#2392 Delicate Steve - Wondervisions

The Stevie Wonder nod of guitarist Delicate Steve's first album is tough to miss, there in the title, there in those subtly non-Western rolling beats that help offset the chiming, keening, pure-silver Ratatat guitar lines. That guitar sound's the star - overwhelmingly pretty, played with vocal expression, Peter Frampton without the need for the actual talk box. Super listenable. Those beats and lightbeams just fly by 4/5

#2391 Delicate Steve - This is Steve

After a couple albums of the same basic bristly beats + gorgeous guitars, Steve mixes things up a bit. Don't worry, guitars are still impossibly pretty, and maybe even more expressive than ever. But it feels like Steve's embraced the uncoolness of this kind of rock music and decided, fuckit, let's have some fun with it, bringing in some synthy pops, some actual crunch, some goodtime riffage. Check Cartoon Rock, which lives up to its name, putting a grin on any living face.

The ripping classics-medley encore at a recent Boston show proves that this dude knows and loves his rock history, and is willing to let er rip - here's hoping his next one takes the goodtimes rolling one step further 4/5

#2390 Teen Suicide - It's a Big Joyous Celebration, Let's Stir the Honeypot

At it's best, IaBJCLStH is a bracing, thrilling ride through emotions and sensations, a manic spill through the flashes of light that make life bearable, and the flashes of darkness give edge to the light. Songs turn themselves inside out, rush through themselves, an dense rushes of melody knock you off your feet - flashes of The Microphones at their swooping, riffing best. Those first 3 songs in particular, had me rethinking my whole 2016 top 10.

But that energy isn't nearly sustained for the 26 song, 68 minute sprawl. By track 7 things have gotten uneven. The band, seemingly out of melodies, starts unraveling into go-nowhere detuned experiments, GBV or Deerhunter at their worst, before tightening back up into flashes of inspiration, before falling apart again.

And honestly, its more misses than hits from there on out, a lot of mess to be endured. But it's still worth hearing, still borderline great. Some of that sloppy, stumbling sprawl is part of the appeal, and the flashes of brilliance are too bright to ignore, that "how much longer . . . can I wait?" as you swoop out of the Green Typewriters soundscape. I'd rather hear a mess like this than another riff on a well-worn riff anyday 4/5

#2389 VA - Sensate Silk

The Ghost Ship fire looms over this new collection, bringing an extra layer of ghostly solemnity. Minimal house swoons in place to the slowest, softest knob turns, borderline ambient. Everything has time and room to breathe. There's no call to dance, no real emotion, just watercolor softness of setting. Fitting, maybe. Mood-soothing music for 2017 3.5/5

#2388 Dean Ween Group - The Deaner Album

Post-Ween Dean's just out to make straight up rock and roll in the spirit of the Allman Brothers, ZZ Top, and Tom Petty, with a dash of punk disdain and just a _touch_ of that old Ween weirdness. Alternately weary and angry and aww-fuckit-both, the Deaner Album's unpredictable, familiar and fresh - a sincere, seasoned blast of vital last-gasp rock 4/5

#2387 Lydia Lunch - Queen of Siam

The first half's an art-punk classic, Lunch's controlling/helpless sexpot strutting is perfectly matched by her band: a frenzied, beat-damaged big-band hellgasm. Lounge jazz from the 2nd circle. Horns and guitars lick and lurch behind sensual noir phantasmagorias.

But, out of energy or ideas, the band nearly disappears in the second half, leaving simmering go-nowhere minimalism. There's not enough atmosphere in the vocals alone to carry it, it's all night and no knives. Still, that first half's unmissable 4/5

#2386 Cities Aviv - Your Discretion is Trust

The post-performance/pure-production thing that's been hitting rock hit hip-hop too. Cities Aviv staggers through all manner of samples, loops, noises, distortions, themes, modes, rapping here and there, disappearing from time to time, everything skittering and splintering, a scattershot cactus of ideas and objections. It's inventive, better than boring, but all over the place, a collage of fragments of fragments, never coalescing into anything cohesive or compelling, never quite strange enough to be staggeringly daring.

That's better than not, but it never quite _gets there_ 3.5/5

#2385 Monster Rally - Mystery Cove

Somewhere in the sea of Since I Left You's flight to Honolulu, in some portal to Les Baxter's island paradise, as listened to by Lawrence Jocoby, cooling his heels, taken away from a place seen from two places at once to a drifting island simplicity. Ted Feighan's got that cratedigger sound, that recontexual sample-judo (is that some Carpet Crawlers I hear?), that hiss of vinyl that keeps it from pure frivolity, offsets all that exotica sheen with the warbled physicality of the almighty vinyl.

Earlier Monster Rally stuff put me off with its detuned very-2010 fuckery, maybe a stylistic choice, maybe just a side affect of slapshot BPM-molesting. But now, the sound itself can shine through without all that nonsense, and it's a fine driftaway, Jocoby head lolling, letting all that murder fall away in horns and ukes and a flutter of strings 4/5

#2384 Shy Layers - Shy Layers (EP)

Shy Layers' sound is barely there. Well-named, fellas! Plinking, repetitive, minimalist indie backing gets washed with ambient oos and electronic buzzes, while semi-intelligible robot vocals mutter and buzz. It's actually rather pretty, perfectly good atmosphere, like deeply-stoned late-era Mint Chicks, but I don't think I could space out to it for longer than an EP's-worth 3.5/5

#2383 Shy Layers - 2

The Shy Layers must have come to the same conclusion I did - that their sound, while pretty, doesn't really have a lot of breadth, and probably couldn't support an LP / headlining set / career. Their second EP takes tentative steps to expand the sound, but most of them don't work. The cooing actual-human singing and bigger bass break the original sound's ambient spell, and the Paul-Simon-via-Vampire-Weekend rhythm mixups are mostly underwhelming. Elsewhere the tracks go fully-instrumental and reveal how necessary those buzzy near-vocals were to keeping things interesting-enough.

It's not bad - still pretty, still decent background music, but when the best thing about your band is its minimalism, it can be tough to avoid subtraction-by-addition 3/5

#2382 Vitalic - Voyager

Vitalic's steely laserbeam pulse continues its inch towards disco/pop - on the instrumental tracks it's totally good. It's a natural evolution of the sound into some well-honed slice of pleasant something. But these guys still haven't found a way to adapt their sound to vocals, to reconcile the subconscious voice of the squishy synths with actual voices, they end up undercutting eachother, sounding like Cut Copy Daft Punk.

Vitalic's sound is a living weapon, a Grandaddy soul-crushed machine melted down into something anonymous and unknowingly angry and sad. Putting actual humans in is always going to be a mistake, a mistake felt more harshly here than usual 3.5/5

#2381 Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part 2: Return of the Ankh

Silky, sultry R&B, with a throbbing, pulsing backing, dense with funky, dark-jazz bass, predicting the rise of the Thundercat/Brainfeeder scene. Badu's voice isn't my cup of tea, the reedy mewling feels put on at times - but there's a spirit of freedom, warm longing, the release of smoke, the feeling of flight, flecked with micro-interludes that give is a loose feel, hanging out, letting the days evaporate 3.5/5

#2380 Autechre - Amber

Golden age 90's IDM, with all the offkilter beats and abrupt tones that make this music _difficult_, that make listening to it feel like _work_. But unlike a lot of the lazy Aphex-toos of the era, there's just enough warmth there, just enough structure, to make the work worth it. Even as my jaw's on edge I see the structure that drives my desperation, marvel at its impossible geometry, and every now and then fall into its sense of space 3.5/5

#2379 Herbie Hancock - Death Wish OST

Nah, outside of the kickin opening theme, this is all movie background music, and it shows, lying limp without the scene its setting, Herbie Hancock or not. There's flashes of jazzy genius, but not nearly often enough where you'd ever really put this on, publicly or privately 2.5/5

#2378 Haywyre - Two Fold Pt. 2

I'm a total sucker for this album structure, two pairs of counterpoint songs, a pivot song, and two more pairs of counterpoint songs -- this is the kind of shit I'm always working into mixes. And I think it matters - song structure as poetry's a burgeoning theoryof mine.

Related point courtesy of Jo: song lengths as sentence lengths, good albums as good paragraphs.

And in the actual tunes --- a post-dubstep mix of big beats, swoops and whomps and swoops and wanders, inventive, sweeping, unconventional, unpinnable, knob turns and overlays and melodic doodles, shades of white whale Feed Me, it's got chopped funk and a lot of soul, packed to the brim with little inventions (an honest to god solo piano track in the endgame), untethered to any particular style, tough to sum up, impossible to predict, and totally something I'm gonna revisit. That structure's not a gimmick, it feels put in place to help you navigate, all the subtle references and kaleidoscopic styles and lurking architecture of Jonathan Blow's The Witness, as sound 4/5

#2377 The Front Bottoms - The Front Bottoms

I kinda get the appeal - there's a generalizable detail-packed personalness to Sella's lyrics, a smart sad friend to get you through smart sad days, Mountain Goats for the terminally mundane. But a lot of its just overdone, slathered in asides and flourishes, until it feels more performative than sincere. Take this from opener Flashlight:

She's says a lot of the kids we graduated with are now homeless
which puts them in mad shady situations, with mad shady people
if not every day, then on an every-other-day basis 

It starts off kinda poignant, but what does that "every-other-day basis" bit buy you? Nobody talks or thinks like that. It's forced, baroque everydayism, and the album's *packed* with lines like that. With nothing musically to save it (the broad trumpet notes get old, the propulsive tempos disappear) it's not something I'd revisit 2.5/5

#2376 Silkworm - Firewater

Pretty standard post-Pavement desperation crunch. Lyrics endlessly circle alcoholism and being a band, but other than a brilliantly detailed Miracle Mile, its mostly vague, forced-clever and generally 90s-overwrought. The main draw's the meaty, wandering bass and shimmering, twisting guitar tones. That guitar sound, it keeps moving, transforming, floating like metallic mist before hitting like a fist, while the moaning vocals play backup 3.5/5

#2375 Neil Young - Peace Trail

Such an understated album, no big productions, no long tracks, no epic solos, just a rumination, not quite outraged, simmering at the state of things, keeping time, grimacing at the world going by. The audacity of Psychedelic Pill's been beaten down, one foot in front of the other.

The flourishes of robotic autotune are, again, understated, welcome. The grumble of guitar a welcome splash of reason, tracks like Peace Trail and My Pledge strike a striking balance. But so many other songs ring with Get Off My Lawn, of step behind step-keeping - Indian Givers thudding on its one-note joke, Texas Rangers and John Oaks too blunt to resonate, My New Robot pure gimmick.

Young sounds left behind. And maybe that genius in its own way. Aren't we all. But I can't help but hope for more, for one last charge against the night 3.5/5

#2374 Haux - All We've Known

Very pretty, but too by the book. Too Bon Iver, too Postal Service-lite, too full of familiar plinky guitars and infinite reverb and sensitive confessions to sound anything more than familiar 2.5/5

#2373 Sigur Ros - Kveikur

Skitcky glitchery, noise, clipping as instrument, it's been seeping into production-as-instrument rock for a while lately, and Sigur Ros were arguably ahead of the curve with 2013's Kveikur. A band that'd mostly cloaked itself in perfection summons up acid and fire, nipping at the edges, and suddenly there are stakes -- not on the tail end of a right-paren, but right up front with the disintegration.

The band retreats at times, and there's no escaping the ever-increasing familiarity of Jonsi's vocal shtick, but it's still as truly textured and un-untouchable as the band's ever dared to feel, getting by on intricate, gritted detail more than sweeping mistiness to keep your attention. It's a gamble, a subtle shift that's hard to get your head around, a thrilling listen for anyone not yet completely exhausted 4/5

#2372 Sigur Ros - Valtari

Waaaay back at the very beginning of this review project I railed against Takk as too-samey. And on a recent trawl through Sigur Ros's discography I mostly stand by that. They're a conundrum of a band, ever the same, but at least trying to batter against every wall of the cell that Aegeay Bergantjjjjn built.

(Untitled) hitched itself to its climaxing structure and singleminded vocals, Takk indulged in strings, Meo Suo went Animal Collective jangle-drums. Piano's the centerpiece of choice this time around, and its a natural fit -- the earthy, rounded vibration puts that spacey Hopelanders down in the dirt where they can transmit bottom-up. It's a return to form that doesn't actually sound *that* much like their breakthrough, if you listen closely.

Valtari also draws into relief the band's ball and chain: Jonsi's vocals. Sigur Ros can never not sound like Sigur Ros with that keening sound lording so large over top. Truth his, his vocals are exhausting (doubly so on Untitled) and the fact that they disappear for most of the last 3 songs on this album are actually the best thing about it.

I've confessed before that I actually don't like Loveless -- those sheer guitars gut the subtle textures, wreck the balance. The same goes for those vocals. Let to drift, some of the band's prettiest moments shine through. Not quite something new, not quite a return to form, but maybe the purest reflection a band that's otherwise been hard to get a good look at 4/5

#2371 VA - The Super Sounds of Bosworth

TIL Libary Music is a thing -- built for backgrounds, soundalikes for every sound, session banged together, factory-direct. And yet, I rather liked this. It's well-done ; spacy, slick, careening around funk, electronic fuckery, overripe exotica, spy movie slinking, every cool thing about the 60's. Ripe fodder for the sampler (see: Hula Rock, Tribe via Madlib), familiar by backalleys. What a strange, fun diversion 3.5/5

#2370 The Grifters - Crappin' You Negative

So Spotify has a nasty habit of putting the reissue date as the release date on albums - and when I thought this was from 2016, it really threw me. It was so 90's, but so...different. The fact it's actually from the 90's makes it a little easier to deal with, but it's still a hidden gem, a total classic.

It's an album packed with offkilter tunings, startstops and subtle swerves, turning you off to turn you on -- whether that's by design of an artifact of the barebones recording? That recording, all the liveness of vintage Guided By Voices, those yelps and hitches and lofi buzzes, maybe a dasha Zappa? When your starting point's itself an erratic array, well, good luck.

Guitars rumble up, hitch, hook, simmer, zig when counted to zag, etc. It's an album I struggled to review - at first repelantly half-off, uncannily detuned, but...something. Scheherazade holding on long enough to catch my ear with its abstract argument, an album you felt exhausted by at track 3, and ready for a hundred more by track 13. An unknowable thing, a daringly, subtly inscrutable screed of guitar noise and plaintive yelping, Pavement cousins once removed and close enough for kissing, battering its influences, if any, into unrecognition --- a move worth all of your attention. Reeling still, can't tell if I like it or love it, points for keeping me wondering, hours and hours on -- candidate for one of the top albums of the decade, whichever its really from, if I can ever pull apart its straightout knots. These guys might be fucking geniuses. I can't even tell 4.5/5

#2369 Flatbush Zombies - 3001: A Laced Odyssey

Murky, doomed hip hop, boasts and swagger cut with existential doubt and a slow fall backwards into the abyss. Lines slurred and dragged, the production too, giant superbass wobbles on the interludes, druggy, detuned experimental shift from a few years ago circling back. Heavy trip 3/5

#2368 Krispy Kareem - Poussine

Krispy Kareem list Dad Rock as one of their main genres on bandcamp, and maybe they meant it as a self-effacing bit of irony, but it's bang fucking on. All those kids who grew up on Pavement and Built to Spill and Nirvana are dads now - underground/alternative is retro as fuck, banging out disaffected, wandering, brittle little bangers is downright square.

And these kids dug it out of the depths and found a way to keep it fresh, just when we thought we'd run out of ways to express yourself with guitars and as little as possible. They're spirited, burned out, the production paperthin and throbbing, every song squirming out from under itself, wandering down some alley to wonderland.

This rock thing keeps on lurching 4/5

#2367 Kraus - End Tomorrow

Kraus blows your mind out with paradoxes turned to 11 - loudness without aggression, fullness without complexity, straddling the start-stop boundaries between cuts, glitches, static, drum-fills, overblown clips, and shimmering guitar glazes, all neverending, a blitzkrieg of sheer-cliff decays, slathered with wordless distorted exhalations, neon chemtrails streaking. It's Lightning Bolt's daylight ghost, Deefhoof's pretty cousin, a war between 200 undead Zooropas - stressful, borderline painful, looped around the horn to a drowned catharsis 4/5