#1838 Glide - Disappear Here

It's those drums that make all the difference: compare to Lime Spider's lumbering backbeat, this's got that popping little breakbeat skitter-on-the-3 that I'll always associate with Debaser and it makes the whole thing fly. Those sprightly drums get you through an album that's a bit wishywashy in the vocals, a bit flatlyteenage, and onto some highlight moments of sunshine guitars and playful basslines.

There's nothing worldchanging here, but it's an excellent specimen of 90's underground, some even-less-known Australian cousin of Swervedriver and Built to Spill, full of heart and moments of subtle strangeness 3.5/5

#1837 Regurgitator - ...Art

See, this is what I'm talking about when it comes to That Weird Album, that 3rd album thing.

Word is these guys started basic, but this's some beautiful piece of playful experimentation gone wrong. Think Guerrilla-era Super Furry Animals with a slab of American crunch via Self or The Dismemberment Plan's strangest moments, dipping all the way into full on Surrender-era house tourism.

Things start off familiar enough, some late-era underground rock with a twist of electronic thisandthat, but then everything gets poppier and less pop, wobbles, and explodes somewhere halfway through Strange Human Being, one of the best aggressive-production-as-instrument rock tracks I've heard, a crunch bunch of bounce chopped into crystal skitters and tossed into the ceiling fan, right into I Wanna Be a Nudist's IDM-stutter hardcore.

Things get all self-referential, songs called I Like Repetitive Music that goes on too long, a title track called Art, declarations and questions and exclamation points. Raveups, raps, screams, mutters, wanderoffs. It's successful about half the time, catchy at about 3 out of 4, just clumsy enough to be charming as shit, completely compelling to the end 4.5/5

#1836 Lime Spiders - Cave Comes Alive

I love that skinshedding album - the one where the band tosses off the sound that put them on the map and shows what they've really got. My absolute favorite is when a boring band morphs into something just strange enough to be interesting: Vitalogy, Zooropa, Surrender, Beautiful Garbage, etc. The fact that said album's usually super unpopular by comparison is just a hipster boner-tickling bonus.

So when I saw a lot of those on this list of underrated albums, I got excited and checked out tons of stuff off it (plus some of the early consensus bests that set up the underrating). Those reviews incoming, starting now.

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Inauspicious start: anything good here is slapped apart on every single 2 and 4, gigantic Albini-gone-wrong snares blasting to 11 in the mix, reminding you twice a bar how dead simple this is. The choruses are blunt and drawled, the guitars are standard, and a little goodcleanfun bass isn't enough to save this bog standard barbanding 2.5/5

#1835 Fungi Girls - Some Easy Magic

I really dig these guys' sound, that surfy rumble, those girlgroup beats, I'll bet its good for twisting a toe to on a weeknight.

But I just can't get past the Local Band sound. It's a such a dickhead thing to even bother picking on, but I've heard bands like this a hundred times: the production's a little thin, the performance is a little nervous, the songwriting's all along the same basic pattern.

Just go for it kids! You've got a good starting point, just take it an run for the county line! These guys could probably be a really ripping band if they got a little tighter or a little looser // started taking this shit seriously or stopped giving a fuck so often 3/5

#1834 Cloud Nothings and Wavves - No Life For Me

Wavves and Cloud Nothings are two pretty uneven bands. Wavves is prone to go-nowhere jams, but can bang out a sunburned punk rumble with the best of them. Cloud Nothings can run slow and boring, but their fast songs sear with propulsive, searching desperation.

What you've got on No Life for Me is a strange middle ground - a collaboration that dodges both bands weaknesses but loses their best qualities along the way. It rocks front to back, chugging and churning and clicking on and on. But you've got a mismatch in tone: Wavves is stoner rock about not giving a shit, Cloud Nothings is desperate post-emo, burning with introspective fuel. Wavves puts skateboarders on the covers of their albums, Cloud Nothings puts lonely black and white skylines.

Not really fun, not really wracked with feeling, it's a peanut butter and chocolate shell with no filling. It'll tap your toe for 20 minutes, but it's not going to move you to get high or low tonight 3/5

#1833 Ratatat - Magnifique

Ratatat laid out a pretty firm trajectory with their first 4 albums, wavering from their path in only the smallest ways.

This breaks zero molds - those same clipped beats and synth//guitar//synth//guitar lines are on full display. There's few growth points: things're a little sunnier, the hooks a little hookier, but if you shuffled this in with the other 4 albums' songs none of these would pop out and bite you.

The subtle growth comes on the album level: the flow's solid, and wafts of radio flutter and vocal snips actually do a lot to build atmosphere, nudging a click towards instrumental hip hop, giving the listen a foothold into your world. I think it might be my favorite Ratatat album front to back, even if we're basically talking Golden Delicious vs McIntosh vs. Empire 4/5

#1832 The Clean - Vehicle

The Clean's a known Pavement influence, and it shows. Those dissonant, wobbling guitars, the tuneless singing, the crusty aesthetic, the utterly unrelenting beat - it's not pretty, but it all crystallizes into something brilliant when you least expect it. A minor masterpiece of underground rock 3.5/5

#1831 The Feelies - Crazy Rhythms

All tension. All too fast and taking too long to arrive. This is nervousness, this is excitement.

That motorik played by man-machine. Those chiming detuners, that bobbling bass, that stammered sentiment, a Joy Division vampire dragged into the sunlight, thrilled and bristling - with Morriseyan vulnerability and tunefulness beyond all peers.

Just feel those guitars an oohs on the back half of Original Love.

I'm reminded of the Unicorns live circa 2004, the splinter of things falling apart.

That rare union of utmost precision and inevitable self-destruction, all beauty and accident.

A touch of the terrible rock music I try to make - all tension.

Great shit 4.5/5

#1830 Prefab Sprout - Steve McQueen

Man, opening track Faron Young got me so fuckin *jazzed*, that driving cowboy twostep tripping over itself into the night, a strange, hooky little piece of post-punk that keeps zigging and zagging.

But Paddy McAloon didn't come here to rock. He's a crooner, a respectable singer songwriter, and everything slips into an 80's pop haze, some wisp of Sting or Billy Joel or Steely Dan. The synthy swipes, the little vocal ghosts, they make it prettier and more interesting than most, and the lyrics prick with everyday details, but it's not my scene 3/5

#1829 Iron Maiden - Powerslave

Iron Maiden loves them their guitars. They just ride em on and on and on into the sky, not even bothering with any particular death and destruction trappings by now, just galloping drums, soaring guitars, and layered vocals, sounding about 2 degrees from Rush, the 13 minute closer wiping out the line between metal and prog altogether. This is just showing off.

The propulsion's enough though, it's a good time just to watch the boys whip themselves into a rock-loving frenzy without giving one single shit about what the world thinks 3.5/5

#1828 AFX - Orphaned Deejay Selek 2006-2008

The Richard James barrelscraping resurgence continues!

If you've heard the basic Aphex Twin / AFX shtick there's not a lot new to find: basic beats // glitchy beats // wobbly alien-anatomy synth lines. No piano, no samples, no production tricks to speak of - it sounds basic, like it was made on basic equipment, analog shades of acid house.

It also sounds lazy: like so much of what's come before, like itself.

On the other hand, there's devils in the details: the subtle deliciousness of some of those fizzling synth hits, the slides between techno/house/IDM, the overloaded layers of track 3.

But back to that first hand: there's too little here. No real beauty, no real invention, nothing to make it worth your trouble over a hundred other songs that sound basically the same 2.5/5

#1827 Liquor Store - In the Garden

Stompy bar-band swagger taken back to its roots, the Hold Steady stripped of the storytelling, AC/DC stripped of the brattiness, BRMC stripped of its gloss, until you're left with a garagey kernel of Stones, rougher and simpler than even the Stones managed. The guitars roll, the kids shout, banging out songs called Keys to the Face, Vodka Beach and Titty was Loc'd. Titty was Loc'd! No frills, no flash, rock and rollers rockin' and rolling. Good enough 3.5/5

#1826 Black Moth Super Rainbow - Falling Through a Field

Before BMSR tasted pop they were in the bedroom, Tobacco croaking out melodic little confessions of his own frailty, so close you can feel his whisper on your microphone ear. Synths churn and buzz on little loops like snow on suburban landscapes, all temporary and beautiful and glinting with crystals, with the occasional gorgeous little line of vocorder chiming or electronic buzz flitting by like, well, a rainbow, or maybe a remarkable moth.

Good band name.

It's slow-paced and underedited, but that's part of its charm, somewhere on the continuum of Grandaddy and The Microphones, twinking and small, until you can almost see the little forgotten flyover house in winter 3.5/5

#1825 Tapes and Tapes - Outside

Loved these guys' early stuff, and like this too. It's hooky, lightly twisty indie rock that'll keep you entertained through every moment of the listen.


But goddamn if a single note of it stuck with me after 2 full playthroughs. Josh Grier's voice finds the same basic croon and locks in, the band backing gamely, but there's none of the spark of The Loon's highlights: none of The Illiad's raw postpunk startstop, Jakov's goinforit intro, or Insistor's insistent stomp, and no comparable swings for the fences to make up for it. Just a band trying to be too pretty, lacking hunger, lacking edge, unwilling to reach out and grab us 3/5

#1824 Spank Rock - The Upside

YoYoYoYoYo was so skeletal, so unapologetic; one-dimensional, but admirable in it's commitment to rawdog Baltimore noise and skeezy hiphop sleaze, a stop-motion T-800 out for pussy. The followup sanded off the edges and got listenable for a net loss, forgettable by comparision.

And here's maybe the sweetspot - still unpredictable and inventive, still weird as shit. Laser blasts bomb you, start-stop slither sweeps the leg, and Juwan drops cryptic, simmering sex, - more Prince than Peaches. That swagger comes out in the pacing too - how do you lay down 7 tracks in 24 minutes and sound like you're in no rush at all, letting bloopy loops breathe, wedging sentiments in every other cranny?

Twisty, futuristic stuff that'll sidle up into your pants before you know it 4/5

#1823 Feed Me - Feed Me's Psychadelic Journey

Never can make it through a Feed Me review without mentioning his Big Adventure, still the high-water mark of dubstep-adjacent buzzsaw house. There's a glimmer of that elusive old stuff here - Patience's got laser sword riffs to rival Justice and Without Gravity builds fuzzy rocketship power that teases and transports subtly, motion by motion by motion. Even Time for Myself squoggles and squirts, juuuust short of the border into too-happy raver nonsense.

Dude needs to cut it out with the vocals though, Alarm Clock sounds dopey as heck, trying too hard to bring emotion to the party and ends up killing the momentum. With only 22 minutes to work with, its a tough stumble to get past, but the Journey's a pretty solid little sampler and a dash of hope that dude's still got another legendary LP in him 3.5/5

#1822 Ecstatic Sunshine - Freckle Wars

Freckle War's got a dozen little propulsors, all angles and micro-start-stops, jangle jangle, arpeggio-io-o-O, rhythm overload without a single drum hit, voices galore without a touch of vocals. It's classical guitar updated for the 00's, Dananananakroyd and Fang Island stripped all the way down to the basics until it's soundtracky and propulsive, like chiming microdosed Explosions/Godspeed. Frantic and relaxing, subtly evocative fun 3.5/5

#1821 Video Hippos - Unbeast the Leash

Every note of Unbeast the Leash floats on a sea of synth tone and rumbling guitar drone and endless bass notes - there are no moments of silent, no breaks between the sounds, just that sea and the spikes and peaks of vocals and guitars that manage to crest it. It can't stop, it pushes forward always in overwhelming, bristling, start-start post-post-punk glory, Single Frame with motion blur, thrilling, exhausting, nauseating, pushing till you drown 3.5/5

#1820 Sheer Mag - II

Man, you gotta love that giant bass, that slashy guitar, that hooksome Thin Lizzy / Cheap Trick feel good strut.

But before you dive into this, you're gonna have to ask yourself if you're up for Christina Halladay's shrapnel vocals, shouted from a broken megaphone across a tincan telephone. It's one part her delivery, one part blownout production, all physically hurtful.

Fuuuck though, that songcraft behind it, and the actual energy underneath the jagged edges on the voice, I can't quite stay away, back into the nailbomb phonebooth for superman all again 3.5/5

#1819 Royal Headache - High

At first I was disappointed that this lacked the breakneck energy of the Headache's debut. But it finds its own lane - as a pre-post-punk take on The Strokes maybe, that clipalong cool, run ragged with shattered, lovelorn vocals. The poppier stuff like the title track's catchy as heck, and things kick up nicely as it all spirals to destruction before you know it.

I first heard this the morning after rewatching episode 2.3 of Rick and Morty, which I won't spoil. But for some reason the impossible tale of a bright-and-fast fling with an intergalactic hivemind seemingly fit this album's soundtracking. Something in High's hugeness, recklessness, sadness and fury strikes a chord, as it glances in humble terms off something gorgeous and impossible with an energy just beyond grasp 4/5

#1818 The Doors - Morrison Hotel

Oh Doors - they're rip-roaring when Morrison breaks on through, but too often his baritone and the backing band's bass and organ swirls make for a murky mess, a blanket of stifling humid air.

There's hookiness here, drawing on blues and general Americana to conjure dusty energy, spinning the sound out in a dozen little directions. But goddamn, Morrison's voice, swampy and winedark and all-consuming, a weight in the gut, making even the hookiest song echo from across a heroin haze, making every song a varying degree of misery 3/5

#1817 Mini Dresses - Four

Listen / buy here!

That slowrolling bass and chiming guitars and piping ladyvocals, it's a catching combination. But it's the same tricks, the same languid tempo, across all 5 of these songs and its numbing by the end 2.5/5

#1816 High Pop - Holy Smokes!

Listen / buy here!

Right up in the psyche/garage/surf-adjacent early 10's / late aughts scene, right down to those unfortunate whiny Deerhunter vocals and Wavvesey blownout fuzz. When they really go for it though, that guitar muscle and reckless charges are refreshing as hell, there guys'll be all fucking right once they get out of the shadows of their inspirations 3/5

#1815 Pupppy - Shit in the Apple Pie

Listen / buy here!

Tones of Built to Spill, that meander and moan and whining guitar into crash that sounds like pure Boston Local Band, even if they're from NY, that slacker lo-fi swoon. Everything's a little too slow, a little too Sunday stoned, ending up unassuming and a little boring 2.5/5

#1814 Vundabar - Gawk

Something about these guys still doesn't add up. They're so polished, so fucking good live, touring the world again and again, and now putting out this rock-solid, totally legitimate, professional album, all while being 20 years old and not even really making that big a splash with the youth of Boston. Everything is so /honed/, so /nailed/

Good management? Just that talented??

Everything I loved about their debut's back, even if it's without that bracing sneakattack factor - those killer hooks, those quicksilver guitar/vocal interplays, those dimestopper hitches, bringing surfy poppostpunk to the masses. It's so goddamned listenable, a totally solid representation of their unbeatable live show.

What's the future for these guys? Can you go up from here? They're made their point. This piece of sound has got their flag in it. They are the masters of their domain. And that's a good start, but here's hoping they're not Spoon, they're not The Strokes, that they've got another gear in 'em, some nextlevel secret weapon that's gonna blow this whole thing wide open.

High hopes here 4/5


____/\_____/\____/\_/\______

edit: to be clear! this is a soaring, exciting album, and there's nothing samey about it on its own. It just feels on the same continuum as the debut, like its bumping up against a high ceiling with urgent force

#1813 Fleetwood Mac - Then Play On (Original CD Tracklist)

A sweet spot where pre-Buckingham-Nicks Fleetwood Mac grew out of pure bluesrock, into something a little more adventurous, something that sounds like Classic Rock. The pacing's patient, ebbing and flowing and pushing and pulling, using those big rich guitars to wring out motion and emotion. It's still pretty stuffy, no real sense of GOINFORIT, but it can still be fun to watch a band trying to streeeeetch its blueprint 3.5/5

#1812 Led Zeppelin - In Through the Out Door

And after getting back to bare bones on Presence, Zepp slathers that skeleton up like Mexican dead people Christmas. Nothing sums up the problem quite like All My Love - rehashing the most well-trod lyrical theme, tempo, basic riff and structure, but with fake strings and synth solos and just generally a bunch of bullshit that doesn't belong here. And are you *sure* Fool in the Rain isn't a Billy Joel song? The whole thing's a mess, swinging for Elvis, The Who, The Stones and Yes without sounding much like Led goddamn Zeppelin.

And yet, I have to almost admire that reckless experimentalism - and when they really go for the prog on Carouselambra it's actually kind of brilliant.

Here's a test I go back to sometimes: what if this was the first and only album by some unknown band? Would it be a cult classic? It's helped redeem the likes of Adore and Vitology and I think it works here: this is a weird pile of everything, and if it wasn't for its aggressive Not-Zeppelinism clouding our judgment, I think we could learn to like it a lot better, to love it as a smart, dumb hot mess 3.5/5

#1811 Led Zeppelin - Presence

Nothing new to say about this one in 2015: it's stripped to the bone, all the instruments just there in perfect balance. Blues + rock = blues rock, as pure as it comes, and it's pretty goddamn great. Just the riffs and songsmanship and rhythmic lockdown that you like about Zeppelin, without any of the pretention and nonsense.

None of the riffs here live up to their best, but for every Black Dog you had to suffer a Stairway to Heaven*. No more! All almost killer // absolutely no filler 4/5

* still hands down the most overrated song of all time, and it's not close, and if you disagree you can kiss my whole ass

#1810 Fleetwood Mac - English Rose

Reminder one more time: Fleetwood Mac used to be a full-on blues band. No ladies, no pop, no damn nothin'. This is from then.

And it's by the book. A couple books anyway. We got a boogie, a rumble, some Fats Domino shuffle, and lots of straight up 12 bar blues. Got some chops, got some heart, though no great heaping helping of either 3/5

Month in Review: July '15

Life continues to make demands, a scant sampling of new stuff, cult classics, and Scott Ganem recommendations managed to yield a solid crop of shit worth hearing.

Album of the Month
 
Thee Oh Sees - Mutilator Defeated at Last - relentlessly thrilling, the realization of all the potential these guys have always shone. A busy, galloping, hooky masterpiece

Also Recommended!

Wilco - Star Wars - these guys are still around, putting out another twisty, solid, subtly brilliant album

Nina Simone - Pastel Blues - maybe it's my relative unfamiliarity with Simone, but this blew my socks off. She's truly a force, and this has got all the nuance and character you could dream of

Langhorne Slim - The Way We Move - an earthy, inviting record that takes the long way around to a dozen of my favorite 00's indie rock sounds