#515 El-P - Cancer for the Cure

El-P has always had some pretty hard hitting raps, and he's wielded his production skills accordingly: full of sqr wv sldge and bzzsw gshs. For the most part he's been easier to admire than enjoy.

Here he's found his stride though, putting out his most listenable, most focuses, most inventive, and probably best album yet, filling in all the vowels on the same descriptors, sliding lightcycle past past album's car crashes. It's still dirty, but here is slime whipped from a sword slash instead of burbling.

And yeah, the raps are still sharp and delivered with aggression, El-P's gutteral spit-shouts hitting in the gut, and the words themselves are clevered than ever. And choruses! Actual choruses. Concessions to listenable music that thoroughly dodge anything you could call selling out 4/5

#514 Ty Segall and White Fence - Hair

Man, this Ty Segall kid can rock. I found Goodbye Bread disappointing, but here the hooks and the inventiveness and the nerve are back in full force. The sound is still pretty sludgy, but the instruments make themselves heard, tracing circles around eachother while vocal outbursts streak outward. The effect is hypnotic without beig narcotic, a peculiar blend of sounds that isn't quite psychadelic, isn't quite indie rock, sounding a bit like what you wish the Beta Band had turned into and what Ariel Pink wishes he could be 4/5

#513 Moonface - Heartbreaking Bravery

If you liked Wolf Parade but wished the entire thing was smothered in blankets, stuffed to the ceiling with reverb and guitars and echoing drums, this is the album for you.

I'll admit it's a fun album live, where the sound can crush and the repetition can build to every anthemic eternal, but on the disc it's all too indistinct and stuffy, the gorgeous, crushing Quickfire, I Tried, notwithstanding 2.5/5

#512 Of Montreal - Paralytic Stalks

At some point Kevin Barned stopped making albums and started just putting his meltdowns, freakouts, and hissyfits to music, seemingly dumping them directly out of his mind. Even more so than the usual Of Montreal fare, this album sounds less produced than pushed into being by emotional force of will. It's one of their most enveloping albums, letting you float for just a little while and then yanking the hook when your mind wanders, the production is much fuller, richer and hypnotic than ever before, even if the melodies are a bit less whipcrack. If you're looking for an Of Montreal album to really get lost in (and that's a big if) this is a pretty good choice 4/5

#511 Mad River - Mad River

A meandering, rollicking assault, sounding like a car wreck between the nascent psychedelic and prog scenes of 1968. I'd recommend this more confidently to fans of the latter: the songs are epic and strange. Keep its place in history in mind and enjoy it as a lost classic: if nothing else early Genesis albums certainly sounds like they took inspiration from this album 4/5

#510 Jack White - Blunderbus

When this album goes for the throat it's just about unsurpassed as a roots / Zeppelin revival album. Heck, as an album period: some of those solos are stunning in their originality and aggressiveness, and when the tempo gets turned up the beats hit sharp and hard. But too much of the album is spent in honkytonk sway and crooning and Stonesism, and that side is considerably less successful.

White has gotten more and more assertive in his quest to update the origins of rock and roll, and I appreciate the more I learn about that era. But his strength remains the killer riff, and there's far too few of those on here 3/5