#2080 Saint Pepsi - Hit Vibes

An album that zeros in on the dead center of the deepest groove around and rides it all night long. A blownout mix stacked with funk pops, disco beats, scrappy samples and bass bass bass, taking Daft Punk's mission to its logical analog conclusion - the blurry memory of low dark dancehalls lost in space and time, guaranteed to make whatever you're doing feel 89% cooler 4.5/5

#2079 Charles Mingus - Pithecanthropus Erectus

The first half of this album works better as art than as a listen: the high-concept title track's an inventive, lurching, squealing squaller that's good for an evening's chin-stroke, but A Foggy Day's horn-as-foley cityscape doesn't rise above gimmickry

On the flipside: Profile of Jackie is gorgeous and haunting, and the closing epic's an excellent, prickly, meandering jam. As always, I know nothing about jazz, but a bit of novelty and a bit of timelessness are enough to give this legs 3.5/5

#2078 Session Victim - The Haunted House of House

Very agreeable, lightly-funked good-groovin' house that will keep your head bobbing and smooth out your moments just fine. Unspectacular and quietly excellent 3.5/5

#2077 James Blake - The Colour in Anything

There's promise here: the production's alien and crystaline and its glacial moves build hypnosis. And when Blake's using his voice as sampling // chopping grist, it works fine, bringing an eerie vulnerability to the emptiness.

But too often he croons, whines, whinnies at length, like the single worst soul singer you've ever heard. It's painful.

And it goes on

for

fucking

ever.

Has anyone ever listened to this entire hour and sixteen minute in a sitting and enjoyed it? It's borderline Metal Machine Music, like some sick joke, asking how much tuneless, pathetic quivering you can take from an album utterly disinterested in your enjoyment, a cargo cult record that hopes blind commitment to a bad idea will bring brilliance. One of the most annoying things I've listened to in a long time 2/5

#2076 Todd Terje & The Olsens - The Big Cover-Up

I'll bet these songs are a blast to rave out to live, but on disc there's just something missing. A lack of big moments, of contrast in the mix - it's all too smoothed out. Even the remixes are pretty safe, making the whole disc sound even more repetitive.

It's a fine listen, with some little inventions and an agreeable pulse, but it's undeniably underwhelming after It's Album Time 3/5

#2075 Goldlink - And After That, We Didn't Talk

A tight, honest, intricate little hip hop record. When Goldlink actually raps he's got an easy, direct, effortlessly thoughtful delivery that's disarming and engaging. All the crooning breaks up the flow - man do I hate that trend in hip hop, everybody's gotta sing too - but it makes the returns the actual rapping all the more satisfying. Asides about race and hip hop and love hit precisely, confessions of flaw and vulnerability ring true.

You know why this really works though? Because it gets in and makes its points in 33 minutes, and that leaves room for you to want more, leaves room for you to reflect on what's been delivered, sounding like someone who's put time into deciding parts of the message that are the most important. There's a lot of dudes out there who could take a lesson 3.5/5

#2074 Dion - Runaround Sue

A rock-adjacent doo-wop gem from the early-60's no-rock lull, it's got just enough swagger to sound pretty fuckin _cool_ in 2016.

Dion's delivery's swinging and pleasant, but with just a little effortless edge, smooth like Sinatra at his snakiest -- backed by pillowey ooo's and shuffly drums, spiked with horns and pianos played by a band with a little bit of last night's grit in their shoes 4/5

#2073 Mercury Rev - Yerself is Steam

A great, fearless slice of golden age indie/underground, packed with buzz and fuzz and hiss and noise and unexpected swerves. It gives you that rush that there is newness possible in rock, that everyone has something nasty and beautiful and strange waiting to pour out through an amp or three.

It's messy, lo-fi, unexpected and unpredictable, but so lively and sincere and rushing headlong that you forgive the mess it leaves in its wake 4/5

#2072 Weval - Weval

Repetitive, uninventive samples and pillowey synths and wonky distortions - real heads might appreciate some subtle innovation in soundsqueezing. But there's no real heart here, no motion, no hypnosis, no mandate to move: the casual listener's likely to find it boring and annoying 2.5/5

#2071 Peter Bjorn and John - Breakin' Point

Dead-simple indie-dance lite. The whole album is an unrelenting cadence of 3-minute songs with 3-chorus cadences, just thud thud thud, 80's revival via the 00's.

I'd like to give this the benefit of the doubt, that it's music meant for the live show? But all I can imagine is half-hearted hip-bumps from the easily pleased - music for people who aspire to "like music", but don't want to have to work very hard at it 2/5

#2070 Mutoid Man - Bleeder

Mutoid Man likes all the ways to rock!

Hardcore rush, proggy judo, and pure metal muscle to back it up!

Never letting you quite settle in, Mutoid Man's coming after you, shouts and screams spiraling around drained humanity, body horror, watching and being watched - but it's all a ton of fun. Brodsky's just thrashing around in it, split-lip grin reveling in the chaos and bringing you along for the ride.

A thrilling, noisy, brilliant little trip 4/5

#2069 Flipper's Guitar - Singles

I'm all for style-jumping, genre-bending, and general plundering, but this is just too pop, too saccharine. Flipper's Guitar nicks bossa nova, funk, surf, sunny 60's rock, etc. - good start! But it smooths off all the rough edges into a Fruit Stripe Playmobil pastiche, sweet but plastic, and completely forgettable 2.5/5

#2068 The Struts - Everybody Wants

The glammy crash of Queen and sneering swagger of the Stones-via-Supergrass, with just a tinge of fake-rebellious smut-lite to titillate the youths. The Darkness // Morningwood //Louis XIV used the same blueprint to manufacture fun in the mid-00's, and this is just another trip to the well.

The Struts take the audacity a step further, for better or worse: every chorus is well-designed for shouting along to, every hook ready to be swayed // danced awkwardly to. Hell, we're not two full songs in before we have an actual crowd singalong AND clappalong, built right into the song. You're supposed to write the songs and earn that kind of adoration, not assume it up-front - it's like palming a condom in your first-date handshake.

And just like that old chestnut, every once in a while, I'll be damned, it's just brazen enough to go around the horn and charm you for a song or two. But albumwide that kind of nonsense just gets sleazy, and you start looking for someone that wants to put in the time to earn it 2.5/5

#2067 Nicholas - Bonus Beats Vol 1

Housey beats + samples + patience; you've got a record with a groove a mile long and a meter deep.

That live-ass bass, those flickers of humanity, that growth into luscious rhodes and horns, it's a thrilling little 4-pack, ready to turn your workday into a party and your party into a better party 4.5/5

#2066 Debo Band - Ere Gobez

Torn, cause I'll bet this's a blast live - all that unpredictable exploding energy, those rolling, rollicking beats, those horns, guitars, layers layers. I'd dance my face off. But on record it's exhausting, the Amharic (?) shouts and chants blurring into noise as the album approaches the hour mark.

It's a promise of something great, even if that something doesn't actually live on the disc 3/5

#2065 The Claypool Lennon Delirium - The Monolith Of Phobos

Les Claypool's a wildly creative dude, one of the greatest ever when it comes to reinventing an instrument. But that wildness cut both ways: his output with Primus was wicked uneven, only really coalescing for about half an album circa Seas of Cheese. Dude just couldn't be contained.

But this collaboration with Sean Lennon might be just what the doctor ordered. With a swirl of Beatlesey psychedelia, wonderous production tricks, and doubled-up gorgeous tunefulness - behold - the beast be yoked, if untamed.

That bass is still a star, but its tricks are put to service powering a rocketship to the depths of your mind. The lyrics are dead simple, a little too hung up on finding rhymes at the ends of lines, riding one theme all song long, but I don't know that it would work any other way. It's all wonderfully hypnotic. A swirling strangeness; insidious repetition giving way to swooping backcurrents, great for a strange night in 4/5

#2064 Drake - Views

Drake always kind of sucked, but now that he's gotten big, he doesn't even have an underdog thing going. One of the biggest rappers in the world and all he does is moan.

I could not care less about all his hollow confessionals, auto-crooned as often as they're rapped, all awash in mushy synths and disinterested beats. I definitely don't need to listen to twenty tracks across one hour and twenty minutes. Every song goes on too long, and while we're on the subject, Hotline Bling is boring garbage. A tighter record might have felt intimate, but this is self-indulgent and thin, a soulless, hookless waste of time 1.5/5

#2063 Terry Reid - River

Loose, roots-via-Zep jams from the great 70's mightabeen. Dude does have a great classic rock voice, and this is all right agreeable (that just-now-no-now drumming keeping everything rolling) but none of it makes much of a lasting impression 3/5

#2062 Whitney - Light Upon the Lake

That backing, ooh, so rich, so sunny, those surging horns, a halcyon home video of Beulah's golden days; those sweet sweet guitars light on the lake.

Those painful vocals though, goddamn, that tinny, grass-flute falsetto, production-honed to piercing sharpness -- if you can survive it you're luckier than me, there's a sea of gorgeous sounds under those sheetmetal strains 2.5/5