Ok! Getting back on this - these are backdated to the date I first heard them for posterity purposes, but as anyone who's paying any attention at all will notice, they were written much later (all the way out to 5/20/12 in this case). Anyway, this was one I listened to in anticipation of going to a (pretty great, actually) show w/ Quincy herself.
This is, if nothing else at all, a sexy album. The synths are slinky, the beats crisply understated, and then there's Grimes's voice itself. At first it evokes the kind of overinflected mewling that seems really hot these days, but it's used to sulk through weird, neondark spaces, to inhabit them and stalk the stalkers. A quiet menace keeps Grimes from being just another wierd-cute object of affection.
Crucially, the reverb knob is kept in check. There's atmosphere to be sure, but it is more Twin Shadow earned than Atlas Sound demanded, more crisply retro, evoking patch cables and LFO's instead of Protools.
That said, at its heart, this is 80's-flecked, mewling girl music, and that is a sound that is played the hell out. That it dodges so many of the pitfalls keeps it on my good side, but this doesn't stun me enough to rise beyond the high end of 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like analogy synths and robot cat girls from space. You need a funky groove to fuck to.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Thursday, March 22, 2012
#502 The Men - Open Your Heart
Of course my last album at the 2 year mark had to be a Pitchfork-plugged one. Just like old times!
The Men are about energies in opposition, bursting and soothing, nights and days, all kickboxing fury against judo grace, neither winning out for more than a few songs.
That balance that makes the album so appealing, that gives it its signature overarching flow, isn't immediately obvious though: the opening two tracks are shouty charges, sounding like a lot of the garage/punk revival that's going around now, suggesting a samey trajectory, lulling you into expecting more of the same.
But then it all drops out, and everything gets textured and nuanced and rich, evoking just about every band to carve heavy rock into acute, shimmering shapes: Sonic Youth, early Beta Band, Liars, and Je Suis France come to mind immediately, wielding the will to stretch the listener's patience and the talent to make the patience worth the trouble. Oscillation is the real winner: a weird, krauty turn. All the shouty punk side falls right off, now its past post punk into post rock, jammy, building irresistible. Later, Candy gets downright Americana, and ambient warbles straight off the backside of Blur's self titled masterpiece creep in from the crannies.
The impressive thing about this album is not just its diversity, but the way that it combines the diverse elements into a cohesive, hypnotic whole. There's a consistent voice here, sounding like the work of a creative, hungry, tight live band committed expertly to tape. I've found myself lost but entertained across repeated listens, an experience all too rare for me these days. Let the parade of generous scores continue! I'm on a finding-good-stuff streak 4.5/5
Update 4/9/12: really enjoying this one, clear frontrunner for album of the year so far.
You might like this if: you like that sweet spot of an album that doesn't overplumb a signature sound, but doesn't go careening Ween-style in every direction at once. You like rock that smolders hot, but only occasionally ignites, with enough flourishes to keep it interesting.
The Men are about energies in opposition, bursting and soothing, nights and days, all kickboxing fury against judo grace, neither winning out for more than a few songs.
That balance that makes the album so appealing, that gives it its signature overarching flow, isn't immediately obvious though: the opening two tracks are shouty charges, sounding like a lot of the garage/punk revival that's going around now, suggesting a samey trajectory, lulling you into expecting more of the same.
But then it all drops out, and everything gets textured and nuanced and rich, evoking just about every band to carve heavy rock into acute, shimmering shapes: Sonic Youth, early Beta Band, Liars, and Je Suis France come to mind immediately, wielding the will to stretch the listener's patience and the talent to make the patience worth the trouble. Oscillation is the real winner: a weird, krauty turn. All the shouty punk side falls right off, now its past post punk into post rock, jammy, building irresistible. Later, Candy gets downright Americana, and ambient warbles straight off the backside of Blur's self titled masterpiece creep in from the crannies.
The impressive thing about this album is not just its diversity, but the way that it combines the diverse elements into a cohesive, hypnotic whole. There's a consistent voice here, sounding like the work of a creative, hungry, tight live band committed expertly to tape. I've found myself lost but entertained across repeated listens, an experience all too rare for me these days. Let the parade of generous scores continue! I'm on a finding-good-stuff streak 4.5/5
Update 4/9/12: really enjoying this one, clear frontrunner for album of the year so far.
You might like this if: you like that sweet spot of an album that doesn't overplumb a signature sound, but doesn't go careening Ween-style in every direction at once. You like rock that smolders hot, but only occasionally ignites, with enough flourishes to keep it interesting.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
#501 The Rolling Stones - Goats Head Soup
Slowly working my way through various missed Stones albums. Dudes're prolific! Also, 1973.
In the Stones' cannon this seems to be Exile on Main Street's little brother. Recorded under similarly exil'd conditions, often adhering to a similarly dusty aesthetic, and following on the tail end of a pretty incredible run of albums, the critical consensus seemed to be that this album was a turning point into disappointment and the end of the Stones' golden age.
Maybe its the blessing/curse of hearing records years later and out of context, but I think its a lot better than most people seemed to think. Sure it, had a lot to live up to, but there's some great variety here, a shredded intensity, and an embarrassment of beautiful moments.
On the front side, Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo and Dancing with Mr. D are the kind of rollicking Stones jams that Primal Scream at its best tried to recreate, while 100 Years Ago crunches with some of the crispest drumming the Charlie Watts ever put to tape. The second half, meanwhile, has some masterstrokes of feel and texture. Hide Your Love bumps with baritone, Can You Hear the Music has a sawtooth Ratatat heart, and Winter's solo soars alongside strings like The Smashing Pumpkins finest moments*.
Maybe there's some sick hipster contratianism leading me astray, leading me to praise the un-over-praised, but I like this one. In fact, its funny I should mention The Smashing Pumpkins (a band the Stones generally sound nothing like), I think there's some of that wild eclecticism of Mellon Collie on display here. That playfulness, that flailing at ideas and resistance to downpinning, that cascading from theme to theme, sound to sound, one perfect moment leading into another completely unlike it a song and a half later. I've got a soft sport for that kind of thing. I suspect strongly that I'm overrating this, and I'm pretty sure I rated much better regarded albums much lower earlier in this project, but at the moment I heard it I downright liked this one here. Maybe I'm just benefitting from not having burned out with a new great Rolling Stones album a year for 5 years straight and can take it at its merits, as a perfectly good album 4.5/5
You might like this if: You like good'ole rock and roll, with a desperate, imaginative slash through it.
* Actually, most specifically The Last Song, which featured a similarly gorgeous solo played, not by Billy Corgan, but by William Corgan Senior. Important facts!
In the Stones' cannon this seems to be Exile on Main Street's little brother. Recorded under similarly exil'd conditions, often adhering to a similarly dusty aesthetic, and following on the tail end of a pretty incredible run of albums, the critical consensus seemed to be that this album was a turning point into disappointment and the end of the Stones' golden age.
Maybe its the blessing/curse of hearing records years later and out of context, but I think its a lot better than most people seemed to think. Sure it, had a lot to live up to, but there's some great variety here, a shredded intensity, and an embarrassment of beautiful moments.
On the front side, Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo and Dancing with Mr. D are the kind of rollicking Stones jams that Primal Scream at its best tried to recreate, while 100 Years Ago crunches with some of the crispest drumming the Charlie Watts ever put to tape. The second half, meanwhile, has some masterstrokes of feel and texture. Hide Your Love bumps with baritone, Can You Hear the Music has a sawtooth Ratatat heart, and Winter's solo soars alongside strings like The Smashing Pumpkins finest moments*.
Maybe there's some sick hipster contratianism leading me astray, leading me to praise the un-over-praised, but I like this one. In fact, its funny I should mention The Smashing Pumpkins (a band the Stones generally sound nothing like), I think there's some of that wild eclecticism of Mellon Collie on display here. That playfulness, that flailing at ideas and resistance to downpinning, that cascading from theme to theme, sound to sound, one perfect moment leading into another completely unlike it a song and a half later. I've got a soft sport for that kind of thing. I suspect strongly that I'm overrating this, and I'm pretty sure I rated much better regarded albums much lower earlier in this project, but at the moment I heard it I downright liked this one here. Maybe I'm just benefitting from not having burned out with a new great Rolling Stones album a year for 5 years straight and can take it at its merits, as a perfectly good album 4.5/5
You might like this if: You like good'ole rock and roll, with a desperate, imaginative slash through it.
* Actually, most specifically The Last Song, which featured a similarly gorgeous solo played, not by Billy Corgan, but by William Corgan Senior. Important facts!
#500 Budgie - Never Turn Your Back on a Friend
1973'd!
I'm no aficionado, but there seems to be two basic strains of metal: the kind that trucks in pure, blunt force thunder and the kind that trucks in clean, clear guitar lines. Call it Mace Metal vs Sword Metal, adumbrating a scale from Electric Wizard (or maybe Sunn O)))) to Def Leopard.
This album, more so than most of the heavier metal of the age, embraces that later edge, full of super clean riffs with swung with fuzz trailing off the back, and some crisp, popping bass lines. Oh, those bass lines, mixed so high and so clean that they define the album; its an approach I've never heard anything quite like, leading to a Minutemen-level democracy among the instruments. The clear highlight is Breadfan, returning again and again to a perfect buzzsaw riff*, blowing past any objection I might otherwise have to the donetodeath 1973 vocal approach, but In the Grip of a Tyrefitter's Hand is also a big, burly stormer.
--
I'd never heard of Budgie, a Welsh band about 10% as famous as the fairly-obscure-in-their-own-right Super Furry Animals. Their biggest claim to fame seems to be the aforementioned Breadfan, which seems in turn to mostly be famous because Metallica covered it. But the album is downright solid, combining heavy metal slashes with an overblown, slightly sloppy garagey charm. Heck these guys put out a 10 albums during an eleven year span from '71 to '82, I'm a bit curious what else the put together.
That said, that big fat popping bass sound started grinding after a while, infringing on some of Parents's finest final moments and downright dominating You're the Biggest Thing I Ever Saw. And there's nothing wholly original here - they're a clearly a band weaned on American rock and roll's heavy hitters, but it's a quietly charming album full of big loud rock and roll moments 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like 70's hard rock and metal, anywhere between Sabbath and Zeppelin, and want to hear the same basic sounds with a few twists. And big, weird, popping bass.
* one that, as far as I can tell, Boris ripped off wholesale on Electric
I'm no aficionado, but there seems to be two basic strains of metal: the kind that trucks in pure, blunt force thunder and the kind that trucks in clean, clear guitar lines. Call it Mace Metal vs Sword Metal, adumbrating a scale from Electric Wizard (or maybe Sunn O)))) to Def Leopard.
This album, more so than most of the heavier metal of the age, embraces that later edge, full of super clean riffs with swung with fuzz trailing off the back, and some crisp, popping bass lines. Oh, those bass lines, mixed so high and so clean that they define the album; its an approach I've never heard anything quite like, leading to a Minutemen-level democracy among the instruments. The clear highlight is Breadfan, returning again and again to a perfect buzzsaw riff*, blowing past any objection I might otherwise have to the donetodeath 1973 vocal approach, but In the Grip of a Tyrefitter's Hand is also a big, burly stormer.
--
I'd never heard of Budgie, a Welsh band about 10% as famous as the fairly-obscure-in-their-own-right Super Furry Animals. Their biggest claim to fame seems to be the aforementioned Breadfan, which seems in turn to mostly be famous because Metallica covered it. But the album is downright solid, combining heavy metal slashes with an overblown, slightly sloppy garagey charm. Heck these guys put out a 10 albums during an eleven year span from '71 to '82, I'm a bit curious what else the put together.
That said, that big fat popping bass sound started grinding after a while, infringing on some of Parents's finest final moments and downright dominating You're the Biggest Thing I Ever Saw. And there's nothing wholly original here - they're a clearly a band weaned on American rock and roll's heavy hitters, but it's a quietly charming album full of big loud rock and roll moments 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like 70's hard rock and metal, anywhere between Sabbath and Zeppelin, and want to hear the same basic sounds with a few twists. And big, weird, popping bass.
* one that, as far as I can tell, Boris ripped off wholesale on Electric
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
#499 The Shins - The Port of Morrow
New Shins! I wasn't so into Wincing the Night away, but they still seem like a band worth keeping an eye on forever based on Oh Inverted World alone.
The basic Shins formula remains largely unchanged. James Mercer's voice soars above everything, while the music churns in wait of well-timed burstings-open, while disciplined dollops of fuzzy wash and pretty seams wind around the chords.
Is there anything new here? Sure, as plenty of early press has pointed out, Mercer obviously learned a thing or two from his Danger Mouse collaborations on Broken Bells; similar sharp beats, electronic flourishes, and atmospheric gestures abound. The sentiment's also grown deeper and darker and more heartfelt: the album feels more cohesive than any since the band's debut.
Despite some sprightly moments, its an album united by a certain resignation. Frustrations and railings against social systems are brought to bear on songs like Bait and Switch and the uncharacteristically-overtly-political No Way Down, a standout track that coruscates with starfall arpeggios. It reeks a bit of reach for acceptance, of careful construction and engineering, but hey that's kind of the stock in trade of party line indie rock. Like most of the songs on here, interesting details lurk in the crannies, rewarding close listening, and in an age of excess, I appreciate the tight running time*.
Despite the evolutions, nothing here rings really new (except for the wonderfully steely Dan Fall of '82 and the exploding balladrey of 40 Mark Strasse). Worse some of the best moments are weighed down by a blatant summoning the band's earlier hooks: Simple Song cops half of Gone For Good's moves, For a Fool tips its high mightily to New Slang's finest turns, and the overall feel is of a retread.
It's an eternal dilemma. How do you judge an album that would be a brilliant debut, but that inches only incrementally past the paths the band's previous releases beat? I enjoyed listening to this, sure, I've found no need to put it on for repeated listens. These songs, or ones not unlike them, are already scratched into my soul, so what do I need the album for? For those less thoroughly raised on Oh Inverted World, you'll find plenty to enjoy here as an expanding of your Shins appreciation, but I think I was at capacity two albums ago 3/5
You might like this if: you like catchy, beautiful indie rock, even if it doesn't take any big chances
* that sounds backhanded, but I really do appreciate this. As someone who listens to albums straight through almost exclusively, more songs aren't always a good thing if they screw up the pacing of the overall listen
The basic Shins formula remains largely unchanged. James Mercer's voice soars above everything, while the music churns in wait of well-timed burstings-open, while disciplined dollops of fuzzy wash and pretty seams wind around the chords.
Is there anything new here? Sure, as plenty of early press has pointed out, Mercer obviously learned a thing or two from his Danger Mouse collaborations on Broken Bells; similar sharp beats, electronic flourishes, and atmospheric gestures abound. The sentiment's also grown deeper and darker and more heartfelt: the album feels more cohesive than any since the band's debut.
Despite some sprightly moments, its an album united by a certain resignation. Frustrations and railings against social systems are brought to bear on songs like Bait and Switch and the uncharacteristically-overtly-political No Way Down, a standout track that coruscates with starfall arpeggios. It reeks a bit of reach for acceptance, of careful construction and engineering, but hey that's kind of the stock in trade of party line indie rock. Like most of the songs on here, interesting details lurk in the crannies, rewarding close listening, and in an age of excess, I appreciate the tight running time*.
Despite the evolutions, nothing here rings really new (except for the wonderfully steely Dan Fall of '82 and the exploding balladrey of 40 Mark Strasse). Worse some of the best moments are weighed down by a blatant summoning the band's earlier hooks: Simple Song cops half of Gone For Good's moves, For a Fool tips its high mightily to New Slang's finest turns, and the overall feel is of a retread.
It's an eternal dilemma. How do you judge an album that would be a brilliant debut, but that inches only incrementally past the paths the band's previous releases beat? I enjoyed listening to this, sure, I've found no need to put it on for repeated listens. These songs, or ones not unlike them, are already scratched into my soul, so what do I need the album for? For those less thoroughly raised on Oh Inverted World, you'll find plenty to enjoy here as an expanding of your Shins appreciation, but I think I was at capacity two albums ago 3/5
You might like this if: you like catchy, beautiful indie rock, even if it doesn't take any big chances
* that sounds backhanded, but I really do appreciate this. As someone who listens to albums straight through almost exclusively, more songs aren't always a good thing if they screw up the pacing of the overall listen
#498 Guru Guru - Guru Guru
1973'd!
Just when I thought I'd heard all the Krautrock* heavy hitters out there I find another one. This actually has a whole lot less in common with mainstays like Neu, Can and Kraftwerk than they have with eachother, steeped much more deeply in good old rock and roll heat than in minimalistic iciness. Heck, there's nary a real motorik* to be found. Plus, everything here is English and wonderfully weird. Makes me wonder what all those Hütters and Suzukis have been saying all these years.
This is a profoundly difficult album to summarize: it's all over the map, and recklessly adventurous, but in ways that aren't immediately obvious. On the surface, these are a bunch of pretty rollicking, complex jams with clean, assertive melodic lines running through them, with veins of surf, doo wop, and blues, but the songs never settle, using these jumping off points as portals to places wholly strange.
Take Medley, A, B, C, D, which is all but a trip through all of rock and roll, starting off with a White Stripes-worthy riff, trundling into a well-worn shuffly chord progression, progressing into Grateful pluckerey, and then mutating into honest to god doo wop, with actual hand claps, and onward and onward, all the while being too weird, too bent, to fuzzy, to knowing to quite settle into anything you can get your head around.
Across the album there are offkilter rhythms, loping bass, jagged pre-post-punk guitars, and uncanny production, all jammed into strange structures bent out of shape by Guru Guru's will. Der Elektrolurch is the highlight, combining arty and catchy in ways that feel profoundly ahead of 1973 as a time. 12 minute closer The Story of Life is similarly amazing, evoking the artiest moments of bands like Radiohead, Talk Talk, and The Smashing Pumpkins (Window Payne), to say nothing of countless post-rock bands.
The reference-points that I so blindly praised, do, at times, I'll confess, wear a bit thin, but it is clearly an album made by some really goddamn smart, talented musicians, at least as interested in entertaining you as showing off, and that goes at least as far as the low end of 4.5/5
You might like this if: you have a little patience for some droney, experimental guitar music, but don't want something that is completely unlistenable in the name of artiness. This has hooks and interest to spare, and will take good care of you for its 42 minutes.
* do a shot
Just when I thought I'd heard all the Krautrock* heavy hitters out there I find another one. This actually has a whole lot less in common with mainstays like Neu, Can and Kraftwerk than they have with eachother, steeped much more deeply in good old rock and roll heat than in minimalistic iciness. Heck, there's nary a real motorik* to be found. Plus, everything here is English and wonderfully weird. Makes me wonder what all those Hütters and Suzukis have been saying all these years.
This is a profoundly difficult album to summarize: it's all over the map, and recklessly adventurous, but in ways that aren't immediately obvious. On the surface, these are a bunch of pretty rollicking, complex jams with clean, assertive melodic lines running through them, with veins of surf, doo wop, and blues, but the songs never settle, using these jumping off points as portals to places wholly strange.
Take Medley, A, B, C, D, which is all but a trip through all of rock and roll, starting off with a White Stripes-worthy riff, trundling into a well-worn shuffly chord progression, progressing into Grateful pluckerey, and then mutating into honest to god doo wop, with actual hand claps, and onward and onward, all the while being too weird, too bent, to fuzzy, to knowing to quite settle into anything you can get your head around.
Across the album there are offkilter rhythms, loping bass, jagged pre-post-punk guitars, and uncanny production, all jammed into strange structures bent out of shape by Guru Guru's will. Der Elektrolurch is the highlight, combining arty and catchy in ways that feel profoundly ahead of 1973 as a time. 12 minute closer The Story of Life is similarly amazing, evoking the artiest moments of bands like Radiohead, Talk Talk, and The Smashing Pumpkins (Window Payne), to say nothing of countless post-rock bands.
The reference-points that I so blindly praised, do, at times, I'll confess, wear a bit thin, but it is clearly an album made by some really goddamn smart, talented musicians, at least as interested in entertaining you as showing off, and that goes at least as far as the low end of 4.5/5
You might like this if: you have a little patience for some droney, experimental guitar music, but don't want something that is completely unlistenable in the name of artiness. This has hooks and interest to spare, and will take good care of you for its 42 minutes.
* do a shot
#497 Todd Rundgren - A Wizard, A True Star
See, usually my "I found this via" entry is either "some list", "some person", "some website". This time though! Well, it was AllMusic's tribute to 1973, from which a few of these albums came. But I wouldn't have ever bothered if not for 30 Rock, who used the name of a Todd Rungdren album to make a 2%'er roundabout C-word joke. And hey, any artist that 30 Rock bothers to make a joke around must be worth something, right? I didn't much like what I heard, his output seemingly consisting mostly of soppy ballads, but this album showed up on several AllMusic editors' lists...
Goddamn right. There are overslow moments, especially on the back side, but there are also profoundly inventive moments, sounding honest to god like nothing else. Soaring harmonies, crushing guitars from nowhere, beastial beats, crystaline textures, and some of the strangest hooks you'll hear that manage to stay this side of catchy.
I'm always a sucker for lots of short songs, being a marker for the kind of batshit, stream of ideas, torrent of hooks rock that you get from the likes of Guided By Voices and The Unicorns. That holds up here: the original salvo of 8 songs totaling 12 minutes are exhilarating, evoking the incomprable Abbey Road medley in their MIRV'd deployment.
The obvious point of reference here is Zappa, with a similar plumbing of rock history, absurd imagery, and surplus of noise and energy, but I actually find this album more consistently surprising and enjoyable than any of Zappa's bent pop albums. There are shades of ELO, Eno, Lamb-era Genesis, Bryan Scary and Olivia Tremor control here, but this precedes all of those artists' most prominent work and outdoes them at some of their greatest strengths. I would be shocked if this album didn't influence most of those folks, and yet it is largely unknown in any music circles I know of.
There are lows, especially the plodding Michael McDonaldism of I Just Don't Know How to Feel and the opening (non-cool-jerk) parts of the soul medley, but the highs outweigh them: the shredding You Need Your Head, the singularly beautiful and propulsive When the Shit Hits the Fan, and whatever Flamingo is.
This is surprisingly close, but I can't quite drop the 5 bomb on something that has as many must-skip tracks on it. But the highs are as high as any album I've heard in a long time, a great hidden gem 4.5/5
You might like this if: you like adventurous, pretty, strange music that will keep you on your toes and demand repeated listens. At very least most music fans would be well served by spending 12 minutes listening to those first 8 tracks, which are pretty incredible*, especially since they predate everything they sound like
* minus Never Never Land, which serves mostly to set up the Tic Tic / You Need Your Head hammer drop
Goddamn right. There are overslow moments, especially on the back side, but there are also profoundly inventive moments, sounding honest to god like nothing else. Soaring harmonies, crushing guitars from nowhere, beastial beats, crystaline textures, and some of the strangest hooks you'll hear that manage to stay this side of catchy.
I'm always a sucker for lots of short songs, being a marker for the kind of batshit, stream of ideas, torrent of hooks rock that you get from the likes of Guided By Voices and The Unicorns. That holds up here: the original salvo of 8 songs totaling 12 minutes are exhilarating, evoking the incomprable Abbey Road medley in their MIRV'd deployment.
The obvious point of reference here is Zappa, with a similar plumbing of rock history, absurd imagery, and surplus of noise and energy, but I actually find this album more consistently surprising and enjoyable than any of Zappa's bent pop albums. There are shades of ELO, Eno, Lamb-era Genesis, Bryan Scary and Olivia Tremor control here, but this precedes all of those artists' most prominent work and outdoes them at some of their greatest strengths. I would be shocked if this album didn't influence most of those folks, and yet it is largely unknown in any music circles I know of.
There are lows, especially the plodding Michael McDonaldism of I Just Don't Know How to Feel and the opening (non-cool-jerk) parts of the soul medley, but the highs outweigh them: the shredding You Need Your Head, the singularly beautiful and propulsive When the Shit Hits the Fan, and whatever Flamingo is.
This is surprisingly close, but I can't quite drop the 5 bomb on something that has as many must-skip tracks on it. But the highs are as high as any album I've heard in a long time, a great hidden gem 4.5/5
You might like this if: you like adventurous, pretty, strange music that will keep you on your toes and demand repeated listens. At very least most music fans would be well served by spending 12 minutes listening to those first 8 tracks, which are pretty incredible*, especially since they predate everything they sound like
* minus Never Never Land, which serves mostly to set up the Tic Tic / You Need Your Head hammer drop
Thursday, March 15, 2012
#496 Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring for my Halo
2011’d!
Kurt Vile sings like he just woke up, like he’s just falling asleep, like he’s slipping through time and doesn’t much mind. The song’s seem to fall out of him, unpropelled by any particular force. He never really seems to rile himself up, muttering and moaning, awash in carefully inflected fuzzy spaces, stopping just short of the blanketey deeps of 2010’s reverbcore, landing just past The National and late Magnetic Fields. In fact, The Fields’ Merritt is a good point of reference, as Vile shares much of his bassey warmth and effortless touch with hooks.
As with the best hip hop though, meticulous thought and craftsmanship certainly underlie the effortless veneer. Vile has a way with a chord, with a shimmering detail, with a nuanced acoustic trickle in the backdrop, and while I seldom mention lyrics, his carry hidden heft. Not my cup of tea, a bit too sedated and muffled, but worth respect, and worth a listen if you’re into that kind of thing 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like singer-songerwritterey crooning, full of depth and meaning and detail, but resting deeply, with the meaning and the detail buried.
Kurt Vile sings like he just woke up, like he’s just falling asleep, like he’s slipping through time and doesn’t much mind. The song’s seem to fall out of him, unpropelled by any particular force. He never really seems to rile himself up, muttering and moaning, awash in carefully inflected fuzzy spaces, stopping just short of the blanketey deeps of 2010’s reverbcore, landing just past The National and late Magnetic Fields. In fact, The Fields’ Merritt is a good point of reference, as Vile shares much of his bassey warmth and effortless touch with hooks.
As with the best hip hop though, meticulous thought and craftsmanship certainly underlie the effortless veneer. Vile has a way with a chord, with a shimmering detail, with a nuanced acoustic trickle in the backdrop, and while I seldom mention lyrics, his carry hidden heft. Not my cup of tea, a bit too sedated and muffled, but worth respect, and worth a listen if you’re into that kind of thing 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like singer-songerwritterey crooning, full of depth and meaning and detail, but resting deeply, with the meaning and the detail buried.
#495 Gauntlet Hair - Gauntlet Hair
Cleaning up the last of the 2011 lists' dregs. Someday I'll actually get my own list together.
I have a hangup with bands that sound like other bands. If I’m not even that hot on the band being copped in the first place my tolerance level is pretty low, even if what you’re doing is perfectly good, I can’t shake the association.
In this case, Gauntlet Hair = Animal Collective. I’m half tempted to smartassedly leave it at that. But it’s like someone went down the list. Tons of reverb, huge overblown drums, vocals that echo to forever, more reverb, repetitive structures, swirling swirling overblown reverb. Ok, ok, ok. God dammit, at some point just make a song that fills the space instead of making a tiny song and inflating every note to enormous proportions. The result is bloated and fuzzy and vague.
Maybe this is fun to have echo around you while you’re stoned out of your mind. And if this had come out in 1997 it would be a revelation. But no points for listenability, no points for originality, and a penalty for the fact that I, unlike most of the indie world, is right burned out on the Animal Collective scene.
All this glossing over the actual merits, the other touchstones (The Shins, Swervedriver, each at their reverbiest), the comparative crispness of Lights Out, but that’s what you get. First impression mini-reviews of derivative albums shouldn’t even run this long 2/5
You might like this if: I don’t know why I ever really started this little subsection. Its often hard not to be a wiseass about it. If you like Animal Collective.
I have a hangup with bands that sound like other bands. If I’m not even that hot on the band being copped in the first place my tolerance level is pretty low, even if what you’re doing is perfectly good, I can’t shake the association.
In this case, Gauntlet Hair = Animal Collective. I’m half tempted to smartassedly leave it at that. But it’s like someone went down the list. Tons of reverb, huge overblown drums, vocals that echo to forever, more reverb, repetitive structures, swirling swirling overblown reverb. Ok, ok, ok. God dammit, at some point just make a song that fills the space instead of making a tiny song and inflating every note to enormous proportions. The result is bloated and fuzzy and vague.
Maybe this is fun to have echo around you while you’re stoned out of your mind. And if this had come out in 1997 it would be a revelation. But no points for listenability, no points for originality, and a penalty for the fact that I, unlike most of the indie world, is right burned out on the Animal Collective scene.
All this glossing over the actual merits, the other touchstones (The Shins, Swervedriver, each at their reverbiest), the comparative crispness of Lights Out, but that’s what you get. First impression mini-reviews of derivative albums shouldn’t even run this long 2/5
You might like this if: I don’t know why I ever really started this little subsection. Its often hard not to be a wiseass about it. If you like Animal Collective.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
#494 The Cynics - Sixteen Flights Up
List?
Context context. Some time when you have a free weekend go out, record an album, grab a time machine, bundle up some industry clout, and put the same record out in a couple of spots. In 1962 it’s on the forefront, in 1973 it’s the next evolution, in 1994 is part of the revival (stale by 1997) in 2012 it’s part of the re-revival (stale by late 2012).
Here we have a 2000 reissue of a 1988 album (Twelve Flights up, plus 4) that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the thick of the 60’s garage scene, a heaping helping of shouty, organ-drenched Nuggets. Everything is insistent and relentless, lightly nasty, with that organ soaring over top, sounding a bit like a toned-down Exploding Hearts. Erica is a lumbering highlight.
And in this case, I don’t know how to navigate the context. Why were these guys putting this out in 1988? Was that a thing that was going on? I guess I’ll have to take it for what it is, sloppy, fun, mildly original pre-punk in a post punk world 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like nasty rock and roll from the 60’s. This adds a dash of modern production tricks and a dallop of fun, but otherwise plays it pretty damn straight.
Context context. Some time when you have a free weekend go out, record an album, grab a time machine, bundle up some industry clout, and put the same record out in a couple of spots. In 1962 it’s on the forefront, in 1973 it’s the next evolution, in 1994 is part of the revival (stale by 1997) in 2012 it’s part of the re-revival (stale by late 2012).
Here we have a 2000 reissue of a 1988 album (Twelve Flights up, plus 4) that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the thick of the 60’s garage scene, a heaping helping of shouty, organ-drenched Nuggets. Everything is insistent and relentless, lightly nasty, with that organ soaring over top, sounding a bit like a toned-down Exploding Hearts. Erica is a lumbering highlight.
And in this case, I don’t know how to navigate the context. Why were these guys putting this out in 1988? Was that a thing that was going on? I guess I’ll have to take it for what it is, sloppy, fun, mildly original pre-punk in a post punk world 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like nasty rock and roll from the 60’s. This adds a dash of modern production tricks and a dallop of fun, but otherwise plays it pretty damn straight.
#493 Public Image Ltd. - Metal Box (Second Edition)
Some list of 80's albums. These days I'm just looking for anything getting any acclaim at all that I haven't heard before.
If punk was angry, and hardcore punk was very angry, and post-punk was icily confrontational, this is hardcore post punk. Public Image Limited does not give a shit about you or your listening experience, the songs exist as lumbering, tumbling beasts that chew innocents between the gears with nary a chip in a tooth. Where Gang of Four had sheetmetal guitars, here the chords are jagged tin thin, killing by a thousand clean cuts, while the bass lumbers relentless, John Lydon sounding like he's being beaten and insinuating a beating in equal measure. It's the dark alley where no one mugs you, but the alley never ends and the threat of mugging is ever-present.
The songs go on and on, with a shift here, a gear change there, but the tempo is relentless and inexorable, the groove indominable, defying any desire you have for release or reprieve. At times it rocks. But for the most part is steadfastly refuses to do so, and while that restraint is admirable, its better for admiring than listening to.
This was also an obvious inspiration for dancepunk to come generations later (especially Liars, but especially The Rapture circa Echoes) and while this is far more groundbreaking and more pure, Liars in particular improved on the formula by alternating deep alienation and the occiasional thrown bone. This album's a beast of impressive engineering, but it isn't any damn fun to listen to, so I'll cut it off with a hedgey 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like relentless, unflinchingly icy grooves, droning and wailing into the night
If punk was angry, and hardcore punk was very angry, and post-punk was icily confrontational, this is hardcore post punk. Public Image Limited does not give a shit about you or your listening experience, the songs exist as lumbering, tumbling beasts that chew innocents between the gears with nary a chip in a tooth. Where Gang of Four had sheetmetal guitars, here the chords are jagged tin thin, killing by a thousand clean cuts, while the bass lumbers relentless, John Lydon sounding like he's being beaten and insinuating a beating in equal measure. It's the dark alley where no one mugs you, but the alley never ends and the threat of mugging is ever-present.
The songs go on and on, with a shift here, a gear change there, but the tempo is relentless and inexorable, the groove indominable, defying any desire you have for release or reprieve. At times it rocks. But for the most part is steadfastly refuses to do so, and while that restraint is admirable, its better for admiring than listening to.
This was also an obvious inspiration for dancepunk to come generations later (especially Liars, but especially The Rapture circa Echoes) and while this is far more groundbreaking and more pure, Liars in particular improved on the formula by alternating deep alienation and the occiasional thrown bone. This album's a beast of impressive engineering, but it isn't any damn fun to listen to, so I'll cut it off with a hedgey 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like relentless, unflinchingly icy grooves, droning and wailing into the night
#492 Brian Eno and John Cale - Wrong Way Up
I’ve been sitting on this for a while now; I think some Eno-ey detail inspired me to hear more of his stuff.
I really want to like Brian Eno. At his best, he has an uncanny touch for detail and texture: Here Come the Warm Jets' title track is a masterpiece of fuzz and buzz and Music For Airports 1.1 is one of the greatest ambient tracks of all time. But I can’t say that I generally actually like his stuff as much as I feel like I want to: there’s something soulless about his pop and instrumental tracks, both.
I’m reminded of the immortal Adventure Time episode What Was Missing, when Princess Bubblegum instructs Finn, Marceline and Jake to play according to an esoteric series of rules in hopes of creating the song that will open the door lord’s gateway. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t work.
I'm sure you know the one.
This album is generally more on the pop side of the Eno spectrum, full of beats both world musical and Casiotoned, full of synthy bendiness, full of little swingy pieces of flair. It all feels like striking out against convention, as doing something new to something that didn’t need the newness, like Peter Gabriel’s later solo stuff, which was similarly world-influenced and left me similarly cold.
Maybe I forget how shitty pop music was back then, and therefore fail to realize how much better this is, but there’s just no resonance here. It doesn’t feel like music made with heart, but cobbled together as an experiment in good song making. There’s some subtle moments of good, full production (the bass on Empty Frame), and Cordoba is haunting and mysterious, and The River reminds me favorably of U2’s lost masterpiece The Wanderer, but across the board, it's all quavers and quixillidian modes and all for what. The proof of the music is in the listening, and there’s not much here to actually hear 2.5/5
You might like this if: you like mildly experimental pop music that at once takes chances and plays it deadly safe
I really want to like Brian Eno. At his best, he has an uncanny touch for detail and texture: Here Come the Warm Jets' title track is a masterpiece of fuzz and buzz and Music For Airports 1.1 is one of the greatest ambient tracks of all time. But I can’t say that I generally actually like his stuff as much as I feel like I want to: there’s something soulless about his pop and instrumental tracks, both.
I’m reminded of the immortal Adventure Time episode What Was Missing, when Princess Bubblegum instructs Finn, Marceline and Jake to play according to an esoteric series of rules in hopes of creating the song that will open the door lord’s gateway. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t work.
I'm sure you know the one.
This album is generally more on the pop side of the Eno spectrum, full of beats both world musical and Casiotoned, full of synthy bendiness, full of little swingy pieces of flair. It all feels like striking out against convention, as doing something new to something that didn’t need the newness, like Peter Gabriel’s later solo stuff, which was similarly world-influenced and left me similarly cold.
Maybe I forget how shitty pop music was back then, and therefore fail to realize how much better this is, but there’s just no resonance here. It doesn’t feel like music made with heart, but cobbled together as an experiment in good song making. There’s some subtle moments of good, full production (the bass on Empty Frame), and Cordoba is haunting and mysterious, and The River reminds me favorably of U2’s lost masterpiece The Wanderer, but across the board, it's all quavers and quixillidian modes and all for what. The proof of the music is in the listening, and there’s not much here to actually hear 2.5/5
You might like this if: you like mildly experimental pop music that at once takes chances and plays it deadly safe
#491 Blu and Exile - Below the Heavens
Another one off the "best underground hip hop albums" lists. I'm just about out of these pretty soon here.
I've tried a lot of styles and genres and subgenres during this project, and I often resort to lists on websites and message boards for recommendations. Nothing has as consistently borne fruit as the underground hip hop scene, where I've loved a bunch of albums that were recommended (Binary Star, Organized Konfusion, and Canibal Ox to name a few). This is another winner, hitting that sweet spot between hard and melodic, between aggressive and thoughtful, that I could never find on the polarized gansta-postive mainstream endpoints.
Blu loves hip hop. He raps honestly, confidently, without overemoting, without bragging beyond his means. It comes to light most poignantly on roundabout seduction track First Things Firsts, where every sentiment is paired with a but- counterpoint, revealing the complexity and thoughtfulness of a rapper who still spits with authority, who balanced complexity with landing squarely on the ends of lines.
The production is Steely Dan smooth, with loping bass, funky, full of deep grooves, but without getting heavy. A nice piece of balance, with few truly standout moments, but with plenty of character and nary a line out of place. The high end of 4/5
You might like this if: you're looking for some hip hop that bobs heads on the surface, with rewarding details underneath, and like having a winning personality at the helm
I've tried a lot of styles and genres and subgenres during this project, and I often resort to lists on websites and message boards for recommendations. Nothing has as consistently borne fruit as the underground hip hop scene, where I've loved a bunch of albums that were recommended (Binary Star, Organized Konfusion, and Canibal Ox to name a few). This is another winner, hitting that sweet spot between hard and melodic, between aggressive and thoughtful, that I could never find on the polarized gansta-postive mainstream endpoints.
Blu loves hip hop. He raps honestly, confidently, without overemoting, without bragging beyond his means. It comes to light most poignantly on roundabout seduction track First Things Firsts, where every sentiment is paired with a but- counterpoint, revealing the complexity and thoughtfulness of a rapper who still spits with authority, who balanced complexity with landing squarely on the ends of lines.
The production is Steely Dan smooth, with loping bass, funky, full of deep grooves, but without getting heavy. A nice piece of balance, with few truly standout moments, but with plenty of character and nary a line out of place. The high end of 4/5
You might like this if: you're looking for some hip hop that bobs heads on the surface, with rewarding details underneath, and like having a winning personality at the helm
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
#490 Gal Costa - Gal
More Tropicalia (nearly) self-titled albums from 1969! What a goddamn year.
If you have any interest in adventurous, weird music, you need to hear this. It was way, way ahead of its time. Tropicalia runs a spectrum roughly from crooning to batshit freakinout, and this blows right off the latter side. Gilberto Gil was Zappa kooky, this is actual crazy, downright unhinged, evoking This Heat, Can and Boredoms in their anarchistic deconstructionism.
How punk rock is Com Medo, Com Pedro? Gal flips the fuck out, beating Deerhoof/Yeah Yeah Yeahs/Bjork to the punch by a handful of decades as a mewling, screeching avatar of energy, while thundering bass, funk guitars and fragmented drums massacre defiantly peaceful pockets of strings and serenity.
Some of it is fairly typical Tropicalia: big buzzy bass, skittery beats, distorted guitars wailing, plenty of experimental flourishes, with curiously pretty touches occasionally swooping in to blanket everything in a delicate, fleeting veneer of serenity. Then there’s something like The Empty Boat, which is Boredoms-tastic, full of tuneless, desperate wailing, scattered drums, and wailing distortion.
Tropicalia took some cues from American psychedelic music, it can’t be denied. But it took it and turned it inside out and made Rube Goldberg machines from its bones. The more I hear, the more impressed I am, throttling past prog on my list of underappreciated genres, leaving it in the motherfuckin dust 4.5/5
You might like this if: you want to hear something noisy, frantic, and messy, but genuinely ahead of its time, full of maniacal energy and bursting at the seams.
If you have any interest in adventurous, weird music, you need to hear this. It was way, way ahead of its time. Tropicalia runs a spectrum roughly from crooning to batshit freakinout, and this blows right off the latter side. Gilberto Gil was Zappa kooky, this is actual crazy, downright unhinged, evoking This Heat, Can and Boredoms in their anarchistic deconstructionism.
How punk rock is Com Medo, Com Pedro? Gal flips the fuck out, beating Deerhoof/Yeah Yeah Yeahs/Bjork to the punch by a handful of decades as a mewling, screeching avatar of energy, while thundering bass, funk guitars and fragmented drums massacre defiantly peaceful pockets of strings and serenity.
Some of it is fairly typical Tropicalia: big buzzy bass, skittery beats, distorted guitars wailing, plenty of experimental flourishes, with curiously pretty touches occasionally swooping in to blanket everything in a delicate, fleeting veneer of serenity. Then there’s something like The Empty Boat, which is Boredoms-tastic, full of tuneless, desperate wailing, scattered drums, and wailing distortion.
Tropicalia took some cues from American psychedelic music, it can’t be denied. But it took it and turned it inside out and made Rube Goldberg machines from its bones. The more I hear, the more impressed I am, throttling past prog on my list of underappreciated genres, leaving it in the motherfuckin dust 4.5/5
You might like this if: you want to hear something noisy, frantic, and messy, but genuinely ahead of its time, full of maniacal energy and bursting at the seams.
#489 Fleetwood Mac - Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac
Yeeeesss. This is why I do this project. Not to say that this album really rocked me all that hard, but I love these little revelations, these little missing links and pieces of history and filled-in missing piece in my general knowledge of rock.
Did you have any idea that Fleetwood Mac put out 10 records over the course of 9 years before they ever put out Rumours? Before Stevie Nicks ever got involved? Did you know that they were a straight up blues band? Did you know that they were the ones who originally did Black Magic Woman? I knew none of this, had no idea. How, this deep into my making-up-for-lost-time journey back into the 50's, 60's and 70's, am I still finding stuff like this out for the first time?
Seriously, I thought I had put the wrong album on when I first listened to it – this is up there with Genesis in terms of bands who changed their sound on their way to wild popularity, leaving a little-known trail back to their origins.
Again, this didn’t rock me that hard, the bluesy rock sound isn’t really in my wheelhouse, but for what it is, it’s pretty solid. The guitar sound is White Stripes righteous at times, and The World Keeps on Turning has veritable melodies of betwixt-note rattle and twang, up there with the best of them. You feel like you’re sitting, shrunk miniscule, right there in the body of the guitar, right there in the thick of it.
As this kind of thing goes, its straightforward, rock solid, well-executed, and only slightly overproduced in places. Not quite for me, but it might well be for you, don’t miss a chance to find out 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like bluesy, stompy rock. And seriously, if you’re any kind of student of rock and have never heard any early Fleetwood Mac, you ought to check this out, even if I’ve somewhat spoiled the surprise.
Did you have any idea that Fleetwood Mac put out 10 records over the course of 9 years before they ever put out Rumours? Before Stevie Nicks ever got involved? Did you know that they were a straight up blues band? Did you know that they were the ones who originally did Black Magic Woman? I knew none of this, had no idea. How, this deep into my making-up-for-lost-time journey back into the 50's, 60's and 70's, am I still finding stuff like this out for the first time?
Seriously, I thought I had put the wrong album on when I first listened to it – this is up there with Genesis in terms of bands who changed their sound on their way to wild popularity, leaving a little-known trail back to their origins.
Again, this didn’t rock me that hard, the bluesy rock sound isn’t really in my wheelhouse, but for what it is, it’s pretty solid. The guitar sound is White Stripes righteous at times, and The World Keeps on Turning has veritable melodies of betwixt-note rattle and twang, up there with the best of them. You feel like you’re sitting, shrunk miniscule, right there in the body of the guitar, right there in the thick of it.
As this kind of thing goes, its straightforward, rock solid, well-executed, and only slightly overproduced in places. Not quite for me, but it might well be for you, don’t miss a chance to find out 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like bluesy, stompy rock. And seriously, if you’re any kind of student of rock and have never heard any early Fleetwood Mac, you ought to check this out, even if I’ve somewhat spoiled the surprise.
#488 Said the Whale - Little Mountain
Recommended via some random, short, unfollowedupupon conversation on okcupid. Welcome to the future of cultural participation!
Can we call this the first 00’s indie rock revival album of all time? Can you have a revival just two years hence?
This is a band well primed to catch on: neck deep in catchy, and evoking a half dozen bands that I love, and that are well-loved in indie circles, putting their own touches on well-worn tropes, owning them and expanding them, even if stopping just short of exploding them. That is to say, Little Mountain is a good title for an album that's adventurous, if not daring, keeping home over the nearest hills in its forays into lands wondrous. That’s good enough for me, especially when home is a nexus of greatness.
The vocals have an endearing reediness that evokes The Shins (We are 1980, 2010), The Decemberists (Big Sky, MT) and They Might be Giants (The Reason) in turn, with the occasional New Pornagraphers boy/girl interplays. Musicals inspire similar namedrops, wielding Tokyo Police Club’s bounce and twang, The Long Winters’ desperate majesty, Los Campesinos joyous jumpalong energy, and even Amnesicac-era Radiohead’s breeble and quaver terror buzz, in turn. Most importantly, though, they don’t settle into one of these styles. If there’s anyone they truly evoke on an album level it’s a band like Wolf Parade, not for any one sound, but for the wild, flailing variety that they lash out with.
Separately, Lucky deserves specific mention as a joyous burster, as do the beat breakdown in We Are 1980, the dropout at 1:20 in Jesse, AR, and Big Wave Goodbye’s New Orleans Neutral Milk Hotel raveup outro. This album makes me fucking grin like music hasn’t made me grin since Sticking Fingers into Sockets.
This is indie rock like they don’t make any more, bursting with ideas and angles, refusing to lean on any one particular stylistic crutch. So much of what’s gotten popular over the last two years has a pidgeonholable style, perched squarely on some combination of dancability, reverb, and nostalgia, huddling around a signature sound. Someone was telling me that all of the songs on the Drums album are in the same key; I can’t verify that, but symbolically, that makes my point.
This reminds me of how I felt in 2002. In 2003 The Shins, The Decemberists, The Strokes, The New Pornographers all put out second albums and all of them were disappointing retreads. But in that space between those bands’ first and second albums, all seemed possible. Indie was breaking open into new pop directions. This album would have fit right in, and it represents just about the fastest retro turnaround possible. Enjoy it! 5/5
You might like this if: If you understood half the namedrops I made in this review. If you loved indie rock in 2002 and want to hear one of the best albums that era never saw.
Can we call this the first 00’s indie rock revival album of all time? Can you have a revival just two years hence?
This is a band well primed to catch on: neck deep in catchy, and evoking a half dozen bands that I love, and that are well-loved in indie circles, putting their own touches on well-worn tropes, owning them and expanding them, even if stopping just short of exploding them. That is to say, Little Mountain is a good title for an album that's adventurous, if not daring, keeping home over the nearest hills in its forays into lands wondrous. That’s good enough for me, especially when home is a nexus of greatness.
The vocals have an endearing reediness that evokes The Shins (We are 1980, 2010), The Decemberists (Big Sky, MT) and They Might be Giants (The Reason) in turn, with the occasional New Pornagraphers boy/girl interplays. Musicals inspire similar namedrops, wielding Tokyo Police Club’s bounce and twang, The Long Winters’ desperate majesty, Los Campesinos joyous jumpalong energy, and even Amnesicac-era Radiohead’s breeble and quaver terror buzz, in turn. Most importantly, though, they don’t settle into one of these styles. If there’s anyone they truly evoke on an album level it’s a band like Wolf Parade, not for any one sound, but for the wild, flailing variety that they lash out with.
Separately, Lucky deserves specific mention as a joyous burster, as do the beat breakdown in We Are 1980, the dropout at 1:20 in Jesse, AR, and Big Wave Goodbye’s New Orleans Neutral Milk Hotel raveup outro. This album makes me fucking grin like music hasn’t made me grin since Sticking Fingers into Sockets.
This is indie rock like they don’t make any more, bursting with ideas and angles, refusing to lean on any one particular stylistic crutch. So much of what’s gotten popular over the last two years has a pidgeonholable style, perched squarely on some combination of dancability, reverb, and nostalgia, huddling around a signature sound. Someone was telling me that all of the songs on the Drums album are in the same key; I can’t verify that, but symbolically, that makes my point.
This reminds me of how I felt in 2002. In 2003 The Shins, The Decemberists, The Strokes, The New Pornographers all put out second albums and all of them were disappointing retreads. But in that space between those bands’ first and second albums, all seemed possible. Indie was breaking open into new pop directions. This album would have fit right in, and it represents just about the fastest retro turnaround possible. Enjoy it! 5/5
You might like this if: If you understood half the namedrops I made in this review. If you loved indie rock in 2002 and want to hear one of the best albums that era never saw.
#487 Sigus Ros - Von
Did you know that Sigur Ros had an album before Ágætis byrjun? This news flash brought to you by the makers of Dookie and Tragic Kingdom.
If the Pitchforks of the world had gotten wind of this when it came out, would they have seen it as the work of a band about to take the world by storm? It has much of the epic scope of its breakthrough predecessor, and in some places it's actually more wild and natural somehow. It evokes the empty, shimmering expanses of Iceland no less effectively, and layers its vocals nearly as perfectly.
Nearly. It often reads as post rock or Lovelessesque shoegaze (especially on Myrkur), and rarely quite transcends music the way the best tracks on Ágætis seemed to. The long soundscapes are undeniably adventurous, sounding like wind and moving plates and auroras themselves (see Hafssyl for hints of the Sigur Ros to come), if a bit indulgent and slow.
Here we see the pre-fetal form of Ágætis's cover alien baby, still luminescent and uncanny, but before its fingers and toes began to form, before it truly began to kick. Not nothing that* 4/5
You might like this if: you have patience for slowly unwinding songs, some that never quite unwind but melt, and want to hear the origins of some of the most unusual (if a bit overrated, if I'm being honest) music of the aughts.
* no pro-life subtext intended
If the Pitchforks of the world had gotten wind of this when it came out, would they have seen it as the work of a band about to take the world by storm? It has much of the epic scope of its breakthrough predecessor, and in some places it's actually more wild and natural somehow. It evokes the empty, shimmering expanses of Iceland no less effectively, and layers its vocals nearly as perfectly.
Nearly. It often reads as post rock or Lovelessesque shoegaze (especially on Myrkur), and rarely quite transcends music the way the best tracks on Ágætis seemed to. The long soundscapes are undeniably adventurous, sounding like wind and moving plates and auroras themselves (see Hafssyl for hints of the Sigur Ros to come), if a bit indulgent and slow.
Here we see the pre-fetal form of Ágætis's cover alien baby, still luminescent and uncanny, but before its fingers and toes began to form, before it truly began to kick. Not nothing that* 4/5
You might like this if: you have patience for slowly unwinding songs, some that never quite unwind but melt, and want to hear the origins of some of the most unusual (if a bit overrated, if I'm being honest) music of the aughts.
* no pro-life subtext intended
#486 Young Galaxy - Shapeshifting
Sorry Young Galaxy, you’re about to get underappreciated by this amateur mini-reviewer for things that have nothing to do with you. It’s all Brit’s fault. She's gotten me into tons of this kind of stuff: synthy, sleepy indie, carefully produced and full of airbrushed neon details. Think Twin Shadow’s spare post-R&B. And I’ve just heard plenty of it.
Maybe it’s not so simple. Maybe this is a trap Young Galazy laid for themselves by trying so hard to be what the indie kids what they want to hear. Bear with me.
Some of it works perfectly well: Blown-Minded’s endless pulse and Eno-honed skyward surges, We Have Everything’s irresistible young folks anthem churn*. And there are surely clever moments and details throughout.
But there’s also something uncannily wrong with Shapeshiting. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it probably has something to do with the cringeworthy idea of legions of privileged indie fans swooning to lines like “in poverty, my love, we have everything”. That’s possibly the most what’s-wrong-with-indie-rock line of the year, to the point of seeming parody. And then there’s that vaguely world-musical steel drum and beat and ooh and ah stuff that creeps into Cover Your Tracks and BSE on the backside, which rubbed me wrong when Eno and Gabriel were going it in the 80’s. And the cloying obviousness of the lyrical imagery, not to mention the band’s name itself, evoking the now and the eternal in the least subtle terms imaginable. Plus the actual aforementioned sameyness of the overall sound.
It feels engineered for those chasing the high they got from Cut Copy and M83 at their respective peaks, and it all leaves you feeling a little used. Context context. Might have been amazing if it hadn’t felt like a point on a carefully-plotted trajectory 2.5/5
You might like this if: you like synthy, emotionally eternal indie rock, and either a) haven’t heard enough to have burned out, or b) are so voracious for it that you don’t mind when it sticks to the formula.
Maybe it’s not so simple. Maybe this is a trap Young Galazy laid for themselves by trying so hard to be what the indie kids what they want to hear. Bear with me.
Some of it works perfectly well: Blown-Minded’s endless pulse and Eno-honed skyward surges, We Have Everything’s irresistible young folks anthem churn*. And there are surely clever moments and details throughout.
But there’s also something uncannily wrong with Shapeshiting. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it probably has something to do with the cringeworthy idea of legions of privileged indie fans swooning to lines like “in poverty, my love, we have everything”. That’s possibly the most what’s-wrong-with-indie-rock line of the year, to the point of seeming parody. And then there’s that vaguely world-musical steel drum and beat and ooh and ah stuff that creeps into Cover Your Tracks and BSE on the backside, which rubbed me wrong when Eno and Gabriel were going it in the 80’s. And the cloying obviousness of the lyrical imagery, not to mention the band’s name itself, evoking the now and the eternal in the least subtle terms imaginable. Plus the actual aforementioned sameyness of the overall sound.
It feels engineered for those chasing the high they got from Cut Copy and M83 at their respective peaks, and it all leaves you feeling a little used. Context context. Might have been amazing if it hadn’t felt like a point on a carefully-plotted trajectory 2.5/5
You might like this if: you like synthy, emotionally eternal indie rock, and either a) haven’t heard enough to have burned out, or b) are so voracious for it that you don’t mind when it sticks to the formula.
Monday, March 12, 2012
#485 Mount Eerie - No Flashlight
I kind of forgot these guys existed: by the time the Microphones' Mount Eerie album came out I felt like the project had run its course, but I did like Wind's Poem, so let's see.
I wanted to like this. I'm able to forgive a great deal of Phil Elverum's indulgences, his empty spaces, his tuneless, plaintive voice, his creaky production. Heck, those are some of his strengths! But what I really like is the epic scope, the inventive structures, the adventurous moves. None of that is on display here: the album strives for hugeness in the personal, but just ends up insular. The album even includes a book explaining the album's multifaceted mythology: in the Microphones days the messages, however obscured, felt universal enough not to need instructions. Later an album of drums from the album, which the band thought "good enough to listen to by themselves" came out - this seems like a band that has sucked up into its own mind, lost its concept of its own strengths, and has just started publishing its notepads unedited. There's a lack of endeavor.
That old sense of adventure is lost too. While the Microphones took on all of the world at once in all its largest tiny details, this trip feels through bedrooms and backwoods, but those well tracked, with suburbs just out of sight on any side, the actual music flat and tuneless and spare, barely stirring from bed. It is an object instead of a landscape, a boulder in the woods instead of the mountains opening skyward.
Maybe once you've made an album more or less about the whole universe there is nowhere left to go but around the horn, back to small and personal. Luckily, there's no suspense. If I had heard this when it first came out, before hearing Wind's Poem, I would have been worried that the project wasn't capable of reaching anything resembling its previous incarnation's heights. This is a shadow of Elverum's Microphones work, but at least with a retrospective glimmer of hope 2/5
You might like this if: you are very thoroughly enamored of the Elverum scene. You don't mind going spare and small, letting songs breathe, and being at peace with the chance that there might be little more there than breath.
I wanted to like this. I'm able to forgive a great deal of Phil Elverum's indulgences, his empty spaces, his tuneless, plaintive voice, his creaky production. Heck, those are some of his strengths! But what I really like is the epic scope, the inventive structures, the adventurous moves. None of that is on display here: the album strives for hugeness in the personal, but just ends up insular. The album even includes a book explaining the album's multifaceted mythology: in the Microphones days the messages, however obscured, felt universal enough not to need instructions. Later an album of drums from the album, which the band thought "good enough to listen to by themselves" came out - this seems like a band that has sucked up into its own mind, lost its concept of its own strengths, and has just started publishing its notepads unedited. There's a lack of endeavor.
That old sense of adventure is lost too. While the Microphones took on all of the world at once in all its largest tiny details, this trip feels through bedrooms and backwoods, but those well tracked, with suburbs just out of sight on any side, the actual music flat and tuneless and spare, barely stirring from bed. It is an object instead of a landscape, a boulder in the woods instead of the mountains opening skyward.
Maybe once you've made an album more or less about the whole universe there is nowhere left to go but around the horn, back to small and personal. Luckily, there's no suspense. If I had heard this when it first came out, before hearing Wind's Poem, I would have been worried that the project wasn't capable of reaching anything resembling its previous incarnation's heights. This is a shadow of Elverum's Microphones work, but at least with a retrospective glimmer of hope 2/5
You might like this if: you are very thoroughly enamored of the Elverum scene. You don't mind going spare and small, letting songs breathe, and being at peace with the chance that there might be little more there than breath.
#484 Sleigh Bells - Reign of Terror
Overwhelming buzz demands I hear this.
I don't remember the old Sleigh Bells album very well, I apparently reviewed it (my, how short I kept it back then!) and liked it ok, but I have no memory of it at all.
There's plenty of todays favorite tropes here, big echoey reverb, synthy edges, big beats. My reference to The Russian Futurists in reviewing Treats totally still holds, all blanket-smothered and big beated.
The key is the opener, a bizarre slash of exaggerated arena rock introdom that acts as a message statement of rock and roll and fun, with waves that carry through otherwise pedestian-seeming cooing girl indie pop rock, but eventually the thrill wears off.
I've posited in past that the key to a good band is feeling like its a band you'd want to be in. This is why personality matters, why chemistry matters, while rough edges and personal details matter. This is a band for girls to want to be in: vulnerable and pretty but assertive and tough. Unfortunately, I am not a girl, and frankly I think being a teenager is another box that it would help if I could check.
Also, man, what a dark little album! Look at those song titles, all death and hell and ends and loss. I liked this at first, but eventually its heaviness and crooning and Bloody Valentining just became oppressive. This isn't a band I want to be in 2.5/5
You might like this if: you're a girl and/or teenage and/or depresses and/or like really overblown, overwashed indie pop.
I don't remember the old Sleigh Bells album very well, I apparently reviewed it (my, how short I kept it back then!) and liked it ok, but I have no memory of it at all.
There's plenty of todays favorite tropes here, big echoey reverb, synthy edges, big beats. My reference to The Russian Futurists in reviewing Treats totally still holds, all blanket-smothered and big beated.
The key is the opener, a bizarre slash of exaggerated arena rock introdom that acts as a message statement of rock and roll and fun, with waves that carry through otherwise pedestian-seeming cooing girl indie pop rock, but eventually the thrill wears off.
I've posited in past that the key to a good band is feeling like its a band you'd want to be in. This is why personality matters, why chemistry matters, while rough edges and personal details matter. This is a band for girls to want to be in: vulnerable and pretty but assertive and tough. Unfortunately, I am not a girl, and frankly I think being a teenager is another box that it would help if I could check.
Also, man, what a dark little album! Look at those song titles, all death and hell and ends and loss. I liked this at first, but eventually its heaviness and crooning and Bloody Valentining just became oppressive. This isn't a band I want to be in 2.5/5
You might like this if: you're a girl and/or teenage and/or depresses and/or like really overblown, overwashed indie pop.
#483 Aphex Twin - Drukqs
I heard pretty lukewarm things about this and kind of forgot about it. Time to buckle down for two discs of horrors!
Something I read about this pointed out that it sounds less like a triumphant return from the o.g. IDM guru, and more like a trawl through a hard drive for previously unpublished songs, dumped wholesale onto a pair of discs. Coming as it does from a man who bragged about releasing rustled-up old tracks to serve as remixes of others' songs, it would hardly be a surprise.
The sequencing doesn't help the case against: tracks are jammed together harsh-to-low-to-harsh seemingly at random, and on the macro level the whole thing seems like an active defiance of production, structure and good taste.
But on a song level, that overlooks some of the album's definite consistent charm. This stands alone alongside I Care Because You Do and RDJ Album on its own merits. Sure, there's the usual suspects: prettty girl song standouts include Jynweythew Ylow, Avril 14th (sampled on Kanye's Blame Game, who knew?), and Grewly Mernans, while nasty boy songs are headlined by Cock/Ver10's aggressive, unpredictable, protodubbsteppy mayhem.
But there's an acoustic, organic side here that bristles with stray hairs, with player piano clicks and hisses, Aphex songs on a rare field trip outside the computer. Heck, Strotha Tynhe and Nanou2 are just traight up pretty little piano pieces, with no particular fuckery or conceptualism at all
Meanwhile Mr Saint Michel + St Michaels and Afx237 v7 are variations just outside the wide spectrum of AT's usua fuckery, the latter featuring some prefusey chopped vocals.
And actually, at the last minute, some real structure and thought seems to come in, as Ziggomatic gets pretty and fades out, seemingly being the perfect end to the album before a little two song coda that touches upon the albums themes on its way out: Beskhu3epnm has is the zenith of that weirdly accoustic brokedown pathos that runs through the album, and the aforementioned Nanou2 is the final lullabye.
As an aside, is this whole album all a joke to test whether we will bother recreating these batshit keystrokes when trying to refer to these sngs? This from a man releasing an album of basically all unnamed songs that people had to hack together titles for from pictures.
And that's at the heart of the problem here. If your whole thing is doing what no one else has done and constantly subverting expectation, eventually what can you do short of put out an album of silence or otherwise unask the entire album question? I guess you settle for putting a bit more heart into your usual tricks, taking them in some new directions, and fuckit, letting your Welsh cat jam on your keyboard and calling it song titles 4/5
You might like this if: you really like Aphex Twin. You kinda like Aphex Twin and haven't heard him in a while. If you haven't heard Aphex Twin, you might like this is you have a high tolerance for noise and weirdness, but if that's the case there's no chance you haven't heard Aphex Twin. If this is somehow you, start with the Richard D. James album and decide if you want to find your way back here.
Something I read about this pointed out that it sounds less like a triumphant return from the o.g. IDM guru, and more like a trawl through a hard drive for previously unpublished songs, dumped wholesale onto a pair of discs. Coming as it does from a man who bragged about releasing rustled-up old tracks to serve as remixes of others' songs, it would hardly be a surprise.
The sequencing doesn't help the case against: tracks are jammed together harsh-to-low-to-harsh seemingly at random, and on the macro level the whole thing seems like an active defiance of production, structure and good taste.
But on a song level, that overlooks some of the album's definite consistent charm. This stands alone alongside I Care Because You Do and RDJ Album on its own merits. Sure, there's the usual suspects: prettty girl song standouts include Jynweythew Ylow, Avril 14th (sampled on Kanye's Blame Game, who knew?), and Grewly Mernans, while nasty boy songs are headlined by Cock/Ver10's aggressive, unpredictable, protodubbsteppy mayhem.
But there's an acoustic, organic side here that bristles with stray hairs, with player piano clicks and hisses, Aphex songs on a rare field trip outside the computer. Heck, Strotha Tynhe and Nanou2 are just traight up pretty little piano pieces, with no particular fuckery or conceptualism at all
Meanwhile Mr Saint Michel + St Michaels and Afx237 v7 are variations just outside the wide spectrum of AT's usua fuckery, the latter featuring some prefusey chopped vocals.
And actually, at the last minute, some real structure and thought seems to come in, as Ziggomatic gets pretty and fades out, seemingly being the perfect end to the album before a little two song coda that touches upon the albums themes on its way out: Beskhu3epnm has is the zenith of that weirdly accoustic brokedown pathos that runs through the album, and the aforementioned Nanou2 is the final lullabye.
As an aside, is this whole album all a joke to test whether we will bother recreating these batshit keystrokes when trying to refer to these sngs? This from a man releasing an album of basically all unnamed songs that people had to hack together titles for from pictures.
And that's at the heart of the problem here. If your whole thing is doing what no one else has done and constantly subverting expectation, eventually what can you do short of put out an album of silence or otherwise unask the entire album question? I guess you settle for putting a bit more heart into your usual tricks, taking them in some new directions, and fuckit, letting your Welsh cat jam on your keyboard and calling it song titles 4/5
You might like this if: you really like Aphex Twin. You kinda like Aphex Twin and haven't heard him in a while. If you haven't heard Aphex Twin, you might like this is you have a high tolerance for noise and weirdness, but if that's the case there's no chance you haven't heard Aphex Twin. If this is somehow you, start with the Richard D. James album and decide if you want to find your way back here.
#482 LCD Soundsystem - 45:33
Just suddenly remembered this existed.
Commissioned in some capacity by Nike as a running mix, the bulk of this album is a single track that plays for (roughly) 45:33. As you might expect this starts with a warmup, raves out to a slowly building crescendo or two, and then chills out at the end.
For the most part, it doesn't really work as a song though, paced all wrong for actual listening, especially during the abruptly-reached and too-long cooldown section. And I'm not sure the vocal filled Shame On You section really works as good listening nor as good running music (not that I tried). Why would I want someone saying "shame on you" in my ear over and over again in either case? Plus, the retroactively-recognizable as Someone Great instrumental is just distracting once you know the song it would become.
The individual notes are full of signature LCD fullness and attack-to-release craft, but as a whole, the titular mix doesn't work for me on a number of levels.
The three bonus tracks that accompany the CD version are good enough, showing off some of that hardline DFA deep groove, but those are just decoration, the mix itself is the meat, and curiously, surprisingly, meh 2.5/5
You might like this if: you've got a few miles to run and want a soundtrack of old-school instrumental dancepunk grooves. Save plenty of time for the comedown.
Commissioned in some capacity by Nike as a running mix, the bulk of this album is a single track that plays for (roughly) 45:33. As you might expect this starts with a warmup, raves out to a slowly building crescendo or two, and then chills out at the end.
For the most part, it doesn't really work as a song though, paced all wrong for actual listening, especially during the abruptly-reached and too-long cooldown section. And I'm not sure the vocal filled Shame On You section really works as good listening nor as good running music (not that I tried). Why would I want someone saying "shame on you" in my ear over and over again in either case? Plus, the retroactively-recognizable as Someone Great instrumental is just distracting once you know the song it would become.
The individual notes are full of signature LCD fullness and attack-to-release craft, but as a whole, the titular mix doesn't work for me on a number of levels.
The three bonus tracks that accompany the CD version are good enough, showing off some of that hardline DFA deep groove, but those are just decoration, the mix itself is the meat, and curiously, surprisingly, meh 2.5/5
You might like this if: you've got a few miles to run and want a soundtrack of old-school instrumental dancepunk grooves. Save plenty of time for the comedown.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
#481 Adele - 21
Every once in a while someone gets so big I break down and listen to their stuff, even if I'm pretty sure I won't like it. Sometimes it pays off!
Man, inflected, yowly female vocals are really in. It's not a sound that I have a lot of patience for, so from the first warbled notes I was skeptical. But I gotta admit, that first track gets cracking, full of insistent drums, surging choruses, and Adele does soar by the end, leading into a riotous, cavernous stomp. Even the following track, as one-dimensional as it is, is downright irresistible.
Throughout Adele belts out power-girl style, channeling Alanis's seethe and Fiona's spooky menace at turns (I'm told Amy Winehouse is the point of comparison of choice, but I can't say I've heard much of her stuff). In some cases, like on those first two tracks, it works, and I was getting downright excited during listen #1.
But then Turning Tables establishes the blueprint followed by more or less every other song on the album: the flat, looping meanderer, where Adele's insistent repeating of the chorus is expected to carry increasing heft just in the repeating. Again and again, especially heading into the albums overlong ending trio, I thought to myself "is this the same song still going?", each song going on one chorus longer than it needed to, expecting more emotional buy-in than it seemed to have earned.
I mean, it's perfectly good pop. As pop, its really good pop. The production is flawless, each instrument standing in its own sonic space, none of this modern everynote reverbey pileupons. This is crisp, assured music that isn't hiding from itself, and on some level I admire that. But the songs themselves hope to be carried on the back of Adele's delivery of these very heartfelt lyrics, and to me, that's not gonna get me there. Too post post jaded, I demand constant novelty, infinte invention, songs marionetting marrionettes with marrionettes, a million moving parts and a clockwork impossibility. Repeated sentimental sentiment only gets you as far as 2.5/5
You might like this if: you want to hear a woman with a powerful, inflected voice sing some very well-produced, perfectly good, ultimately mostly unadventurous songs
Man, inflected, yowly female vocals are really in. It's not a sound that I have a lot of patience for, so from the first warbled notes I was skeptical. But I gotta admit, that first track gets cracking, full of insistent drums, surging choruses, and Adele does soar by the end, leading into a riotous, cavernous stomp. Even the following track, as one-dimensional as it is, is downright irresistible.
Throughout Adele belts out power-girl style, channeling Alanis's seethe and Fiona's spooky menace at turns (I'm told Amy Winehouse is the point of comparison of choice, but I can't say I've heard much of her stuff). In some cases, like on those first two tracks, it works, and I was getting downright excited during listen #1.
But then Turning Tables establishes the blueprint followed by more or less every other song on the album: the flat, looping meanderer, where Adele's insistent repeating of the chorus is expected to carry increasing heft just in the repeating. Again and again, especially heading into the albums overlong ending trio, I thought to myself "is this the same song still going?", each song going on one chorus longer than it needed to, expecting more emotional buy-in than it seemed to have earned.
I mean, it's perfectly good pop. As pop, its really good pop. The production is flawless, each instrument standing in its own sonic space, none of this modern everynote reverbey pileupons. This is crisp, assured music that isn't hiding from itself, and on some level I admire that. But the songs themselves hope to be carried on the back of Adele's delivery of these very heartfelt lyrics, and to me, that's not gonna get me there. Too post post jaded, I demand constant novelty, infinte invention, songs marionetting marrionettes with marrionettes, a million moving parts and a clockwork impossibility. Repeated sentimental sentiment only gets you as far as 2.5/5
You might like this if: you want to hear a woman with a powerful, inflected voice sing some very well-produced, perfectly good, ultimately mostly unadventurous songs
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
#480 Kendrick Lamar - Section 80
On the 2011 lists - almost out!
Kendrick Lamar stakes out a pretty interesting middle ground with this album, somewhere halfway between:
a) the modern, pretty, synthed-out, personal hip hop of Kanye, Drake, and heck, to a lesser extent the new Busdriver.
b) old school sensibilities, with a social message, simmering anger, and R&B loping pacing and basslines.
The combination works, coming out like a more experimental version of The Blueprint's slower tracks, Lamar exposing soul instead of heart, keeping its cool while it shows its hand. It all comes out at its strongest on centerpiece Ronald Regan Era, where rhymes land hard over loping, quivering mellotron, crisp beats and vocal flourishes. The whole thing is downright listenable, without ever being soft of weak, without ever being harsh. It takes less extravagant chances than some recent rap standouts, but its a really promising start, will be keeping an eye on this dude's upcoming one 4/5
You might like this if: you like pretty hip hop, with an edge, with a message, with a soul.
Kendrick Lamar stakes out a pretty interesting middle ground with this album, somewhere halfway between:
a) the modern, pretty, synthed-out, personal hip hop of Kanye, Drake, and heck, to a lesser extent the new Busdriver.
b) old school sensibilities, with a social message, simmering anger, and R&B loping pacing and basslines.
The combination works, coming out like a more experimental version of The Blueprint's slower tracks, Lamar exposing soul instead of heart, keeping its cool while it shows its hand. It all comes out at its strongest on centerpiece Ronald Regan Era, where rhymes land hard over loping, quivering mellotron, crisp beats and vocal flourishes. The whole thing is downright listenable, without ever being soft of weak, without ever being harsh. It takes less extravagant chances than some recent rap standouts, but its a really promising start, will be keeping an eye on this dude's upcoming one 4/5
You might like this if: you like pretty hip hop, with an edge, with a message, with a soul.
Monday, March 5, 2012
#479 The Animals - Animalism
Lists lists lists.
Garagey rock at just about its finest, playing a series of bluesy / early R&B covers. The guitars are ragged and frayed, the delivery just this side of the wheels coming off, a threadbare scarecrow in a ramshackle soapbox racer. The production is the perfect vehicle too, alternately sharp and cavernous, always aggressive and huge. You feel like you are hearing real performances, and every rough edge is in just the right spot. I don't think I ever quite connected the dots between R&B and garage and the route the electric guitar took through the 60's; this is a crucial link 4/5
You might like this if: you like rock and roll
Garagey rock at just about its finest, playing a series of bluesy / early R&B covers. The guitars are ragged and frayed, the delivery just this side of the wheels coming off, a threadbare scarecrow in a ramshackle soapbox racer. The production is the perfect vehicle too, alternately sharp and cavernous, always aggressive and huge. You feel like you are hearing real performances, and every rough edge is in just the right spot. I don't think I ever quite connected the dots between R&B and garage and the route the electric guitar took through the 60's; this is a crucial link 4/5
You might like this if: you like rock and roll
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