#1601 Floating Points - Shadows

The best bit of the just-reviewed Teebs album comes at the very end: a bassoon (?) part flubs some notes and noodles the album off to nothingness. It's alive at last.

Here too the highlights are the imperfect moments, music made by human hands over top of that microhousey perfection. I'm looking at you Myrtle Avenue, with your warm, glowing rhodes breathing life into everything. And at the very end Sais beats with Aphexey tone-pulses.

But then there's the likes of Obfuse and Realise that are offkilter, sure, but sounding more like       k              kk                 k k                k k              k            k k      k           k  k                     k               k                   kk    k                 k               2.5/5

#1600 Teebs - Estara

A meandering mix of ambient, wobblecore and old-school IDM that doesn't really amount to much. Occasionally pretty, but just doing too much subtle weird shit in post to really settle into 2.5/5

#1599 Flying Lotus - You're Dead!

I've always found flylo's stuff pretty oppressive, packed with dark texture, glitchy twitches and some unknowable eldritch atmosphere. This is no different: it's incredibly well put together, insidiously imaginative, and certainly brightened by Thundercat's sprightly bass lines, but I respect it more than I enjoy it. I just feel stoned or soulsucked or something afterwards.

An impressive trick, but not exactly the kind of thing I can recommend fullthroatedly 3/5

#1598 The Byrds - Fifth Dimension

Harmonies!
 Harmonies!
  Harmonies!

Offset to forever!

Bouncy little thisandthat with a touch of that country twang, layered on and on into sheets to help you sleep, daydream or otherwise keep the peace. Super listenable, well-paced proto-psychadelia, bonus for a slightly stranger than usual Hey Joe boxchecker 3.5/5

#1597 Captain Beefheart - Safe as Milk

In 1967 we didn't know Beefheart was going to go all Trout Mask Replica on us yet, so what he does here is a sneaky little sneak. It's a few tracks of pretty straightforward, bluesy // Faces // bar rock, with nothing stranger than a proto-Waitsian wobble to the vocals to tip us off.

And then we're growling our way through Dropout Boogie and theremin-swooning over jagged Electricity and feeling punch-spiked circa Abba Zaba. I knew that album title couldn't be sincere! we'd say. It's a pretty good piece of albumwise maneuvering, and the listen's more fun for it, even if there's nothing as explosively inventive as his later stuff on here 3.5/5

#1596 Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

I spent a first run through rock and roll hitting the foremost album by all the heavy hitters: Sabbath's one of those band's where I'm *still* working my way back through, going "these guys really had a //lot// of good goddamn albums".

The dips into proggy territory work for me. Cos prog rules. Who Are You's synths are a bit much, but Fluff's a great little breather and A National Acrobat is staggering. This is strong stuff: heavy, interesting, super listenable, even if it lacks the violent impact and memorable hooks of the earlier stuff 4/5

#1595 Brownout - Brownout Presents Brown Sabbath

See, now maybe this benefits from coming on right after that bloodless Ronson album, but this is how you put some fucking muscle in your mix: layer it 9 dudes deep and riff on the powerchord godfathers.

Yep: big-band funk covers of Sabbath songs, pretty much sounds like you might expect: power chords with horn flourishes and the occasional jammy detour. It's a gimmick that's good for a listen or two, should be ripping live though 3/5

#1594 Mick Ronson - Slaughter on 10th Avenue

I want to like this, what with its inspired guitar flourishes, its Bowie-wielding stagger and swagger and coo. But this sounds like the snake's cast off skin - the production's tinny, the pacing's plodding, and nothing about it sticks in the ear. It might get in there someday, but I'm spoiled by glam that reaches out and grabs me instead of twisting a toe by the barstools 2.5/5

#1593 Dan Deacon - Gliss Riffer

Deacon's finally done it - he's made that gorgeous, alien, comforting, thrilling post-pop album that always seemed just within arm's reach


Spiderman of the Rings was the breakthrough, half-taming his spastic noisepop instincts into something affecting and bonkers and damned enjoyable in its own batshit way. But that brush with approachability sent him wheeling off in the other direction, into the hyperdense weeds of Bromst and America - brilliant, but more like post-music dissertations than dancefloor manifestos. America was an electronic-prog turning point: had we lost Dan Deacon to a spiral of chinscratching, showoffy process music forever? Was a Metal Machine Music bottomout next?


Just as we despaired, that hand reached out from the pit and grabbed the ledge. Dan's back from the depths and he's dragged everything he's learned back to the surface and he's thrown us a feast of strange fruits and meats and he's telling us the stories of his death and what came after.

This sound like Dan finally ready to make something that people like, and to be ok with that. Each of the first 6 songs has something to grab onto, a cooing ladyvocal, an invitation to "get a little bit closer", a downright approachable hook or three. And it all *flows*, something even the best Dan Deacon album's never done - it's remarkably easy to put this thing on and let it carry you song to song.

Maybe Dan had a lifechanging experience. There's that thread of mortality and beauty and the moment that won't let up, approached with that wide-eyed wonder of Starfucker's Reptillians or The Unicorns' opus, with a sense of community and grabbing hold of everything and everyone around you, or tripping through time and space.

All the signatures are there: the endless titular glissandos, piano overloads, the buzzy buzzes, the snickersnapped vocals, but Deacon's seemingly taken cues from the likes of Laurie Andersen, Steve Reich, and Scott Herren, bringing uncommon warmth from the flintiest of alien ores.

Much of this goes out the window during the last 2 tracks that indulge in more of his usual excesses - they're enjoyable in the usual way, but lose some of this latest album's magic. If you pretend it ends at track 6 you've got the most perfect 28 minute album you're going to hear in a long, long time 4.5/5

#1592 Mind Spiders - Inhumanistic

Relentless, forward-leaning indie rock streaked with pretty flourishes and an unstoppable hyper-motorik, putting the punk back in post-punk, like a stressier Lower Dens.

Individual songs are pretty great, though it rides that relentlessness until it's numbing. The fragile, buzzy, City Stuff is a great little reststop - a couple more diversions like that and these guys could really be onto something - as it is now it's promising stuff that's still a little too one-dimensional to really light me up 3.5/5

#1591 Nobunny - Secret Songs: Reflections From the Ear Mirror

My initial abortive encounters with Nobunny died at the sound of that voice. I like nasty guitars but that voice was sheetmetal qtip.

He's taken it down a notch here, still nasty but unpainful. Well done! The hooks are even better, full of sneering reverence for the early rock and roll / rockabilly classics, with that garagey slash at the altar. Great, nasty, delightfully unpredictable shitshow fun 4.5/5

#1590 Turbo Fruits - Butter

With its straightforward, crunchy guitars and strained vocals, this is the album Supergrass would have made instead of Diamond Hoo Ha if they'd scaled back their ambition, which is a half-bankhanded compliment to everyone involved. The dead-simple, chugging riffage is fun, if wildly unoriginal.

You know what fucks this up for me? That album name / cover. If you're trucking in grit you gotta get the image right and the art completely undercuts any atmosphere the music builds up. It's about the complete package around here, folks 3/5

#1589 Todd Rundgren - Runt

Rundgren's that weird kid in class. You get to know him and he's actually rather sweet. But you still hesitate when he comes in for a hug.

His first solo album works its way through all kinds of blues / pop / soul /schmaltz / rock and roll shapes with a McCartneysian eye for hooks and angles, but also the first stirrings of the offkilter, childlike inventiveness that would later bloom on Something/Anything / A Wizard, A True Star.

It's fascinating, occasionally brilliant, but you still kind of keep it at arm's length. Heck, the mix even makes Rundgren sound physically closer than I'm altogether comfortable with. Sweet kid though 3.5/5

#1588 Hall And Oates - Abandoned Luncheonette

That soft soul-lite rock it do go down smooth. So earnest, so layered. This is the soil that every lovingly soft Conchords/SNL song spawns from.

It's pretty, it's soothing, and dammit I kinda like it -- those warm little keys, those shuffly little drums, those sweet, soft vocals, that proto-Steely Dan production. If you're gonna got for this kind of thing this is about as good as you're gonna do 4/5

#1587 The Smith Street Band - Throw Me in the River

I wanted to like this, so earnestly anthemic, with dust falling off that Australian twang, with its gestures at Hold Steady details and Mountain Goats grasping. But the closest reference point ends up being Mumford and Sons, that numbing nothing-but-climax // generally-always-the-same-climax formula. "SHOUTING THE DETAILS AND FEELINGS OF THE SCENE" seems to be the only gear that Wil Wagner's got. It's nothing you can listen to for more than a song or so without wanting a break 2/5

#1586a Earth, Wind and Fire - That's the Way of the World

Smooth, feelgood, totally agreeable funk-lite. There's real fusion here, real unification of parts to purpose, all those vocals, horns, guitars, synthy lines, strings layered layered layered to make a sweeping thing that's not quite like anything else.

In the end the album can't quite balance its poppy / easy leanings with its jazzy / adventurous side and it ends up being a bit of a strangely-paced hodgepodge, but there's enough twists, turns, and sparkling nuggets to keep things interesting, listen after listen 3.5/5

#1586 Kurt Vile - So Outta Reach

Vile just outviles himself here, most of these songs just chug along unhurriedly with moaning over top, but without that red road ethereal majesty that gets up into his best stuff. Life's a Beach and the title track have it, but overall this is a just-ok, his weakest record among the ones I've heard 3/5

#1585 Krill - A Distant Fist Unclenching

Jonah Furman's gotta be the saddest guy in the Boston music scene. I don't think it's that scenester affect we've got in spades. I don't think its marketable emo. He's just a furiously bummed guy, and it comes across in every interview, every interaction, every yelp and strain and shriek, some neglected child of Oberst and Krug.

The start-stop is hot, the songs are full of ragged energy, but I find all that Furman frisson just too damned much. Fans of those guys I namedropped above check this out for sure 2.5/5

#1584 Tears for Fears - Songs from the Big Chair

80's synth-drvien pop is often described (rightly) by people (like me) as being superficial, delivering platitudes in samey packages, riding the same shallow technological tricks for cheap returns.

And well, that's mostly what this does. But it's also more inventive and expansive than you might guess: the full version of Shout really has room to breathe, and Broken and Mothers Talk doubletime out of the usual 80's stomp to get things burning.

But mostly platitudes and tricks. Just can't truck with this era 2.5/5

#1582 The Frights / Death Lens - Deathfrights EP

The Frights half of this garage/punk split is fine, but doesn't really pull off melody or grit with any real convincingness. The lofi mix and chiming accents are at odds.

The Death Lens half though, that brings it: real propulsion and excitement, with hooks and surfy angles backed with some serious guitar rumble muscle. Reminds me of local favorites Vundabar, and that's a good thing 3.5/5

#1581 Shark? - Savior

Slower and sludgier and samier than True Waste, and California Girls aside, it's mostly hookless, falling into some drudgy Interpol hole. The buzzy crunch just trundles by unknown.

I still need a real name for this thing. Is Alex Hates Music out of the question? 2.5/5

#1581 Woods - Bend Beyond

Gorgeous, rich production full of texture and vibration and verve, plus some really staggering hooks and turns of song that grab your attention and ride it. This is really lush indie rock at its best - except.

Except. God those falsetto vocals are a lot to get past, and they're relentless, doubled, tripled up, all high and tight, trebly nails in my temples. Your enjoyment of this will rest squarely on how much of that you can deal with that 3/5

#1580 Michael Jackson - Bad

I know. I'm disappointed in me too. We had, like, half? this album on a tape in the car as a kid? But once I put it on I'm like "I've totally never heard some of these songs before."

Worse, I know this is part of his big 3, but I'm not a fan.

Not nearly as much fun as Off the Wall, not nearly as wildly inventive as Thriller, that awareness of needing to create a hit is all over this thing, in every overproduced detail, every samey gated snare. Skip to the 1 minute mark of Just Good Friends and then the 1 minute mark of Another Part of Me. Indistinguishable. Do the same thing at 1:30 or so on Liberian Girl and I Can't Stop Loving You, the same crooning and silk sheet strings. I think Quincy had just taken this thing as far as it could go.

Also, is there any better marker of someone who knows they don't have the songwriting goods than the guy who starts nearly every song with a dog bark, or motor growl, or synthy weird noise (which is why I got you skipping all over the place in that example up there). MJ in his prime didn't need to be his own hype man, the songs got right to being great songs without fucking around*.

There's no life here, it's Michael getting high on his own supply, and I think the slide into Dangerous started earlier than people want to recognize. And can anyone honestly tell me that this fake toughguy shit doesn't sound wack like wack by now?

There's hooks, but as I so often complain these days, it's not much fun. Only Smooth Criminal really seems vibrant, everything else is just working. so. hard. to. still. be. so. amazing. It's not cool, and it's not that good 2.5/5

* except, obviously, for Thriller. The beginning of the end?

#1579 Jeff the Brotherhood - Dig the Classics

This 6-pack of previous-gen noiselover covers mostly just cranks up the fuzz on already noisy (wipers, teenage fanclub) and previously frail (colleen green, superearly beck) songs. It's a good summary of the changes in underground-ish rock: those tinny, gettinby days are gone and even the littlest bands seem ready to heave lightning from the godcrusher's garage. The result's are alright, a
"was this what you were going for?" doubleup of some obscure ditties that comes across effortless.

Covering //how// they did it legends like Pixies and MBV is tougher. There's a kitchen sink of knob torques on Gouge Away that add up to a ripping climax, but there's something so damned self-conscious about it. And trying to out-fuzz Come in Alone turns out pretty much how you'd expect.

It's a fun little gimmick this album, but it'd been better if it'd been consistently self-conscious or consistently overreaching. The combination's doesn't feel spontaneous or adventurous and a cover album's gotta pull at least one of those off 3/5

#1578 Nacho Patrol - The Africa Jet Band Album

Legowelt's house/funk experiment continues and grossly overstays its welcome. A backbone loop flops down and noodly arpeggios and lazily improvised synth lines wander over it for way, way longer than stays interesting. The fact that each of the 10 tracks lays down such a similar groove doesn't help, and the whole thing never builds any real motion or tension or emotion.

This basic idea ran out of places to go about 5 minutes before the end of The Maze of Violence 2/5

#1577 Hesselager/Tagel/Laub - Inner Outing

Jazz, I guess, because it's made up of a traditional piano/bass/drums trio, and because it trucks in every-place-but-the-2-and-the-4 kinds of sneakattacks on rhythm. But it finds its way to those offkilter offbeats from a dozen pop-adjacent-adjacent angles, with splashes of Bad Plus rockism, Grasscut soundtracking and Booksian space-play.

That scatter's the best // worst thing about this: it's an unfocused album that can't decide if it's born to wisp or wander or writhe, but it's exciting to see something so playful and untethered to genre convention, that manages to touch so many things and make them so damned accessible 3.5/5

#1576 The Red Crayola - The Parable of Arable Land

Man, it's a damned fine line between a noisy // experimental album that's bullshit and one that's got that something. This's got that something. It's got six tracks named Free Form Freak-Out #[1-6], so you know, it is not like you were not warned.

But its the songs in between, just strange and pretty enough, riding just outside the tattered wake of 1969; its the actual songs that make it sing, that work you into the state to ride those idiotic freakouts; just enough cred in the crannies to spread you right across the whole damned English muffin 4/5

#1575 Pine Barrons - Pine Barrons

Slightly arty, graspingly anthemic, gravelly // pretty - see I woudn't have seen it a couple months ago, but these guys are next wave My Morning Jacket acolytes! That's why they sound a little bit like a lot of things; enjoyable // watered down.

That sounds a little more backhanded than I mean it, but only a little. These guys are perfectly pleasant, far more imaginative than most bands out there. But they lack that fire, that heart of rock and roll, to put them over the top 3/5

#1574 Orgue Electronique - Strange Paradise

Bog standard house variations with a reverence for the basics. Could have come out in '92 for all I can hear. Even the one pop track is almost parody: Our House (natch) is pure, distilled DFA. Newer, but not exactly cutting edge. Unless you are twice the connoisseur as I, this isn't gonna your world on fire 2.5/5

#1573 Nacho Patrol - The Maze of Violence

Propulsive, 80's-nicking night-drive electronica with funk guitars and sawtooth edge. Plus a bullshit lost-Italian-soundtrack backstory worthy of the immortal Shiteasters.

On paper, it sounds awesome. On disc it sounds awesome for a listen or two, but there's not enough going on here to last beyond the novelty phase; each of the 5 tracks is a one-trick loop that shows its hand within the first 10 seconds.

Though it would make for a pretty badass soundtrack. Somebody make this fake movie, stat 2.5/5

#1572 The Districts - A Flourish and a Spoil

A hesitant step forward for The Districts. Lacking some of that dead-simple // secret-complex magic of their debut EP, this is a more-straightforward modern rock record, full of slowish builds, each-chorus-bigger-than-the-last-style. Only the first couple tracks really pull that off, but the fragile bedroom poetry of Suburban Smell mostly lands, and Young Blood seems tailor-made as a live set closeout raveup.

I saw these guys at the Sinclair a couple days ago (where they did, in fact, close with Young Blood) and they did fucking rock. There was something British about it, something classic, something 90's, just rock and roll and rock and roll. Whatever worked about it, it was in the details, in the nuances of the delivery, and its not something that they've quite managed to capture on this record.

See em live if they come to your town though. Great show. 3/5

#1571 Pink Floyd - Ummagumma

Pink Floyd started off making solid space rock, and that's on display on the first live disc of this album. It's meandering, but just strange enough, just heavy enough, to make the 4-long-song-long set enjoyable.

But the band wanted to be more, and this was their first big swing at it: each member getting 15 minutes to fuck around with studio tricks to make some artsy bullshit composition of their own. Even just the "every man for himself" conceit smacks of desperation to do something new. The experimental second disc is messy and pointless and boring and lazy. The best thing you can say about it is that, having tried the shortcut to relevance, Pink Floyd seemed to realize that just being geniuses wasn't enough. Maybe getting this out of their system prepared them to put in the hard work to make the likes of Dark Side and The Wall, albums where the experimentation actually amounted to something 2.5/5

#1570 My Morning Jacket - Circuital

By now MMJ is just so inert. The songs have no particular dynamism, no big change, repeat themselves at a greater-than-chorus rate, just little loops befitting the album title. Is this all to just cuddle you in your stoned haze without undue nudging? A perfectly pleasant, impossibly forgettable album - just 45 minutes of maybe-I-was-in-space lost time 3/5

#1569 The New Basement Tapes - Lost on the River

For better or worse, there's little of Dylan left in these adaptations of his old lost lyrics. No, this is pure supergroup: supplementing the usual too-many-cooksism with some Dylan reverence for good measure. And when it's not muddy it's scattered: I almost like Spanish Mary and Hidee Hidee Ho #11, but they're sorely out place. For an album called Lost on the River there sure isn't any flow, and it sure never lets me get lost, shouting ideas like a drunk backseat driver.

Frankly most of what I like of this is just Jim James. His awesome, creaky guitar solo is the only thing keeping Kansas City from being every other Mumford and Sons track, and his Down on the Bottom take is possibly the album highlight.

Maybe it's not even that there's inherent supergroup problems here: maybe I just don't much like Mumford and Sons, Dawes, Elvis Costello, My Morning Jacket, or hell, Bob Dylan, all that much 2.5/5

#1568 M. Ward - Transistor Radio

M. Ward's stuff is awfully slight, that same quaver, that same unassuming instrumentation, nothing to stir the silk sheet, summer breeze // winter snow soft prettiness. There's something admirable about that dedication to craft, that unwillingness to swerve into gimmicks, but he manages one hook that's really, really great every few years. This time around its Hi-Fi, cushioned in plenty of his usual pillowy bliss 3/5

#1567 Feed Me - A Giant Warrior Descends on Tokyo

Feed Me's still the guy who managed to toe that line on the dubstep bullshit, keeping me plenty interested with his heavy hooks and transdimensional swerves without sounding like a *total* hack about it.

This is his hardest hitting block of songs since the immortal Feed Me's Big Adventure, full of big riffs and savage skqqqqquuuuuaooo // thrrruuuuuubbbbb. Fun shit, keep it coming 4/5

#1566 Sun Ra - Atlantis

Wildly noisy, not without its method, but getting stranger and stranger and stranger, until the final sidelong title track is a pilgrimage through a continent of noisescapes. Drums bristle. Horns writhe, organs melt. There's structure underneath the wandering and lashing, but it's nothing designed for your inhabitance - take your wander, watch your step. None of this is up to code 3/5

#1565 ODESZA - In Return

A strange one that grew on me. Trickles of sound // washes of effect, voices swirled into pure essence, frozen, and cobbled back together. Peaceful in places, its post-note fudges less annoying than the scene's usual, another slow drip of payoff from this last year or two of lazy experimentalism.

There's something trying a bit too hard in its grasps for M83 epicness // Sigur Ros strangeness, and its weird attempts at triphop neo-soul fall flat, but it finds its own footing often enough to largely win me over 3.5/5

#1564 Hot Chip - Dark and Stormy

Hot Chip always struck me a little timid, tiptoeing over twinkling synths, only occasionally (Boy From School!) getting anywhere.

This is bolder stuff though, the title track's got some real swagger, and Jelly Babies goes full weird, complete with offscript synth squiggles, vocal deconstructions, and a National Anthem-ready horn squall climax. Even Doctor's steel drums manage a crafty build near the end there.

But that's all the meat on this EP's bone: padded by a reissue of mid-tier highlight Flutes and some remixes. Still, it's probably the strongest 4-song stretch in their catalog (Flutes holds up!) and the one I'm most likely to return to any time soon 3.5/5

#1563 Tom Vek - Luck

Weird, bassy, buzzy, swaggering/vulnerable electronic indie pop/rock, somewhere between Hot Chip and Perfume Genius. Despite lots of real cleverness and surging hookcraft it's all pretty grim, ploddingly undancable, bordering on unenjoyable 2.5/5

Month in Review: January '15

A seemingly weak Bonnaroo lineup had me checking out some of the unknowns and trying wicked hard to get into My Morning Jacket.

Good news is pretty much all of my favorite albums of the month fell out of that trawl, some real good shit to be had after all maybe. 

Album of the Month
Benjamin Booker - Benjamin Booker - damned hooky stuff with just a bit of grit and soul. Rock solid, enjoyable rock records always find their way into my favorite list, at least for a little while.

Also Recommended!
Tycho - Awake - best instrumental, looping, loping electronic/analog jam since Ratatat's self titled.

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Twelve Bar Bruise - this garage rock revival is just the gift that keeps on giving. These guys are heavy and hard and nasty and weird.

The Districts - The Districts - raucous little shouter this one, lots of subtle inventiveness tucked in among the big dumb riffage.

Strand of Oaks - HEAL - desperate, skylorn, gigantic country-flecked rock that wallows and climaxes and will knock your socks off once or twice.