#1665 Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell

Hey kid, wanna see a dead body? And then it's your dead body, and it flutters apart in streamers of light into a million pearly butterflies and you cry at the beauty of it.

Sufjan's masterpiece, destined to be an I See a Darkness / Sapphie kind of cult classic, he tells these stories of loss and pain with such grace that they become yours and transcend themselves all at once, bathed in ethereal sounds to perfect for human hands. It cuts so deep, so quick, so well, that it hurts just to listen 4/5

#1664 Refused - The Shape of Punk to Come

I love me anyone who goes for it - better go out in a flaming blaze of shit than putter around making their same shit again and again (right, Spoon?). This is messy, indulgent, ridiculous: hardcore screaming stretched to 7+ minute songs packed with start-stops, going

THUNDERING RIFFS

weird samples

THUNDERING RIFFS


deserts of spare drums and bass


THUNDERING RIFFS

But all that contrast is all along one dimension: the dynamic and tempo shifts are huge, but (parts of Protest Song 68 aside) the tone's always the same, the basic dissonant chords, the same screaming, alternating between seething rage and exploding rage, never really landing a memorable moment, just a sprawling landscape of jagged noise, yellow-orange plateaus of staggering size. So it lacks that immediacy of punk, lacks the rich adventurousness of prog, landing in some strange middle ground that I want to love, but just don't 3/5

#1663 Alabama Shakes - Boys and Girls

Brittany's all they say: girl can belt it. The band's no great shakes (thankyou), but they're solid enough, and the Americana gets some surprising slashes: that rip right down the middle of Hold On, right? The slower songs lean too hard on the vocals, but I dig the pacing: ending with the galloping Heavy Chevy earns major one-more-spin points 3.5/5

#1662 The Bloody Beetroots - Hide

LET'S GET EVEN DUMBER! All I do is work these days, so it's often gotta be pure energy to make it into my headphones.

This is that: a handful of pretty, inspired songs (guests include Peter Frampton? Paul McCartney?) packed amidst 10 more tracks of Daft Punk to 11/ Justice to 16 / by the numbers fistpumping rockist bullshit that, well, does make the fist pump 3/5

#1661 Boys Noise - Out of the Black

Robot nipples like daftpunk, nicking all the robot voices and synthy slashes, replacing all the disco cool with dumbshit maximalist riffage and start-stop noisemaking. It's fucking exhausting by the end, but dammit, I kinda like it - hard, dumb trashy fun, robots on buffer overflow 3.5/5

#1660 Spoon - They Want My Soul

Pity Spoon. When your whole sound is so stripped, so mechanical, so deadpan, so restrained, how do you make a Spoon album that sounds like a Spoon album without making the same Spoon album?

This time they go late-era Black Keys, adding some detuned piano, some mello strings, some shimmering synthies, on top of what's otherwise a bog standard Spoon song. It's not well integrated, not a good faith effort to do something new, just feeling stapled on (esp I Just Don't Understand, yikes), a tarted up grand dame that feels flatly unnecessary 2.5/5

#1659 Future - Monster

I don't know if DJ ESCO THE COOLEST DJ IN ON THE PLANET saved Future's life or what, because the rapper dedicated his latest album to the time spent in jail by DJ ESCO THE COOLEST DJ IN THE WORLD, and every time I find some pleasant piece of sentiment in this overautotuned mess a sample added by DJ ESCO jumps in, telling me who produced it. None other than DJ ESKO THE COOLEST DJ IN THE WORLD, or maybe something about 808 MAFIA. Whatever the fuck 808 MAFIA is. I guess mixtape djs need their props, but this is bullshit.

Is this unreadable? This post has one all-caps bullshit shoutout for each sample in *one* *song*, the last song on the album, same as all those before it, ending the song and the album with a bang, a kid mumbling DJ ESCO THE COOLEST DJ IN THE WORLD 1.5/5

#1658 Twin Peaks - Wild Onion

Kids that draw on long traditions of trashy clattering guitars and murky psychedelic wanderings you say? Lot of that going around, but these guys mostly actually pull it off! Where the likes of Ariel Pink and Unknown Mortal Orchestra hide behind the detuned haze, its just a starting point for Twin Peaks - these songs jump with real imagination and swagger, pulling off a Thin Lizzy kinda searing joy. Sure, things occasionally stumble into a oily mudpuddle, but it's mostly a rippin good time 4/5

edit: goodgod, that second half of Telephone, two of the most perfect guitar lines I've heard in ages

#1657 Rick James - Come Get It!

Big bad dancable funk with bass muscle and a kickin' horn section. I expected this to be goofy, but it kinda fucking rocks - James actualy pulls off MC duties too, just enough shriek and growl to keep things sleazily believable 4/5

#1656 Scuba - Personality

Loops and loops, building and building, coming and going - nothing fancy, no big distortions, just short vocal samples, synths and beats, pure mootsetting and abstract narrative, Orbital with more impetus to dance. Old school. Never quite interesting, never especially surprising, but it makes the hour go by pretty good 3/5

#1655 Carl Perkins - Dance Album

Classic 50's rockabily with flashes of country twang and proto-rock fuckit. He's not quite as unhinged as Gene Vincent, not quite as cool as Elvis, and without that extra *somethin the simple songs don't quite pop. But this is rock solid stuff, essential for any fan of the style 3.5/5

#1654 Lindstrom & Prins Thomas - II

Everything you'd hope it would be: those endless roiling Lindstrom arpeggios + clattery beats, that krauty, rolling early Prins Thomas bass, this is serious deep groove timemelter stuff. Perfect pairing of two masters of the rolling longform accoustic/electronic groove 4/5

#1653 Songhoy Blues - Music in Exile

Epic story of these guys escaping oppression in Mali to make rock music cannot go without a brief mention.

Music! Shuffling, tippingover rhythms and call and response vocals set the stage for some killer guitarwork, full of exciting, looping hooks and frantic flairs. It's brilliant, drawing off of all kinds of traditions, right up there with next-country-neighbor Bombino as fun, shambling, African roots rock goes 4.5/5

#1652 Earl Sweatshirt - I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside

The album title/cover are about right, this is as monochrome a rap album as I've ever heard, just wrapping itself up in blankets and quitting. I couldn't get a single line of a single mumbly, disinterested song to stick. I thought it was cause I wasn't listening close, but even as I tried it just slipped through my fingers. There's no highs, no lows, moments or moves, this is a dreary, cloudy Saturday spent doing nothing 2.5/5

#1651 Glass Animals - Zaba

Nobody wants to cut a clean line to melody anymore: its all layers and layers and layers. Even layermaster Dan Deacon's latest was much better for letting a single tune rise to the top. This lays out a complex beat and then a blitz of vocals and shimmers and shine to dazzle you into dance. It's not a bad idea, but putting together some actual hooks, would it kill any of yall? 3/5

#1650 Carl Craig - More Songs About Food and Revolutionary Art

Restless techno, full of little inventions, sounding made of primitive parts, the bits and angles showing through - fun puzzles for the technically minded. Pretty good to space out to 3.5/5

#1649 The Vibrators - Pure Mania

It's a punk album alright, right from when the scene was getting rolling.

It's kind of pure: is that a good or bad thing for a punk album?

It's rock played fast and raw - but it's not really all that nasty, not particularly revolutionary, sneering and snarling but tuneful. You get the idea they're choosing to play their instruments this exact simple way. It's like a blueprint for a style that's supposed to be about tearing buildings down. It's confusing. And damningly, just not actually all that exciting, not polished or brutish enough to really move the needle 2.5/5

#1648 The Go Team - The Scene Between

The Go Team've really drifted further and further from the ragged energy that made their debut work all those years ago: this is /fine/, but the instrumentals and raw power have been left far behind: every song is slathered in layered, chiming, cooing vocals that cover any rough edges in frosting. There's a few short experimental interludes that hint at what might have been, but it's a halfhearted hedge - the album's a pretty watercolor, blurry and samey and unmemorable 2.5/5

#1647 Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

She really is just about the greatest lyricist going, and I do say this as someone who mostly couldn't give a shit about lyrics and resents having to pay attention to them to get what's soooo grrreeat about Bob Dylan or some shmuck. But damn, her words are worth the attention, banging on with folky wry observationalism and rap wordplay for the sound of it. Throw in the fact that she pulls off this humble, shuffling persona (no folky pretention, no rap bravado) and it's a charmer.

The band mostly rumbles in some gear between roots and 90's underground, setting the stage and energy, though occasionally glorious melodies make the scene. It falters at the end, Debbie Downer sounds leftover and Kim's Caravan goes nowhere worth going, but those first 8 tracks are cracking good songwriting made real 4.5/5

#1646 Bassnectar - Noise vs. Beauty

His old stuff was really one-dimensional dubstep

BWWWWWWWWWWOOOMMMMMMMMMMMM

but Bassnectar branches out on this one, mixing in all kinds of technicolor trashy nonsense. If you can get past its bro-y superhuge noisemaking it's actually a lot of fun, never sitting still, never boring 4/5

#1645 Dorian Concept - Joined Ends

It's so busy it becomes a wash, this wave of tones that bleed into themselves and eachother, a closer-to-bare-metal Dan Deacon approach, arpeggios washing together like waves into backwash from waves. It blurs sample, blurs pure tone, it's so artificial it's alive, watercolor flood over method. Curiously, ungraspably exciting 4/5

#1644 William Onyeabor - World Psychedelic Classics 5: Who Is William Onyeabor?

Nigerian funk master who put out some secret, synthesizer shit in the 70's that we're just now getting around to appreciating. Alexis Taylor's in a tribute band to his stuff and it figures: Hot Chip accidentally riffed on // ripped off his entire sound, why not pay it back.

7-10 minute tracks are in no hurry, looping beats for the duration, with synth lines and simple vocal anthems and a strangely pure, swaggering, endless post-krautrock insistence takes hold. It's so good, so rock solid. You just couldn't do it if you knew any better - this goes for it cause it doesn't know what else to do and cuts to the heart of the matter by a sheer lack of distraction. Too caught on the spine of whitehot rhythm to give a fuck.

You feel cool as hell when you listen to this stuff. Does anything else matter? 4.5/5

#1643 Zongamin - Zongamin

Dem I dig this. It's deep funk cuts, it's deep bass, its live energy, with this hooky, herky jerky kinda beat thing, a little bit of Prefuse. You find your shoulders moving at odd angles, everexciting stuff that's found some vein of core earth good shit and just mines it, spraying it out in this ever-expanding cloud of weird energy and joy 4.5/5

#1642 VA - TxK Original Soundtrack

Sad story about the Tempest 2000 creator facing legal trouble around his Tempest-ish game TkX, but at least the news got me to the soundtrack. Listen / buy here!

These are dance-ready house songs with grown up synths agogo - they've got a gamey side sometimes, but this is not "video game music". This is beats with a 80's future streak, made up of searing vector lines and light cycle trails - it's great work music and a pretty solid dance mix besides 3.5/5

#1641 Father John Misty - I Love You Honeybear

Misty sings tuneful, ever over a bed of some damn thing smooth: slide guitars, gospel coos, strings, big piano chords, the occasional electronic beat (?), delivering Billy Joelesque generation-growing-up observations by the dozen. It's fine, clever in the details, but it's way too polished down to get excited about 3/5

#1640 Archers of Loaf - Icky Mettle

Noisy, jangling, giveafuck proto-slacker rock, that deadpan shout, those tinny, screaming guitars. It's got heart, punk in spirit more than sound, that charming reaching beyond its grasp, bouncing hard in the general direction of its propulsion 4/5

#1639 A Sunny Day in Glasgow - Sea When Absent

Cooing pop with distant crackling energy and some swooning shoegaze muscle behind it. There's plenty of small invention, structures and sound glint off eachother, even if it never quite gets far enough past being generally agreeable and etherial to start knocking your socks off 3.5/5

#1638 Autolux - Future Perfect

Shoegaze at heart, with those fuzz bulldozers and keening feedbackers, but pretty far on the pop side. The beats keep up, the singing's all tuneful, and there're 3-chord concessions and other moments of restraint: this is more Swervedriver or Placebo than the full MBV. The wall of noise is a tool, but they're not worshiping it, which makes for an enjoyable, if less exciting, sound 3.5/5

#1637 Fantastic Negrito - Fantastic Negrito EP

Strong singer with some guitar chops, stirring up some roots-driven, blues-touched modern rock, something for the rock fans looking for something real. There's a lot of guys doing that in the last year or so, and there's something about this sound doesn't ring true.

The cred-garnering touchstones feel by the numbers, the 'making the old new again old again' production touches are laid on pretty thick. Which would be fine, but the song's don't really land as enjoyable pop either. I can't help but compare to Benjamin Booker, who has fewer obvious nods to the past, but who comes across as more sincere, and catchier to boot. Fantastic likely's got talent, but there's too much production /telling and not enough of him /showing on this record 2.5/5

#1636 Louis Jordan - #1's (Geffen '04)

The editorial-null collection: all the man's #1 singles (not greatest hits!), in chronological order.

So pure.

One way to appreciate this album's as a jaunty little rock history lesson - two of these tracks made the great First Rock and Roll Record comp, after all. This jumps, its a big band swinging, punchy set, with Jordan crooning easy and then spitting it out like he don't give a damn: that's where you hear it, in a man that's past musicality and on to seeing what kind of ] impact [ his voice can deliver. That's not a jazz move, that's rock.

And it works as music too, whatyda know. It's those big horn hits, those shuffly rolls, and Jordan, all hot and cool, blazing energy delivered effortlessly, or with the occasional exquisite delivery of effort 4/5

#1635 Kyoji - Metanature

Nature sounds, big lush piano loops, synthy washes, and glitch-lite little breakbeats that wander in and out - I did not realize until I typed it how hipster this sounds on paper. On record, it sounds less like something you'd hear at an austere coffee shop and more like ambient proper, if with those beats.

There's something painterly about it.

This /would/ work as coffee shop music as long as that place looked like the future made real for real, like some Droogs'd be about 3.5/5

#1634 Joanna Gruesome - Weird Sister

Jaunty too-fast punk, more jangle than clash, a doubletime drive with sun through trees. The shoegazy cooing vocals are a distracting cliche, but the shouty ones, those got spark. Stick to the ragged side of that combat knife and these kid's be just fine 3.5/5

#1633 Mount Eerie - Ocean Roar

Definitely my favorite of the Mount Eerie era of the Elvrulution, it backs the smallness and experimentalism with gigantic shitstorm noisewallsof yore. It's a high level of commitment to a nature theme, even by Elvrum's standards, the ebb and flow of those endless thundering oceans, transporting to small moments better than anything since Glow Pt. 2, glimmers of a person and town underwater 4/5

#1632 Daedelus - The Light Brigade

Returning to the loose time-and-place theming of Righteous Fists of Harmony, this revolves around the Charge of the Light Brigade. I guess? I mean, the album title, the song titles, the quoting of the poem by the same name, it's there on paper. But as with RFoH, it's a poem read in soft focus: if you took those things away I don't know that this mostly-instrumental album would tip you off overmuch.

It is interesting the way this plays with the Daedelus loops-and-loops formula: the beats are minimal, and many of the samples are piano chords and dusty acoustic arpeggios and pluckarounds, making this earthy and traditional in actual sound, but electronic and otherwise Daedelian in structure.

But at the end of the day, and look I'm a fan of the man, it doesn't /work/ No emotion's strongly conjured, no real sense of place or pain find its way into the listener's headspace. Either Darlington's lost his touch and thinks he's conveying something he's not, or he's just been lazy and slapped a theme on some underwhelming approach-nudging tracks. I don't know which would bum me out more 2.5/5

#1631 Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly

Kendrick's latest doubles down on the epic, personal sweep of GKMC, tying knotted narrative to a swirling cloud of deep funk and jazz touchstones. You're aaalll up in the rapper's head and it's a claustrophobic spot, full of anxiety and overthought, wooly with wiry Thundercat bass, rhodes pulses, reverb filling every airhole.

Lamar rants and raves, repeats himself, trying to get past contradictions, obsessing, working, working out a personal story that doesn't make sense even to him. You watch the story of the man figuring out how to tell the story, the story of getting famous, leaving a life behind, enduring corruption, and trying to reconcile all the things he's seen and things he's been, weaving themes of self-respect and community responsibility.

It does bring the funk, and for a 3-and-a-half span from Complexion to the first act of i, its actually downright exciting: the clouds part, the mind unclenches, Radiohead and Steely Dan flourishes seem strangely at home. But it's mostly a difficult record, more rewarding than enjoyable, as Kendrick rants for minutes at a time, disappears down rabbit holes, repeats himself, obsesses, climaxing not with a melody to carry into your day but a 7-minute fantasy dialog with 2Pac (?).

It's a final commitment to art over pop, for anyone who thought he was on the fence. And that's great. This is a great album and a great piece of art. Just know what you're in for: this isn't a party, its a guided tour of a stately space, and it's more about atmosphere and history than having a real good time 4/5

#1630 Krazy Baldhead - The Noise in the Sky

Can I get this off my chest? Krazy Baldhead. Aggressively bad name.

But.

I love this despite myself. It does not adhere to formula, it squiggles around with its own puckish energy, building atmosphere and tearing it down. Racking grooves and breaking em up. In a supergenre so packed with convention I dig the way this guy romps his own way through, damn listenable besides. Great album for lovers of glitchy-but-enjoyable electronic nonsense 4.5/5

#1629 Lotus Plaza - Spooky Action at a Distance

Indie post-NY beats and arpapeggipggios with synthy washes. So Lower Dens. Those moany vocals no less. It's...good? Pretty, inventive, hopeful, trying. It's trying. But it's got its formula, some lack of risktaking that tops this out around 3.5/5

#1628 The Emperor Machine - Like A Machine

Right in that DFA vein -- but def not DFA -- that live bass, those swervey swerves, way better maybe.

Those flickers and flares, especially on Voices, this's got that rebelious energy, ghost fuckinup machine from the inside, that keeps it from being boring, Lotus + Thundercat without all the oppressive darkness, strange funky shit. Dig 4/5

#1627 Outputmessage - The Infinite Void

Severely boring house that's not saved by its outerspace theme: far too many lazy 3-or-4-loops-and-a-slow-knob-turners here, and too insistent for comedown besides 2/5

#1626 Lusine - The Waiting Room

Low key ambient // techno // downbeat that captures magic, finding sensation and emotion in waves, with just enough texture and pulse to keep you alive. Dude can craft a tone, and that carries this as a great listen, even through some meandering later tracks 4/5

#1625 The Fresh and Onlys - The Fresh and Onlys

I like guitars and I like noise, but this is just grey: every song a bit too slow, the mix overloaded into mud, the singing just a plodding chant of disinterest, without even a Mark E. Smith sneer to hang its hat on 2.5/5

#1624 Sonny and the Sunsets - Tomorrow Is Alright

Classic-pop-copping ditties with plenty of aww-shucks twee touchstones (Planet of Women's a charmer).

The fact that Sonny Smith is a multimedium artist, that he once curated a project writing 200 songs for 100 fake artists, sounds about right: these're songs without any real hunger behind them, someone fapping about agreeably, hoping someone'll sing along, but not really all that bothered either way. That attitude's disarming and makes for a breezy, low-stakes listen 3/5

#1623 Deadmau5 - For Lack of a Better Name

I keep saying it, but I really was wrong about Deadmau5. Not in a good way, I just assumed he was hookier, heavier, more obviously fist-bumping. Turns out, at least on album, he's just boring. Hi Friend's got a ripping vocal hook, and Moar Ghosts n Stuff has that big riff, but for the leftover hour it's just big dumb kinda-progressive house, on and on and on 2.5/5

#1622 Hiss Golden Messenger - Lateness of Dancers

This is a little too smooth, a little too obvious, in its county-flecked, God-dusted, beautiful-croonin' ways. But damn its so listenable, so agreeable -- maybe it's just smooth enough. I don't know if I quite respect it, but it do just soothe my soul 3.5/5

#1621 The Monkees - Head

The Monkees are dead, long live The Monkees!

On track 3 the boys rattle off a Who-Sell-Out-ready ditty that tries to get ahead of the argument: "you say we're manufactured, to that we all agree! ... Hey hey we are The Monkees, we've said it all before // the money's in we're made of tin, we're here to give you more!"

That out of the way, we jump into the whole psychedelia / mod thing, more Small Faces than Beatles, but still not, definitely not - don't you say it - The Monkees. It comes across as a bit calculated, but I love it when a band explodes out of what it does, even if it's for the $$$. This is a strange, winding little guitar album that's totally worth hearing if you have any interest in 60's rock at all 3.5/5

#1620a Miracle Legion - Surprise Surprise Surprise

Jangle jangle, croon, moan, soar! The kind of band that gets introduced as REM's brother at parties. Pure 80's proto college rock, not much memorable here, every song trundling along on the same basic tempos and feels 2.5/5

#1620 Swervedriver - I Wasn't Born to Lose You

These guys basically picked up exactly where they left off half my life ago, same walls of swirly guitars whorling you down the whirlpool. It's actually the catchiest thing they've done, with beautiful little breakdowns and vocal hooks asserting themselves. Heck, the vocals almost seemed embarrassed to be in the same room as the guitars on their previous albums, but it's 17 years later and they're all grown up 3.5/5

#1619 Strand of Oaks - Pope Killdragon

This is not 2014's HEAL, there's none of that plain personal sentiment, little of that giant guitar crush.

This is all dark fairy tale, all strange ballad, somewhere between NMH and Okkervil River, all moondark uncanniness, surely for straightthrough listens. That cover art's about right, this is quietly eldritch, haunting guitar rock without a single unnecessary detail 3/5

#1618 Together Pangea - Badillac

Fuzzed out guitar rock with a little bit of cowboy drawl and surfer crawl, reminds me of local boys Vundabar. What matters is these are kids with their whole hearts in this rock and roll thing, sweating all the clatter and shriek and shred, you can feel every hit coming harder than necessary, everything tripping over itself to gettherefaster. That's an attitude I can get behind 4/5

#1617 VA - Ultra High Frequency: Chicago House Party

I saw Pitchfork's got a downright dissertation on this record - all I hear is late-era disco that's just not that much fun when you've dragged it into the sunlight / 2015 - it's not a style or a scene that's all that interesting in large doses, and this shit draaaags by the end 2.5/5

#1616 Solids - Blame Confusion

Everbuilding guitars over galloping drums, roaring off with endless depth and momentum, a hurtle down a night drag halfdrunk and whipped by headlight flashes. This is that heedless feeling, the most relentless moments of Cloud Nothings and Trail of the Dead hammered into immutable shapes - exhausting and singleminded, but strangely admirable - deeply enjoyable if you're in justtherightspot 3.5/5

#1615 The Lovely Bad Things - The Late Great Whatever

Torn, cause this is a lot of fun, but its also a bit well-supervised, the band a bit well-designed. 90's underground-cribbing band from LA with a cooing redhead in the clip, you say? With albums titled things like Shark Week and, well, The Late Great Whatever? WITH FUCKING YARN AND BIGFOOT ON THE COVER? Kids.

If you're not an old man you'll probably ignore all that stuff and find a hooky, rattling, too-fast punky thrillride awaits 3.5/5

#1614 King Buzzo - This Machine Kills Artists

Just a man and his acoustic, but it's just 'bout the biggest, baddest, rattlingest acoustic you've heard. Hearing Buzzo coax an orchestra of sound from that metal and wood's a treat for the close listener, but there's not a lot of song here, and it all gets pretty samey by the end 3/5

#1613 Vertical Scratchers - Daughter of Everything

I was gonna nail this for sounding a lot like Enon, but oh, it's John Schmersal from Enon. Aight. So yeah, wheeling vocals and startstop angularism agogo.

The problem's in the production: something went wrong in the mix or the recording process or something because there's this anti-live feel, the vocals floating disconnected up front in your skull, everything else across a distant ballroom, and neither quite lining up timingwise, one always scrambling to find the other. It's completely distracting and downright unpleasant. Somebody should get fired over this 2/5

#1612 White Reaper - White Reaper

Fuck yes. A trashy, thrashy 6-song garagepunk salvo, inventive and inspired and still sounding like a clattering shitstorm accident; an effortlessly exciting slash of noise and fun 4.5/5

#1611 Sam Prekop - The Republic

You believers in tone pure tone, knowers that the right textures and shapes can add up to a space, revel in the 9-part title track here: it feels and breathes, glistens with breezes, all without beats, with justtheright ambient lines and silences.

Weather Vane's a miniature masterpiece in its own right, but then Prekop seems to be padding the remaining length with meandering, anonymous arpeggiations. Great little minimal electronic suite, even if it doesn't quite add up to an album 4/5

#1610 Of Montreal - Aureate Gloom

Well, it's an Of Montreal album: Barnes's whining, swoopy structures, spongy-brakes start-stops, and plenty of offcenter lines about hurtful girls. But it's also like, an actual rock album! Like I haven't heard from these guys in a decade or so! Heavy guitars, funk//disco//4444 beats keeping things beating, and nary a 12-minute shitfit in sight. It's unfocused, ungraspable, a little hookless, but still the only thing they've done in ages that I'd actually listen to for pleasure.

Look, even when he's making a "normal" record Barnes is plenty weird; it's nice to know he can still make something enjoyable to listen to when he's not engaging in some doubledown game of anti-pop chicken 3.5/5

#1609 Black Sabbath - Sabotage

Last of the big 6! Sabbath philistine no more.

Continuing Sabbath Bloody Sabbath's dips into proggy territory, complete with Zeppleny slowdowns, classical guitar interludes, and a wack synth track. The the band's definitely starting to sound out of ideas, but this is a hell of a last gasp, full of strange structures, thrilling guitarwork, and The Thrill of it All's the best track Rush never wrote besides 4/5

#1608 Bob Dylan and The Band - The Basement Tapes

Beh, too bloated, too packed with annoying vocals (now coming in two different flavors), too laconic and shoddy, and - most criminally, this release is too fucked with in its retrofitting and re-adding and general George Lucasing to even feel alive as an artifact of the sessions or the era. There's the sheen of a museum piece, the bloat of a monument, it all totally undercuts the humble tone the music's going for.

Those Dylan and Manuel vocals really are awful to listen to, too 2.5/5

#1607 Beck - Loser EP

Back when Beck was hungry, possibly literally hungry, getting fucked up and banging out fucked up songs about it. A 5-track EP/single, a monument to the good old days, that buzzbarn guitar, those clattering drums, that deadpan delivery. This is about as solid a collection of early-era Beck songs you're gonna get, rivaling Mellow Gold for livewire consistency, ragged glory front to back 4/5

#1606 Beck - Gameboy Variations

It sounds like a bad joke: taking Beck songs from the midst of his samey, uninventive 3-album run and tarting them up with stale a 8-bit bleep-bloop trend. Half right: the two X-dump tracks are meh tracks propped up with totally unrelated BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP BLOOP. But the two track credited to just "8-bit" (?) have the right angles to make me all like
           HELL
     YES        PLEASE
           ENJOY
     GET       YOUR    DAMN       HANDS         UP
full of that unpredictable sprightliness we haven't seen from Beck in year. Get this man (?) producing his next album, stat 3/5

#1605 Judas Priest - Stained Class

Did you know the just-reviewed John Wesley Harding track The Ballad of Frankie Lee and *Judas Priest* gave the band the name? Neither did I!

The blueprint for 80's metal: those nasal vocals, those agreeable hooks, those galloping drums, pretty much everything you'd come to expect, except without any burning need to be all DEVIL ZOMBIE BLOOD RESPECT MY GUITARING, all laid out in 1978. Learning!

Those vocals get old, and the whole approach starts to sound pretty samey by the end, but it's pretty rock solid shit 3.5/5

#1604 Bob Dylan - John Wesley Harding

Don't like Dylan's voice, and 9 of his 10 rambling indulgences are boring as hell.

This is solid though, full of spontaneity, narrative, and dusty atmosphere // paradoxically tighter, more tuneful than just about anything he'd done before. It's like after all the unconscionable, unlistenable Bloat on Bloat he finally just decided fuckit, maybe I should just record some *songs*. Dude can lay down a tune when he gets out of his own damn way 3.5/5

#1603 Pile - Magic Isn't Real

Blueprint for the Boston 2010 rock album right here. Worshiping at the altar of the best of 90's underground (Jesus Lizard!) with a hardcore bent, with only the occasional song that sounds exactly like Nirvana - this is rock solid, heavy, thundering, full of deft start-stops, just dudes making the music they love the way they love to play it 4/5

#1602 Neil Young - After the Gold Rush

Love Neil Young the rocker, but this is mostly Neil Young the wailer, layered and layered, a flight of nasal banshee whinging. That cracking, crackling guitar sound I love only comes out on the immortal Southern Man and on late When You Dance, I Can Really Love - that's not nearly enough to recommend this mostly annoying album 2.5/5

Month in Review: February '15

Was all over the map this month, in life and music both. Went back and scraped the bottom of the "best of the 60's" barrel for a few things I hadn't heard, but it was a hodgepodge.

Album of the Month
Dan Deacon - Gliss Riffer - The Dan Deacon album I've been waiting for for years - totally listenable, full of heart, and infinitely rich in the details.

Also Recommended!
Nobunny - Secret Songs: Reflections from the Ear Mirror - Dude got his vocals working and suddenly those endlessly inventive, classics-riffing songwriting chops shine through. And bright!

Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath - Gaddamn, these guys really did have a lot of good albums. Check this out if you've only heard their super meaty stuff and have *any* tolerance for proggy nonsense.

The Districts - A Flourish and a Spoil - I must have been in a bad mood or been hung up on their debut EP when I gave this a 3 because this's a great bit of gritty, soulful, rockin' indie rock.

The Red Crayola - The Parable of Arable Land - Alright, one gem out of my 6th trawl through the 60's: this fullon freakout's a slab of psychadelia that's damned worth hearing if you're feeling weird.