#1493 Warm Soda - Young Reckless Hearts

They just don't make gliding little rock groups like this any more, banging out catchy little ditties with just a dusting of grit. With the innocence of 80's underground, Young Reckless Hearts is about the perfect album title, sounding like a band just doing their thing in a single breath -- this's breezily enjoyable Replacements-style rock and roll 3.5/5

#1492 Davilla 666 - Davilla 666

These Puerto Rican dudes came to party, packed with gargey grit sung Spanishwise, but also wolf howls, yup-da-da-da-da!s, uh-uaaaaaa!s, and woo-hoo!s. There's noise and rage, but also moments of beauty -- the joy of being alive. The thin mix and undermuscled sheetmetal guitars makes this more grating than noise has gotta be, but the spirit of an ancient, impossible demo tape burns bright 3.5/5

#1491 King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizards - Oddments

In the weird valley these guys have a place on the corner of Zappa St. and True Star-Era Rungren Blvd, somewhere between The Frogs on floor 4 and Ariel Pink in the penthouse on the Structure Structure.

Boys keep it delightfully fuzzy, freaky, lo-fi, but the pacing's inconsistent and slapdash. There's a left turn on a song-by-song basis, but individual songs reveal themselves and then just churn for the duration - you're set up to expect surprises, but few come.

But! Man, that Nick Drake twinkling on the 2nd-to-last track works wonders, a sensitive moment that gives humanity to everything that came before. That alone ups this a solid half point to a solid 3/5

#1490 Yo La Tengo - Fade

Fade's a perfectly competent album, and I hate to nail a band for doing what they do, but how many mostly interchangeable Yo La Tengo albums can we possibly praise? I think even their biggest fans would admit they sound a bit on autopilot here.

Crux of the matter: Well You Better. Possibly the hookiest song on the album, but that brushy beat, that meandering organ, that microfunk guitar -- it sounds like an all-Tengo Girl Talk track. It's cute! Even great! But even as it wins you over, in comes that little Frampton guitar talktalk like a starburst labeled "New!" and it tips into contrived. Pop's a razor's edge baby. Elsewhere extra little horns and strings wander in, but it just feels like frosting.

Most damingly, the heart and soul of the YLT experience, the endless droning wanderer, doesn't quite make itself known, the opening and closing tracks trying gamely but hewing just too carefully to ever make it to forbidden places. Frustratingly decent stuff 3.5/5

#1489 Machinedrum - Vapor City

Landing somewhere between subpar Prefuse tracks and pure glitch on the barely-there-o-meter, each track on Vapor City stitches an itchy beat to a warped sample or two and kind of throws washes and dub moves at them while they toddle around. There's the occasional burble of emotional resonance, but this mostly sounds like lazy looperism.

Thankfully, I'm pretty sure this whole slurry/samply/sub-IDM-revival movement died out in 2013 -- it reeked of shallow newness for its own sake from the moment it skittered under the door 2/5

#1488 Bjork - Homogenic

Let's get this out of the way: Bjork's voice is fucking annoying, and it's prevented me from getting through her albums for years.

But! I like what she does with it: the melodies are bonkers, the subject matter seen from alien angles, the backing beating Radiohead to a half-dozen punches by a decade or two. The album's unique. That's not nothing.

But! It's also icy, distant, unrelatable. It's showy in its strangeness, with none of Radiohead's engagement with our times, none of Sigur Ros's born-from-space effortlessness. It's unwillingness to entice me, to appeal to me, to speak a single uninflected, undecorated word, keeps me from treating it as more than a curiosity 3/5

#1487 Wet Nuns - Wet Nuns

Hard rock grind and groan that never really finds anywhere to go, shouting and lurking, building a riff but never really finding anything to do with it -- all threat, no action. It could work for a song or two, but that same ragged shouting and monolithic levels paper over even the interesting bits until it all sounds gunmetal grey. This lands in that forbidden valley of riffage: not interesting enough // not basic enough 2.5/5

#1486 Lindstrom - Where You Go I Go Too

The halfhour title track's the centerpiece, a slowgrower that's part Kraftwerk, part Pink Floyd, all classic roadtrip ambient - the kind of roadtrip that melts roads into blackness and passing reflectors into distant stars and on into the astral motherfucking plane. Heady shit.

The remaining halfhour works better as the delirious outflow of that initial trip - there's far more of Lindstrom's usual endless arpeggios and space disco mastery but by the time you get to em you'll be good and primed 4/5

#1485 The Staple Singers - Uncloudy Day

Pure gospel singing that tips over just ever so gracefully into blues thanks to some guitar rumble and shimmer. Deep full of soul, bursting with desperation and hope, songs mull in place, smoldering, cleansing - beautiful stuff 4/5

#1484 Suede - Suede

These guys were saddled with being the next Smiths, the next big English thing, by an English press desperate for a flagbearer for an English rock resurgence, a forgotten isle in the sea between Madchester and Britpop.

This isn't just my periodic stab at actual writing, it's really the easiest way to understand what this album sounds like: like a post-Smiths band with all the moaning and mellodrama, with a pre-Oasis dollop of swirling guitars and 60's-70's-please-help-us-old-rock-gods revivalism. It's an English rock band that knows they need to bring something more to the table, but they still can't quite split from the church of Morrisey, arriving at something that's a little too self-serious, a little too self-conscious, running on a little too long, having fun occasionally in spite of itself 2.5/5

#1483 Okkervil River - The Silver Gymnasium

These guys just don't sound desperate anymore, they're just making music. Tuneful tunes, with little kinks here and there that will pique your eyebrow at just the right moment, but it sounds so under control, so designed, with none of that haunted euphoria that marked earlier stuff, the unmatched Black Sheep Boy in particular 3/5

#1482 OBN IIIs - Live in San Francisco

Here's the OBN III's teased on Third Time to Harm, that wall to wall shitkicking, that couldntgiveafuck // aggressive nastiness weaponized in some of the best stage banter I've ever heard. Orville Bateman Neeley III (mystery solved!) gives the band real swagger, check his shouting match with a fan at the end of New Innocence, where he manages to be a total dick, a pretty nice guy, and not really give a shit, all at once. That's rock and roll, and the thundering, enormous, Thor's garage sound backs it up.

In and gone in 26 minutes, wish I'd been there 4.5/5

#1481 Hawkwind - Space Ritual

"He's in a Floyd hole!" Dr Venture yelps circa season 3, finding Hank passed out, limbs hung slack over a sea of classic prog sleeves.

Fuck Pink Floyd though, you want to talk about music that you can overdose on, this is it. Bass brings the metal backbone, guitar washes, swirling solos, and sax squalls make for a cosmic soup with looping sharks; tracking one lets the others in the back door and you're gone. It borders on ridiculous with its operatic exhalations of cosmic insignificance and the perils of sonic attack, but if you're looking to really prog out, to really go hard with both hands behind your back, this is the shit 4/5

#1480 Kid Kongo and the Pink Monkey Birds - Haunted Head

Haunted doom-wop sung with a tittering deathbed smile, Kid Kongo's a swaying, swaggering, staggering weirdo in no rush to get where he's doing. There's plenty of zappaesque retro slop and pyschobilly schlock; with glints of swampy, stoned fun it's a bouncy carriage ride to nowhere 3.5/5

#1479 Cheap Time - Cheap Time

Trashy, all-treble garagey shredding and smashing. On paper, this sounds like something legends like fallen Jay Reatard and Exploding Hearts might have put out, but it doesn't *quite* work, isn't quite exciting or personal enough to really hook you. Maybe being doomed is the secret ingredient. Sorry kids. 3/5

#1478 Oblivians - Desperation

Pure stomp. No frills shouting over endless chug and perfect steady beats, go go garage with the ghost of Jay Reatard. Tales of everyday trouble, shreddy guitars, caked with grit you can believe in 3.5/5

#1477 Useless Eaters - Bleeding Moon

It's not that this album does anything much better than that OBN IIIs album below -- its attitude's less purely nasty, its riffs don't hit as hard, it lacks Third Time to Harm's sloppy charm. But it's got the pacing down,  bristling with brisk little grinders that keep you engaged, there's urgency and peril here that keeps the heartrate up, and it makes for an altogether more fun, scuzzy garage // punk listen 4/5

#1476 OBN IIIs - Third Time to Harm

Opening track No Time for the Blues comes on in such a furious charge that you really buckle in for a ride. And there's Stoogey rollick and hard-Stones sneer to spare, but it's all a bit monochrome, with pacing that can't keep the party rolling, straddling hungover fuckoff and invincible rush without settling into either. A fun, nasty, strangely disappointing album 3/5

#1475 Lindstrom & Christabelle - Real Life is No Cool

Lindstrom's still on top of his game as space disco overlord, and I like that he's branching out, getting a dedicated vocalist to lead his toothsome synth spirals. I just don't know if Christabelle's a good choice, she's too typically icy, too cloyingly exotic, never building any real rapport. That arch little title says it all, the album creates a space populated by pretentious twits - it's nowhere I want to hang out 2.5/5

#1474 The Juan Maclean - In a Dream

Classic DFA double-disco, full of synthy arpeggios, big bass and one-stop-two-stop beats. Nancy Whang lends keening vocals to most of the tracks: whether you like this hinges on whether you like her.


If you ask me, she's ok. Melodic, with a touch of mystery, but she doesn't exactly set the place on fire. And she sets up a situation where MacLean himself seems pretty bloodless by comparison, riffing on // ripping off James Murphy and late-era Bowie, the songs them selves sounding an awful lot like Grimes (The Sun Will Never Set on our Love) and, well, LCD (Love Stops Here). It's all too familiar, effortless cool tipping over into a lack of effort 2.5/5

#1473 Clark - Clark

Unknowable, unmakable glitchy house, full of scratchy textures and ever-echoing atmospherics, wearing skyscrapers down to dust over centuries. Beats battle sounds, sides sway, a soundtrack to a strange dark film that's over before you know it. Quietly fascinating stuff 3.5/5

#1472 Adhesive Wombat - Marsupial Madness

8-bit's pretty played out, often gimmick, usually showoff, seldom better than something you could do with better tools.

But AW's using 8-bit as a starting point, swinging video game motivation and propulsion with a giant metal arm made of buzzy waymorethan8bit synths, churning guitars, and real ass beats. And yeah, the occaisional bleepy bloopy, but as intro, as accompaniment, appetizer and sauce - dude knows we gotta eat meat and dude brings some meaty motherfuckers, competing with Justice and Vitalic on the rockist techno front. Hooky, stern, clever, banging stuff 4/5

#1471 FaltyDL - In the Wild

Skipping the 2's and 4's, going all skitterey glitch, all 90's IDM, all prefuse samplelooper -- it's like Falty had to go out there and prove he can checklist styles. He almost pulls it off! But despite some mysterious moments, some clever tricks, the sense of song is missing. Everything loops longer than it should, never building onward or inward, like an instrumental version of a hip hop album, but without that lyrical negative space to justify its persistence 2.5/5

#1470 DJ Koze - Reincarnations, Pt. 2 The Remix Chapter 2009-2014

Less remixing than very diligent sampling, Koze grabs some core snippet from a song, puts it on a giant dumbwaiter, gives it a halfhearted push, and lets it circle back into view, again and again, while his housey beats and synthy washes pulse and drip.

Highly hypnotic, deeply patient // a little formless, a little overlong. But if you're looking to space out for damn near an hour and a half you could do a lot worse 3.5/5

#1469 Wand - Ganglion Reef

MORE TY SEGALL COLLABS.

Tremendous fuzz, interstellar solos, moments of riffage and fragile grace, wrapped up in waifish, reverbey vocals that give the whole thing a slimy translucent pink sheen. It's slippery stuff, hooks buried under squish - I liked it, wanted to love it, but it just kept slipping out of my grasp 4/5

#1468 Trentemoller - The Last Resort

Minimal-approaching-ambient electronics full of creeping atmospher // tension, interrupted with melody and texture only insidiously. Packed as full of Atticus Ross insect rhythms and Lychian menace as it is, it's surprisingly listenable, slitherey and fitted with rounded hooks on soft springs, a trip through an arcane world with a charming arcane guide that you mostly trustnand you kinda want to get with 3.5/5

Month in Review: October '14

A frantic month of work left me with too little energy to get super adventurous with new stuff or embark on any epic research projects. Instead I ended up hitting mostly-underwhelming albums by known quantities (!!!, Cibo Matto, Basement Jaxx, Legowelt, Tobacco, Sjukstugan) and trawled the blogs for newer stuff to round out my 2014 lists. Still gems to be had! Especially from the seemingly-endless expanses of Ty Segall collaborators, a connection that seldom disappoints. For example:

Album of the Month
Mikal Cronin - MCII - I've cooled on this a bit, it's a little too pop to last as your favorite thing ever forever, but I listened to this a boatload this month. Catchy, intricate, undemanding, never boring, a small masterpiece of big-guitar power-pop.

Also Recommended!
Meatbodies - Meatbodies - On the other side of the Segall spectrum, these guys make heavy, hooky garage-psychadelic-metal that hits like a ton of bricks and still manages to be a ton of fun.

Kurt Vile - It's a Big World Out There (And I Am Scared) - Just when you thought Vile's drawnout, hypnotic, epic guitar sound and craggy groan couldn't get any better, he trims the fat, adds some synths, and ends up with something familiar, different, and quietly magical.

Run the Jewels - Run the Jewels 2 - A hip hop album packed with intricate rhymes and impossible production moves, all while sounding completely effortless, the record in the block of vinyl just waiting to be found.

Courtney Barnett - The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas - Not so much a full recommendation as a special prize for being something I liked a bit when I expected to //hate// it, and for getting Avant Gardener solidly stuck in my head something fierce for a solid week.