#1393 The Gordons (US) - Southern Illinois Bluegrass

A debut very similar to the Gordons' just-reviewed second album - plenty of wickedfast plucking, agreeable singing, a bouncing bluegrass backing. The main difference is the lack of a fiddle player - making for a thinner, more dust-and-sticks sound. I probably like it a bit better in isolation, though it does suffer, in this moment, from being the one I heard second 4/5

#1392 The Gordons (US) - Covered Bridge

We're past the era of radio, past the era of putting on a record/tape/cd. Now we listen to things on our streeminservices and little weird things happen like you're listening to New Zealand standout shitkickers The Gordons and your Spotify rolls right on into 70's midwest bluegrass geniuses The Gordons.

This is their second album, reviewed by me.

Goddamn do they get that banjo a-plucked as fuck, this is frantic incredible stuff, driven by two voices so perfect and pure in their legitimate passion for music and the things their music is about, so fraught with grit and twang and sincerity that you don't even know how to resist it.

Your head will bob, and goddammit your hands will slap and your toes will tap. I mean this sincerely - when I first heard this, and again now as I hear this again it happens again, my hands did feel compelled by unholy fury to slap the nearest knee/table/anyfuckinthing withing reach. If you make it through the first five minutes of this and don't feel the same you need to check on your soul and see if it's still roundabouts your corporeal frame, still having any kind of ability to incur the body to do the things that a body outta do.

Which is a long way of saying, this is frantic, gorgeous, bluegrass that makes me feel right alright about the oncoming Boston winter, about the winter of all our lives, about every thing that one might worry about that might be washed away by the shimmering splash of cold clear plucking and strumming and fiddlin and hootin and doing every goddamned thing god damned us all to do 4/5

#1391 The Gordons (NZ) - The Gordons

It's not rock and roll if you know what's going to happen next. That goes for yall listeners and that goes for the band itself. It's the energy of moment and if you designed it you fucked it up. Plan, practice, then show up and let it happen.

That energy's on display on The Gordons' debut LP - here's guys who heard postpunk and decided that they were going to take it up a notch, past where they where ready - that goes for the listener too.

Alister's frantic yelp, those bipiditbibitibtybipt bass skitters, that shammering, shttering guitar wash, full of hooks with barbs, full of couldntgiveafuck that it'd take us 5-10 years to catch up to stateside.

You get that perfect power here, of people making music without bothering to wonder if they're making it wrong. Nothing better than that - even if the debut EP was better for its raw freshness - it's part part of a downward slide into propriety for these lads, grab this last gasp at greatness as it flies on by 4/5

#1390 Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gilespie - Bird and Diz

bwopaboppabweedaleeda-bwaaah!

fastslooowfastynastyfastslooooooow. fast! fa! fas! slooowididity - idity - fast!

I'm sure what these guys are doing is brilliant. And if you dig in, these little horn lines they do fly. But before long it sounds like people circling eachother in an argument where nobody's making any particular headway and the same points get rephrased from slightly different angles. Gimme some atmosphere, some structure, some tang of effort - this feels like guys coasting on talent and I demand a little more sweat in my tunes 2.5/5

#1389 The Gordons (NZ) - Future Shock EP

Before there was Bailter Space there was The Gordons, and The Gordons were hardhitting, garagey, couldn't giveafuck shitkickers and they fucking ruled. This was the height of what these guys could do, sparks flying, flywheels coming detached, some relentless robotic incarnation of the Iggy Pop Memorial Hall of Stooges gone broken on a singleminded accidental bydesign bludgeoning rampage.

This is the kinda shit that makes you say "well fucking duh albini wanted on board this shit" because they were totally out-big-blacking him and telegraphing some of the Pixies best 7yearshence tricks while they were at it. That guitar sound, that tendon-throb bass, it's enough to make you want a proper album of this shit, even while you recognize that this little 3-songer was the best possible package for this payload 4.5/5

#1388 Ace Frehley - Space Invader

Look, word got around our tiny office that Ace had an album out that had lurched its way up some billboard chart's dinosaur ass. So, fuckit.

Look, if my buddy said "my dad made this album in his home studio" I'd politely (but sincerely!) say "hey, this sounds really good!" But there'd be this unspoken "...for an album that some random dude slapped together".

And that's is where this album lands: the guitar chops are solid, the songwriting AC/DC-simple but good enough for what it is. But the mix is thin, with almost nothing to surprise you at any point. The phoned-in cover of SMB's The Joker just about sums it up. Hey! you made classic rocking! That's great champ 2.5/5

#1387 The Human Instinct - Stoned Guitar

Sub-Grateful Dead, sub-Hendrix guitar jam blueism. The guitar solos sound like they're a thousand miles away from the rest of the band, doing their own sloppy noodly-noodly-waaaah with almost no regard for the beat, so even when they're good they've got no connection to the overslow backing. Messy stuff that lives up to the album title 2/5

#1386 Rustie - Glass Swords

Rustie's 2011 debut falls somewhere between bigdrop bros-on-molly dubstep and wobblefuck artshit dubsteb and manages to be better than either. It's good, swooping fun and packed with ideas about how to fill the spaces between notes, whether with overblown bass, prefuse vocal snickersnaps, or hall-of-mirrors synth scintillations.

Hamfisted in places, up its own arse in others, its a net win - worth hearing for fans trying to keep the latest wave at arm's reach while keeping a finger on its pulse 3.5/5

#1385 Boom Bip - Zig Zaj

A scattershot rotation of seamripping bass, Manitoba breakbeats, synth surges, guest vocalists, and overblown production. This is 10 ideas in search of an album - none of the songs have much of anywhere to go once they've revealed their intention, nor do they add up to much stacked alongside 9 brothers. Tumtum alone stands out as a song whose centerpiece sound is enough to carry it - the rest sound like demos that could have used a little more time in the oven 2.5/5

#1384 Split Enz - Mental Notes

A pretty, hooky, quietly strange album, labyrinthine with changes in tone and tempo. This is somewhere between art rock and prog, but it's so damned easy to listen to it's hard to peg it as either. It sounds like some lost Genesis album that should have followed Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, a blueprint for how that band could have transitioned towards pop with grace.

Full of baroque detail and forward-leaning production touches, this free associates and leaps through its own wormholes in an effortless dream. Most importantly, all of the strangenesses it conjures are in service of that phantasmal atmosphere - nothing feels done for its own showy sake.

I've still got some untangling to do on this one, but it's got my attention - it'll surprise you near-constantly, give it a listen if you're into that kind of thing 4/5

#1383 Bailter Space - Thermos

I've been knocking a lot of these New Zealand bands for sounding too much like their influences, but here's one where the Kiwis just might be ahead of the curve. Thermos is a hard slash of dissonant post-punk, jagged-as-shit guitars, blownout yelped disinterest/desperation, heedless drums - all before the 80's really got hold of this stuff in earnest. It's tense, complex, uncompromising stuff.

Too much setup for the payoff a lot of the time, but if you're in the mood for a simmering nightmare in a ringy metal cube - who isn't from time to time? - here's yer fix 3/5

#1382 Goldenhorse - Riverhead

A slow-growing smash in New Zealand, hitting #1 a couple years after its release - this is far too pop, far too blankly pretty for my tastes. The real problem is Kirsten Morrell's inflected little voice, full of twangy angst worthy of Lisa Loeb, keening over very songwritterey little songs. Funky the way Dave Mathews Band is funky. There's highlights here and there, the title track has a great chorus swell and rolling menace in its analog organs, but getting there's a journey though Candyland 2.5/5

#1381 Opossom - Electric Hawaii

Another ex-Mint Chick project, this time from singer Kody Nielson, whose auto-tuned, doubled-up shimmersingin from Chicks circa Screens is on full display.

Other than that distinctive vocal tick though, this has the same problem as the just-covered Ruby Suns album: too much reliance on 60's and 00's influences (highlight Blue Meanies is a dead ringer for late-era Beck, Why Why is as similar to George's Wah-Wah in sound as it is in name). It fares better at the end when things get noisier and weirder (Cola Elixer's orrery swirls), but it's mostly very indistinct, with few real memorable moves. Too much NZ pretty and too little NZ punch 3/5

#1380 The Ruby Suns - The Ruby Suns

New Zealand week continues!

A band deeply influenced by all things dense and pretty. The album is sometimes very Beach Boys and Beatles, and sometime *very* Beach Boys (Function of the Sun) and Beatles (that She's So Heavy riff on Birthday on Mars), with plenty of Flaming Lips shimmer and whimper for good measure (Trepidation Part 2) and a bonus dusting of late-era Beck all about. The Shins too. Oh No Oh My. I could go on.

And it *is* pretty! Dense with prettiness! But none of it really sticks, washing into your memories of its comebefores. A perfectly agreeable, disposable piece of breezily arty, poppy indie 3/5

#1379 Die! Die Die! - Die! Die! Die!

New Zealand week! I'm a huge Mint Chicks fan (RIP) for one, and always found the garagey/pretty sounds coming out of the country agreeable. Let's take a quick tour.

First up, a ragged slab of post-hardcore shouting, sounding exactly as Steve Albini-produced as it, in fact, is. All them thin drums and jagged guitars. The fact that they toured, at various points, with Franz Ferdinand and Blood Brothers also makes a lot of sense: they land about halfway in between those bands on the hooky/screamy polished/falling-to-shit scales without being quite as boring/unlistenable as either.

Vaguely dancable, with a cheeky bit of wit (dig those song titles), this is good, if unremarkable fun - it mostly makes me miss Single Frame who struck the balance better.

Now I'm just listening to Wetheads Come Running. That albums rules.

3.5/5

#1378 Bear in Heaven - Time is Over One Day Old

One part cyclical Beta Band hypnosis, one part nauseating surging synths and sounds, this is hooky, disorienting stuff that seems very 2014. Fundamentally trippy, fleetingly inventive - I can't decide if I like it or not, it slips through my fingers like a suggestion, like a drug it alters and dilates and slightly sickens. That's a good trick if nothing else 3/5

#1377 Slow Magic - Triangle

There's warning signs here that this is going to be another of those slurred-for-doing-something-new's-sake messes. And Corvette Cassette, from its 80's-wanking title to its slowdubbed synths to its garbled chants is all things wrong with music in the early 10's.

But if you hang with, Slow Magic finds little moments of, well, magic. Little tinklings of piano, that woooOOOB-TCH gutwrencher on Feel Flows, that heartbeat-burble that out-DCRS&LG-era-M83's M83 on Circle - actual little flashes of innovation among the well-worn gimmicks. Quietly intriguing, even if that wobble-wobble-slur sets my teeth on edge 3/5

#1376 Alpis - Med Öppna Ögon EP

This guy's no Sjukstugan, making more of that huge-beat, hands-in-the-air live rap thing, full of overblown angles - this feels more inspired by American hip hop and less like its own magical thing. But it still kind of works. My love for Swedish as a language to hear banged into rhythmic shapes only grows; head-bobbing shit yet again 3/5

#1375 Sjukstugan - Rap pa Svenska

Swedish is a good fucking language for hip hop. Who knew? Those clipped syllables, those round vowels, those inflected consonants. I don't know a word of this, but as vocal sound, as pure verbal rhythm - it's a pretty sick beat.

The fact that the beats themselves are kicking is the other half of the equation. Full of fat bass, electronic squiggles, and surprise angles, this shit is guaranteed get your head bobbing and make you feel like a cool motherfucker. Hip hop outta have a message, sure, and I don't know what these guys' is, but as pure music this is a killer surprise find 4/5

#1374 Sigur Ros - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust

Sigur Ros work best when they're slippin outward to the stars and inward to the soul, never better embodied than by that Aegis Byrjun astral alien baby. Their debut's otherworldly timbres, ( )'s terrifying inversions - all that mystery made their cooing worth enduring.

Here's an album of Sigur Ros exposed to the light - on the first couple tracks it soars, sounding like the Polyphonic Spree keening from across the abyss of a good trip. But afterwards, we're just left with their music as it is. It challenges you to accept it for itself without its intrigue. 'Do you love me for who I really am?' it asks.

Not really. I mean, you're fine, but I don't know if this is really going anywhere between us 3/5

#1373 Pet Shop Boys - Please

Pet Shop Boys can't decide if they want to take a critical Pulp-style sneer at the hollow nightclubbers or make music *for* them, so you get something a little incisive, a little dancable, and almost entirely miserable. It's a club scene hatefuck.

West End Girls is a tease, that drunken mellotron, that fat synth throb, thick with nightlife neon flicker and humid haze. The boys never find that high again though. Love Comes Quickly conjures a little bit of atmosphere, but everything else just sounds like the post-disco 80's: utterly disposable, grasping at a night that will surely end 2/5

#1372 James Burton - The Guitar Sounds of James Burton

Dude's a legend, and he does get in some tricks on that guitar, working in all the between-note nuance you could want, soaring with acute shining edge, leaping on the runs, riding the decay. Mystery Train has that rollick rollin.

But instrumental cover albums (two originals notwithstanding) are the lowest form of music. There's not much soul here, sounding too muso and too pop all at once. The record's an ipod - sleek and expensive and cheap 2.5/5

#1371 Ty Segall - Manipulator

A lush, hypnotic, timeless album, this is pure glam rock into chugging proto-metal. Every song finds its core riff and spins it in place while swooning sentiment and a clatter of inventive guitar solos hold court. There's palpable glitter and shine with real rock energy, a cascade through a history of Queen, T-Rex, and the Stooges at their slinkiest. Brilliant is the word.

The variety, the 17-song generosity, the whole-album flow - I can't be help but be reminded of all time personal favorite Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

It's a departure from Segall's pure shitkicking garage energy, and it truly catches fire only occasionally, but it's a glorious triumph in its own way. Dude's a fucking genius, this is a serious contender for my album of the year 4.5/5

#1370 Magic People - You are the Magic People

Listen / buy here!
 
Slightly tuneless, slow-paced, angular post-punk drenched in offkilter synth washes, evoking the mellower side of early Enon, Single Frame, and not to sound like a super hipster overobscure shithead - Built to Spill bassist Brett Nelson's side project The Suffocation Keep. And maybe even Ween, 'cause these guys just sound like they don't give a fuck, droning their way through quiet nightmares and can-barely-be-bothered-to-hate half-joking disdain for the world and everything in it.

It's clumsy, frustrating, and just strange enough, just charming enough, stuffed with just enough surprising angles to recommend pretty strongly to fans of strange, dissonant, fuck-you stuff 3/5

(disclosure: drum programmer / lead laugher Jesse Hubble's a buddy of mine)

#1369 The Ventures - Another Smash!!!

I mostly knew these guys from their legendary Live in Japan sets and this is more of the same, perfectly agreeable, snaky instrumental surf rock. Or maybe its twangy country - it's an interesting little straddler, sounding like rolling hills and rolling surf in turn, ringing like slowly unfolding adventure 3.5/5

#1368 Miles Davis - On the Corner

Wild, dangerous, stuff. This reeks of heat, of desperation, of energy, reading like a wildly psychadelic funk album as much as rock-instrumented hard, free jazz. Drums stomp from beyond, guitars skitter and wail, bass pops and thrashes and throbs, while a cast of horns enters and writhes and exits stage left. That bass, that endless, whalloping bass. Powerful stuff.

I keep saying "stuff". These songs have substance, they get on you like sweat, that kind of summer sweat that lets you know you're surviving and alive 4/5

#1367 Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians

Burgeoning trumpet great John Cross introduced me to Reich's minimalism years ago, but it's got a lot more backdoors to get its hooks in me in 2014. The way notes melt into texture on this hourlong song, the way you get those buzzes and surges that I reach for via electronics, achieved via the sheer culmination of decisively analog sounds, the emotional switches flipped by the abstract.

It's an experience, somehow soothing and tense, changing drastically depending on how closely you listen. Vital, easy, difficult, slippery stuff - been on my mind since first listen 4/5

#1366 Kiss - Alive!

Kiss! Hah.

This does shred in places, legitimately gets that meedlie-meedlie-meedlie-meedlie! thing cranking. And there's a fist pumping energy to it, sure. But what's exciting for a few songs inevitably degenerates into samey ham-fisted heavy-metal riffage.

Also, wow, does that crowd noise sound fake. Coupled with the specter of some controversy regarding what, on the disc, was actually recorded live, makes this sound more like an annoying studio album a lot of the time.

Stage banter highlights include:

"I got this feeling tonight's gonna be one of those hot nights!"

"I wanna know...how many people over here... ... ... ... like to party!? ...all right."

and, totally non-consecutively:

"I wanna know! How many people here like to take a taste of alcohol!? ...all right."

Charisma. There's dumb rock and roll and there's dumb rock and roll, and this is both.

Not to mention, most of the songs are about women: half about how they're deceitful destroyers, half of how they Got to Choose, Got Nothin' to Lose, and should C'mon and Love Me, all couched in this vague threatening slime.

If Kiss was a guy, he would be a total bro pickup artist / borderline date rapist. Pass.

2.5/5

#1365 The Black Keys - Turn Blue

This starts off promising: 7-minute opener Weight of Love has power to spare, from its spare accoustic intro to its headphone-ready dangermouse-driven atmospherics to its suite of crushing guitar solos, its another, deeper, heavier level for The Black Keys.

But the rest of the album keeps the same clothes without bothering to keep up the swagger that pulled them off. Things get a bit predictable: take Year in Review where Intro + FirstVerse = FirstChorus so precisely that the motherfucker feels familiar the first time you hear it. The same overcrisp beats, those crooning vocals, those anthemic zero-deviation choruses, that stuffed-full spectrum, we've lost any last vestiges of the garage rock energy that got us excited about these guys circa Thickfreakness.

I praised Danger Mouse's production on Attack and Release, where he had a surprisingly light touch - just tightened up the corners on the basic Black Keys sound. But this ends up sounding like a Broken Bells record half the time, scrubbing the Keys into the Shins. Or maybe one of those forgettable records Beck kept putting out in the early aughts.

There is one place where this latest evolution serves the band: an emphasis on solos. They're longer and more adventurous than ever before, but they're lost in a haze that's anathema to that clean, hard sound that used to define them. The Black Keys've become the kind of band that *needs* solos to punch up their sound - used to be just playing rock and roll was enough 2.5/5

#1364 Tim Buckley - Starsailor

This must have caught a lot of record buyers on the back foot. Lookit that schmuck on the album cover, with that name {Tim} {Buckley}, you're expecting some real Paul Simon / James Taylor, let me croon to you from across your coffee kinda scene.

What you get is a nightmare of wailing, keening free-jazz hard freak-folk neverending implosion, Buckely's voice yowling and careening though a night-black void while a band of zombie geniuses flails at their instruments with uncanny restraint. To call it unpleasant is an understatement.

Damn, I do admire it somehow. And damn it is it a hell of a trip to listen to, legitimately mind-changing in its violent disregard for structure and sense. I highly recommend that you listen to this once.

Though, when it was over I did say out loud "Wow, that sucked."

2.5/5

#1363 Wire - Chairs Missing

Pink Flag didn't impress me as much as I'm told it was supposed to, but this shit. Wow was this way the hell ahead of its time in nineteen goddamn seventy eight.

I was getting real burned out on rock, hell, on music. Every once in a while you need something like this to come along and smack you - packed with nasty edges, full of arty angles, altogether mildly unpleasant to listen to, but also packed with moments of real vulnerability and beauty, all the tones on rotating dimmers, dumping walls of guitar noise, electronic washes, weird loops, and straight up great hooks into a time-lapse rock tumbler, watching the whole thing fall out smooth and impossible.

Truly exciting shit, endlessly surprising, full of secret passages I'm sure I haven't found yet 4.5/5

#1362 Lonnie Mack - The Wham of that Memphis Man!

Criminally underappreciated - this guy rules. Plays the guitar like a mean rockability motherfucker, shouts with gospel fury like the best of 'em, really blows the roof off the place. This is galloping, thrilling shit, always one step ahead, with that teeth-grittingly sweet guitar leading the way all the way 4.5/5

#1361 The Rentals - The Return of the Rentals

Well, it'd just be negligent not to mention Weezer, since this their bassist's side project and musically the apple doesn't fall real far from the tree. Weezer with more bass presence. Really good, fat, fuzzy bass, actually. Also, Weezer with girl vocals, some squonky synth parts, double the cuteness, half the scruffiness. Which is to say: perfectly solid power-pop / pop-punk, providing few surprises, but plenty of crunch, hooks, and guileless deadpan charm 3.5/5

#1360 Harold Budd - Perhaps

Patient. Is the word. Solo piano that's all about shape, about finding a chord and letting that motherfucker ring on into extra dimensions till it's got body. Exceedingly minimal, glacially paced // strangely soothing, strangely compelling, nearly perfect for a very specific kind of blighted snowy Sunday morning 3/5

#1359 Charles Wright and The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band - Hot Heat and Sweet Groove

Instrumental funk / soul, with shades of tons of bands I like, but it never quite gets there. A little too precise, a step too slow // not enough soul, not enough funk. Consider: covers of Yellow Submarine and Girl from Ipanema. Cute, unnecessary. Even that album title is a bit of show-don't-tell sinning.

This never quite gets past making you want to relisten to the other bands that do it better 2.5/5

#1358 Richard Hell and the Voidoids - Blank Generation

Nasty little bastards making this record, with twice the spit of punk bands twice their size, Hell himself spitting twice the wit. The fact that they're right talented musicians, cramming herkyjerky effortless razorblade punk full of hooks seals the deal. Classic stuff 4/5

#1357 FKA twigs - LP1

Oh fuck no.

Let's pray all this electronic wobble / microglitch / hyper-auto-tune small dick contest's finally reached its climax.

It's all just reflex now. Notes are passe, they say. Beats are done, singing, totally //fin. So they throw it all out without having any good ideas about what to put in its place. This is pure producer wankerey masquerading as the new - the fact that it's awful to listen to and thematically shallow besides is only gravy.

Iconic childhood experience: there's one kid who's just trying to fit in. Another kid tells a non-joke: "Two frogs are in the shower. One says to the other...pass the salt!" to see if the poor sucker'll laugh.

What I'm saying is- and look, if you like this album that's your prerogative. Maybe you find something in it I don't. Sincerely. But what I'm saying is, if you like this, it's likely you aren't paying any fucking attention to the content of the conversation 1.5/5

#1356 Grateful Dead - Live/Dead

3 parts:

* Dark Star opens up with 20+ minutes of aimless noodling, little runs running nowhere. Word is they practiced this song like crazy so they can improvise in it smoothly - this is the best they got out of all that work? beedoop beedop deooop deeooop x 1000.
* The after a transitional St Steven, the next two tracks rule: The Eleven's the best Dead song I've heard, and Turn on Your Love Light spins from a Doorsey raveup to something far more frantic and exciting.
* And then the last 2 tracks (plus a blank "goodnight") go right on back out to the nowhere we started from. I could almost forgive Feedback if I hadn't already used up most of my indulgence-tolerating goodwill on Dark Star.

So, one out of three, doesn't seem that good, but the sum's more than the parts somehow. Maybe you need those boring bookends to set the stage, to give you passage too and from that realm of rock. The Dead remain a frustrating band, but this album, at its best moments, is the best thing I've heard from them by a mile, evoking those dusty SF clubs, in all their aimless psychedelia and transcendent collision. I almost love the parts I hate, just for their larger role in the experience. Could be a grower 4/5

#1355 Duane Eddy - Have 'Twangy' Guitar Will Travel

Shoulda been "Twongy" guitar if you ask me. That big bold sound, all that reverb, that weight on each note, that's a TWONG, big and round. "Twangy" makes it sound a little bit country and this is very much rock and fuckin roll.

From that Yakety Sax Sax to that fabulous Fabulous Wailers background yelping, to that big Dick Dale surf ride, to that no-rush Link Wray spacing, this is a grand tour of kickass old-school instrumental guitar sounds. The lack of focus, lack of any particular mood this exactly suits, keeps this out of legendary territory as an album, but if you don't mind a loose fit this makes a fascinating headphone listen and radical background music for any time hot and cool besides 4/5

#1354 Gondoliers - Tonight's Whispering

Overblown megaphone shouting, artlessly barfed over overblown bass and blaring, mouthy halfbroken synths. It's a messy, lumbering mess, Enon vs Christopher Nolan Frankenstein vs David Lynch Godzilla, songs hammering a single idea into black oil submission, half angry and two thirds resigned.

But, you know? Pretty good for that kind of thing. Gotta admire the commitment.

3/5

#1353 Alien Knife Fight - Debut EP

That Morphine 2-string slide bass, drenched in Stoogey hypnosis - it's a record full of menace and slinking sex.

Those structures, with their abnormal patience, their horn squonks, call up Menomena's Deeler experiments.

Monique Ortiz's vocals, stunning live, don't quite lift off the record, leaving a hole where its dark, mechanical heart should be.

I guess a hole's pretty menacing. That should almost work better. I give it a hole-plus 3/5

#1352 Silversun Pickups - Swoon

There's a lot to like here: that ever-Pumpkinsey guitar crush is still overwhelming and beautiful, and the album's full of tonal trapdoors and shifting sonic walls that keep the labyrinth breathing. Brian Aubert's vocals though, shit. Landing somewhere between Corgan's nasal whine and Maida's inflected quabble, it's just too much after a song or two, distractingly distinct, a neon paintball hit on a Mondrian masterpiece. A tragic miss, coulda been something with a different dude at the front 2.5/5

#1351 The Black Crowes - My Morning Song

Shamelessly grasping for the no-frills pub rock crunch of the 70's, this does achieve what it set out to. Specifically, the Crowes sound right like The Faces, right down to that Rod Steward scour, and they do nary a damned thing to overreach and betray their gritty cred, taking about zero chances.

Chances are for fancy art rockers and we are not that.

The band takes the retro thing too far, doing too little to update the sound, and far too little to differentiate itself from itself, leaving you unable to tell one verse on a one-verse-too-long song from another 2.5/5