#2350 Mitski - Puberty 2

Mitski's low cooing, too-personal details, and simple, pulsing, chugging, 1-2-3-4 backing give Puberty 2 an icy bedroom-indie intimacy. It's quietly unsettling, making love with a stranger who seems to have known you all their life, cracking your heart to glimpses of beauty (Fireworks!). Xiu Xiu lite, the Princess of Carrot Flowers, an insidiously catchy, strange little record 3.5/5

#2349 Goodie Mob - Soul Food

Classic Southern hip hop, that stutter-step cadence, those slowroll beats, all packed with love and resistance to struggle, overflowing with a sense of place, community, truth, presence. Strong stuff 4/5

ps well shit, some time a couple hundred back I cocked up the numbering. So we jump back up a hundred. The new version, coming some day, will fix all this.

#2248 Nicholas Jaar - Sirens

Jaar doesn't stray too far from his Darkside sound, until he slowly does, riding those mysterious loops and basslines into Spanish crooning, Booksian samples, island bop - its a seductive slide into unfamiliarity.

If you're not familiar with Darkside, shit, well this is a silky, pitch-black, purple-streaked, mysterious, inky, slithering, pulsing little piece of disappear. Doubly worth checking out in that case 3.5/5

#2247 Babymetal - Metal Resistance

There's two obvious routes out of this album: to bristle at its manufactured idol-metal emptiness, or to get past the context and be taken by it's heedless, hooky momentum. I want to be won over, and at times it's grudgingly good fun. But attitude matters in rock, and the lack of credibility undercuts the riffs again and again, and they get less and less thrilling as the album piles them on 2.5/5

#2246 Kyle Dixon - Stranger Things Soundtrack

M83 imagined an 80's that never was, voiced by a music that never really existed. Dixon takes that a step further. His soundtrack drips with menace and romance, with the dark, naive thrill of being young in an uncertain world, full of possibility and fear, pulling hard from M83, and from Kraftwerk's warmest moments, packing every track with blistering, blossoming, analog texture.

The pacing's slow, completionist. This's no Fight Club. It doesn't quite capture the atmosphere, the feel. But the sound's just too sweet to ignore, too packed with endaround pathos, every tone knowing the frequency-key to your heart's darkest maybes 4/5

#2245 Martha - Blisters in the Pit of My Heart

Charmingly British pop-punk, overflowing with tight little guitar hooks and twangy little vocals and a bursting sense of miniature, raging enthusiasm and fidgety rage. Makes me smile, with a Boston (the band) kind of hookiness, like Tom Scholz was turned into a teenager, plopped in England, fully aware that 2016 would find him, 69, irrelevant, but alive 4/5

#2244 Bomb the Music Industry! - Adults!!!...Smart!!! Shithammered!!! And Excited By Nothing!!!!!!!

Maybe  my favorite album title and album cover and album title / album cover combination.

Rosenstock brings  clumsy    enthusiasm  and staggering   fallover  punk energy to  every fragile little  moment, bringing uncool  sincerity back to skittering   ska,  the 'scene ' creeps  through   every  bar, until your jaded heart accepts it's not put on and you just believe it. Do try to keep up 3.5/5

#2243 Jeff Rosenstock - Worry

What a perfect record to find now, so packed with resonant desolation, wrapped in righteous hookiness and joyous zeal.

Themewise its all banal desperation and flailing helplessness that resonates now more than ever - I'll stop saying that someday, i swear. But it feels personal and relatable, built from a sense of place, centered in NY in a way I dont even hate, reflecting the urban pressures in a way that feels universal and welcoming instead of insular and smug.

Musically it's so fucking hooky, so packed with great guitar sounds and shameless pop moves and great little vocal hooks, no clap-clap off-limits, no synth lick or vocal ooooo or doubletime or breakdown forbidden, Weezer + Ted Leo with some actual rage in the clip, especially on that secret ten minute epic, disguised as 7 blasts of punk proper.

Bittersweet and heartbreakingly thrilling, guaranteed to crack my albums of the year list 4.5/5

#2242 Yohuna - Patientness

Those big textured guitars/synths and ghostly vocals and minimally desperate sentiments compliment eachother perfectly, stirring something ominous and soothing. On paper, all that cooing and reverb and general pillowey folk sensibility should repel me, but it's a balm, with just enough invention to sneak around my defenses 3.5/5

#2241 Gun Outfit - Possession Sound

Intellectually great, sure - this's packed with weird tones and keys and inventive moves, pure Sonic Youth // Pavement. But I can't make it halfway through this without getting tired of that disinterested, atonal moaning, succumbing to an overwhelming sense that this whole rock and roll thing is such an exhausting, unpleasant exercise. I don't have enough time in my life to invest in listening to something willfully unpassionate unless the music really makes up for it, and this doesn't come close 2.5/5

#2240 Metallica - Hardwired to Self Destruct

For a few songs, this's way better than you could possibly expect to crawl out of Metallica's dusty, dried-out husk. There's a taste of the old stuff, of unstoppable gallop, of too-appropriate bitter apocalyptica, and some pretty sharp guitar moves. But the momentum runs out. It gets numbing, then boring - the tempos drag into generic sludge, the lyrics reduced to ruminations on high school notebook stuff, on songs called things like ManUNkind and Am I Savage? Still a pleasant surprise, considering 3/5

#2239 A Tribe Called Quest - We Got it from Here...Thank You for Your Service

It's been so hard to find enthusiasm for this project lately - this album in particular feels insurmountable. It's excellent, packed with surprises, inventions, bile, insights, glimpses of joy, with restless, effortlessly intricate production. Fun maybe, there's undeniable chemistry (those handoffs on Dis Generation), but it'll always be haunted by it's post-election status, destined to be a hard album to really enjoy, at least in the short term 4/5

#2238 Dirtwire - Dirtwire

I'm out of patience for the whole Beats Antique exotica triphop thing, and I can't decide if this is just that with a midi instrument change: sitar -> violin / twangy guitars, finger cymbals -> shuffling feet and chains, etc. Either way, the dusty atmosphere's an improvement, mysterious for its familiarity, lending itself to gritty details. Overworked but pleasant enough work music 3/5

#2237 The Men - Devil Music

It's good to hear the Men back to raging - they'd gotten static for a while there. It's all a little formless, mostly unmemorable, but with enough propulsive energy to get you through the workday, and an argument for an asskicking live show. Still wish they could find a way to let all their sides combine forces the way they did on Open Your Heart 3.5/5

#2236 Catherine Wheel - Chrome

Well-balanced sound, nothing gets in the way of anything else, a unified wall of shoegaze guitars that gets fractally more detailed the closer you look. The sentiments are repeated and vague, the tempos and structures unimaginative, the drums 90's-basic - all the better to keep the focus where it belongs. Good to space out to at very high volume 3.5/5

#2235 Guerilla Toss - Eraser Stargazer

Frantic, angular, stabby bouncing, sliced with synths and yelps, Deerhoof meeting Enon for a piss on the 3rd rail. Wildly annoying, but daring and and strange and sincere enough to win you over if you can stand it 3/5

#2234 Mannequin Pussy - Romantic

a lot of crashes, a lot of tincan screaming, a lot of startstop fasterfaster guitars. It goes for the throat (except on the clumsy pop-grasping misstep Denial), keeps the songs punk-short - all good moves, but we've heard all this before, and I'm not moved, too jaded, numb and dumb 3/5

#2233 Boys Noize - Mayday

Oh thank god, we're back where the blog dates (listen dates) are past moment Omega -- aka the #1 non-Hitler moment time travelers got on their todo list. Some day my homegrown blog will handle this shit better. Do see the start of this kick if ive lost you. Reviewed late 11/19 for the record.

--

What a bad name. And the glimpses of homegrown vocals are pretty [fart noise]. But there's an analog soul here, a sense of the actual knobs being turned, if not actual wax leaving hands, a sense of live crackle, of craft, that's invigorating. Mostly it sounds like a poor substitute for a pretty solid live set -- that that doubleedger how you will 3.5/5

#2232 Common - Black Amercia Again

Reviewed late 11/18

aw fuck, here's where we hit the whole post trump thing head on.

because when I heard this circa 11/8, I still had hope, wavering, that shit might be in the right direction.

revisiting that space is a tough spot.

--

I have this pet theory that this and the Tribe album are two sides of the same coin.

I posited to Liam, local hip hop scholar of note, I'm learning -- that one hoped for a Hillary future, and one feared a Trump future. He agreed, that the Common record was way more somber.

He's not wrong, but I'd meant it the other way around: this seemed like the optimistic//Hillary one, to me. But then, maybe its because I heard it before the sword dropped, and the Tribe album after. Also, fuck if I didn't stumble onto The Day Women Took Over the World for the first time day of, and took it as a sign.

"_wrong_"

both recorded before, I'll take this as the final assessment: Common's record took on the Hillary future and wanted to tackle how shit was still broke despite that. Tribe said Trump's coming, but let's get by. paragraphs on a nonsense theory, sorry Common. #secretposttrump etc

--

It's a swirling, rich, poignant record.

It's packed with seething anger, hope, production that wraps around you.

The R&B-tinged romantic interludes (Love Star, Red Wine) don't work for me, but the screeds, the wanders, the retroactive-paeans like The Day Women Took Over, the pain, the *fucking opus* of the title track, the soaring Little Chicago Boy -- goddamn.

when the album bites in is when it works. when it recognizes the shitfuck we're all fucked in, is when it sticks.

it's a liquid record that moves on its own accord.

impossible not to appreciate.

--

even on 11/8 i heard Rain

and John Legend sings.

if its going to rain tomorrow, let it rain

and I felt that shiver of what might (did) come

it's like Common hoped on the previous track, but recognized that his hope might not come, and left this breadcrumb for us, just in case.

and maybe that fear's laced throughout.

this is an era of hip hop that knew there were two ways could go, and one way things were gonna go through weaving though that, and a hope to find that central thread and move it.

you don't hear Common himself all that strongly in this album. It's not a Kanye album, not a Kendrick record like that. it's a world record like that, reaching out low and wide, trying to draw in. and goddamn if we don't need more of that.

and conversely, to bring Kanye into the fold -- there's a Gospel cloth that Common draws himself into with his opening track, dropping reference to Ultralight Beam, which Chance (gospel revivalist himself) guested on -- 2016's getting back to believing, to sharing belief, to spreading the idea that maybe we're - - - -   -  -  -  -    -   -   -    -    -     -

--

"Common's in everything" Jo and I say sometimes, lately. He hosts, voices, advertises -- really turned a corner, culturally, lately. His identity as a rapper seems like an afterthought.

But there's something here.

When he really raps he's got it.

But he doesn't that much. And maybe there's something to that. He's an orchestrator here, laying out the stage and stepping aside, just an MC to a view on the world how he'd like it to be // how he fears it might be, hoping you'll find the way to the right way forward 4/5

#2231 Radiohead - In Rainbows Disc 2

Reviewed late 11/19

Some day I'll stop seeing every record in terms of the new American order, but not just yet. not in the face of prescient terror about Down is the New Up, about this being a nightmare you keep failing to wake from, a (4 minute) warning from two elections before we dropped into the worst timeline.

--

That aside.

0---

It's a bonus disc best cut in half: the first 4 tracks are the kind of moaned-out filler that's been crowding Radiohead EP's since the 90's. The MKs are throwaways, the actual songs go nowhere. But if you slice off those last 4 tracks, you've got a good little listen. Some real heart, some real grasping, some real pain, some real beauty -- that desperation spiked with the abstract that Radiohead does best, cutting to some core of our uncertainty about what this all means/

3.5/5

#2230 Kvelertak - Nattesferd

Reviewed late 11/18

you know what I appreciate?

not giving a fuck about what kind of album you're supposed to be.

this is METAL, legit scandinavian and packed with screaming and tripletime drums and raging guitars and thumpathumpathumpathumpa RAAAGH

but then, through the storm, again and again, a fistful of GODLIGHT, that thing where you just get those fucking //streaks// of light // down // through // the // clouds //

just these searing guitar lines that cut through your heart, these spots where the stars line up, and where all that noise turns into a bird-shaped spaceship and takes you away.

it's impossible to avoid comparison to Fucked Up, who traffic in the same kind of screamy // pristine guitar work, and who, fucking -- well, listen to 1985 and tell me that's not a secret Fucked Up cover.

and every song swings from rough fuckin riffage to full on Boston//Journey sheen and everything in between without a flinch. And fuckit, the latters right fucking enjoyable, so swing hard at it you crazy Norwegian metal gods.

This is how you do not giving a fuck right - not even giving a fuck about how you're supposed to not give a fuck 4/5

#2229 PUP - The Dream is Over

Reviewed late 11/18

somewhere along the wayindie's arch self-awareness smashed into emo's earnest self-assessment and (pop) punk's fuckit-lets-get-fucked-up disregard, and the sparks were a pained-at-my-coping-but-using-my-coping-to-cope scene.

AND God what a glorious convergence, as all the weaknesses of those three scenes cancelled eachother out in a glorious collision of riffs and feelings and FUCKFEELINGS.

FIDLAR's patient zero, maybe from some thread of Wavves, spreading to Car Seat Headrest and now to PUP, who wheels and whines and rages and collapses and asks you to drink and thrash and regret it and drink and thrash and get hurt and not care and not care and regret it and doubt yourself and drink and doubt yourself and drink and drink and drink and try to scrap together why it went wrong and drink and try to scrap together why it all went wrong and finally, sing along.

riding that Weezer-via-Japandroids wave to the skies on the back of ragged collapse, falling apart musically and emotionally, and soaring past itself and looking back with disgust, and whipping a head around into the wind from an open car window and shouting into cold.

the kids are figuring our younger and younger that there's no easy answer, and the rest of us, slow to pick it up, and deeper entrenched, find hope in that, and hold on tight, and slam our heads against headrests 4/5

#2228 Flasher - Flasher

Reviewed 11/18

This is where the whole thing where I date these by listen date, rather than review date, gets awkward. Cause this is dated, what, 11/4? But I'm reviewing this a full 2 weeks later, because this Trump president-elect horseshit took my knees out, fulfilling every horror story I've been telling myself for months, with the best yet to come.

So fuck this blog, etc. Progress stop. Shelter in place.

And I quit weekday drinking, because, let's face it, it was that or FULL BLOMWN ALCOHOLISM. And the difficulty of that revealed a certain degree of Garden Variety Functional kind, but hey, progress. Two weeks of success, by that criteria.

And hey, its Friday. The Friday after the Friday after that sword dropped. And game on, with a full fist of whiskey etc. So ignore the date before that maybe-hopeful single tracker. This is the beginning of the post-Trump era. Let's see how that goes.

Fuck, sorry Flasher, you're getting the full long form treatment for all the wrong reasons.

--

My gut's to dismiss you as NY revival-revival, all that no-wave-lite, all that post-Interpol post-post-punk, all that Velvet-via-Sonic Youth dissonance. And wait, lets give that last one some credit before we switch to the reversal - cmon, Erase Myself, that's basically teenage riot and a dozen other sonic youth songs. And I don't wanna be all hyphonated but

--

oh good, you do come through

give this beastie a full listen, and it walks out in the robes of its arch-assed forebears but it sheds it and struts. you rotate your crops over a long enough timespan and maybe the same grounds worth revisiting.

this is old stuff, but with enough new electricity to make it walk, and enough modern armament and fashion to make it new again --- and if what you're reanimating is genius brain, let us give thanks. sounds fresher on every listen, as those associations fall off one by one 4/5

#2227 Diarrhea Planet - Turn to Gold

Crunchy, efficiently enjoyable pop-punk - the kind of record we don't get much of any more. The Planet churns and chugs and keeps on moving, veering off for a perfect little screaming guitar aside every then and again. A band doin' what they do well 4/5

#2226 Scattle - Only Built 4 Sausage Links

Super Meat Boy's part of this early 10's indie retro game revival: bringing back chunky pixel graphics and punishing//rewarding difficulty. And this's a set of tracks from the newer version of the game that capture that spirit: retro 8-bit skrunch rubbing elbows with slightly-less-retro breakbeats and just-kinda-recently-uncool dubby wobblebobbles.

It's exciting, propulsive stuff - fast tempos, busy textures and short song lengths keep things fresh. Good for typing fast or driving fast or jumping though buzzsaw gauntlets fast 3.5/5

#2225 Modulogeek - Modulogeek

That chunky 8-bit cover might lead you to expect 8-bit bleep-and-buzz -- and there's some of that, and so much more. Variety's the key to this album's magic. In isolation some of its tricks wouldn't work: The Circus Mcgurkus's kid-talking would be too twee, For the Bleeps' Starcraft tutorial samples would be too gimmicky, A Post-Rock Intro's meanderings would be too boring. And even taken as a whole, it'd be a scattershot: those circuit bent squonks, those Books-ian slices of life, those chopped little drum samples.

But they all set eachother up beautifully - it's an album that demands to be listened to straight through. There's a thread that runs, of humanity and vulnerability and happiness and craft. It's the little details, the imprecisions, the seams: the sound of the physical button presses on the toy instrument, the off-center clamoring of vocals, you sense the joy of making music, of trying everything.

It never quite hits the piercing highs of, say, ^ The Books, but it rivals fellow Monome-enthusiast Daedalus's efforts to weave the artificial into the human, to find something familiar and new in the intersection 4.5/5

#2224 Yak - Alas Salvation

I do love it when an album keeps you guessing.

Yak comes thundering out the gate with big overblown bass, writhing vocals, and a general start-stop whiplash Giddy Motors momentum. It's urgent, but the kind of thing that would be exhausting for 30 minutes.

Luckily, Yak swerves, spinning out a couple trippy little meanderers that're more Men-pretty than Animal Collective//Deerhunter-boring, before kicking it back into high gear, and back again and back again. And even across these transitions, the hard/soft angles keep changing, until you've zigzagged yourself diagonally to some unexpected place that was all part of the plan all along.

None of it really blows me away, no one song left much of a mark, but respect to an album that works much, much better than the sum of its parts 3.5/5

#2223 D.R.A.M. - Big Baby D.R.A.M.

At its best, DRAM's latest sounds like Chance's latest, full of sunny little flashes - Broccoli//Cute's a one-two and a half.

But most of the album sounds like the year's other heavy hitter: Drake. Drake sucks.

DRAM keeps moaning and moaning, milking modern-life observations (passwords / wifi / uber), every underfed song vamping on one idea and one verse's-worth of rhymes 2.5/5

#2222 Public Memory - Wuthering Drum

Simmering, sizzling electronic throb and buzz, rendering dark alleys for the muttered vocals to sulk in. Dark, but not depressing; strange, but just short of dissonant; a borderline unpleasant album that's packed with enough mysterious texture and adventurous flashes to draw you in and seduce you into staying 3.5/5

#2221 Luna - Bewitched

A prettier, more assured second album from Luna, doubling down on the Yo La Tengo living room rumbling//muttering and Lou Reed silky serration. The guitars are still strikingly clear, but the rest of the band has risen up to meet them, making for a fuller, more balanced sound. An understated, tuneful, little slice of muso heaven 3.5/5