#1718 Sylvan Esso - Sylvan Esso

Opening track Hey Mami's everything good about this album: that delicate dance around its subject matter, that slithery vocal line, those buzzity surges - a fluttery, lime-dark little world.

I like the sound. In the end, the vocals + skitters is too basic a blueprint to win me over all the way over - the album falls short of that Lorde threshold for escaping the atmosphere of my cynicism on the power of so - damn - many - good - little - moments . . . but it gets close. Hey Mami into Could I Be into HSKT, a silvery skeleton in shabby clothes that just might make it part my door tonight 3.5/5

#1717 MG - MG

The cover's got a big knob with some arrows pointing twistwise, and that is in fact what you get: analog-based, ambient little sketches that evolve out from under themselves via the slow sweep of a value from X to Y. They're fairly evocative, rather nuanced, but the listen's not especially well-paced or memorable 2.5/5

#1716 De Lux - Voyage

These dudes are really not shy about sounding like a lot of DFA bands, sounding like you mixed equal parts LCD / Rapture / Hot Chip and ended up with all the disco beats, chantalongs, funk guitars, and cowbells you can pack into a record. There's liiitle flourishes here and there: Sometimes Your Friends are Not Your Friends will knock you on your back foot a couple times.  But even that feels like bizzaro All My Friends.

Perfectly catchy, but I'm pretty thoroughly inoculated by now 3/5

#1715 Gymshorts - No Backsies

Sarah Greenwell blasting shouty salvos accented with loaded asides - with that clattery backing favorable Kim Gordon comparisons are unavoidable. I did try. The band's got a rough, electric energy, but there's no real sense that anything altogether unexpected's going to happen - Bedstuy keeps you on your toes, but otherwise its a rocket train to the next town over.

If they keep that energy alive their next one's gonna be worth keeping an eye on 3/5

#1714 Blur - The Magic Whip

I want to like this. When Blur's good, they're magnificently good. And this has better pulse than the scattered, sloppy Think Tank. But it's goddamn boring, never lighting up, never really laying out a memorable melody or infectious rhythm*. It reminds me too much of Albarn's similarly tepid Everyday Robots.

It works best as a kind of musical Lost in Translation, an atmospheric spell of loneliness, quiet uncanniness, and insidious alienation. I do enjoy albums with their own little world built - I could see it soundtracking a day spent staring out a hotel window with much majesty. But mostly it's a shell of Blur, worn out by a life without weekends 3/5

* alright, Go Out's got that some good buzzy guitarwork and an insistent Spoon-y pulse. I do dig that.

#1713 John Holt - 1000 Volts of Holt

I'm not your biggest reggae fan - I guess someone found the formula for rocking the human rhythms justso, but you can only ride that equation for so long before it starts to get - so - fucking - boring.

This merges that basic pulses with all manner of pop, slathered in saccharine strings and vegas-ready crooning. It's agreeable to the point of being kinda goofy, but it does make ya feel good, and at least it does *something* different with that well-worn form 3/5

#1712 Art Tatum - Piano Starts Here

Undisputed king of bonkers stride and general hows-one-dude-do-all-that piano, glissin and cadenzin all up and down and around till you're sure the piano runs mobius, till you're sure you're tripping on shadowlines, playing across their own echoes. Impossible touch, impossible sound, this twinkling crystal thing.

More impressive than it is enjoyable oftentimes but hoo golly is it impressive 3.5/5

#1711 Art Blakey Quintet - A Night At Birdland, Vol. 1

Hey! It's that guy from Cantaloop! Neat.

Bop that wot bops, a hot, tight night, the whole set jumping with unexpectable energy, everything just a bit too fast, but you trust the drivers just enough 4/5

#1710 Camel - Rain Dances

Prog lite lite*. Prog with lime. Strawberryprogarita. Song lengths stay sensibly near 4 minutes, each full of sweet saxes and guitar melodies - there's funky time signatures and angular lines, but nothing particularly difficult. Not that's necessarily a bad thing: it's a twisty little listen, full of pleasant puzzles that fuzzle up to your brain and settle down to sleep with kicky little feet 4/5

* granted: cred for calling a song Metrognome, prog song title hall of fame

#1709 Gramatik - Coffee Shop Selection

This starts off pretty bangin, but then the last hour (!) is just lazy: loops and beats and "jazzy" noodling improvisation, something your uncool friends think is really cool music.

Fuck, even the song titles!

Sitar Chop
Pizzi Chop
Guitar Madness

Are these just your Ableton filenames? More:

Just Jammin'
Tranquillo
Chillaxin' by the Sea

Chillaxin' by the Sea! Jesus. 2.5/5

#1708 Brian Eno - Thursday Afternoon

All I know is this: this is one song, and its an hour long, and the first time I heard it I listened to it 3 and a half times in a row.

Possibly the finest piece of hardline ambient ever, nailing the balance of stasis vs change, of somethingness vs. nothingness: just burbling piano lines and strings that shimmer like the middle of a sunset 4/5

#1707 Yngwie Malmsteen - Rising Force

meedlymeedlymeedlymeedlymeedly!

squeeedleydeeedlydeeedlydeeedlydeeedlydeeedlydeeedlydeeeeee!

SQUEEEEEEEEEE!

chungetachungetachungetaCHUNGETACHUNGACHUNG A CHUNG!

meedlymeedlymeedlymeedlymeedlymeedlymeedlymeedlymeedly!

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

3/5

#1706 Steve Hackett - Please Don't Touch

Hackett's first album after leaving Genesis has got something to prove. Hackett's like

"Yo Genesis, check out THIS Genesis song!"

and ALSO

"Yo Genesis, bet you never couldn't have done a song like THIS one!"

It's a scattered mess that spreads itself too thin, that forgets to make something anyone would want to listen to. At its best, there's flashes of art-pop, Rundgren or Zappa at their most tuneful. And then there's those half-baked Genesis songs. And THEN there's Hoping Love Will Last, a wildly out of place, soppy, smooth-jazz-adjacent love song.

Ambitious, messy mess 3/5

#1705 Yngve Guddal - Genesis for Two Grand Pianos Vol. 1

Does what it says on the tin.

7 solid choices of Gabriel and early-Collins era Genesis songs covered by 2 grand piano players.

Technically, I can find no fault. Dudes weave some really wooly, inventive ways around some pretty complex songs.

But no chances are taken, no deviation from the source material are dared. Worse, I don't really sense that these guys *get* Genesis, leaving the emotional high points lying flat in the name of nailing the notes.

If you don't make me openly weep with those rising lines at part 2 of One for the Vine I will summarily dismiss your Genesis project as without worth 100 times out of 100 2.5/5

#1704 Alabama Shakes - Sound and Color

Have you heard any of the last 3 or so My Morning Jacket albums? Doesn't this sound just like those? Those humid atmospherics, those funk angles, the too-slow tempos, that underwhelming waft. This disappointing followup that has none of their debut's breezy heart and charisma.

Two

huge

exceptions.

Miss You, the way it creeps up, simmers, recedes and them just lashes out with such fucking heart.

And then there's The Greatest, which is, as I recently put it to Robin, "such a fucking amazing slash of goinforit", such a stomper - that riff, that exploding train beat, that wooly ol synth line, and Brittany just throwing herself at it like its a pinpulled love grenade.

They're so double-live, those two songs, so full of rock and roll, so full or fury and sincerity and a lightningbolt moment that will never happen again.

Where's that energy on the other 10 tracks? Why couldn't the whole album be songs like those two, or at least *attempts*, some swing at that kind of energy?

A baffling contradiction 3/5

#1703 Squarepusher - Damogen Furies

Squarepusher sez

"All yall EDM kids are into fucked up drums and big swooping synth meltdowns. I'm all about that stuff! I, um, lemme cook you up somethin."

And he did.

And it's actually pretty good, as exciting as anything he's done in ages. It's still madcap as shit, but those lightsaber riffs give it bitchin backbone 4/5

#1702 The Do - Shake, Shook, Shaken

A very pop indie rock album, every song tuned for huge // relatable sentimentality.

Also, for dancing slightly awkwardly to. I keep getting the image of girls in an audience, singing along very sincerely, head back, eyes slightly closed, bopping their hips back and forth. That's not such a bad image. And this is tuneful stuff. Catchy even, with lots of good little electronic pulses. But I am not the person it's speaking to 2.5/5

#1701 Alt-J - This is All Yours

It's like Alt-J ran out of melody, out of song - like those were exhaustible resources that got exhausted. This has all the sound of An Awesome Wave, all that texture and layering and creeping ambient // guitar pulse. But no *song*, the whole thing passing through you like the wind, with all of the figure and substance of that cover art.

It's fine, even good, as momentary sound - but don't expect to remember a note of it when its over 3/5

#1700 This is the Kit - Bashed Out

I'm a good hippie at heart mostly, but damn folkies, with their wispy words and their chinstrokey affectations.

I like parts of this, that simple, looping, pulsing backing, some of the little turns of words - all coming together nice on closer Cold and Got Colder. But up till then there's too many repeated phrases, too much of the same mewling accents from Kate Stables, rolling every damn line around like a jawbreaker she hasn't got the nerve to bite 2.5/5

#1699 King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - I’m In Your Mind Fuzz

Space-prog facemelters Hawkwind get mentioned a lot by my heroes: those guitarfuckers at the vanguard of the 2010's garage rock onslaught. You hear it here and there: Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall work in their psychedelic angles and truck in the kinds of huge riffs that power intergalactic battlecruisers. But where's the epic scope? The Dyson sphere worldweaving? The going biiiig?
Rightfuckingheredude. It's tough to compete with Slaughterhouse for pure raging riffage, but if you're looking for something that turns those guitars inward and outward and through into a self-referential, deeply trippy, wildly exciting, this is about the best album, like ever.

The previous 3 KGATWL albums kept getting weirder and weirder, waysiding guitars all along the way. Now it all whipcracks back into place, taking that endless space / inevitable deathcrash of Head On / Pill to its next level, taking every great thing they'd left behind and screaming it into place.

The opening salvo's twisty naming's just about perfect, all those interlocking parts in the short and long term, and Am I in Heaven? makes me say, I don't know dude, but I am. Screaming crescendos of rock power all day long. I just wish for one more salvo at the end: those last 3 songs lay me down to sleep it off when I want to keep on raging. Still, must-hear for anyone with any interest in modern prog/psychedelia 4.5/5

#1698 The Range - Seneca

This came out before Nonfiction*, and Hinton's not /quite/ on top of his game yet here, leaving the vocal samples lighter, the beats sloppier, the production even more basic, ending up with less than the full serving of magic that we're used to. Still a nice portion of skitterey, embryonic electronica 3.5/5


* I think? This EP shares its name with a track on nonfiction, google research hell ensued

#1697 The Range - Panasonic

And we return to The Range, with an EP that builds right on 2013's excellent Nonfiction. The same structure: pulsing washes, a repeating vocal sample or two, twinkling backing, barely-there beats.

But more than ever James Hinton knows *just* how to use those basic parts to transport you, crack your heart a bit and let a crying slice slide out. Two in particular just sparkles apart your heart guts with a stone soup of songcraft - brilliantly minimal stuff 4.5/5

#1696 Chrome Sparks - Goddess

This is perfectly good soul-flecked, glitchy, meandering electronic stuff - though I think it's telling that I liked it a whole lot more during the brief Booksian conversational / incidental snippets on Enter the Chrome Forest. There's so much glistening newness in that song that it made me want more, made the rest of the album's stuttering samples seem pretty predictable by comparison.

And then there's Zzzzzzzzz, which spends a couple minutes really going for it, slashing surges and burbles all over everything.

Maybe its the 27 minute runtime, maybe its those flashes of promise, but this feels unfinished, like I want to hear what this guy does next once he's figured out which of his tools are the sharpest 3/5

#1695 Nosaj Thing - Drift

See, as I listen my way through some of Justin's work music recs, this is how you do armchair electronic right. Drift's got the most potent balance of headbobbing, surefooted groove // glitchy intricacy I've heard in ages, full of alien throbs and skitches that all make a strange kind of sense when they're all swooped together. Just about the nerdiest cool music out there 4/5

#1694 College - Heritage

I'm down with the 80's revival thing, I'm even down with stripping those loopy synths down to housey basics. But there's no meat on the bone here, just baaaasics: a few loops, littleless/littlemore beats, the kind of stuff I threw together from premade clips in Acid in middle school. This doesn't hit hard enough to get you pumped up // there's not enough going on to keep you hypnotized - songs fading out meekly leaving you going "that's it?" 2.5/5

#1693 Rone - Tohu Bohu

This teeters precariously on a boundary between ambient and glitchy techno/house, hovers around a kind of soundtracky landscape, and then sticks the landing. It's boring, but it's the good kind of boring.

This is rich and enjoyable as background music, with a touch of atmosphere, a kiss of emotion, and just enough inventive details in the crannies to entertain you when you need a little more, shards of Orbital, Atticus Ross, and early M83, smoothed out and polished down to silvery perfection 3.5/5

#1692 Justin Timberlake - The 20/20 Experience: 2 of 2

An album that is part 2 of a two hour and twenty-five minute endeavor: would it surprise you to hear that the pacing's not that tight?

There's just not a lot of interesting ideas here, musically, lyrically, structurally. True Blood's the one exception: nine and a half minutes of twisty Thriller-inspired cranking around. The lyrics are goofy, but little flourishes, breakdowns, chopped laughs, dark ride swerves keep you entertained.

But so many of the songs would have been halfassed at three and a half and are downright fucking boring at seven. I'm looking at my watch at the halfway point of songs like Amnesia and Only When I Walk Away. Smash this into part 1 and there *might* be a really good album in the block of marble 2.5/5

#1691 Gary Clark Jr. - Blak and Blu

1) How do you move units as a bluesman in 2015?

By making an album for people who aspire to be people who like the blues, but who don't really have the patience for the blues (which, shit I don't know, might include me). So you load it with crossover bids: late-era Black Keys jams, neo-soul crooners, Cage the Elephant stompers, a little honkytonky riproaring. And then you drizzle the blues over top, and everyone gets to talk real knowing-like about really liking the blues.

====

Let's walk that question back.

2) How do you even make a blues album in 2015?

The blues is the blues is the blues - that structure's solid ground // an ironclad cage. You could just be *thatfuckingood* and out-chops // out-soul the greats, but even if you do, and you won't, there's about 25 guys who are gonna hear it.

And the answer to both of these questions is right here: Blak and Blu is the blueprint, the embodiment of making a blues album in 2015. That cuts both ways.


The highlights are great: Clark Jr. does crack open the blues, taking it to psychedelic // garagey places without busting up the structure, it's a good trick that requires a real craft. He's drawn a lot of praise for his guitarwork, and if you ask me it's less about fireworks and more about the way he uses space, the way he stretches ideas and phrases across bars. He lets the blues blllllllleeddddddd.

So he pulls off the update, but then he keeps just right on going and the bare populism undercuts the album's flow, hacks out its soul. The [other] stuff feel producer-suggested, contractually-mandated, made for getting download cards into Starbuckses.

How do you move units with the blues in 2015? How do you make a blues album in 2015?

Both tough ones, the album's less than it could be for trying to do both. Here's hoping dude gets big and shows us where his heart's at on the next one 3.5/5

#1690 Son Little - Things I Forgot

I guess with "Son" in your name you better be a roots badass: Little's no House on the grit side, and he's no Benjamin Booker on the hookiness front, but he's got just enough of each, slinging soulful singing and bigole guitar just fine. Throw in a little of his own glitchy simmer, good shit 3.5/5

#1689 Mini Mansions - The Great Pretenders

Pulsing, busy, synthy ELO art/pop/rock that actually sounds pretty fresh, packed full of curious details and scooting, glammy cool, weilding a bit of Rundgren weird and Bryan Scary too-fast careening // soaring desperation.

The secret ingredient is Queens of the Stoneage bassist Michael Shuman: every time the album threatens to get to too fuzzy and abstract he swings in with a killer backbone that gets your heart back in it 4.5/5

#1688 Bear's Den - Without / Within

Boring, lovelorn rock with too many layered
                                                            layered
                                                              layered!
vocals over top its lazy guitars and plucky banjos. It's Band of Horses and Mumford and Son's lovechild's tacky cousin. I didn't love that kind of sound to start with, but it sounds crassly calculated in 2014 2/5

#1687 Broncho - Can't Get Past the Lips

What the hell happened to Broncho? This's a perfectly decent piece of scuzz, miles away from the stagnant nonsense of the just-reviewed JEHTBAW.

CGPTL's a Strokes album with the cool whipping off in the wind, bothering to kick up the tempo, to kick and thrash a little, banging around with chiming retro influences and youthful energy.

What happened? Drugs? Hipsterdom?

Broncho was good once, this album's the proof 4/5

#1686 Broncho - Just Enough Hip To Be a Woman

Nasal vocals, overbusy mixes, consistently lazy pacing - this never fucking *goes* anywhere, never does anything, a truck idling outside your window. Get going for fucks sake! 2.5/5

#1685 Rubblebucket - Survival Sounds

Reminds me of Octopus Project: slightly thinky rock music with synthy noises and inventive structures, female cooing and calling at the front. I mostly rather like it, the squiggles on the likes of Carousel Ride are good fun, Shake Me Around rips itself up nicely, etc. It's got some pretty bald grasps at "isn't this fun!" live-ready moments that don't altogether land, but it all seems to come from a sincere love of music and that's not nothing 3.5/5

#1684 Grabass Charlestons - Dale and the Careeners

Watered down Separation Sunday, that same twangy shout, those same cranky chords, that same swing at druggy narrative, story specifics, and sweeping half-rotten romanticism. God, there's even a song called Addicted Together that sounds like Hold Steady parody.

This comes up short on every count: Will Thomas is no Craig Finn, lacking that wry wit, that hitched nuance, that ability to change gears away from shouting, and shit, just Finn's straight up chops. The guitarwork lacks that offkilter energy, and none of the little observations land worth a damn.

Maybe its unfair to sum this up as "not as good as my 3rd favorite album of the last decade", but it hews desperately, unignorably close - there's no getting around it 2/5

#1683 Swearin' - What a Dump

See that's more like it - this is an urgent 11-minute slash of bursting, rattling garage rock that's not afraid to speed up and lay out some hooks. Crutchfield's voice isn't quite my cup of tea, but she cracks it out there with heart 3.5/5

#1682 Swearin' - Surfing Strange

I go, this sound like Waxahatchee's Katie Crutchfield - but its her sister Allison. Who knew?

This is full band stuff, fully embracing the Pavement / 90's underground sound, stumbling and clattering through guitar washes and boy-girl wails at touch-too-slow tempos. Mostly forgettable - I feel like these guys used to have more energy 2.5/5

#1681 Waxahatchee - Ivy Tripp

The best part of this is the backing: a fearless, minimal stream of drones, keyboard beats, and trashy guitar lines. It's not afraid to let Katie Crutchfield's voice be the arms, legs, and backbone, and for the most part she pulls it off, bringing nuance and passion and 90's grit. Her voice grates here and there, ringing out of range and nasal, but mostly its the kind of charming, disarming indie pop I didn't think we much made anymore 3.5/5

#1680 Shakey Graves - And The War Came

Unsurprisingly, this doesn't try to capture Rose-Gracia's sparking one-man performances, instead layering things up and generally making something more conventionally swoony and full of Mumfordian excess. But through all the woooaaaaAAAAHHHoooohhhhs it's still inventive, still exploring crannies of Americana, bringing just enough restraint and sincere lack-of-restraint to keep things exciting 3.5/5

#1679 Toro Y Moi - What For?

Little beats, little melodies, 60's nods, layered vocals, tiny inventive production flourishes - it's perfectly pleasant, very, very indie rock, but aside for a bit of Rundgrenny weirdness it takes about zero 2015 chances 3/5

#1678 Antipop Consortium - Arrhythmia

Outright experimental hip hop, pushing on what it can be with aggression, complexity, and wit. Sounds bend, production skitters, rhymes whiiiiip - - andcrack. Good shit that'll get more listens 4/5

#1677 Ed Schrader's Music Beat - Party Jail

A sulky // brash record that sheds its post-punk throb and reserve in slashes of noisy gesture. This is that rare album that's made by someone who doesn't stick to the structures, that just careens off when it feels the need - that alone's pretty exciting. The actual battering clattering of guitar and hard-lined garagey rush is just a bonus 3.5/5

#1676 Freestyle Fellowship - Innercity Griots

Early 90's LA underground - this is great, complex, hard-edged stuff, never letting its jazzy angles interrupt its flows. Just a dash. There's freedom here, it's sprightly, alive - guys having a blast showing off their craft, considerable mastery of wordplay, banged out effortlessly thanks to putting the work in 4/5

#1675 DJ Format - Music for the Mature B Boy

Still packed with knotty underground rhymes and a general slick English hip hop sensibility, but this early Format LP lacks the confidence and flair of Statement of Intent. Totally solid stuff, just not quite as exciting as this dude gets later 4/5

#1674 DJ Format - Statement of Intent

Sounds so much like Edan that when Edan guested on the 2nd track I went "is this some Edan side project?"

This is definitely a compliment.

Two great things combine here:

1) deft, complex hip hop tracks, as Format wrangles a cavalcade of expert guests, all fitting right in with the production style and eachother, full of twisty angles that keep you on your toes.

2) When the guests step aside, the instrumental tracks pull the same vibe, booming out partyready, effortlessly busy, relentlessly exciting.

This is unassumingly intricate,packed with flow, one of the most flat out entertaining records I've heard in ages 4.5/5

#1673 The American Analog Set - Late One Sunday: Bliss Out v.9

A year later, TAAS put out a much better little EP. By stripping down the vocals and any pretense of trying to make pop // indie pop, by committing to 10+ minute songs and an ambient agenda, they made something that works, as a meandering, atmospheric little piece of evocative background music 3.5/5

#1672 The American Analog Set - The Fun of Watching Fireworks

No escaping the Yo La Tengo comparison, down to the boy/girls, the drones.

I think, given the band name / album cover, that I'm supposed to be in love with all the little details of this recording, but there's not enough here, the long sections lacking heft and pacing, the pop moments not landing, the wispy singing drifting past unheard. It's lazy, stumbling as ambient and doing too little to rise above it 2.5/5

#1671 The Sonics - This is the Sonics

You'll read this a lot, it's all true: the 60's garage legends are old as shit and they still got it, ripping and kicking out the couldntgiveafuck like some lightspeed paradox landed them in 2015 and they picked up right on the beat. It's everything a revival like this should be an never is: messy, noisy, electric with the same spirit that charged these guys a million billion years ago 4/5

#1670 Lower Dens - Escape from Evil

Ever since their career highlight (Brains! gorgeous) I wanted to like these guys more. But they never lift off: slow motorik and lazy crooning, echoing off to nowhere, too caught up in its own loops to commit to a line forward 2.5/5

#1669 D'Angelo - Voodoo

Fifteen (!) years before he shocked the world with his Black Messiah comeback, there was this alone.

It's not so different: not nearly as heady // intoxicating // thrilling, but packed with layered crooning, horn flips, languid beats, all totally unafraid to go all night (13 songs across 80 minutes!). It's never really exciting, and D's falsetto gets old, but you're never quite bored, lost in atmospheric, endless groove 3/5

#1668 The Neville Brothers - Fiyo on the Bayou

Soul / funk's a tricky gumbo.

Fiyo on the Bayou's smoothness cancels out its funk grit // its funk pop kicks it out of cool - and the soppy Ten Commandments of Love is way out of line on any album. Can't put this on at a party, wouldn't wanna make love to it, not sure what it's good for 2.5/5

#1667 Sam Prekop - Sam Prekop

Sam Prekop used to make lil pop songs, who knew? 15 (!) years before his excellent minimal electronic manifesto The Republic those experimental notes were only glimmers on agreeable featherweight bossa nova ditties. Twinkling along on pastel pinpricks with electric tips, going full hornwash and bleep bloop for a 7 minute stretch in the middle - it's quietly not quite like anything you've ever heard while being damned pretty. That's a keeper 4/5

#1666 Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress

I do dig the purity of what is basically a one-song album:

10 MINUTES OF ANTHEMIC THUNDERING

15

min

drn

vly

13 MINUTES OF TOWERING NOISE.

I dig the rich detail, the albumlong listen, the fact that actual memorable melodies emerge from the darkness. There's cinematic physicality here, evoking the better parts of Mount Eerie, totally worth a listen through if you're into this kind of thing at all, though you may only need to see it once 3.5/5

Month in Review: March '15

Holy shit.

This was an *insanely* good month for music: lots of good new albums released, lots of good finds on an electronic kick, some playing-bonnaroo-driven finds and a dash of my usual trashy nonsense. Brace yourself!

Album of the Month
 
Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit - Actual lyrics get at this old heart of mine, this girl do have a wry way with saying words, with a reckoning rumble to back it up.

Also Recommended!

So much!

New releases:

Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly - A rich, ranting, blistering hip hop screed to remember.

Sufjan Stevens - Carrie and Lowel - Probably the most crushingly beautiful, sad album you'll hear all year.

Electronic stuff:

Zongamin - Zongamin - Glitchy, bouncy, subtly strange, completely listenable accoustic/electronic.

Krazy Baldhead - The Noise in the Sky - Rockist electronica with great hooks and flow, plus a spark of something new you just can't put your finger on.

Lindstrom and Prins Thomas - II -  Both at the top of their game: those krauty basslines, those helixical synth lines, pure space disco hypnosis.

Africa via roo '15

Songhoy Blues - Music in Exile - Intricate, toetapping guitar music that slithers all around the outside of "rock"

William Onyeabor - World Psychedelic Classics 5: Who Is William Onyeabor? - About ahead of its time as sounds come, beats and grooves so sure, so pure.

The usual:

White Reaper - White Reaper -Yep. Still a sucker for too-loud, too-fast, wheelscominoff garage rock.