Has the world changed, or have I changed?
I went back to Feed Me's Big Adventure, and it's still incredible. Why can't he find it again?
Maybe there was just a punk rock first-swing energy. I think Jon Gooch's just got too much integrity.
He keeps trying something new. He won't just settle into that big 4/4, won't embrace those big dumb riffs, everything's got all these vocal samples and missing beats and subtle pulses and swirls and variants on dubstep builts and it's just - - - not as good.
I want to appreciate all this invention, but he's stuck in a valley: this isn't dumb enough to tap that raw animal nerve, not interesting enough to pass as inventive // chin scratchy // compositional electectonicia nonslelnse, and I can't find any reason to put it on.
For my tiny corner of the world, he's cursed by putting out the single best GET SHIT DONE record I've ever heard, and his way better stuff just doesn't move me and I can't listen to anything of his without comparing it. That probably makes me a bad writer and a bad person but I can't get past it 3/5
Friday, July 29, 2016
Thursday, July 28, 2016
#2109 Bark Psychosis - Hex
Pretty, barely there, often beatless, mostly formless, washed with horns and guitars and endless piano lines. Dig the clean production: when the sound's busy its because the wall's been built, brick by brick, not reverb-summoned into massiveness. And there's that patience, that ever-lurking waft of silence.
Pretty. But mostly soulless, the murmured vocals bringing nothing to the table - this is pure background music, even by post-rock standards 3/5
Pretty. But mostly soulless, the murmured vocals bringing nothing to the table - this is pure background music, even by post-rock standards 3/5
#2108 Tortoise - TNT
I downloaded a Tortoise track or two 20 years ago (god!) and had no idea what to make of it.
Now I'm a little more receptive - it's experimental, showy, meandering, but truly beautiful in places, with more heart than Talk Talk and Slint, like some early shadow of Broken Social Scene at their airiest, packed with little details to get lost in. A relief map of your physical brain.
It does kinda sound like a soundtrack at times - but at least it makes me think "yeah, I'd watch this movie" 4/5
Now I'm a little more receptive - it's experimental, showy, meandering, but truly beautiful in places, with more heart than Talk Talk and Slint, like some early shadow of Broken Social Scene at their airiest, packed with little details to get lost in. A relief map of your physical brain.
It does kinda sound like a soundtrack at times - but at least it makes me think "yeah, I'd watch this movie" 4/5
#2107 Gap Dream - This Is Gap Dream
Minimal, electronic-tinged lo-fi, simmering somewhere between Velvet-disinterest and GBV-doing-my-bestism, trickling out pan-fried production until you want to curl up under its fuzzy details and lack of expectations. Always roughly pretty, never quite the same, it's an intriguing, restless little critter 4/5
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
#2106 Big Business - Command Your Weather
As I wrote to Aaron: "its kind of sludgy and repetitive, but the guitar sounds are like fucking *steaks*. its like Muse played by cavemen"
I think that about sums it up - the pacing's all wrong, but all the better to dig into those monsterous guitar//bass buzzes. Extra points for Horses and its uncanny, unshakable dread 4/5
I think that about sums it up - the pacing's all wrong, but all the better to dig into those monsterous guitar//bass buzzes. Extra points for Horses and its uncanny, unshakable dread 4/5
#2105 Melvins - Houdini
Stoner rock Sabbath gone slow and sludgy - overblown guitars groan, King Buzzo moans, that big rumbling bass plods on forever to nowhere. Maybe the poor pacing's intended as some kind of punk-rock // outsider art rock move, but it seems like a bad sign when the most interesting thing about your album is its boringness 2.5/5
#2104 Sweet - Desolation Boulevard (US)
Dead simple themes blasted out with panache, never quite sitting still - a goodtime glam/proto-pop-metal romp in the spirit of peak Queen 3.5/5
#2103 Outkast - ATLiens
Outkast's second album sanded some of the rough edges of their debut. The production's gotten spacier: less funk, more soul. The gangta stuff's gone, the interludes too, it's just all just smooth, hell, even sexy in places.
What's intact is the easy reminiscence of southern details - food, cars, neighborhoods, scenes. And that cadence, locked in, intricate rhymes pour out effortlessly. Two dudes deeply comfortable in their own skin 3.5/5
What's intact is the easy reminiscence of southern details - food, cars, neighborhoods, scenes. And that cadence, locked in, intricate rhymes pour out effortlessly. Two dudes deeply comfortable in their own skin 3.5/5
Monday, July 25, 2016
#2102 Slowdive - Souvlaki
Despite some indulgences in the big Ride/MBV shoegaze guitars, Slowdive shows a quieter, more nuanced side of the scene. The wall of sound shimmers with frail details, the loud moments interspersed with airy, reverb-soaked passages - - spare guitar lines and voices floating out in space - - the whole album twists in place, never touching the ground 3.5/5
Friday, July 22, 2016
#2101 Outkast - Southernplayalisticadillacmusik
Outkast's debut's built on languid, sparking g-funk - big lush backing spiked with that signature pip-pip-pap-pippitipatap cadence. Sprawling, but never boring, it's all a big, slow, sweltering party, stoned and familial, packed with inspiration, flashed with violence, an easy-feeling ride through uneasy streets 4/5
#2100 The Arcs - Yours, Dreamily
Dan Aurbach's appeal was coming at guitars rough and hard, the second coming of The White Stripes - but he's struggled to grow. Brothers aside, it's been a descent into polish with no return.
His latest project goes all psychedelic, and the blankety production's a good trick, but it doesn't carry the underwhelming songs. There's not a memorable hook among them, and all the grit and bite's buried under that faux retro sound.
Don't get me wrong, the sound's the star, the production deliciously over-under-produced, it's just at odds with the measured songwriting. It'd have worked better without Aurbach's distinctive voice, which is too strong and too sure, when what these songs needed was a little wheels-coming-off desperation. It ends up like an Ocean's movie - sounding too polished, too removed - more fun to make than to listen to 3/5
His latest project goes all psychedelic, and the blankety production's a good trick, but it doesn't carry the underwhelming songs. There's not a memorable hook among them, and all the grit and bite's buried under that faux retro sound.
Don't get me wrong, the sound's the star, the production deliciously over-under-produced, it's just at odds with the measured songwriting. It'd have worked better without Aurbach's distinctive voice, which is too strong and too sure, when what these songs needed was a little wheels-coming-off desperation. It ends up like an Ocean's movie - sounding too polished, too removed - more fun to make than to listen to 3/5
Thursday, July 21, 2016
#2099 Weezer - Weezer (White Album)
I've mostly gotten over the pain of Weezer's second coming. I think I'm ready to hear a Weezer album with an open mind.
The basic backbone's fine. A little overpolished, a little obvious, but hookish, sure. And there's some searing little guitar moment in almost every song. I can't deny, each one has some ooo or skrwee to catch you at the 2:30 / 2/3 mark.
And lyrically, there's moments. Thank God For Girls is a little much, but . . . works, in a kinda awkward hey aren't you 46 but hey I can't believe I'm 36 so I guess its ok kinda way.
And there's the barest whiff of poison - but it's all still bubblegum. Rivers never forgave us for Pinkerton, and he'll never let us in again. This is all still pitched at the second gen kids.
And yet
I sense that somewhere out there Weezer's got that album in them that says, beyond all the Hurleys and Raditude goofs, I'm forty fucking six and counting. I am closer to dying than being born, and when I'm alone at night I feel more like that vulnerable kid in the first two than that swaggering douche in the last five, and despite all the ways you try to grasp at the good days too, doesn't that creep up on you at night, too? Let's get open and empty.
I don't begrudge this for not being that album. Rivers doesn't owe us shit. But I guess I appreciate, somewhere between the shimmers, there's that hint that he knows 3/5
The basic backbone's fine. A little overpolished, a little obvious, but hookish, sure. And there's some searing little guitar moment in almost every song. I can't deny, each one has some ooo or skrwee to catch you at the 2:30 / 2/3 mark.
And lyrically, there's moments. Thank God For Girls is a little much, but . . . works, in a kinda awkward hey aren't you 46 but hey I can't believe I'm 36 so I guess its ok kinda way.
And there's the barest whiff of poison - but it's all still bubblegum. Rivers never forgave us for Pinkerton, and he'll never let us in again. This is all still pitched at the second gen kids.
And yet
I sense that somewhere out there Weezer's got that album in them that says, beyond all the Hurleys and Raditude goofs, I'm forty fucking six and counting. I am closer to dying than being born, and when I'm alone at night I feel more like that vulnerable kid in the first two than that swaggering douche in the last five, and despite all the ways you try to grasp at the good days too, doesn't that creep up on you at night, too? Let's get open and empty.
I don't begrudge this for not being that album. Rivers doesn't owe us shit. But I guess I appreciate, somewhere between the shimmers, there's that hint that he knows 3/5
#2098 VA - Whatever Nevermind
Like the recent In Utero tribute, this goes song by song in order, and has about the same ratio of hits and misses.
And like that comp it leads off with a song that suggest a slowedup, more adventurous take than the rest of the comp can deliver. Too bad Young Widows' Smells Like Teen Spirit never really works - it's slowed and minimized and Sonic Youth dissonantized, but it doesn't use that tweaking to arrive at the original's thrust in a new way. It's just fucked for its own sake.
See also Kylesa's Come As You Are. Playing a song slowly doesn't count as reinventing it. I can put on Nevermind at the wrong RPM all by myself if that was what I really wanted (take note Witch House and Chillwave, if you're still limping along out there).
Just to show you can screw it up both ways: Toche fills the gap with a needless, rote recreation of In Bloom.
On the other side of the coin: is it a coincidence that the bands I came to hear did the best? The middle section of the album's by far the strongest:
- Cave In takes the already high-notched Breed up a notch
- Boris shows how the big slowdown can be done right, taking Lithium's underlying, smoldering madness all the way down the hole
- Personal favs White Reaper win the MVP, kicking Territorial Pissings up a dozen notches, going full hardcore, with their signature synth wheeling bringing the perfect pop-punk swingback
As with In Utero, In Tribute: nothing here that's going to displace the original, but there's enough reinvention to justify a once-through if you're even a casual Nirvana fan, or fan of any of the comp's admirable lineup of noisy motherfuckers 3.5/5
And like that comp it leads off with a song that suggest a slowedup, more adventurous take than the rest of the comp can deliver. Too bad Young Widows' Smells Like Teen Spirit never really works - it's slowed and minimized and Sonic Youth dissonantized, but it doesn't use that tweaking to arrive at the original's thrust in a new way. It's just fucked for its own sake.
See also Kylesa's Come As You Are. Playing a song slowly doesn't count as reinventing it. I can put on Nevermind at the wrong RPM all by myself if that was what I really wanted (take note Witch House and Chillwave, if you're still limping along out there).
Just to show you can screw it up both ways: Toche fills the gap with a needless, rote recreation of In Bloom.
On the other side of the coin: is it a coincidence that the bands I came to hear did the best? The middle section of the album's by far the strongest:
- Cave In takes the already high-notched Breed up a notch
- Boris shows how the big slowdown can be done right, taking Lithium's underlying, smoldering madness all the way down the hole
- Personal favs White Reaper win the MVP, kicking Territorial Pissings up a dozen notches, going full hardcore, with their signature synth wheeling bringing the perfect pop-punk swingback
As with In Utero, In Tribute: nothing here that's going to displace the original, but there's enough reinvention to justify a once-through if you're even a casual Nirvana fan, or fan of any of the comp's admirable lineup of noisy motherfuckers 3.5/5
#2097 Jeff Beck - Loud Hailer
Dad, is that you?
Because this is the exact album my dad's been making for years: a bitter dig at a deserving bullshit world, all in the service of carving out space to rip out a solo or three.
--
On to the album at hand:
The lyrics are a little too obviously rhymed, a little underclever, a little South Park-obvious in their targeting. And singer Rosie Bones is ragged and ready, solid enough, but she's reciting someone else's lines and it shows. And while I'm complaining: some of the Big Stuff production, with all its Trent Resnorisms, feels a forced at times.
But it pulls it off often enough, just ripping the roof off your speakers//face, just "how did you make my headphones do that shit just now" - well shit, respect. If you've gotta overproduce, at least make a monster.
And Beck can still play - underneath all those populist trappings there's some muso nuggets. And while the thrust is big-shit modern-adjacent bombast, when all that grasping falls away there's some real pretty little moments. Those slow songs are secret highlights, dig that Little Wing solo on Scared for the Children.
Beck's put on modern clothes, and it's an ill fit - but he's got enough swagger he pulls it off anyway 3.5/5
Because this is the exact album my dad's been making for years: a bitter dig at a deserving bullshit world, all in the service of carving out space to rip out a solo or three.
--
On to the album at hand:
The lyrics are a little too obviously rhymed, a little underclever, a little South Park-obvious in their targeting. And singer Rosie Bones is ragged and ready, solid enough, but she's reciting someone else's lines and it shows. And while I'm complaining: some of the Big Stuff production, with all its Trent Resnorisms, feels a forced at times.
But it pulls it off often enough, just ripping the roof off your speakers//face, just "how did you make my headphones do that shit just now" - well shit, respect. If you've gotta overproduce, at least make a monster.
And Beck can still play - underneath all those populist trappings there's some muso nuggets. And while the thrust is big-shit modern-adjacent bombast, when all that grasping falls away there's some real pretty little moments. Those slow songs are secret highlights, dig that Little Wing solo on Scared for the Children.
Beck's put on modern clothes, and it's an ill fit - but he's got enough swagger he pulls it off anyway 3.5/5
Wednesday, July 20, 2016
#2096 Ian William Craig - Centres
A masterpiece.
This crushes song and time and instrument, as analog decay, digital decay, echo, glitch, sawtooth, echo, sine, overflow, attack, sustain, clip, clip, echo, buzz, buzz - - takeover.
A fragile heart of humanity clips along at 30 frames a second, 20 frames a second, there is no sense of song or chorus. none of this seems l
ike itis designed for you but a think that comes out of th
e alignment of stars fr
from this coincidental position that makes belts and ladles and streaks th
thththth
something comes out of the dark and it wants you to know that purpose is no country you can find. that you cannot contain and cannot be contained.
and a beam of light like an angel comes down in sawtooth sound.
we are frail and afraid, and we go on, for now 4.5/5
This crushes song and time and instrument, as analog decay, digital decay, echo, glitch, sawtooth, echo, sine, overflow, attack, sustain, clip, clip, echo, buzz, buzz - - takeover.
A fragile heart of humanity clips along at 30 frames a second, 20 frames a second, there is no sense of song or chorus. none of this seems l
ike itis designed for you but a think that comes out of th
e alignment of stars fr
from this coincidental position that makes belts and ladles and streaks th
thththth
something comes out of the dark and it wants you to know that purpose is no country you can find. that you cannot contain and cannot be contained.
and a beam of light like an angel comes down in sawtooth sound.
we are frail and afraid, and we go on, for now 4.5/5
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
#2095 Sepeltura - Roots
A masterpiece of earthy, subtly atmospheric, insidiously strange metal.
Perfectly-named too. Roots brings the roaring and riffing as hard as anything in 90's metal, but that Brazilian influence simmers underneath, the skittering rhythmic asides, the the Korn loose-bass rattle, the buzzing drones and chants - there's this vibrating backbone that keeps you uneasy, the first third of a Cronenberg movie, something branching and snaking between the drums and guitars. Sneaky good shit 4/5
Perfectly-named too. Roots brings the roaring and riffing as hard as anything in 90's metal, but that Brazilian influence simmers underneath, the skittering rhythmic asides, the the Korn loose-bass rattle, the buzzing drones and chants - there's this vibrating backbone that keeps you uneasy, the first third of a Cronenberg movie, something branching and snaking between the drums and guitars. Sneaky good shit 4/5
Monday, July 18, 2016
#2094 Pygmy Lush - Bitter River
Their Serve the Servants cover got my attention, but nothing here's as wildly spacy.
The MO is splintering hardcore screamo mixed with lilting, morose plucking and crooning. The switch flips on a dime, but the band's savvy about pacing out the swerves, until the back and forth feels natural, the flayed guitars and throats // the hopeless drifting strums two sides of the same coin, flipped by a smoldering emo Two Face -- Modest Mouse drawn and quartered till every impulse is overdone.
Much too muchy for me, but admirable from a distance 3/5
The MO is splintering hardcore screamo mixed with lilting, morose plucking and crooning. The switch flips on a dime, but the band's savvy about pacing out the swerves, until the back and forth feels natural, the flayed guitars and throats // the hopeless drifting strums two sides of the same coin, flipped by a smoldering emo Two Face -- Modest Mouse drawn and quartered till every impulse is overdone.
Much too muchy for me, but admirable from a distance 3/5
#2093 VA - In Utero, In Tribute
If you're gonna do a tribute comp, doing an album straight through's the way to go. And if you're gonna do an album straight through, each band's gotta bring something new to the table without making a disjoint hodgepodge.
This's better than most, with a few real novel takes. Pygmy Lush's wildly dreamlike Serve the Servants, Mean Jean's bratty Very Ape, and Thou's flayed Milk It -- they all take the originals' energy in a new direction without just starting from scratch.
The rest is mixed at best: Circa Survive's Scentless Apprentice at least comes in a little harder, taking that Albini percussive crush up a notch. But Young Widows' Dumb is powefull uninteresting, and Thursday's Rape Me is pathetically watered down, one of the meekest covers I've ever heard.
The rest is in between - it's nothing that's going to replace the original, but its a fun listen once or twice through if you've got 15 bucks / (more likely) spotify and an hour to burn 3.5/5
This's better than most, with a few real novel takes. Pygmy Lush's wildly dreamlike Serve the Servants, Mean Jean's bratty Very Ape, and Thou's flayed Milk It -- they all take the originals' energy in a new direction without just starting from scratch.
The rest is mixed at best: Circa Survive's Scentless Apprentice at least comes in a little harder, taking that Albini percussive crush up a notch. But Young Widows' Dumb is powefull uninteresting, and Thursday's Rape Me is pathetically watered down, one of the meekest covers I've ever heard.
The rest is in between - it's nothing that's going to replace the original, but its a fun listen once or twice through if you've got 15 bucks / (more likely) spotify and an hour to burn 3.5/5
Thursday, July 14, 2016
#2092 The Prodigy - Music for the Jilted Generation
The Prodigy's image circa Fat of the Land was eye-rollingly "intense" in a distinctly 90's way - its tough to separate it from the music. And the music's pretty uncool on its own: the little vocal snippets, the rave-ready beats, the hip hop scratches - it's all wildly dated by now.
But if you can get past it: some of those squonky acid loops are pretty hooky, and who doesn't love a breakbeat? [Aside: I feel like there was an awful lot of meat on the breakbeat bone when we gave up on it] And why shouldn't you throw every buzzy, squiggling, noisy thing you can find into the mix? Pure kitchen-sink maximalism: Justice/Vitalic/DaftPunk meets GirlTalk/JasonForrest/Avalances. It's a good little rush if you can give yourself over to it 3.5/5
But if you can get past it: some of those squonky acid loops are pretty hooky, and who doesn't love a breakbeat? [Aside: I feel like there was an awful lot of meat on the breakbeat bone when we gave up on it] And why shouldn't you throw every buzzy, squiggling, noisy thing you can find into the mix? Pure kitchen-sink maximalism: Justice/Vitalic/DaftPunk meets GirlTalk/JasonForrest/Avalances. It's a good little rush if you can give yourself over to it 3.5/5
Monday, July 11, 2016
#2091 The Avalanches - Wildflower
You had every reason to have low expectations for Wildflower. 16 years after an impossible 3,000+ sample opus, the window for a true follow-up was closed - surely the magic was gone, maybe the money'd run out. Early singles sounded like Avalanches gone pop, or unlike Avalanches altogether.
And as you tuck in with cautious optimism, signs are shaky. The warbles opening Because I'm Me, the too-bold samples and hip-hop verse-structured Frankie Sinatra - there's certainly nothing to suggest the mysterious, encompassing world-building of Since I Left You.
But the album unfolds and it all starts to make sense. That lilting pulse sets in. Signature flute flutters and vocal touches and the thinnest implication of a story and analog knob-turn DJism dynamics weave themselves into : holy shit: an honest to god Avalanches record.
And it blooms from there.
This is a different kind of party, less bopping beside dim-lit coffee tables, more sinking into sunlit couches. Colours abound, patterns shift, beams of daylight twist. If I Was a Folkstar and Harmony deliver some of the duo's most beautiful Beachboy layerings ever, and the entire second half melts out from under itself. There's no burst of disco light, Live at Dominoes raveups - Wildflower's happy to roll out a blanket on the grass and fade out of view in a sea of sounds.
It even gets its Frontier Psychiatrist moment out of the way early - The Noisy Eater's a shimmering fucking blast and gives you your last jolt before the 11-track fadeout.
--
The album steals my thunder a bit: all the words I'd use to describe it show up right in the song titles: Sunshine, Colours, Harmony, and most of all _Kaleidoscopic_. It's the perfect word for the album: packed with familiar things splintered into something stranger and more colorful and disordered into new beautiful patterns.
Let's stretch that metaphor to breaking: it's also a bit of a novelty. All that second-half driftoff is nice if you're in a very specific mindset, but I missed the way SILY kept the energy up, kept you wrapped up in its world. Wildflower's a bit more of a wild child (flower child?), wandering off to let you take in the day on your own, and it can feel a bit like half an album - just about every memorable moments on the first side.
Still! It's a wholly unique thing, another dose of magic from one of the most original electronic acts out there - an endless summer flipside to their first album's endless nights - changing minds instead of longitudes to make life last forever. A expectation-defier that might take years to come to appreciate at its own achievement* 4.5/5
* Do we dare hope for a third? Or better yet, with the momentum of Smile, GBV, and now Wildflower, is there hope for the other great reappearances? You paying attention out there Jeff Mangum?
And as you tuck in with cautious optimism, signs are shaky. The warbles opening Because I'm Me, the too-bold samples and hip-hop verse-structured Frankie Sinatra - there's certainly nothing to suggest the mysterious, encompassing world-building of Since I Left You.
But the album unfolds and it all starts to make sense. That lilting pulse sets in. Signature flute flutters and vocal touches and the thinnest implication of a story and analog knob-turn DJism dynamics weave themselves into : holy shit: an honest to god Avalanches record.
And it blooms from there.
This is a different kind of party, less bopping beside dim-lit coffee tables, more sinking into sunlit couches. Colours abound, patterns shift, beams of daylight twist. If I Was a Folkstar and Harmony deliver some of the duo's most beautiful Beachboy layerings ever, and the entire second half melts out from under itself. There's no burst of disco light, Live at Dominoes raveups - Wildflower's happy to roll out a blanket on the grass and fade out of view in a sea of sounds.
It even gets its Frontier Psychiatrist moment out of the way early - The Noisy Eater's a shimmering fucking blast and gives you your last jolt before the 11-track fadeout.
--
The album steals my thunder a bit: all the words I'd use to describe it show up right in the song titles: Sunshine, Colours, Harmony, and most of all _Kaleidoscopic_. It's the perfect word for the album: packed with familiar things splintered into something stranger and more colorful and disordered into new beautiful patterns.
Let's stretch that metaphor to breaking: it's also a bit of a novelty. All that second-half driftoff is nice if you're in a very specific mindset, but I missed the way SILY kept the energy up, kept you wrapped up in its world. Wildflower's a bit more of a wild child (flower child?), wandering off to let you take in the day on your own, and it can feel a bit like half an album - just about every memorable moments on the first side.
Still! It's a wholly unique thing, another dose of magic from one of the most original electronic acts out there - an endless summer flipside to their first album's endless nights - changing minds instead of longitudes to make life last forever. A expectation-defier that might take years to come to appreciate at its own achievement* 4.5/5
* Do we dare hope for a third? Or better yet, with the momentum of Smile, GBV, and now Wildflower, is there hope for the other great reappearances? You paying attention out there Jeff Mangum?
#2090 Teddy Pendergrass - Teddy Pendergrass
Pretty but boring - the slow songs're too soppy, the fast songs're too disco-fluffed, and they're both too repetitive. Teddy's got a great voice, and sometimes his whole sexy shtick's just too much to ignore, but the songwriting's uninspired and the mix doesn't give him enough space to overcome it 2.5/5
#2089 Goggs - Goggs
Never change, Ty.
There's no really innovation here. It's blistering, thundering guitars, shaped into the kind of 10-ton hooks that Ty Segall makes in his sleep, spiked with some real choice electronic noisefuckery, paced for effortless neverstopbobbingyourheadheartbeatsfasterfaster.
25 minutes of good, hard, overblown fun, and if I hadn't heard something so similar 10 times in the last 10 years from Segall and friends (see esp Fuzz, Meatbodies) it might be my album of the year. Still, I could listen to an infinite number of albums like this. Just might get my wish 4/5
There's no really innovation here. It's blistering, thundering guitars, shaped into the kind of 10-ton hooks that Ty Segall makes in his sleep, spiked with some real choice electronic noisefuckery, paced for effortless neverstopbobbingyourheadheartbeatsfasterfaster.
25 minutes of good, hard, overblown fun, and if I hadn't heard something so similar 10 times in the last 10 years from Segall and friends (see esp Fuzz, Meatbodies) it might be my album of the year. Still, I could listen to an infinite number of albums like this. Just might get my wish 4/5
Friday, July 8, 2016
#2088 DJ Shadow - The Less You Know the Better
Around the time this album came out, DJ Shadow gave a really candid interview.
He basically said, I didn't want to keep making Endtroducing. But when I put out The Outsider, people didn't seem to like that that much. So I put this out as an album that would please everyone.
It's possible Josh Davis doesn't even like that whole atmospheric//transcendent//amazing thing Endtroducing did. Maybe he just wants to be a producer of shitty hip hop tracks. It's a little sell-out-y, but can I really, really nail him for it?
But if his goal was to please everyone, shit, I don't know. I don't think this album get enough credit. I think he kinda did. I mean, this is some of his better fuck-Endtroducing-Imma-make-beats work, and some of his better atmospheric stuff. Not to mention, dude is still cratedigger mastermind - that sample on Give Me Back the Nights is fucking *staggering*. Front to Back's pretty great too.
I'm as bad as anybody when it comes to backfitting everything to Endtroducing. But let's step back to the first-album test. What if we wiped out prior DJ Shadow work (and RJD2-type followons for good measure) and this was a greenfield superfresh record -- I think it might be a classic. That first half's kinda cloying, but it settles in on the 2nd, turning, if grudgingly, into a kinda great DJ Shadow album, packed with mysterious samples and moods and tones. And those albumwide gestures and callbacks, it works. I think its at least as good as Private Press -- I think people were still salty about The Outsider to be honest and never gave dude a fair shake.
Shadow's got a real sense of pacing, of atmospheric flow, of sample selection, he just can't seem to get out of his own way.
So I'm defending the guy.
Counterpoint:
I think some of his missteps come from trying to get mainstream play. See also, in retrospect, his track on Mountain featuring Run the Jewels -- "fine fine I'll do Endtroducing, but can yall at least maybe give some radio play to these radio-play-ready tracks that I put on my album for that express purpose?"
He really does want it both ways.
Can I bury the guy for wanting to break? I guess not. But I can't overlook the fact that he can't seem to make a record for the heads, that he's gotta undercut himself. In rock we call that selling out, and I don't know that he gets a pass here.
This is a pretty good balance, a pretty good record. Better than it gets credit for. But you can feel the way it doesn't commit, that it holds itself back -- that there's something fucking great waiting to happen, that there's something brilliant waiting to be had, but the conduit, the man himself, just can't let it happen. So much potential, greatness when you overlook the distractions, but I can't help but resent having to put that work in. Wish dude could just make a record as great as the one he keeps teasing in the margins 4/5
He basically said, I didn't want to keep making Endtroducing. But when I put out The Outsider, people didn't seem to like that that much. So I put this out as an album that would please everyone.
It's possible Josh Davis doesn't even like that whole atmospheric//transcendent//amazing thing Endtroducing did. Maybe he just wants to be a producer of shitty hip hop tracks. It's a little sell-out-y, but can I really, really nail him for it?
But if his goal was to please everyone, shit, I don't know. I don't think this album get enough credit. I think he kinda did. I mean, this is some of his better fuck-Endtroducing-Imma-make-beats work, and some of his better atmospheric stuff. Not to mention, dude is still cratedigger mastermind - that sample on Give Me Back the Nights is fucking *staggering*. Front to Back's pretty great too.
I'm as bad as anybody when it comes to backfitting everything to Endtroducing. But let's step back to the first-album test. What if we wiped out prior DJ Shadow work (and RJD2-type followons for good measure) and this was a greenfield superfresh record -- I think it might be a classic. That first half's kinda cloying, but it settles in on the 2nd, turning, if grudgingly, into a kinda great DJ Shadow album, packed with mysterious samples and moods and tones. And those albumwide gestures and callbacks, it works. I think its at least as good as Private Press -- I think people were still salty about The Outsider to be honest and never gave dude a fair shake.
Shadow's got a real sense of pacing, of atmospheric flow, of sample selection, he just can't seem to get out of his own way.
So I'm defending the guy.
Counterpoint:
I think some of his missteps come from trying to get mainstream play. See also, in retrospect, his track on Mountain featuring Run the Jewels -- "fine fine I'll do Endtroducing, but can yall at least maybe give some radio play to these radio-play-ready tracks that I put on my album for that express purpose?"
He really does want it both ways.
Can I bury the guy for wanting to break? I guess not. But I can't overlook the fact that he can't seem to make a record for the heads, that he's gotta undercut himself. In rock we call that selling out, and I don't know that he gets a pass here.
This is a pretty good balance, a pretty good record. Better than it gets credit for. But you can feel the way it doesn't commit, that it holds itself back -- that there's something fucking great waiting to happen, that there's something brilliant waiting to be had, but the conduit, the man himself, just can't let it happen. So much potential, greatness when you overlook the distractions, but I can't help but resent having to put that work in. Wish dude could just make a record as great as the one he keeps teasing in the margins 4/5
#2087 DJ Shadow - The Outsider
What a mess.
It's not a _bad_ album exactly, but . . such a mess. It's fine that it's not Endtroducing. Really. But every time it finds an identity it undercuts it -- head to toe goth with a trucker cap, Coors light can, and a peace sign button.
For a while it's like DJ Shadow's party mix: soul flows into hip hop into bluesey meandering. That's cool. I was kinda getting into that.
But then there's a Jason Forrest-ready
plunderphonics
hillbilly
speed
metal
nightmare
And it tries to get back to hip hop,
but it spends 13 minutes in meandering crooning Lemon Jelly pop.
then back to hip hop.
When the fuck am I supposed to listen to this? Was this all just a middle finger?
No atmosphere, no flow, and even the actual songs are no great shakes, nothing I couldn't get better off an album dedicated to the craft.
Fuck it, I admit it, I admire its audacious idiocy - but it doesn't even really commit to the fuck you, undercutting album-wide convention-fucking by sounding, track-by-track, like its looking for any crack into a radio playlist. It's like a boyfriend that showers you with gifts,but none of 'em are really all that thoughtful.
Dammit, I just can't bring myself to really bury it. I have to admit, for all the messiness, I'd take sample-paella like this over a single-sound slab every time 3/5
It's not a _bad_ album exactly, but . . such a mess. It's fine that it's not Endtroducing. Really. But every time it finds an identity it undercuts it -- head to toe goth with a trucker cap, Coors light can, and a peace sign button.
For a while it's like DJ Shadow's party mix: soul flows into hip hop into bluesey meandering. That's cool. I was kinda getting into that.
But then there's a Jason Forrest-ready
plunderphonics
hillbilly
speed
metal
nightmare
And it tries to get back to hip hop,
but it spends 13 minutes in meandering crooning Lemon Jelly pop.
then back to hip hop.
When the fuck am I supposed to listen to this? Was this all just a middle finger?
No atmosphere, no flow, and even the actual songs are no great shakes, nothing I couldn't get better off an album dedicated to the craft.
Fuck it, I admit it, I admire its audacious idiocy - but it doesn't even really commit to the fuck you, undercutting album-wide convention-fucking by sounding, track-by-track, like its looking for any crack into a radio playlist. It's like a boyfriend that showers you with gifts,but none of 'em are really all that thoughtful.
Dammit, I just can't bring myself to really bury it. I have to admit, for all the messiness, I'd take sample-paella like this over a single-sound slab every time 3/5
Thursday, July 7, 2016
#2086 Sleeping Beauties - Sleeping Beauties
Rock and roll's a shark that's gotta keep moving - gotta be new and sincere to stay alive // rock and roll's an endless parade of reinvention and rediscovery and retread that can't escape its roots without becoming something unknown and unlike.
The bands that give me hope: its those few bands that know how to rip off with their own righteous fury, that truly do that trick of learning their favorite songs and making them their own, and flying that momentum into some burning atmospheric exit. There's no small amount of that spark here.
These kids rip through it. They have that raucous frustration, that sneering cocked eye at the history, that need to be alive in this moment on that trail of noise that goes down and down.
That romantic desolation of The Hold Steady, that hot heat into crystallized beauty of Fucked Up, that ragged hell of the Pixies, the loose-limbed fuckit of the Stones and the Stooges, filtered though the rambling stagger of The Men and the shambling ramble of the immortal Exploding Hearts.
The Men - desperately unappreciated band, that's where you start here - that rambling attack from every angle, but Sleeping Beauties bring this staggering punk rock slobbering that takes it all into a wildeyed headbutt.
And for every nod back to Sympathy woo woo's and Addicted to Love//Drugs, there's a awwwcmonman-fuckallthat. Nothing static, nothing expected -- Merchants of Glue escalates to raving, Slumber Party descends into melancholy and back with a vengeance; and 50's Haircut / Gold Shoes, fuck, jesus christ. Song of the year maybe. The whole album's on drugs, never knowing when its going to slip into a dirge or flip the fuck out, and you're bracing yourself until the inevitable gutterfuck wakeup.
What a brilliant, sloppy, meltdown of a record, packed with manic live energy, as if happening on accident before your eyes, like a slash of broken glass might dash you to the emergency room or worse at any moment, but with this highwire precision that sticks every landing, all through the filter of every band that said this -- all this -- it can fuckin burn -- let's party and see who's left 4.5/5
The bands that give me hope: its those few bands that know how to rip off with their own righteous fury, that truly do that trick of learning their favorite songs and making them their own, and flying that momentum into some burning atmospheric exit. There's no small amount of that spark here.
These kids rip through it. They have that raucous frustration, that sneering cocked eye at the history, that need to be alive in this moment on that trail of noise that goes down and down.
That romantic desolation of The Hold Steady, that hot heat into crystallized beauty of Fucked Up, that ragged hell of the Pixies, the loose-limbed fuckit of the Stones and the Stooges, filtered though the rambling stagger of The Men and the shambling ramble of the immortal Exploding Hearts.
The Men - desperately unappreciated band, that's where you start here - that rambling attack from every angle, but Sleeping Beauties bring this staggering punk rock slobbering that takes it all into a wildeyed headbutt.
And for every nod back to Sympathy woo woo's and Addicted to Love//Drugs, there's a awwwcmonman-fuckallthat. Nothing static, nothing expected -- Merchants of Glue escalates to raving, Slumber Party descends into melancholy and back with a vengeance; and 50's Haircut / Gold Shoes, fuck, jesus christ. Song of the year maybe. The whole album's on drugs, never knowing when its going to slip into a dirge or flip the fuck out, and you're bracing yourself until the inevitable gutterfuck wakeup.
What a brilliant, sloppy, meltdown of a record, packed with manic live energy, as if happening on accident before your eyes, like a slash of broken glass might dash you to the emergency room or worse at any moment, but with this highwire precision that sticks every landing, all through the filter of every band that said this -- all this -- it can fuckin burn -- let's party and see who's left 4.5/5
#2085 DJ Shadow - The Mountain Will Fall
DJ Shadow's spent years making it clear he's got no interest in making Endtroducing Pt 2, but this is as close as he's ever gotten to capturing that original magic.
Nobody Speak's a red herring, and an unfortunate distraction. It's a fine song, but its got no place on this album, shades of The Outsider. It's like DJ Shadow needed buzz, realized a that doing a track with the hottest crossover rappers going was the ticket, and stuck it into slot 2 to get it out of the way. A couple other tracks stick out (The Sideshow, Mambo), but --
those out of the way
Dammit if there's not shades of the old magic. It's punched up with glitchy modern IDMism, and there's none of those brilliant, meandering minutes-long samples that stretched the Endtroducing soundscape into narrative nowhere, but for moments, for actual long stretches near the end...
DJ Shadow's at his best when he lives up to his name, when he disappears except as shade and shape, lets something pour out that sounds tapped from a glorious spacetime helix of human music and experience. When he just dangles a vocal sample lets you spin your own webs from it.
The showy The Outsider was the opposite, the underrated TMYKTB and Private Press glimpsed it, and here it's cracking open again. Especially on Three Ralphs into Bergschrund, and the entire last 5 track suite, you can really get lost in that seamless mix of dexterous details and large-scale sweeps, something grand and large with intricate stitching.
That magic's vulnerable to flashes and curtain drops, and there's too many hiccups for the spell to last, but in between those distracting signposts there's thrilling glimpses into some woolly impossible land 4/5
Nobody Speak's a red herring, and an unfortunate distraction. It's a fine song, but its got no place on this album, shades of The Outsider. It's like DJ Shadow needed buzz, realized a that doing a track with the hottest crossover rappers going was the ticket, and stuck it into slot 2 to get it out of the way. A couple other tracks stick out (The Sideshow, Mambo), but --
those out of the way
Dammit if there's not shades of the old magic. It's punched up with glitchy modern IDMism, and there's none of those brilliant, meandering minutes-long samples that stretched the Endtroducing soundscape into narrative nowhere, but for moments, for actual long stretches near the end...
DJ Shadow's at his best when he lives up to his name, when he disappears except as shade and shape, lets something pour out that sounds tapped from a glorious spacetime helix of human music and experience. When he just dangles a vocal sample lets you spin your own webs from it.
The showy The Outsider was the opposite, the underrated TMYKTB and Private Press glimpsed it, and here it's cracking open again. Especially on Three Ralphs into Bergschrund, and the entire last 5 track suite, you can really get lost in that seamless mix of dexterous details and large-scale sweeps, something grand and large with intricate stitching.
That magic's vulnerable to flashes and curtain drops, and there's too many hiccups for the spell to last, but in between those distracting signposts there's thrilling glimpses into some woolly impossible land 4/5
Wednesday, July 6, 2016
#2084 Deakin - Sleep Cycle
Animal Collective alum, obv - that light, lilting, pulsing trippiness of Sung Tongs-era AC is all over the place, dripping out as reverb//echo, squishy beats, waves of vocals, unidentifiable murmurs.
The best moments are sleepiest: the peaceful minimal, night-wandering opening track, the hypnotic, lilting closer. It's a shame they couldn't ride that vibe end to end; the crashing Footy and swampy Seed Song break the spell and seem out of place. I can't help but wish Deakin had dared to fully commit to that drifting, breathing light 3/5
The best moments are sleepiest: the peaceful minimal, night-wandering opening track, the hypnotic, lilting closer. It's a shame they couldn't ride that vibe end to end; the crashing Footy and swampy Seed Song break the spell and seem out of place. I can't help but wish Deakin had dared to fully commit to that drifting, breathing light 3/5
#2083 Cassius - The Rawkers EP
Six clever little techno chuggers, each with its own approach: going icy or big or working in a touch of dubsteppy swoops or soul sampled chops. It's all ok. Really, six totally ok songs, but nothing special. Plus it listens like a demo reel, with no sense of theme or pace, no sense of emotion beyond a dim tension (the swooning I < 3 U SO excepted) no real reason to recommend it other than to the Cassius competionist 2.5/5
Tuesday, July 5, 2016
#2082 Serge Gainsbourg - Histoire de Melody Nelson
What a slinky, sexy piece of cool. The epic first and last tracks are the highlights - everything floats and coasts and slides, dips into velvet depths and soars into sharp-dressed sky parties, spiked with prickly guitars, Tropicalia gone high society. Shades of A Moon Shaped Pool, actually.
The rest is a bit mixed - too formless in places, too ridiculous in others (ok, ok, En Melody), but the album's must-hear: mysterious and sensual and strange and right 4/5
The rest is a bit mixed - too formless in places, too ridiculous in others (ok, ok, En Melody), but the album's must-hear: mysterious and sensual and strange and right 4/5
#2081 Daft Punk - Alive 1997
Alive 2007 was a masterclass in more-than-the-sum-of-its parts mixing and sequencing, an all-Daft-Punk mashup that elevated every song it touched: worldwide megahits and HAA undesirables alike.
'97 shows a whole 'nother way to crush a live electronic set. Da Funk's the only hit Daft Punk's got to work with at the time, and rather than burying it in the back of the set, the way, I don't know, any other one hit act might, they lead right out with it, using it as a springboard for a wildly live, unpredictable, organic electronic jam. The song writhes out of control, mutating out from under the song again and again - it's a thrilling move that has you eating out of the duo's hand as they squiggle and squonk together a rugged, sexy 45-minute run.
The recording's perfect, a little raw, a little raspy, but you can feel the room, the energy - it's as rock and roll as electronic music gets, the absolute opposite of push-play, played to perfection 4.5/5
'97 shows a whole 'nother way to crush a live electronic set. Da Funk's the only hit Daft Punk's got to work with at the time, and rather than burying it in the back of the set, the way, I don't know, any other one hit act might, they lead right out with it, using it as a springboard for a wildly live, unpredictable, organic electronic jam. The song writhes out of control, mutating out from under the song again and again - it's a thrilling move that has you eating out of the duo's hand as they squiggle and squonk together a rugged, sexy 45-minute run.
The recording's perfect, a little raw, a little raspy, but you can feel the room, the energy - it's as rock and roll as electronic music gets, the absolute opposite of push-play, played to perfection 4.5/5
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