’ mutual fondness for the mid-century Japanese novelist Atsushi Nakajima. Notes on the album situate the song within the context of the novelist’s interest in the “failure of ritual,” which might explain its uneasy tug-of-war between mantra-like repetitions, inquisitive melodic deviations, and, ultimately, explosions of chaos. For the first third of the piece, it would be easy to miss the fact that there are two players, with Grubbs’ searching movements wreathed in a luminous fog of electronics. When his guitar is joined by Unami’s, their playing resembles a figure dancing before an enchanted mirror—a tangle of gestures that seem identical but prove, on further examination, to be entirely different. Then the distortion pedal kicks in: The final six minutes are snarling and dissonant, the guitars blackened, out-of-tune frequencies beating the air like bats’ wings. The remainder of the album finds the two musicians locked even more deeply into their uncanny mirror-play—particularly on “Threadbare 1” through “Threadbare 4,” short, improvised pieces that make an impression as ephemeral as the wind bending high grass. Even for longtime listeners of either musician, it’s difficult to say who is doing what, engaged as they are in a questing yet relaxed mind meld. Only one song, “The Forest Dictation,” breaks from that mold, as Grubbs’ vocals take the lead atop shimmering, gently intertwined guitars. It’s the sort of performance he’s been giving since his days in Gastr del Sol: not quite singing and not quite speech, but some third option hidden in the divide between the two. The lyrics, inspired by Nakajima’s The Moon Over the Mountain, concern a human-tiger hybrid that dwells in the forest. But, typically for Grubbs, they don’t resemble traditional lyrics so much as a page pulled at random from the library stacks—a text made musical only by virtue of his dry sing-song: “The irreversibly combined voices/Of human tiger/Recited 30 poems, some long and some short/As to their quality/I would not presume to judge.” It’s a magically low-key moment on a magically low-key album, a manifestation of the divine couched in playful but fundamentally level-headed terms. The human tiger’s two unflappable witnesses remain focused on their fretboards, fully immersed in the rapture of their craft.

Artist: David Grubbs, Taku Unami, Album: Failed Celestial Creatures, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "David Grubbs has the instincts of a gardener who prefers the thorns to the blossom. In a career that spans more than three decades, he has developed a unique language for the guitar, one that flickers between consonance and dissonance; his hooks are barbs bent at odd angles, his melodies unreliable narrators. His quirks are difficult to describe, which might be why his reviewers over the years have favored adjectives like “elliptical,” “slanted,” and “spidery” (all absolutely correct, by the way). Grubbs attacks his songwriting in roundabout fashion. Though coherent, it tends to be slightly off, as though he’s taken rock’s classic song forms and run them through a kid’s cereal-box decoder ring. His music flows strangely, a Cubist river of hard lefts and sudden interruptions. It doesn’t sound abstracted so much as distracted, as though you were listening in on a particularly absent-minded thought process in real time. When he sings, Grubbs favors knotty prose constructions and halting cadences delivered in a genial tone that reveals faint traces of his Louisville upbringing. This style emerged a quarter-century ago on The Serpentine Similar, the first album from Grubbs’ band Gastr del Sol, and he has since pursued it across 14 solo records and appearances on nearly 200 more. His new album, Failed Celestial Creatures, is a duo project, recorded over the course of two days in August 2017 with the Japanese guitarist and electronic musician Taku Unami. But it feels of a piece with Grubbs’ last two records under his own name, Creep Mission and Primrose, both nominal solo releases that each features a handful of guests. On all three albums, Grubbs uses the presence of collaborators to play with drones, repetition, and improvisatory interplay, taking his style to a more intuitive place. The bulk of Failed Celestial Creatures is given over to the title track, a 21-minute meditation inspired by the musicians’ mutual fondness for the mid-century Japanese novelist Atsushi Nakajima. Notes on the album situate the song within the context of the novelist’s interest in the “failure of ritual,” which might explain its uneasy tug-of-war between mantra-like repetitions, inquisitive melodic deviations, and, ultimately, explosions of chaos. For the first third of the piece, it would be easy to miss the fact that there are two players, with Grubbs’ searching movements wreathed in a luminous fog of electronics. When his guitar is joined by Unami’s, their playing resembles a figure dancing before an enchanted mirror—a tangle of gestures that seem identical but prove, on further examination, to be entirely different. Then the distortion pedal kicks in: The final six minutes are snarling and dissonant, the guitars blackened, out-of-tune frequencies beating the air like bats’ wings. The remainder of the album finds the two musicians locked even more deeply into their uncanny mirror-play—particularly on “Threadbare 1” through “Threadbare 4,” short, improvised pieces that make an impression as ephemeral as the wind bending high grass. Even for longtime listeners of either musician, it’s difficult to say who is doing what, engaged as they are in a questing yet relaxed mind meld. Only one song, “The Forest Dictation,” breaks from that mold, as Grubbs’ vocals take the lead atop shimmering, gently intertwined guitars. It’s the sort of performance he’s been giving since his days in Gastr del Sol: not quite singing and not quite speech, but some third option hidden in the divide between the two. The lyrics, inspired by Nakajima’s The Moon Over the Mountain, concern a human-tiger hybrid that dwells in the forest. But, typically for Grubbs, they don’t resemble traditional lyrics so much as a page pulled at random from the library stacks—a text made musical only by virtue of his dry sing-song: “The irreversibly combined voices/Of human tiger/Recited 30 poems, some long and some short/As to their quality/I would not presume to judge.” It’s a magically low-key moment on a magically low-key album, a manifestation of the divine couched in playful but fundamentally level-headed terms. The human tiger’s two unflappable witnesses remain focused on their fretboards, fully immersed in the rapture of their craft."

Jónsi

Go

Rock

Ryan Dombal

Jónsi Birgisson doesn't do small. As the lead singer of Sigur Rós, he's starred in several of this century's most epic songs; with their penchant for instrumental swells, feedback, and weight-of-humanity wails, the Icelandic band has practically set a new, near unreachable height for melodramatic art rock. But after perfecting this style on 2005's Takk, Jónsi and his mates have had some trouble finding a way out from beneath the burden of big. Their last album, 2008's Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, tried to temper the bombast but occasionally got bogged down in aimless balladry. Jónsi's subsequent Riceboy Sleeps LP with Alex Somers offered largely voiceless ambiance, akin to Quentin Tarantino directing a silent chamber drama. But with his solo debut, Jónsi fights huge with huger. Helping to realize the mini symphonies in the singer's head are two key collaborators: pianist, composer, and arranger Nico Muhly-- who has become the de facto solution for artists like Grizzly Bear and Antony and the Johnsons when in need of unique, showy flourishes-- and Finnish percussionist Samuli Kosminen, who can be seen literally banging on old suitcases in an in-studio video on Jónsi's website. The conspirators balance well; though Muhly's manicured arrangements could have come off stiff in this context, their combination with Kosminen's unbridled wallops brings the orchestration dizzily whirling forth. But what truly elevates Go is Jónsi's voice, which still has the ability to stun a decade after Agætis Byrjun introduced most listeners to his alien bleats. Along with Jeff Buckley and Thom Yorke, Jónsi's pipes have set the standard for modern eunuch-like crooning. And on Go, he makes up for the lack of vocals on Riceboy Sleeps by working overtime, backing himself up to create a Jónsi choir, offering skyrocketing counter-melodies, and even making the occasional bird sound. He beams ecstatically on "Go Do", cracks hearts on the string-laden "Sinking Friendships", and comes as close as he probably ever will to rapping on "Animal Arithmetic". He may lack Buckley's soulfulness or Yorke's infinite melancholy, but Jónsi's distinguishing trait is an innocence that helps make emotions sound fresh. This child-like view is more apparent on Go because it finds the singer mostly expressing himself in plain English rather than his usual combination of heavenly vowel sounds and Icelandic. On the surface, the language breakthrough is irrelevant; whatever you thought he was singing about before is probably close to what he's singing about in English here. For instance, the hook on "Go Do" goes, "We should always know that we can do anything." Of course it's corny, but Jónsi's sincere intent makes the feel-good anthem feel good. Images of nature come up often, which makes sense considering his gale force lungs. Even when he comes close to "Legend of Zelda" territory, like when he sings of "a treasure chest full of labyrinths" on "Around Us", his committment and wide-eyed naivety go a long way. In Jónsi's universe, cynicism has yet to be invented. Much of Go matches the uplift of Sigur Rós at their most dramatic. There's more sonic density here than ever-- Go's cacophony of flutes, piano, horns, strings, and bird calls beg for a 5.1 mix. At the same time, the songwriting is pruned down. The usual crescendos spring up in condensed bursts, rather than being spread out over seven minutes. And Jónsi seems to be getting less murky and moody as he collects years. Still, Go isn't pure escapist Peter Pan theater. "No one knows you 'til it's over," he yowls on "Sinking Friendships", "you know no one true 'til it's over." For Jónsi, life and death are spoken in mythic, uncompromising terms. There's not much room for the little things, which is partly why he's able to strike hard around the world; whether singing in English or jibberish, the message is clear. Go means go.

Artist: Jónsi, Album: Go, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.1 Album review: "Jónsi Birgisson doesn't do small. As the lead singer of Sigur Rós, he's starred in several of this century's most epic songs; with their penchant for instrumental swells, feedback, and weight-of-humanity wails, the Icelandic band has practically set a new, near unreachable height for melodramatic art rock. But after perfecting this style on 2005's Takk, Jónsi and his mates have had some trouble finding a way out from beneath the burden of big. Their last album, 2008's Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, tried to temper the bombast but occasionally got bogged down in aimless balladry. Jónsi's subsequent Riceboy Sleeps LP with Alex Somers offered largely voiceless ambiance, akin to Quentin Tarantino directing a silent chamber drama. But with his solo debut, Jónsi fights huge with huger. Helping to realize the mini symphonies in the singer's head are two key collaborators: pianist, composer, and arranger Nico Muhly-- who has become the de facto solution for artists like Grizzly Bear and Antony and the Johnsons when in need of unique, showy flourishes-- and Finnish percussionist Samuli Kosminen, who can be seen literally banging on old suitcases in an in-studio video on Jónsi's website. The conspirators balance well; though Muhly's manicured arrangements could have come off stiff in this context, their combination with Kosminen's unbridled wallops brings the orchestration dizzily whirling forth. But what truly elevates Go is Jónsi's voice, which still has the ability to stun a decade after Agætis Byrjun introduced most listeners to his alien bleats. Along with Jeff Buckley and Thom Yorke, Jónsi's pipes have set the standard for modern eunuch-like crooning. And on Go, he makes up for the lack of vocals on Riceboy Sleeps by working overtime, backing himself up to create a Jónsi choir, offering skyrocketing counter-melodies, and even making the occasional bird sound. He beams ecstatically on "Go Do", cracks hearts on the string-laden "Sinking Friendships", and comes as close as he probably ever will to rapping on "Animal Arithmetic". He may lack Buckley's soulfulness or Yorke's infinite melancholy, but Jónsi's distinguishing trait is an innocence that helps make emotions sound fresh. This child-like view is more apparent on Go because it finds the singer mostly expressing himself in plain English rather than his usual combination of heavenly vowel sounds and Icelandic. On the surface, the language breakthrough is irrelevant; whatever you thought he was singing about before is probably close to what he's singing about in English here. For instance, the hook on "Go Do" goes, "We should always know that we can do anything." Of course it's corny, but Jónsi's sincere intent makes the feel-good anthem feel good. Images of nature come up often, which makes sense considering his gale force lungs. Even when he comes close to "Legend of Zelda" territory, like when he sings of "a treasure chest full of labyrinths" on "Around Us", his committment and wide-eyed naivety go a long way. In Jónsi's universe, cynicism has yet to be invented. Much of Go matches the uplift of Sigur Rós at their most dramatic. There's more sonic density here than ever-- Go's cacophony of flutes, piano, horns, strings, and bird calls beg for a 5.1 mix. At the same time, the songwriting is pruned down. The usual crescendos spring up in condensed bursts, rather than being spread out over seven minutes. And Jónsi seems to be getting less murky and moody as he collects years. Still, Go isn't pure escapist Peter Pan theater. "No one knows you 'til it's over," he yowls on "Sinking Friendships", "you know no one true 'til it's over." For Jónsi, life and death are spoken in mythic, uncompromising terms. There's not much room for the little things, which is partly why he's able to strike hard around the world; whether singing in English or jibberish, the message is clear. Go means go."

VCMG

Ssss

Electronic

Jess Harvell

Vince Clarke and Martin Gore might have conquered the world together as members of Depeche Mode's original lineup, which held together for just one album, 1981's Speak and Spell. (They conquered it anyway, separately.) The clashing aesthetics that probably provoked the split are all too apparent when you compare Speak and Spell (written largely by Clarke) with the music Depeche Mode's made for the last 30 years (written mostly by Gore). Speak and Spell is blithe, bright, and bouncy, qualities Clarke took to projects like Yaz and Erasure, which scored huge when he combined this bubblegummy synth-pop with over-the-top emoting and a little ersatz soul. Depeche Mode went for synth music's darker strains, turning it into digital stadium rock, draping themselves in leather and chains, delivering all that campy S&M imagery and religious mania and gaunt raunch with a much-needed wink. What initially brought them together was a love of electronic music and a yearning for stardom. The latter was what made their music pop, of course, turning their work (together and apart) into one of the key transition points from post-punk keyboard freaks tinkering in their bedrooms to synthesizer-wielding pretty boys taking over the airwaves. While their music may have reveled in new technological toys, as synths moved from expensive and inaccessible to the realm of consumer electronics, their delivery was pure showbiz, whether we're talking Clarke's Broadway brassiness or Gore's grim-but-cuddly goth melodrama. But it's that lifelong infatuation with beats and bleeps that's brought them back together, three decades after "Just Can't Get Enough", as VCMG, with 10 tracks of the kind of fierce, instrumental, no-bullshit techno that was as left-field popular in 1988 as 1998 as 2008. It's often witty, with a kind of robots-running-amok charm, and always attention-grabbing, at least in small doses. But friendly it ain't. On the one hand, their timing seems perfect, since instrumental dance music is enjoying a level of almost unprecedented mass-cult saturation in America. On the other hand, Ssss is appearing at a time when dance fans both overground and underground have violently veered away from the scorched-earth minimalism of VCMG tracks like "Aftermaths", whether it's indie kids running toward early-1990s pop house or Hot Topic habitués headbanging to Skrillex's screamo-meets-Aphex. Which isn't to say that there are no of-the-moment touches. "Bendy Bass" is six minutes of queasy wobble-- one hesitates to call it a "drop" since it practically consumes the whole track-- that doesn't recall dubstep so much as recent dubstep's debts to techno. But the overall vibe is more the-sound-of-six-or-seven-years-ago than hot-hits-of-just-last-week. If Ssss had come out in 2005, when hip producers were reviving the punishment of stiff electro riffs and exploring the bombed-out terrain of the darkest Detroit techno, it might have seemed like old pop stars bandwagon-jumping, and probably been as flimsy as you'd expect. In 2012, it feels like that rarest of side projects, two famous dudes exploring a sound they love for the hell of it, regardless of its commercial potential, with an intensity to match. Since they no longer have to long for fame, having become Flashback Lunch Hour staples on various FM radio formats and revered grandpa figures in a number of subcultures, they don't need to offer a mass audience an easy way "in." And so the instrumental throbscapes of Ssss are stark and forbidding in a way that even Depeche Mode's flirtations with minimal techno weren't, since they at least had Dave Gahan doing his defiled-altar-boy routine. Anyone looking for the karaoke-grade choruses of something like Erasure's "A Little Respect" will instead find themselves sucked into a black hole of sub-woofer abuse, implacable drums, and a few synth frills with all the warmth of the earliest acid-house architects. For guys who can seem emblematic of the Big 80s, and all of the sleek dance-rock accessibility that implies, these tracks are far more likely to remind you of essentialist techno don Robert Hood, at least if Robert Hood ever deigned to be entertaining. Because even after they scrape their music clean of pop and pare things down to the metronomic essentials, they still can't hide the fact that they were born to make music that sounds as big as possible. If most 21st-century minimal techno fetishized restraint and control to the point of boring you, Clarke and Gore keep the compositional scrupulousness while making things huge and bold and unignorable. In other words, it's not the dance equivalent of a Michael Bay movie, like the output of the post-Skrillex crew, but it's also not a Bresson flick, like the work of so many German dance tinkerers. The problem is, as usual, that an hour's worth of minimal instrumental anything, however loud and slamming, has the potential to wear you down rather than suck you in, and Clarke and Gore don't entirely escape that trap here. After a few tracks of nothing but boom and tick and woosh, non-technophiles may find themselves longing for the more "obvious" pleasures of Upstairs at Eric's or Violator. But the one thing you can't say about Ssss is that it's uncommitted, and after decades of quickie cash-in collaborations between long-estranged old bandmates, that in itself is its own kind of pleasure.

Artist: VCMG, Album: Ssss, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "Vince Clarke and Martin Gore might have conquered the world together as members of Depeche Mode's original lineup, which held together for just one album, 1981's Speak and Spell. (They conquered it anyway, separately.) The clashing aesthetics that probably provoked the split are all too apparent when you compare Speak and Spell (written largely by Clarke) with the music Depeche Mode's made for the last 30 years (written mostly by Gore). Speak and Spell is blithe, bright, and bouncy, qualities Clarke took to projects like Yaz and Erasure, which scored huge when he combined this bubblegummy synth-pop with over-the-top emoting and a little ersatz soul. Depeche Mode went for synth music's darker strains, turning it into digital stadium rock, draping themselves in leather and chains, delivering all that campy S&M imagery and religious mania and gaunt raunch with a much-needed wink. What initially brought them together was a love of electronic music and a yearning for stardom. The latter was what made their music pop, of course, turning their work (together and apart) into one of the key transition points from post-punk keyboard freaks tinkering in their bedrooms to synthesizer-wielding pretty boys taking over the airwaves. While their music may have reveled in new technological toys, as synths moved from expensive and inaccessible to the realm of consumer electronics, their delivery was pure showbiz, whether we're talking Clarke's Broadway brassiness or Gore's grim-but-cuddly goth melodrama. But it's that lifelong infatuation with beats and bleeps that's brought them back together, three decades after "Just Can't Get Enough", as VCMG, with 10 tracks of the kind of fierce, instrumental, no-bullshit techno that was as left-field popular in 1988 as 1998 as 2008. It's often witty, with a kind of robots-running-amok charm, and always attention-grabbing, at least in small doses. But friendly it ain't. On the one hand, their timing seems perfect, since instrumental dance music is enjoying a level of almost unprecedented mass-cult saturation in America. On the other hand, Ssss is appearing at a time when dance fans both overground and underground have violently veered away from the scorched-earth minimalism of VCMG tracks like "Aftermaths", whether it's indie kids running toward early-1990s pop house or Hot Topic habitués headbanging to Skrillex's screamo-meets-Aphex. Which isn't to say that there are no of-the-moment touches. "Bendy Bass" is six minutes of queasy wobble-- one hesitates to call it a "drop" since it practically consumes the whole track-- that doesn't recall dubstep so much as recent dubstep's debts to techno. But the overall vibe is more the-sound-of-six-or-seven-years-ago than hot-hits-of-just-last-week. If Ssss had come out in 2005, when hip producers were reviving the punishment of stiff electro riffs and exploring the bombed-out terrain of the darkest Detroit techno, it might have seemed like old pop stars bandwagon-jumping, and probably been as flimsy as you'd expect. In 2012, it feels like that rarest of side projects, two famous dudes exploring a sound they love for the hell of it, regardless of its commercial potential, with an intensity to match. Since they no longer have to long for fame, having become Flashback Lunch Hour staples on various FM radio formats and revered grandpa figures in a number of subcultures, they don't need to offer a mass audience an easy way "in." And so the instrumental throbscapes of Ssss are stark and forbidding in a way that even Depeche Mode's flirtations with minimal techno weren't, since they at least had Dave Gahan doing his defiled-altar-boy routine. Anyone looking for the karaoke-grade choruses of something like Erasure's "A Little Respect" will instead find themselves sucked into a black hole of sub-woofer abuse, implacable drums, and a few synth frills with all the warmth of the earliest acid-house architects. For guys who can seem emblematic of the Big 80s, and all of the sleek dance-rock accessibility that implies, these tracks are far more likely to remind you of essentialist techno don Robert Hood, at least if Robert Hood ever deigned to be entertaining. Because even after they scrape their music clean of pop and pare things down to the metronomic essentials, they still can't hide the fact that they were born to make music that sounds as big as possible. If most 21st-century minimal techno fetishized restraint and control to the point of boring you, Clarke and Gore keep the compositional scrupulousness while making things huge and bold and unignorable. In other words, it's not the dance equivalent of a Michael Bay movie, like the output of the post-Skrillex crew, but it's also not a Bresson flick, like the work of so many German dance tinkerers. The problem is, as usual, that an hour's worth of minimal instrumental anything, however loud and slamming, has the potential to wear you down rather than suck you in, and Clarke and Gore don't entirely escape that trap here. After a few tracks of nothing but boom and tick and woosh, non-technophiles may find themselves longing for the more "obvious" pleasures of Upstairs at Eric's or Violator. But the one thing you can't say about Ssss is that it's uncommitted, and after decades of quickie cash-in collaborations between long-estranged old bandmates, that in itself is its own kind of pleasure."

Cotton Jones

Paranoid Cocoon

Rock

Eric Harvey

On "The Ruby Ring Man", from Page France's 2007 album …And the Family Telephone, Michael Nau asserted that he "would kiss the devil's cheek/ To get this halo off of me," a bit of self-prophesying in retrospect. The song was a pastiche of New Morning-era Bob Dylan, and Nau used it to flip Dylan's own c. 1970 script, shedding himself of the Christian folkie character he'd been playing since 2004. Nau's cardigan-wearing teenage boy contingent weren't exactly the type to yell "Judas!" on their blogs, but that didn't stop Nau from shutting down Page France's precious passion play with Telephone. He'd been recording on the side as the Cotton Jones Basket Ride, and Paranoid Cocoon marks the emergence-- minus the "Basket Ride"-- of Nau's latest iteration of 60s psychedelia. Cotton Jones is Nau's vehicle, but Whitney McGraw's presence is just as strong. Together, their harmonies and trade-offs, immersed in a languid surround of smoky organs, Opry earnestness, and an abundance of steel guitar, suggest a place on the spectrum for the duo somewhere between late-60s Johnny/June and Ira/Georgia c. And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out. Appropriately then, McGraw is a steadying presence on Cocoon, as Nau's muse predictably wanders around the constraints he's set for himself this time. On opening track "Up A Tree (Went This Heart I Have)", he drops low into Jim Morrison range, and the bluesy cadence of the song follows suit. Two tracks later, though he doesn't show up until well over two minutes into the song, he morphs the pleasant shuffle established by "Some Strange Rain" into what feels like a minor My Morning Jacket cut. Indeed, Cocoon's pleasantness and low stakes are its most recommendable traits. You know after the first 10 seconds of the record what you're in for, and while your mind's never blown, it's also never let down. "Gone the Bells" is indicative of the album as a whole: a narcotic stroll through a dimly sunlit park with no particular reason for anything that happens, save the faintest hints of romance and regret. As an aesthetic, it's comparable to an out-of-focus photo in an old shoebox, or the early morning sunrise viewed through a dew-covered windshield. But who knows how long it'll last? The album ends with "I Am the Changer", where Nau reminds us that he's "always a stranger, and a liar." It's an obvious statement, of course, for those who've followed Page France until now, not to mention one that's bit bold on a record that works so well at the level of suggestion. It also probably means that we'll be getting something new from Nau the next time around. Switching between musical characters is obviously Nau's default setting, and for all of its pleasantness, Paranoid Cocoon, in the context of his career thus far, feels like transition music over a costume change.

Artist: Cotton Jones, Album: Paranoid Cocoon, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.8 Album review: "On "The Ruby Ring Man", from Page France's 2007 album …And the Family Telephone, Michael Nau asserted that he "would kiss the devil's cheek/ To get this halo off of me," a bit of self-prophesying in retrospect. The song was a pastiche of New Morning-era Bob Dylan, and Nau used it to flip Dylan's own c. 1970 script, shedding himself of the Christian folkie character he'd been playing since 2004. Nau's cardigan-wearing teenage boy contingent weren't exactly the type to yell "Judas!" on their blogs, but that didn't stop Nau from shutting down Page France's precious passion play with Telephone. He'd been recording on the side as the Cotton Jones Basket Ride, and Paranoid Cocoon marks the emergence-- minus the "Basket Ride"-- of Nau's latest iteration of 60s psychedelia. Cotton Jones is Nau's vehicle, but Whitney McGraw's presence is just as strong. Together, their harmonies and trade-offs, immersed in a languid surround of smoky organs, Opry earnestness, and an abundance of steel guitar, suggest a place on the spectrum for the duo somewhere between late-60s Johnny/June and Ira/Georgia c. And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out. Appropriately then, McGraw is a steadying presence on Cocoon, as Nau's muse predictably wanders around the constraints he's set for himself this time. On opening track "Up A Tree (Went This Heart I Have)", he drops low into Jim Morrison range, and the bluesy cadence of the song follows suit. Two tracks later, though he doesn't show up until well over two minutes into the song, he morphs the pleasant shuffle established by "Some Strange Rain" into what feels like a minor My Morning Jacket cut. Indeed, Cocoon's pleasantness and low stakes are its most recommendable traits. You know after the first 10 seconds of the record what you're in for, and while your mind's never blown, it's also never let down. "Gone the Bells" is indicative of the album as a whole: a narcotic stroll through a dimly sunlit park with no particular reason for anything that happens, save the faintest hints of romance and regret. As an aesthetic, it's comparable to an out-of-focus photo in an old shoebox, or the early morning sunrise viewed through a dew-covered windshield. But who knows how long it'll last? The album ends with "I Am the Changer", where Nau reminds us that he's "always a stranger, and a liar." It's an obvious statement, of course, for those who've followed Page France until now, not to mention one that's bit bold on a record that works so well at the level of suggestion. It also probably means that we'll be getting something new from Nau the next time around. Switching between musical characters is obviously Nau's default setting, and for all of its pleasantness, Paranoid Cocoon, in the context of his career thus far, feels like transition music over a costume change."

T-Pain

Oblivion

Rap

Briana Younger

It’s somewhat unbelievable that T-Pain would ever feel the need to reintroduce himself, but here we are. Six years removed from his last proper album, he opens Oblivion in grand fashion, kicking open the casket at his own funeral. He offers his gratitude to loyal fans and fuck-yous to those who wrote him off—all before he settles into his lead verse with a succinct reminder of his resume: “I hit the Billboards with a baseball bat.” The charismatic “rappa ternt sanga” dropped his debut single “I’m Sprung” in 2005, setting off the Midas touch era of T-Pain. His signature Auto-Tuned voice landed in the the Hot 100 over 30 times in a five-year period, and everyone from Kanye West to Black Eyed Peas adopted their own renditions. It feels like a musical lifetime has passed since then, but nostalgia and excitement still follow him wherever he goes. The wave crested with his 2014 Tiny Desk concert when a portion of the world learned T-Pain can actually sing without digital assistance. The moment spawned a brief acoustic tour this year and, probably, a glimmer of hope that Oblivion would follow suit. Instead, it finds him channeling the ghosts of past. Nearly every song sounds like it could've been a smash several years ago which is, both, admirable and disappointing. On the one hand, his ability to churn out earworms remains untarnished. The selection is everything T-Pain does best: intoxicating computerized crooning mixed with gratuitous sex and flash. On the other, there’s the admittedly unreasonable expectation that one of Rap&B’s most influential artists would hint at the genre’s next horizon or, at the very least, his own. While there may be a few seeds here, Oblivion settles mostly in his established wheelhouse. Songs like “Straight” and “2 Fine” are low-stakes affairs that find T-Pain playing around with his assorted vocals, flows, and ad-libs—it’s genuinely fun. But his ingenuity shines brightest on the Mr. Talkbox-assisted standout “May I.” Running like two passionate robots serenading a jazz lounge, it is the peak use of a computer to make the voice an instrument unto itself—nearly eight minutes of finesse that only T-Pain could pull off. Oblivion’s most unexpected feature is its mix of sub-genres that T-Pain chameleons himself into perfectly. From trap rap (“Goal Line”) to Latin-flavored pop (“No Rush”) to the percussive lands of go-go (“Cee Cee From DC”), it’s almost like a best-of but with all new music. In his grasp, the respective genres end up sounding poppier rather than like true interpretations, but it's nice to hear an artist push his own creative boundaries—even if the source material is a bit watered down. There’s a masterpiece somewhere in the colors of all these disparate sounds if only it were trimmed just a bit more. As such, Oblivion feels like a “business decision” album: it’s a casual affair that frees him from his label obligation to RCA. It isn’t exactly phoned in, but T-Pain has more in his tank than what he shows here, even though the tracks that reflect his past eras display his versatility and allow for optimistic glimpses of a career resurgence. The free-spirited energy that earned him ubiquity a decade ago remains intact despite his fall from glory. This album reflects the best of what we know of him, but the unknown remains the most intriguing. Projected ambitions aside, this release typifies just how ahead of his time he was and how much those melodic blurred lines influenced the generations that followed—sing-raps can‘t be fully attributed to him, but he certainly played a substantial part. The genre fluidity he shows here helped lay the foundation for artists to come. And even in a landscape that outgrew him or outran him or both, Oblivion T-Pain sounds like a teacher who still feels welcome in his own classroom, and he’s owed at least that.

Artist: T-Pain, Album: Oblivion, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "It’s somewhat unbelievable that T-Pain would ever feel the need to reintroduce himself, but here we are. Six years removed from his last proper album, he opens Oblivion in grand fashion, kicking open the casket at his own funeral. He offers his gratitude to loyal fans and fuck-yous to those who wrote him off—all before he settles into his lead verse with a succinct reminder of his resume: “I hit the Billboards with a baseball bat.” The charismatic “rappa ternt sanga” dropped his debut single “I’m Sprung” in 2005, setting off the Midas touch era of T-Pain. His signature Auto-Tuned voice landed in the the Hot 100 over 30 times in a five-year period, and everyone from Kanye West to Black Eyed Peas adopted their own renditions. It feels like a musical lifetime has passed since then, but nostalgia and excitement still follow him wherever he goes. The wave crested with his 2014 Tiny Desk concert when a portion of the world learned T-Pain can actually sing without digital assistance. The moment spawned a brief acoustic tour this year and, probably, a glimmer of hope that Oblivion would follow suit. Instead, it finds him channeling the ghosts of past. Nearly every song sounds like it could've been a smash several years ago which is, both, admirable and disappointing. On the one hand, his ability to churn out earworms remains untarnished. The selection is everything T-Pain does best: intoxicating computerized crooning mixed with gratuitous sex and flash. On the other, there’s the admittedly unreasonable expectation that one of Rap&B’s most influential artists would hint at the genre’s next horizon or, at the very least, his own. While there may be a few seeds here, Oblivion settles mostly in his established wheelhouse. Songs like “Straight” and “2 Fine” are low-stakes affairs that find T-Pain playing around with his assorted vocals, flows, and ad-libs—it’s genuinely fun. But his ingenuity shines brightest on the Mr. Talkbox-assisted standout “May I.” Running like two passionate robots serenading a jazz lounge, it is the peak use of a computer to make the voice an instrument unto itself—nearly eight minutes of finesse that only T-Pain could pull off. Oblivion’s most unexpected feature is its mix of sub-genres that T-Pain chameleons himself into perfectly. From trap rap (“Goal Line”) to Latin-flavored pop (“No Rush”) to the percussive lands of go-go (“Cee Cee From DC”), it’s almost like a best-of but with all new music. In his grasp, the respective genres end up sounding poppier rather than like true interpretations, but it's nice to hear an artist push his own creative boundaries—even if the source material is a bit watered down. There’s a masterpiece somewhere in the colors of all these disparate sounds if only it were trimmed just a bit more. As such, Oblivion feels like a “business decision” album: it’s a casual affair that frees him from his label obligation to RCA. It isn’t exactly phoned in, but T-Pain has more in his tank than what he shows here, even though the tracks that reflect his past eras display his versatility and allow for optimistic glimpses of a career resurgence. The free-spirited energy that earned him ubiquity a decade ago remains intact despite his fall from glory. This album reflects the best of what we know of him, but the unknown remains the most intriguing. Projected ambitions aside, this release typifies just how ahead of his time he was and how much those melodic blurred lines influenced the generations that followed—sing-raps can‘t be fully attributed to him, but he certainly played a substantial part. The genre fluidity he shows here helped lay the foundation for artists to come. And even in a landscape that outgrew him or outran him or both, Oblivion T-Pain sounds like a teacher who still feels welcome in his own classroom, and he’s owed at least that."

Cocteau Twins

BBC Sessions

Rock

Kristin Sage Rockermann

Main entry: twomb Pronunciation: 'twüm Etymology: tomb, womb: Middle English tombe, akin to Old High German wamba belly Function: noun 1: an object that resembles a both a womb and a tomb 2: an excavation in which a corpse is buried in a space resembling a womb 3: any Cocteau Twins full-length release 3b: a Cocteau Twins EP 4. a house, chamber, or vault that is intended for the dead but is instead filled with moody synths Twombs got me through college. As the hours before essay deadlines slipped away, things would become more clear. You can call it an epiphany or you can call it a gimmick, but Edgar Allan Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher" is like a tomb. It is also like a womb. You could write it as "(t/w)omb" and be beaten until you bleed all over your properly marked edition of "Derrida's of Grammatology." Or you could call it a twomb. As in, "that's pretty twomby." Here's an example of the word "twomby" in a sentence: This week's "very special episode" of "Dawson's Creek" was twomby as all hell. The Cocteau Twins? Dark, damp waves of warm nostalgia wash over cushions of gently layered synthesizers. It's familiar somehow, but over-produced into something usually described as otherworldly or ethereal. The Cocteau Twins are the perfect example of twomb-rock. Twins are together in the womb. And the Cocteau Twins were also womb to the development of a new generation of independent rock, including groups such as Dead Can Dance and Pale Saints. The two-disc compilation of live BBC Sessions recorded between 1982-1996? You got it-- buried alive! Trapped and kicking to get out, in a twomb with a drum machine! Let's go through the contents of this twomb. There are 30 versions of 28 songs spanning two discs. Yes! There are two versions of "Hitherto" and "Musette and Drums." The record is largely devoted to Garlands-era early work and to BBC recordings of songs from their mediocre 1996 release, Milk and Kisses, with a few songs from Treasure and Head Over Heels sprinkled about. This leaves a significant portion of their 15 year career unrepresented-- specifically, material from Blue Bell Knoll and Heaven or Las Vegas. This conspicuous absence prevents the album from serving as a retrospective or greatest hits compilation. Instead, it can be categorized as either an inadequate introduction to the band, or as one more morsel for completists. From the FAQ in the "Cocteau Twins Café:" Q: Why such an odd track listing for the BBC Sessions Double CD? A: The selections for this double album may seem a bit sporadic, there is a big chunk of their musical career missing for one good reasox8A.it's just BBC Sessions!" From the FAQ in the "Pitchfork Café:" Q: Why would anyone decide to release "just the BBC Sessions," which leave out the stronger period of Cocteau Twins' work? A: They're milking it! As Neil Diamond once told us, "Money walks, but it don't sing and dance and it don't talk." That's BBC Sessions' bottom line-- it's one more release issued by the floundering U.S. label Rykodisc (and Simon Raymonde's own Bella Union imprint in the U.K.) that will be sold and bought and maybe sold again. Although these BBC Sessions hold a certain amount of economic potential, this compilation is not only too long for such a quirky track listing, but the Cocteaus' strength is not their live performance. Fussy production provides the suspension of disbelief that entering the Cocteaus' twomb properly deserves. In a live setting, their studio aesthetic of densely-layered shimmering dissolves and sugar-coated textured noise becomes washed out sentiment lacking in urgency. Although BBC Sessions contains a few inspired performances such as the 1983 version of "Hitherto," and an unusual if slightly grating cover of Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit," for the most part, it isn't. This compilation may just be a ploy to fund a private school education for the daughter of Liz Fraser and Spiritualized's Damon Reece, but that doesn't mean certain fans won't find pleasure in these slightly more course versions of classic Cocteau Twins tracks. For the uninitiated or casual Cocteau fan, though, Heaven or Las Vegas, Treasure, and Blue Bell Knoll are twombs that should certainly be explored first.

Artist: Cocteau Twins, Album: BBC Sessions, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.3 Album review: "Main entry: twomb Pronunciation: 'twüm Etymology: tomb, womb: Middle English tombe, akin to Old High German wamba belly Function: noun 1: an object that resembles a both a womb and a tomb 2: an excavation in which a corpse is buried in a space resembling a womb 3: any Cocteau Twins full-length release 3b: a Cocteau Twins EP 4. a house, chamber, or vault that is intended for the dead but is instead filled with moody synths Twombs got me through college. As the hours before essay deadlines slipped away, things would become more clear. You can call it an epiphany or you can call it a gimmick, but Edgar Allan Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher" is like a tomb. It is also like a womb. You could write it as "(t/w)omb" and be beaten until you bleed all over your properly marked edition of "Derrida's of Grammatology." Or you could call it a twomb. As in, "that's pretty twomby." Here's an example of the word "twomby" in a sentence: This week's "very special episode" of "Dawson's Creek" was twomby as all hell. The Cocteau Twins? Dark, damp waves of warm nostalgia wash over cushions of gently layered synthesizers. It's familiar somehow, but over-produced into something usually described as otherworldly or ethereal. The Cocteau Twins are the perfect example of twomb-rock. Twins are together in the womb. And the Cocteau Twins were also womb to the development of a new generation of independent rock, including groups such as Dead Can Dance and Pale Saints. The two-disc compilation of live BBC Sessions recorded between 1982-1996? You got it-- buried alive! Trapped and kicking to get out, in a twomb with a drum machine! Let's go through the contents of this twomb. There are 30 versions of 28 songs spanning two discs. Yes! There are two versions of "Hitherto" and "Musette and Drums." The record is largely devoted to Garlands-era early work and to BBC recordings of songs from their mediocre 1996 release, Milk and Kisses, with a few songs from Treasure and Head Over Heels sprinkled about. This leaves a significant portion of their 15 year career unrepresented-- specifically, material from Blue Bell Knoll and Heaven or Las Vegas. This conspicuous absence prevents the album from serving as a retrospective or greatest hits compilation. Instead, it can be categorized as either an inadequate introduction to the band, or as one more morsel for completists. From the FAQ in the "Cocteau Twins Café:" Q: Why such an odd track listing for the BBC Sessions Double CD? A: The selections for this double album may seem a bit sporadic, there is a big chunk of their musical career missing for one good reasox8A.it's just BBC Sessions!" From the FAQ in the "Pitchfork Café:" Q: Why would anyone decide to release "just the BBC Sessions," which leave out the stronger period of Cocteau Twins' work? A: They're milking it! As Neil Diamond once told us, "Money walks, but it don't sing and dance and it don't talk." That's BBC Sessions' bottom line-- it's one more release issued by the floundering U.S. label Rykodisc (and Simon Raymonde's own Bella Union imprint in the U.K.) that will be sold and bought and maybe sold again. Although these BBC Sessions hold a certain amount of economic potential, this compilation is not only too long for such a quirky track listing, but the Cocteaus' strength is not their live performance. Fussy production provides the suspension of disbelief that entering the Cocteaus' twomb properly deserves. In a live setting, their studio aesthetic of densely-layered shimmering dissolves and sugar-coated textured noise becomes washed out sentiment lacking in urgency. Although BBC Sessions contains a few inspired performances such as the 1983 version of "Hitherto," and an unusual if slightly grating cover of Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit," for the most part, it isn't. This compilation may just be a ploy to fund a private school education for the daughter of Liz Fraser and Spiritualized's Damon Reece, but that doesn't mean certain fans won't find pleasure in these slightly more course versions of classic Cocteau Twins tracks. For the uninitiated or casual Cocteau fan, though, Heaven or Las Vegas, Treasure, and Blue Bell Knoll are twombs that should certainly be explored first."

Ex Cops

Daggers

Ian Cohen

Ex Cops’ sophomore LP is an alt-rock album with a pathological eagerness to please, so naturally, it involves... Ariel Pink and Billy Corgan? The former makes a guest appearance, the latter serves as a co-writer and executive producer, and what’s even crazier is that neither is the most contentious artist connected with this thing. That would be Ex Cops' own Amalie Bruun. Earlier this year, Bruun was revealed as the voice behind the anonymous but suspiciously well-publicized one-woman black-metal project Myrkur. As a result, she became 2014’s hottest flashpoint in a community that never needs much spark, the target of a #Gamergate-style crusade that used dubious calls for "ethics" and full disclosure as a front for what often amounted to outright misogyny. But the music itself, standard issue Ulver-esque doom-gaze, was certainly subject to valid criticism—too polished, lacking distinction, too willing to ride a crested wave. All of that is even more true of Daggers. This doesn’t make it a bad record on its own. Let’s remember, this is an alt-rock album with a pathological eagerness to please. And sometimes, Daggers hits its target with focus-grouped precision. Opener "Black Soap" doesn’t really sound like Smashing Pumpkins or Zwan, but Billy Corgan has spent the past 15 or so years trying to make music that sounds like  it—compressed acoustic guitars buzzing against drum machine chatter, blasting into a chorus that has the luscious curvature of shoegaze. The mere title of "White Noise" instantly places Ex Cops in a conversation that involves Disclosure, AlunaGeorge, and, now, Taylor Swift, which can’t be totally unintentional; except it’s the next song that actually sounds like all of them at the same time and it’s called, not coincidentally, "Teenagers". We could suss out the minor tributaries Daggers cuts from the mainstream on a track-by-track basis, but in short, their glitchy, witchy synth-pop toasts so enthusiastically to the success of Chvrches and Haim, Ex Cops might as well change their name to L’chaim*!*. While Bruun thrives in this setting, Brian Harding’s muttered, displaced vocals are the only way you’ll remember that Ex Cops also made True Hallucinations, a debut that also used enthusiasm to compensate for tardiness—in that case, a style of glistening dream-pop reminiscent of a time where the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, DIIV, and Wild Nothing were what you immediately thought of when people used "indie rock" and "Brooklyn" in the same sentence. That album came out in 2013 and it seems like a decade ago. This isn’t a change of heart, it’s a heart transplant, and a cynic could use its convenient timing as irrefutable proof of Ex Cops as commerce rather than art. That’s also a shitty double standard: if we’re really to take their word that they are and always were a pop band, part of the job is sounding of the moment. They’ve succeeded on that end. But Daggers is easy enough to like and impossible to trust. Engage with Daggers and you hear pandering ad exec logic, an attempt to identify a demographic that considers themselves "indie" but not an outcast. You go to dance clubs! Or at least you’d like the idea of it. Bruun sings, "I never hear songs that lead me to the dance floor," because this is dance music for contained debauchery, kitchen drinking. You do drugs! Or at least you know people who do; "Pretty Shitty" tries to contract the same incapacitating mental and physical corruption that infects Sky Ferreira (Night Time, My Time contributor Justin Raisen produced all 11 songs and co-wrote a few as well), except Ex Cops never sound like they’re willing to shed blood or have any skin in the game. The chorus of "Pretty Shitty" might be in some way a response to Bruun’s experience in Myrkur, but, "How can you be so shitty/ To a girl so pretty?" seems more in line with the pervasive, aggressive insipidness, Ex Cops claiming "pop" as a cop out. For example, the chorus from "Teenagers"—"We can start a war/ ‘Cause we’re insecure/ We’re like teenagers." Like most lines here, it scans as Ex Cops guessing at the listener’s emotions rather than feeling their own, but you know what? Ex Cops are like teenagers, if you’re willing to take a generous view of Daggers and hear it as a concept album about the particularly adolescent desperation of seeking acceptance, of doing anything and everything to fit in. On the closing "Weird With You", Harding begs, "I wanna be dumb with you/ I wanna be numb with you/ I wanna be weird with you." It’s the first moment of true self-awareness, Ex Cops admitting that if someone just walks in front, they’ll follow the leader.

Artist: Ex Cops, Album: Daggers, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 5.2 Album review: "Ex Cops’ sophomore LP is an alt-rock album with a pathological eagerness to please, so naturally, it involves... Ariel Pink and Billy Corgan? The former makes a guest appearance, the latter serves as a co-writer and executive producer, and what’s even crazier is that neither is the most contentious artist connected with this thing. That would be Ex Cops' own Amalie Bruun. Earlier this year, Bruun was revealed as the voice behind the anonymous but suspiciously well-publicized one-woman black-metal project Myrkur. As a result, she became 2014’s hottest flashpoint in a community that never needs much spark, the target of a #Gamergate-style crusade that used dubious calls for "ethics" and full disclosure as a front for what often amounted to outright misogyny. But the music itself, standard issue Ulver-esque doom-gaze, was certainly subject to valid criticism—too polished, lacking distinction, too willing to ride a crested wave. All of that is even more true of Daggers. This doesn’t make it a bad record on its own. Let’s remember, this is an alt-rock album with a pathological eagerness to please. And sometimes, Daggers hits its target with focus-grouped precision. Opener "Black Soap" doesn’t really sound like Smashing Pumpkins or Zwan, but Billy Corgan has spent the past 15 or so years trying to make music that sounds like  it—compressed acoustic guitars buzzing against drum machine chatter, blasting into a chorus that has the luscious curvature of shoegaze. The mere title of "White Noise" instantly places Ex Cops in a conversation that involves Disclosure, AlunaGeorge, and, now, Taylor Swift, which can’t be totally unintentional; except it’s the next song that actually sounds like all of them at the same time and it’s called, not coincidentally, "Teenagers". We could suss out the minor tributaries Daggers cuts from the mainstream on a track-by-track basis, but in short, their glitchy, witchy synth-pop toasts so enthusiastically to the success of Chvrches and Haim, Ex Cops might as well change their name to L’chaim*!*. While Bruun thrives in this setting, Brian Harding’s muttered, displaced vocals are the only way you’ll remember that Ex Cops also made True Hallucinations, a debut that also used enthusiasm to compensate for tardiness—in that case, a style of glistening dream-pop reminiscent of a time where the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, DIIV, and Wild Nothing were what you immediately thought of when people used "indie rock" and "Brooklyn" in the same sentence. That album came out in 2013 and it seems like a decade ago. This isn’t a change of heart, it’s a heart transplant, and a cynic could use its convenient timing as irrefutable proof of Ex Cops as commerce rather than art. That’s also a shitty double standard: if we’re really to take their word that they are and always were a pop band, part of the job is sounding of the moment. They’ve succeeded on that end. But Daggers is easy enough to like and impossible to trust. Engage with Daggers and you hear pandering ad exec logic, an attempt to identify a demographic that considers themselves "indie" but not an outcast. You go to dance clubs! Or at least you’d like the idea of it. Bruun sings, "I never hear songs that lead me to the dance floor," because this is dance music for contained debauchery, kitchen drinking. You do drugs! Or at least you know people who do; "Pretty Shitty" tries to contract the same incapacitating mental and physical corruption that infects Sky Ferreira (Night Time, My Time contributor Justin Raisen produced all 11 songs and co-wrote a few as well), except Ex Cops never sound like they’re willing to shed blood or have any skin in the game. The chorus of "Pretty Shitty" might be in some way a response to Bruun’s experience in Myrkur, but, "How can you be so shitty/ To a girl so pretty?" seems more in line with the pervasive, aggressive insipidness, Ex Cops claiming "pop" as a cop out. For example, the chorus from "Teenagers"—"We can start a war/ ‘Cause we’re insecure/ We’re like teenagers." Like most lines here, it scans as Ex Cops guessing at the listener’s emotions rather than feeling their own, but you know what? Ex Cops are like teenagers, if you’re willing to take a generous view of Daggers and hear it as a concept album about the particularly adolescent desperation of seeking acceptance, of doing anything and everything to fit in. On the closing "Weird With You", Harding begs, "I wanna be dumb with you/ I wanna be numb with you/ I wanna be weird with you." It’s the first moment of true self-awareness, Ex Cops admitting that if someone just walks in front, they’ll follow the leader."

Dan the Automator

Wanna Buy a Monkey?

Electronic,Rap

Rob Mitchum

Rock Critic Standby Statement #842: we're now living in the Age of the Producer. It's true. A close look at the pop charts from the last couple of years reveals that today's biggest hitmakers aren't Britney or J-Lo or Madonna, but EQ wizards Timbaland and the Neptunes. Not since the heydays of Motown and Phil Spector have the men behind the board carried such bankability in the industry. Now, more and more, we're seeing these über-producers cutting out the middlemen, releasing albums under their own name or a slight variation thereof (N.E.R.D.). It's no surprise, then, that Dan Nakamura, aka Dan the Automator, aka Nathaniel Merriweather, aka "dude, that Asian guy from the Gorillaz," wants to get in on the action. For the past half-dozen years, the Automator has been the Timbaland/Neptunes correlate for the underground, a knob-twiddling ambassador between the worlds of alternative hip-hop and indie rock. Collaborating with everyone from Kool Keith to Jon Spencer, Nakamura pulls off the seemingly impossible task of retaining his street cred while appealing to the less rap-inclined (pronounced "white") crowd whose rap collection doesn't run beyond Ill Communication. I don't hold myself above the latter group: the Deltron 3030 project was one of the few hip-hop albums to penetrate my guitar-loyal musical sensibilities, though that was at least half because I'm a sci-fi geek who enjoys hearing Neuromancer and Gamera name-dropped. I'll even admit to enjoying the Gorillaz album, the singles from which have provided the first digestible MTV fare in years. And frankly, anyone who collaborates with Mike Patton earns a spot on my good list. No matter what the project, the Automator consistently has brought a sound just organic enough, just diversely influenced enough, just "safe" enough to catch my ear. So the idea of an Automator-chosen mixtape session, billed as "a look into my head" by the man himself, appealed to me. Featuring the likes of Tortoise and Air rubbing up against Brand Nubian and Dilated Peoples, I expected a gonzo display of effortless genre-hopping and style-blending, despite Nakamura not being well-known for his DJ scratching skills. All right, yeah, you know from the rating where this is heading: Wanna Buy a Monkey? didn't live up. Containing a number of selections from the Automator's own projects alongside some of his hand-picked favorites from other artists, Monkey comes off resembling either a padded greatest-hits comp or an "inspired by" soundtrack for a non-existent movie. What it certainly isn't is a DJ mix where previously hidden links between seemingly unrelated songs are unearthed through the ancient art of juxtaposition. Part of the problem lies in the musically segregated organization of the album, as the Automator's hip-hop selections are clumped into the front and back, while the indie-friendly picks comprise the creamy center. This allows Nakamura to splice tracks together with minimal segue ingenuity, mostly using the Radio 101 technique of slowly fading in the beat from the on-deck song. Meanwhile, the one opportunity to flaunt high-flying mixing ability, Deltron 3030's "Positive Contact" into Air's "Le Soleil Est Pres de Moi," is handled with all the dexterity of a one-armed drummer (Rick Allen notwithstanding). Sadly, these short between-song mixtures, as inventive as they ain't, are the most compelling manipulations of the album. The Automator's additions to the members of his all-star team fall under the categories of near-invisible (the vocal sample added to a portion of Tortoise's "Seneca") or distracting (the generic beat and "one, two" vocals clumsily added to Air's ethereal "Le Soleil"). Even Nakamura's own productions (Lovage, X-Ecutioners, an early Black Rob track) are left alone, with only the "original version" of Gorillaz' "Latin Simone" deviating significantly from the album version. To Dan's credit, Wanna Buy a Monkey? confirms what was already apparent from his own work-- namely, that he has classy and diverse musical taste. There's hardly a disagreeable pick among the sixteen present, and most reflect the same sensibilities Nakamura adds to his own music: live instruments, Latin flavoring, positive lyrical messages. But something tells me I would be more sold on the liner notes' claim that he has "something very personal to say on this record" if the artists presented were early influences rather than contemporaries. It's hard to imagine who would want to pick up this disc, as most Automator fans would likely own a majority of the cuts appearing with minuscule changes here. Perhaps Wanna Buy a Monkey? could be justified as a listening guide to point fans towards artists with the Automator stamp of approval, but this goal could have been just as easily accomplished by reading an online interview and booting up your Audiogalaxy satellite. And with almost nothing in the way of imaginative mixing, never mind a $16.99 price tag; Wanna Buy a Monkey? seems nothing more than an early contender for The Onion's "Least Essential Albums of 2002" list.

Artist: Dan the Automator, Album: Wanna Buy a Monkey?, Genre: Electronic,Rap, Score (1-10): 4.0 Album review: "Rock Critic Standby Statement #842: we're now living in the Age of the Producer. It's true. A close look at the pop charts from the last couple of years reveals that today's biggest hitmakers aren't Britney or J-Lo or Madonna, but EQ wizards Timbaland and the Neptunes. Not since the heydays of Motown and Phil Spector have the men behind the board carried such bankability in the industry. Now, more and more, we're seeing these über-producers cutting out the middlemen, releasing albums under their own name or a slight variation thereof (N.E.R.D.). It's no surprise, then, that Dan Nakamura, aka Dan the Automator, aka Nathaniel Merriweather, aka "dude, that Asian guy from the Gorillaz," wants to get in on the action. For the past half-dozen years, the Automator has been the Timbaland/Neptunes correlate for the underground, a knob-twiddling ambassador between the worlds of alternative hip-hop and indie rock. Collaborating with everyone from Kool Keith to Jon Spencer, Nakamura pulls off the seemingly impossible task of retaining his street cred while appealing to the less rap-inclined (pronounced "white") crowd whose rap collection doesn't run beyond Ill Communication. I don't hold myself above the latter group: the Deltron 3030 project was one of the few hip-hop albums to penetrate my guitar-loyal musical sensibilities, though that was at least half because I'm a sci-fi geek who enjoys hearing Neuromancer and Gamera name-dropped. I'll even admit to enjoying the Gorillaz album, the singles from which have provided the first digestible MTV fare in years. And frankly, anyone who collaborates with Mike Patton earns a spot on my good list. No matter what the project, the Automator consistently has brought a sound just organic enough, just diversely influenced enough, just "safe" enough to catch my ear. So the idea of an Automator-chosen mixtape session, billed as "a look into my head" by the man himself, appealed to me. Featuring the likes of Tortoise and Air rubbing up against Brand Nubian and Dilated Peoples, I expected a gonzo display of effortless genre-hopping and style-blending, despite Nakamura not being well-known for his DJ scratching skills. All right, yeah, you know from the rating where this is heading: Wanna Buy a Monkey? didn't live up. Containing a number of selections from the Automator's own projects alongside some of his hand-picked favorites from other artists, Monkey comes off resembling either a padded greatest-hits comp or an "inspired by" soundtrack for a non-existent movie. What it certainly isn't is a DJ mix where previously hidden links between seemingly unrelated songs are unearthed through the ancient art of juxtaposition. Part of the problem lies in the musically segregated organization of the album, as the Automator's hip-hop selections are clumped into the front and back, while the indie-friendly picks comprise the creamy center. This allows Nakamura to splice tracks together with minimal segue ingenuity, mostly using the Radio 101 technique of slowly fading in the beat from the on-deck song. Meanwhile, the one opportunity to flaunt high-flying mixing ability, Deltron 3030's "Positive Contact" into Air's "Le Soleil Est Pres de Moi," is handled with all the dexterity of a one-armed drummer (Rick Allen notwithstanding). Sadly, these short between-song mixtures, as inventive as they ain't, are the most compelling manipulations of the album. The Automator's additions to the members of his all-star team fall under the categories of near-invisible (the vocal sample added to a portion of Tortoise's "Seneca") or distracting (the generic beat and "one, two" vocals clumsily added to Air's ethereal "Le Soleil"). Even Nakamura's own productions (Lovage, X-Ecutioners, an early Black Rob track) are left alone, with only the "original version" of Gorillaz' "Latin Simone" deviating significantly from the album version. To Dan's credit, Wanna Buy a Monkey? confirms what was already apparent from his own work-- namely, that he has classy and diverse musical taste. There's hardly a disagreeable pick among the sixteen present, and most reflect the same sensibilities Nakamura adds to his own music: live instruments, Latin flavoring, positive lyrical messages. But something tells me I would be more sold on the liner notes' claim that he has "something very personal to say on this record" if the artists presented were early influences rather than contemporaries. It's hard to imagine who would want to pick up this disc, as most Automator fans would likely own a majority of the cuts appearing with minuscule changes here. Perhaps Wanna Buy a Monkey? could be justified as a listening guide to point fans towards artists with the Automator stamp of approval, but this goal could have been just as easily accomplished by reading an online interview and booting up your Audiogalaxy satellite. And with almost nothing in the way of imaginative mixing, never mind a $16.99 price tag; Wanna Buy a Monkey? seems nothing more than an early contender for The Onion's "Least Essential Albums of 2002" list."

Säkert!

Facit

Rock

Marc Hogan

"Good writing cannot permit itself to be contained within checkpoints and borders," English novelist Zadie Smith writes in the preface to a recent European short-story anthology. If nothing else, unlikely Swedish pop star Annika Norlin is a very good writer. Her albums as Hello Saferide, both 2005's Introducing... and 2008's tellingly named More Modern Short Stories From Hello Saferide, demonstrate an unusual aptitude for pitch-perfect fictions. Norlin finds the sublime in everyday life and shows strength by being unafraid to bare weakness. Her first Swedish-language album as Säkert!, an eponymous 2007 release of homespun indie pop, went gold in her native country and won two Swedish Grammis, including an award for lyricist of the year. Norlin returns to the Swedish language on her second Säkert! album, and once again her songwriting deserves to transcend cultural boundaries. Musically, Facit is more richly arranged than its predecessor, but also darker, with minor chords even among the fast songs. Henrik Oja, who again produces and now also gets co-writing credit, can count free jazz among his recent work; here he favors a dusky, approachable jangle that puts the focus on Norlin's conversational vocals. So sooner or later you're going to have to try to understand what she's singing about, whether a holy misfit with the same first name as the prime minister, a young rebel who reminds the narrator of her own faded idealism, or an insecure woman who can't help but go back to a former lover, like Liz Lemon returning to loser boyfriend Dennis Duffy in old episodes of "30 Rock". Non-Swedish phrases jump out here and there: Rosa Parks, Lonely Planet, Rotary. If you can watch The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo with subtitles, then you can wring a whole lot of enjoyment out of Facit, but it sure helps to follow along by mousing over the lyrics in Google Translate. It turns out there's a wedding song, "Dansa, fastän", where horns, handclaps, and Daniel Berglund's subtle drumming nicely frame Norlin's romantic disillusionment. There's a funeral song, "När du dör", where a whispery Norlin imagines a dead lover turning into a tree, so future generations can meet him, or else that tree getting cut down to make paper, in which case she'd write letters with pen again-- she'd write poetry. And best of all, there's an unrequited-love song, "Får jag", where a couple go to a Stockholm bar called Dovas, watch hockey on TV without watching hockey, and lean in close to each other right when the score reaches 2-0 versus Finland: a stomach-tingling moment that, like the inland simplicity to which it hearkens, is doomed not to last. There was a minor Swedish media frenzy this summer after a magazine reported that Norlin would be quitting music. She has since dismissed such rumors, but Facit makes it easy to see why people might want to believe them. Although obviously crafted with great care, the songs here feel tremendously naked and transparent, even to someone who doesn't speak the language.

Artist: Säkert!, Album: Facit, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: ""Good writing cannot permit itself to be contained within checkpoints and borders," English novelist Zadie Smith writes in the preface to a recent European short-story anthology. If nothing else, unlikely Swedish pop star Annika Norlin is a very good writer. Her albums as Hello Saferide, both 2005's Introducing... and 2008's tellingly named More Modern Short Stories From Hello Saferide, demonstrate an unusual aptitude for pitch-perfect fictions. Norlin finds the sublime in everyday life and shows strength by being unafraid to bare weakness. Her first Swedish-language album as Säkert!, an eponymous 2007 release of homespun indie pop, went gold in her native country and won two Swedish Grammis, including an award for lyricist of the year. Norlin returns to the Swedish language on her second Säkert! album, and once again her songwriting deserves to transcend cultural boundaries. Musically, Facit is more richly arranged than its predecessor, but also darker, with minor chords even among the fast songs. Henrik Oja, who again produces and now also gets co-writing credit, can count free jazz among his recent work; here he favors a dusky, approachable jangle that puts the focus on Norlin's conversational vocals. So sooner or later you're going to have to try to understand what she's singing about, whether a holy misfit with the same first name as the prime minister, a young rebel who reminds the narrator of her own faded idealism, or an insecure woman who can't help but go back to a former lover, like Liz Lemon returning to loser boyfriend Dennis Duffy in old episodes of "30 Rock". Non-Swedish phrases jump out here and there: Rosa Parks, Lonely Planet, Rotary. If you can watch The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo with subtitles, then you can wring a whole lot of enjoyment out of Facit, but it sure helps to follow along by mousing over the lyrics in Google Translate. It turns out there's a wedding song, "Dansa, fastän", where horns, handclaps, and Daniel Berglund's subtle drumming nicely frame Norlin's romantic disillusionment. There's a funeral song, "När du dör", where a whispery Norlin imagines a dead lover turning into a tree, so future generations can meet him, or else that tree getting cut down to make paper, in which case she'd write letters with pen again-- she'd write poetry. And best of all, there's an unrequited-love song, "Får jag", where a couple go to a Stockholm bar called Dovas, watch hockey on TV without watching hockey, and lean in close to each other right when the score reaches 2-0 versus Finland: a stomach-tingling moment that, like the inland simplicity to which it hearkens, is doomed not to last. There was a minor Swedish media frenzy this summer after a magazine reported that Norlin would be quitting music. She has since dismissed such rumors, but Facit makes it easy to see why people might want to believe them. Although obviously crafted with great care, the songs here feel tremendously naked and transparent, even to someone who doesn't speak the language."

Merzbow

Ikebana: Merzbow's 'Amlux' Rebuilt, Reused and Recycled

Experimental

Dominique Leone

Source material for a remix can be like salt in a cake mix: technically speaking, one has to have the first in order to construct the second, but the fun lies in the way you hide its taste, and I would argue that a "faithful remix" (or a salty cake) defeats the point. So, chefs, DJs and other people who like to make messes have run amok over the past couple of decades turning what might have been nothing more than small, lifeless pea into Haydn's Creation. Many times, this transformation is done for practical reasons-- say, extending a groove for the dancefloor, or adding a little punch for the radio-- though I've always been more interested in the mixture made for reasons purely "artistic," culinary or otherwise. Over time, this recreation-- probably a notch removed from a "remix," if only because the most interesting stuff involves more than just editing and jacking with levels-- has evolved from fringe experiment to full-grown musical cuisine. Early musique concrete pioneers Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry might have envisioned a world where everyday sound or radio broadcasts might be turned into avant-garde art via sampling and electronic amplification, but I doubt they could have foreseen the po-mo hurricane that is modern sound design: Otomo Yoshihide uses his "group" Ground Zero to "remix" UK experimentalists Cassiber's live record; Christian Marclay cuts up Elliot Sharp's guitar in real time and nobody comes out unscathed; John Oswald forges massive documents of alien sound out of music already heard by anyone with ears; Ekkehard Ehlers, Fennesz and Keith Whitman play their own stuff, cycle it through a laptop, and produce sounds at once familiar and of singular idiosyncrasy. Nothing is sacred. Or, music is god, and cannibals make the best sacrifices. Merzbow's 2002 release Amlux is the main course for better than twenty very hungry young dicers on Ikebana's meta-menu. According to the liners, artists were supposed to use the original album's music as an element in a new composition, rather than piece together a traditional remix. Furthermore, despite Masami Akita's rep as devastating noise dominatrix, none of the new tunes were to be necessarily bound to his extreme aesthetic. I can imagine the participants feeling either fantastic glee at the prospect of being given free rein in the Merzbow shop, or a bit of paranoia at approaching the same material as twenty other artists and having to come up with something just as interesting. The coolest thing about Ikebana is that you don't even really need to know anything about Merzbow or "noise" to listen to it. There are a few u nruly moments that seem pages out of some forgotten cassette-only Masami Akita (Merzbow) release, but in general, much of this release could pass for an experimental IDM sampler. Alec Empire's raging "Digital Hardcore Mix" comes on like the soundtrack to a Terminator sequel that didn't suck, with wildly distorted drum tracks kicking the shit out of all the extraneous debris (hint: tonality = debris) in their way. With a decent stereo, the bassline could do some serious damage. Similarly, Luke Vibert's (performing under his Plug alias) excellent untitled futuro drum-n-bass slaps an engorged, fuzzy repeating synth bass under jagged glitch stutter beat. Some of the tempo changes and oddly timed samples remind me of the more spastic moments on Hrvatski's first record-- or possibly of the record I wish Squarepusher would make. Elsewhere, artists you might think would provide the electro-splice goods deliver something else entirely. Mouse on Mars' "Superstar" features no beats whatsoever, and in truth, sounds almost exactly like a Merzbow original, albeit a piece wherein he doesn't so much opt for deafening displays of violent florescence as disorientating sound design. Cornelius' untitled piece starts out innocently enough, with sampled jungle birds and rain, but gradually mutates into the pitter-patter of static electricity and industrial clang. Nobukazu Takemura's "Assembler Mix" takes the static idea and gallops with it, giving you hundreds of variations on the same grating implosion for what seems an eternity. Now that's entertainment! However, it's also pretty reverential, and in scheme of Ikebana seems kind of quaint. For reference, see Makoto Kawabata's amazing/nauseating "Revolved Jane", which shows you don't have to bother living up to a legacy if you're perfectly capable of vandalizing it with a chorus of grotesque psych-locusts. Ikebana isn't exactly the smoothest listen, and not just because it comes from Merzbow music. DJ Spooky's trip-hop treatment doesn't really sound like it belongs on the same album as the MoM or Takemura tracks, and Negativland's highly annoying "An Actual Attack" doesn't sound like anything I need in my collection at all. Still, as samplers go, it's consistently "challenging"-- or better yet, there lots of sounds you'll want to come back to after being assaulted the first time. And you want to know a secret? I never heard the original Amlux music, and can vouch for this stuff working well enough on its own. So, sit down, fork in place, and dig in-- you like buffet, right?

Artist: Merzbow, Album: Ikebana: Merzbow's 'Amlux' Rebuilt, Reused and Recycled, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Source material for a remix can be like salt in a cake mix: technically speaking, one has to have the first in order to construct the second, but the fun lies in the way you hide its taste, and I would argue that a "faithful remix" (or a salty cake) defeats the point. So, chefs, DJs and other people who like to make messes have run amok over the past couple of decades turning what might have been nothing more than small, lifeless pea into Haydn's Creation. Many times, this transformation is done for practical reasons-- say, extending a groove for the dancefloor, or adding a little punch for the radio-- though I've always been more interested in the mixture made for reasons purely "artistic," culinary or otherwise. Over time, this recreation-- probably a notch removed from a "remix," if only because the most interesting stuff involves more than just editing and jacking with levels-- has evolved from fringe experiment to full-grown musical cuisine. Early musique concrete pioneers Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry might have envisioned a world where everyday sound or radio broadcasts might be turned into avant-garde art via sampling and electronic amplification, but I doubt they could have foreseen the po-mo hurricane that is modern sound design: Otomo Yoshihide uses his "group" Ground Zero to "remix" UK experimentalists Cassiber's live record; Christian Marclay cuts up Elliot Sharp's guitar in real time and nobody comes out unscathed; John Oswald forges massive documents of alien sound out of music already heard by anyone with ears; Ekkehard Ehlers, Fennesz and Keith Whitman play their own stuff, cycle it through a laptop, and produce sounds at once familiar and of singular idiosyncrasy. Nothing is sacred. Or, music is god, and cannibals make the best sacrifices. Merzbow's 2002 release Amlux is the main course for better than twenty very hungry young dicers on Ikebana's meta-menu. According to the liners, artists were supposed to use the original album's music as an element in a new composition, rather than piece together a traditional remix. Furthermore, despite Masami Akita's rep as devastating noise dominatrix, none of the new tunes were to be necessarily bound to his extreme aesthetic. I can imagine the participants feeling either fantastic glee at the prospect of being given free rein in the Merzbow shop, or a bit of paranoia at approaching the same material as twenty other artists and having to come up with something just as interesting. The coolest thing about Ikebana is that you don't even really need to know anything about Merzbow or "noise" to listen to it. There are a few u nruly moments that seem pages out of some forgotten cassette-only Masami Akita (Merzbow) release, but in general, much of this release could pass for an experimental IDM sampler. Alec Empire's raging "Digital Hardcore Mix" comes on like the soundtrack to a Terminator sequel that didn't suck, with wildly distorted drum tracks kicking the shit out of all the extraneous debris (hint: tonality = debris) in their way. With a decent stereo, the bassline could do some serious damage. Similarly, Luke Vibert's (performing under his Plug alias) excellent untitled futuro drum-n-bass slaps an engorged, fuzzy repeating synth bass under jagged glitch stutter beat. Some of the tempo changes and oddly timed samples remind me of the more spastic moments on Hrvatski's first record-- or possibly of the record I wish Squarepusher would make. Elsewhere, artists you might think would provide the electro-splice goods deliver something else entirely. Mouse on Mars' "Superstar" features no beats whatsoever, and in truth, sounds almost exactly like a Merzbow original, albeit a piece wherein he doesn't so much opt for deafening displays of violent florescence as disorientating sound design. Cornelius' untitled piece starts out innocently enough, with sampled jungle birds and rain, but gradually mutates into the pitter-patter of static electricity and industrial clang. Nobukazu Takemura's "Assembler Mix" takes the static idea and gallops with it, giving you hundreds of variations on the same grating implosion for what seems an eternity. Now that's entertainment! However, it's also pretty reverential, and in scheme of Ikebana seems kind of quaint. For reference, see Makoto Kawabata's amazing/nauseating "Revolved Jane", which shows you don't have to bother living up to a legacy if you're perfectly capable of vandalizing it with a chorus of grotesque psych-locusts. Ikebana isn't exactly the smoothest listen, and not just because it comes from Merzbow music. DJ Spooky's trip-hop treatment doesn't really sound like it belongs on the same album as the MoM or Takemura tracks, and Negativland's highly annoying "An Actual Attack" doesn't sound like anything I need in my collection at all. Still, as samplers go, it's consistently "challenging"-- or better yet, there lots of sounds you'll want to come back to after being assaulted the first time. And you want to know a secret? I never heard the original Amlux music, and can vouch for this stuff working well enough on its own. So, sit down, fork in place, and dig in-- you like buffet, right?"

White Denim

Last Day of Summer

Rock

David Bevan

White Denim quietly dropped the free online release Last Day of Summer just days after summer was over. Guitarist/vocalist James Petralli attached a note to the posting on their homepage, asking that, should you be compelled once you clicked, you please donate some/any cash for an upcoming tour. In addition to confirming that the trio-turned-foursome's (guitarist Austin Jenkins has been welcomed to the fold) next studio LP was within days of being finished, he wrote, "[Last Day of Summer] is something we made as a little summer retreat from our ongoing work on the third full length... We were super pumped to utilize a few fresh and casual musical approaches on this record." So they likened recording to summer vacation; you can feel the freedom shine through in every cut. Here, White Denim run down some ideas that might not have fit flush in the more pressurized context of a wide release: a couple of jazz instrumentals sidled up next to funk tonics and British folk forays; everything they not so secretly love anyway and all of which congeal into a family of recordings that's still totally, deliciously listenable. "Light Light Light" and Tropicália-tinged "Incaviglia" contain the aforementioned jazz intermission, the former (with production that echoes Modest Mouse) propelled along by a thumpy, roadhouse bass figure and wooly, sometimes atonal sax. They're experiments, fleshed out with great affection and an outside-the-indie-rock-box artistry that makes this band's more straightforward garage jams equally bold. Elsewhere, you'll find treasure. "Tony Fatti" is predictably twitchy and clipped, the repetitive drive of drummer Josh Block and bassist Steve Terebecki's rhythm section providing strong license for Petralli to color in and outside and all around the lines vocally. "If You're Changing" is a Byrds-indebted strummer that eventually shakes the pretty stuff and breaks into a strut, demonstrating White Denim's ability to sew together different styles. (The flip side is that this band isn't able to contain its many influences.) But what makes Last Day of Summer engaging has as much to do with White Denim's potential future as it does its roots.

Artist: White Denim, Album: Last Day of Summer, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "White Denim quietly dropped the free online release Last Day of Summer just days after summer was over. Guitarist/vocalist James Petralli attached a note to the posting on their homepage, asking that, should you be compelled once you clicked, you please donate some/any cash for an upcoming tour. In addition to confirming that the trio-turned-foursome's (guitarist Austin Jenkins has been welcomed to the fold) next studio LP was within days of being finished, he wrote, "[Last Day of Summer] is something we made as a little summer retreat from our ongoing work on the third full length... We were super pumped to utilize a few fresh and casual musical approaches on this record." So they likened recording to summer vacation; you can feel the freedom shine through in every cut. Here, White Denim run down some ideas that might not have fit flush in the more pressurized context of a wide release: a couple of jazz instrumentals sidled up next to funk tonics and British folk forays; everything they not so secretly love anyway and all of which congeal into a family of recordings that's still totally, deliciously listenable. "Light Light Light" and Tropicália-tinged "Incaviglia" contain the aforementioned jazz intermission, the former (with production that echoes Modest Mouse) propelled along by a thumpy, roadhouse bass figure and wooly, sometimes atonal sax. They're experiments, fleshed out with great affection and an outside-the-indie-rock-box artistry that makes this band's more straightforward garage jams equally bold. Elsewhere, you'll find treasure. "Tony Fatti" is predictably twitchy and clipped, the repetitive drive of drummer Josh Block and bassist Steve Terebecki's rhythm section providing strong license for Petralli to color in and outside and all around the lines vocally. "If You're Changing" is a Byrds-indebted strummer that eventually shakes the pretty stuff and breaks into a strut, demonstrating White Denim's ability to sew together different styles. (The flip side is that this band isn't able to contain its many influences.) But what makes Last Day of Summer engaging has as much to do with White Denim's potential future as it does its roots."