#1083 Wavves - Afraid of Heights

By now Wavves's discarded most of the scrappiness that made Nathan Williams a readymade Pitchfork darling circa '08. Gone are the drone-on experiments, the shitcan production, and most of the frantic guitarwork, now Wavves takes its cues from the similarly-themed Surfer Blood, making tuneful, swooping crunchrock in the Weezer* vein, with streaks of Green Day sneering and Unicorns seeking. It's a perfectly pretty, fun little album, but much of the personality's been airbrushed out, the lyrics reduced to generalisms like "I'll always be on my own!" and "everything is my fault!".

Every once in a while Wavves peeks out from behind the mask, say on the frenetic clap-clap streaking of Beat Me Up, on the whirring frenzy of Lunge Forward, but for the most part it sounds designed to capitalize on some bizarre sweet spot of twentysomethings who think Weezer hasn't been good since the Red Album 3/5

*Williams is a self-professed Weezer fan and he really goes too far on the title track that swerves cringeworthily close with its "woke up, found Jesus" line

#1082 Death - For All the World To See

No, these guys aren't the lost first punk band*, but they are a band that made a wildly fun, inventive, hard-rocking album in the vein of the the MC5 and the Stooges (and, retroactively, Bad Brains). It's a legitimate lost gem of rock and roll.

If you haven't heard the hype, well you're in for a treat. Short version: three black brothers banged out 7 kickass rockandroll songs in the mid 70's, did a tiny run of a single single, and disappeared for decades. And now we have those 7 songs on an album and they're goddamn great, full of insights, riffs, swerves, and just straight up killer instincts about how to use rock to pump people's blood. Brilliant, proto-punk full of life and spontaneity, finely aged and righteously ready to enjoy today 4.5/5

* here's the easy argument against that storyline: is punk about playing loud and fast or about rejecting traditional notions of musicianship and quality in rock and roll? If it's the former, the Stooges and MC5 did everything Death did first, and they're the first punk bands. If its the latter, then these guys don't qualify, and the Ramones and Sex Pistols retain the crown: these guys are decidedly trying to make good music. And they succeed! There's nothing fundamental these guys did first, they just happen to be super fucking good at making vaguely punk-flavored music, and they were completely unknown until recently. And isn't that enough as a storyline goes?

#1081 Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel III

You get the sense that Gabriel listens to his own records, that they represent some kind of therapy for him, some externalization and disarming of his deepest apprehensions. They're listenable, and by his 3rd self-titled solo album downright pop in places, but there's something about their particular tone that feels bent inward to scratch itches the artist can't reach any other way.

Here its Eno-via-Low atmospherics, Springsteenian bombast (check that sax solo on Family Snapshot), and Casiotone twilight backbone, all shuffled together into paranoid themes, even the brightest moments greased with desperation and concern. It's an interesting artifact, bristling with subtle ideas and psychological crannies, but not really any fun as pop and not quite able to commit to pure concept. You can take a listen, but it isn't for you 3.5/5

#1080 Heart - Dreamboat Annie

The "lady Zeppelin" thing really does hold: its not just the spot-on-similar vocals and guitar touches (see Soul of the Sea (!)), its the overall scope of the songs, full of grasps at the infinite and crunches into the details via songs long and tall and broad.

But, while nothing on here is Black Dog-thunderous in terms of riffage, Heart bests the boys in plenty of other ways. The tonal and rhythmic cleverness of Magic Man is stunning, the frenzy of Crazy on You is unmatched, and the overall tone is massively more personal and approachable. This is music made by people for people, not just an abstract monument to the gods of rock, listenable, peaceful, exciting, and fun in ways 70's classic rock seldom was 4/5

#1079 Aphrodite's Child - 666

It's fitting that 666 recounts the book of revelations: Aphrodite's Child is more religion than band, aiming for nothing less than the elevation of humanity, utterly committed to its own convictions, off and running on a grandiose, mad musical crusade, defying song structure, length, tone, and all other yardsticks of good taste, taking proggy rock excess back to basics and up to the heavens all at once.

Along the way there are some legitimately beautiful passages, some catchy riffs, some engaging experiments, all aswim in some truly pretentious scope that vastly outreaches its grasp. The result is a difficult, occasionally boring, but mostly rewarding listen. If you're the type who can tolerate some self-important, somber spoken word, some aimless dronescapes, and monumental conviction to an artsy vision, this is a Babeling pile of tower worth a topple from 3.5/5

#1078 Feed Me - Calimari Tuesday

Feed Me's still tops at wielding the meaty squonk of dubstep while (Electric Mountain aside) avoiding huge drops and general brofisty bullshit, and he shows off a lot of tricks here. Some of it works: the clipped cutting of Short Skirt, the casiotone brass and breakdown on Ophelia, Orion's sweeping expectation-defying scope. But its all pretty bloodless, more Orbital than I'd like, and far too infested with trancy female vocals. Orbital's actually a good point of reference: this doesn't commit to bangers (Short Skirt and Chinchilla aside), and doesn't quite pull off chinscratching intricacy, and ends up being a vaguely homeless album of "work music".

Feed Me's managed to keep outside the box in a genre that's already died Dancepunk-fast. Good job knowing what not to do, and good job on the still-untouched Big Adventure, now he's just gotta decide what he is gonna do that's going to get him to the next level 3/5

#1077 The Mamas and The Papas - If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears

Get yer harmonies here! Get em by the dozens! Each guar en tee'd to have at least 3 voices in both genders! Why have one person singing when you could have 2, 3, even 4? Why have a mama when you could have mamas? Why have a mamas when you could have mamas and papas? Listen to this demo of the MnP technique, harmonies shooting high and low, fast and slow, all over folky songs ranging from trippy to psychedelic!

Frankly, the whole thing's is so forced, so slathered in singing and singing and look at all of the singing we're singing that it's impossible to salvage the songs themselves, steak drowning in sauce. I'm not even sure there's steak down there. It's damn near unlistenable 1.5/5

#1076 Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel II

Somewhere the magic got lost. Gabriel's 2nd solo album follows the same blueprint as its predecessor, right down to the sharp art-pop of the respective opening tracks, but it's missing that overarching pull, those perfect barbs, that made his debut work. The best moments are when the vocals stretch just to breaking, like on the heartcrusher chorus of Mother of Violence and on the final track's desperate climax. But the rest of the time Gabriel sounds under control, playing it safe, with only token toes outside a slightly-funky radius, creating an album that's undeniably interesting, but lacking many memorable moments 3/5

#1075 Roky Erickson and Okkervil River - True Love Cast Out All Evil

Look, I like Roky. Dude puts on a mean live show to this day, and his story can't help but inspire, but he seems like the weak link on this collaboration. The album's finest moments are in its atmosphere, check the stunning, haunting opening track. Even the best songs, those that sound like regular old Roky solo stompers, soar on elements that're Okkervil all over. John Lawman especially works because of all that beefy baritone sax, Iggy piano plinking, and fucked up guitar squall, not necessarily because of Roky's workmanlike, shouty singing.

The weakest moments, meanwhile, lie mostly in the vocals, where the lines are clunky (Please Judge) or just clunkily delivered (Ain't Blues Too Sad). Erickson's croak gives the songs character, but he's no Cash when it comes to driving timeless pathos into modern sounds. The album's got soul, and its earnest clumsiness is charming in places, but it lands in an awkward middle ground between earthy grit and highly-produced swooning, never quite winning you over via one or the other 3/5

#1074 Ty Segall - Sleeper

Modern guitar god Ty Segall goes acoustic! Are his songwriting chops up to the task of justifying an album's worth of songs, absent the massive force multiplier that his garage armageddon guitar sound brings? Eh. The lyrics still twist about, simplicity lightly barbed, all about the general and the universal and life and love in abstraction. And the riffs are kind of there, with that start-stop immediacy. But its telling that the album's second best moment is the throttling one-chord electric beating that leads into the climax of The Man Man. Without that guitar energy, Segall's reedy voice and good-not-great songwriting just don't have any punch to them and they fail to get the blood pumping.

One exception: the best moment on the album is its entire last song, a gorgeous, chord-perfect, treasure of acoustic guitar longing. Stuff a bit more of that on the next one and you might be onto something - in the meantime, don't quit your day/night/where-do-you-find-the-time-to-be-this-fucking-prolific job 3/5

#1073 Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel I

A quietly strange pop album, full of hooks, vocal turns, and a dozen seeming mainstream concessions that still manage to sound alien and intriguing. Crooning and stamping like Bob Seger, Billy Joel, and Nick Lowe in turn, the basic model is certainly of the lone, clever singer songwriter: this is no Genesis album. But it still feels like a natural transition from Lamb, with synthy twists, vocal distortion, and a comfortably queering atmosphere.

It drags in places, and Gabriel has little charisma himself, acting more of a conduit for the albumlength vision. But that vision, it do come through. Each song does its own thing, and collectively they make for a nuanced, easy, mildly thrilling listen, with an emotional arc that readily spurs that onemorelisten 4/5

#1072 Def Leppard - Pyromania

I'll get the good out of the way. The guitars are fun, the album's packed with shredding solos, but there's two problems with this album. First off, it's mostly damned boring. Its all one of two tempos, all the same beat, all the same structure, damn nearly all the same key, all the same whiny trippledup vocal wheezebagging.

Second, it's profoundly uncool: these guys flunk the "would I want to be in this band?" test and their ridiculousness is doubly damning because they seems to think they're fucking RADICAL. That's what Chad Wasser and I used to call being a twonce. Every once in a while you go "hey this is kind of fun!" and the album goes "isn't this fuckin' FUN!!?". Every time you start to accept it as goofy frivolity it reminds you that this is dead serious business.

By the official Def Leppard FAQ's (?) unapologetic admission, songs were made up of dozens and dozens of takes, and it shows. As an album, it's completely overproduced into mediocrity, boring with occasional flashy moments that are mostly undermined by its sub-AC/DC posturing 2/5

#1071 The Byrds - The Notorious Byrd Brothers

A psychedelic album with the corners of the Byrds' folky past and country future poking through, full of honkytonk touches, lush vocal harmonies, and early synth flourishes. It's the kind of barely-there, overlayered album that I'd normally blow off, but it all works so damned well, making just the right number of stylistic swerves and tempo transitions, melting into and making animate; even the hitchy time signatures feel like part of the fabric. This is a completely composed forehead-of-god album from a band that I'm increasingly realizing I've been criminally underrating 4.5/5

#1070 Iron Chic - The Constant One

Pop punk in the Japandoids shouting-at-the-night vein, with more pop, more punk, and more existential thrashing. The Constant One's album full of songs for those believing that if we confront our mortality and smallness head on, all at once as a crowd, with riffs and swearing and huge all-shouted-together-shoutalong choruses, maybe then we can feel like we're safe, like everything's going to be ok, just for this one night. It's Garden State: The Album, with riffs in place of Shins and shouting in clubs in place of shouting in quarries, with everything played too fast to resist, too fast to think, whipping by like birthdays.

It just may be as purely and relentlessly as this particular strategy has ever been undertaken, and its fun in small doses, but too one-dimensional to work as an album: all climax, all catharsis, all the time for 11 songs and 40 minutes. Brute force cheer. For those who can handle it it might be the best album you've ever heard in your life 3/5

#1069 Blue Oyster Cult - Tyranny and Mutation

BOC's 2nd album is hard rock in transition, holding onto the vestiges of stonesey, sneering swagger and whipping everything up to 80 miles an hour, filling every cranny with ripping guitar solos, and sounding presciently like the kind of goodtimes metal that would fill the next decade or two. It's ambitious, surprisingly sprightly rock and roll, too fun to be truly menacing, too metal for party music, but occupying some slanted, addled space in the night 3.5/5

#1068 Fuzz (David Streit) - Sparkle Vision

An endearingly sloppy maximalist electronic hosedown from Fuzz (not to be confused with Ty Segall's band of the same name). With Justice-big synth riffs, a touch of Prefuse glitchy beat clipping, plenty of quadrupledup dubstep bass metabuzzes, and a spattering of analog squiggles, its a spooky, hooky trip through an electronica buffet. Nothing here stands out, and nothing hits as hard as any of its influences, but its a fun trip for electronic music fans without purist baggage 3.5/5

#1067 Hawkwind - In Search of Space

Space rock! It's theremins, synthesizers, swirly guitars, moaning vocals; psychadelia's unworldiness stretched to prog rock proportions, with all the indulgence and spectacle that implies. There's little in the way of big solos, little in the way of aggression, this is proto-post-rock, above it all and outside it all, chugging with Krauty atmosphere and propulsion. In 2013 there's nothing here that sounds all that groundbreaking, and it's unwillingness to rouse you from your spaceland reverie keeps it from really baring its claws, but its a rich, strange trip as rockandroll-fueled trips go 3.5/5

#1066 The Beta Band - Heroes to Zeros

The Three EPs was a certified classic. The rest of the Beta Band's stuff less so, as they seemed to lose interest in stretching themselves, churning out formless, charmless churners. While it's not exactly a return to form, H2Z is the Betas' tightest album, and their most inventive since their debut. Within those tidy 3-and-change runtimes, the songs pack some minor hypnosis and invention, a slash of horns, a clatter of drums, a wash of organs, all atop brushed rock repetition that suggests long meanderers without actually doing anything superfluous. Beta Band condensed, this is their most readily listenable album 4/5

#1065 David Bowie - The Next Day Extra

An extra 10 tracks for Bowie's underwhelming latest album. The main draw here is definitely the Love is Lost remix, a 10-minute James Murphy-produced epic that stretches through time and space, with a nod to Clapping Music along the way. It's a legit LCD-caliber microraveup and a match made in heaven.

The rest is all pretty limp though. There's some highlights among the bonus tracks: Atomica's a nice little stomper of 80's art pop, Born in a UFO is an offkilter, swooping trip and I'll Take You There clips along with purpose. But even the punchy, faster, better tracks blow their tricks within the first few bars, never veering off of their initial trajectories. Bowie's heart doesn't seem to be in trying to impress, he's just making little songs, nocking the tempo, singing for a bit, and clocking out at 3:00 or so. Which is fine, if that's all you expect 3/5