#2504 Lemony Kravitz - Bedtime Stories

I picked a hell of a time to start trying to quit comparing to other bands. But. True story:

I have a to-listen playlist on my Spotify with the first track of a hundred or so albums in the backlog. And sometimes I accidentally don't click _into_ an album and I think I'm checking out a new album but suddenly I'm listening to the first song on some completely unrelated album. And there's a new King Gizzard album out (it's good! stay tuned!) and I actually thought I'd --

no shit, no joke, I'm a little drunk, but it just happened again. like just now.

point is, this sounds a lot like King Gizzard at their psychiest, also Tame Impala, and in general like a lot of modern bands that sound like a misremembered 60's and it's all fine but these guys need to develop their own sound -- I'd rather to go to at least one degree of the source. Fun band name tho 3/5

#2503 Rozwell Kid - Precious Art

Rozwell Kid used to be perfect: a little band all about big band moves, all 80's big-hair metal glory, all power chords played in power stances, all aww-shucks grinning leaning into a drumstick flipping kick-in.

But that youthful hope wears off. Maybe weed, in its own small way, is a hell of a drug. Cause now they've sunk into that stoner-punk scene, Wavves on a middling surf day. It's all self doubt, all TV, so much TV. Songs about MadTV, Futons, UHF on DVD, Clue: The Movie, Seaquest reruns, and whatever Michael Keaton's in.

Those choices are telling: not a single topical or recent or good thing among them, strictly the kind of shit you watch because it's familiar at best, because it's what happened to come on and where the fuck's the remote and I guess it's 3:00 and I guess that's basically my day.

And I love that honesty. It's a trap I totally believe these kids fell into -- they used to care, but it's so hard to, and now this is what they know, and they crunch their way through. And that's relatable and enjoyable and I actually really like it. I guess I wish I didn't like it. I liked it better when I liked their shit that felt like rock and roll could pull you out instead of cuddling you back down 3.5/5

#2502 Laura Stevenson - Cocksure

Stevenson's latest drops most of Wheel's dusty, folkism, swinging for the indie-rock fences with breakfast cereal sweetness. It's catchy, but the a bit thin, each song riding its one hook, lacking the curiosity and scope of her previous stuff 3/5

#2501 Laura Stevenson - Wheel

On her 3rd album, Stevenson combines Jenny Lewis's mewling sense of pop-rock bittersweetness with a more shuffling, swooping kind of plucked singer-songwriterism. It's a restless album, never satisfied with any particular approach to your heart/feet, far sweeter and softer than you might expect given her Bomb the Music Industry history 3.5/5

#2500 Kevin Morby - City Music

Morby's big deep M. Ward voice rings like a well, offset by the clear guitar lines twinkling above, shuffly Kansas City backing bridging the gap. It's pretty, peaceful, rich.

There's something appealing about the framing too - something about the way the visual rhythm of the words of those song titles, flecked with lighght, peppered with y's and i's, all eyes, nights, cities, all dark sparkle, glinting off of the same mirrors of that album cover.

Come to Me Now
Crybaby
1234
Aboard My Train
Dry Your Eyes
Flannery
City Music
Tin Can
Caught in My Eye
Night Time
Pearly Gates
Downtown's Lights

It's a touch so subtle it might not even be there, but it made the whole experience much more satisfyingly complete somehow 3.5/5

#2499 Village Bicycle - Fits and Starts

A fetal burst of local-band shamble and yelp, crunchy indie packed with baroque synthy buzzes and start-stops. It starts off awkwardly, tripping over lame Blur//Cake character sketches like Hot Mom.

But you can watch the band find its footing in real time; the propulsive chug of Sprankles, the clattering actual chaos of The Panic Song, the toothsome sunrise chiming of Turtle Dove. The kind of band you'd pledge to keep an eye on as you stagger out of their bar show - might even be served keeping that eye on from afar 3.5/5

#2498 VA - Cellar Door Vol. 4

Cleveland label comp is packed with Good Mozzarella Sandwich songs: the kind of local band music you enjoy when you wanted some music, especially like when you came down to the break room when you heard there was leftover food and this was all that's left and you picked it up grudingly but you totally enjoyed it in the moment and your need was duly slaked and you tapped your toe and maybe even in the moment when "that was good!" -- like, that shit was just what I needed! But you will probably never think about that band // sandwich the next day or ever again.

Not even personal heroes Herzog escape this orbit.

I liked all of these songs, really liked a few, and added none of them to my Starred list on Spotify and all stand zero chance of a relisten 3/5

#2497 Shpongle - Are You Shpongled?

Goa trance week, bonus round!

A lot of the best-regarded albums from this scene have this feeling of being beamed from space - of existing without the need for the filthy hands of man. But Shpongle's opus feels packed with effort, with ambition, with a kitchen sink blitz to blow your mind with every sound imaginable. At times the it's wildly successful, with a better album flow than most; and those last three tracks are truly alien, often terrifying.

But there's a failure to connect somehow. Is it that awful name, somehow worse than the likes of Dimension 5 and Paradise Connection? I can't imagine talking to someone who says they're a huge Shpongle fan without assuming that I'm about to have a really boring conversation -- the Dave Mathews Band of synths, the Humphreys McGee of beats. Or maybe it's just that production weight of it all, overflowing with throat singing and chopped robot vocals and shimmering endlessnesses piled like 2x4s, the album shouting in your face ARE YOU TRIPPING OUT OR WHAT 3/5

#2496 Alan Hackshaw and Brian Bennett - KPM 1000 Series: Synthesis

A highlight in the sea of KPM collections on Spotify. There's the usual TV-show-theme-ready hooks, spiked by jazzy flourishes and lightly proggy transformations, all washed with warm synths. Too clearly _composed_ to read as funk*, too pop for jazz/classical respectability, but it's a solid set of strange little romps 3.5/5

* exception: Mermaid's gorgeous French getaway washes

#2495 VA - Bootleg Beats (KPM)

In an age where library music is finding its way into hiphop left and right, here's the middle ground - a lightly-fucked, lyricless romp through the archives. The source samples are solid; building grooves that makes you feel like Danny Ocean playing Elvis; the kind of hooks that steal a half step from your stride and put it back better than ever, each loop spiked with some dusting of synth pulses or extra beats; some little chop or drop or glitch.

Not to take away from the respective producers, but it's not that the extra touches are so exceptional, it's that this whole era of library music is hooky and party-ready and needs the barest spark to catch your place on fire. And sometimes the muckery even undercuts the dusty swagger of the source material, ending up a little bit Fatboy-overproduced. But there's enough hits to make this worth your attention, at very least as an easy reserve of hooky background music 3.5/5

#2494 Scott Gilmore - Subtle Vertigo

A wobbly lump of Luau-local samples, more listenable than your average sun-baked detuned disaster, but still not quite relaxing, not quite interesting, living up to the album name -- not thrilling, not comfortable, so what the fuck are we doing here? Get your shit together or lose it, this is wasteful chin-scratchy middle ground 2.5/5

#2493 Benjamin Booker - Witness

Booker's debut was a masterstroke - it flirted with too-easy Starbucks hookiness, but was carried by flashes of observation and piercing moments of unfakeable, frantic energy.

But this followup doesn't quite escape that poppy orbit. His raspy vocals are a short tether that keeps all the songs in the same space, and an air of overproduction smothers all the gospel vocals and flickers of flourish.

There're brilliant moments - the opening two-parter's toothsome, and the title track's a heartbreaking double-entendre. But then its 4 lazy tracks till the proper stomp of Ovetime, and then 2 more duds before the deliciously too-short All Was Well and then --- holy fuck, we're already done here.

It's too safe, too thin on ideas and energy, a disappointing, understufffed effort from a kid who's obviously got a lot to say. Problem is nothing comes close to the stomp of Violent Shiver/Wicked Waters, nothing approaches the pathos of Slow Coming/Spoon Out My Eyeballs. Its a shadow living in a shadow; here's hoping Booker's got another chapter in him 3/5

#2492 Ubar Tmar - Fusion

Goa week pt 6!

A happier, goofier, dancier, weirder, woolier, more experimental, more sci-fi sample-packed take on trance -- just fuckit lets go for it. My ramshackle notes say things like:
 - colorful _moves_ instead of slow shifts
 - harder edged switch-flips
 - delightfully skittery!
 - actual guitars! flashes of rockism
 - playful squelches, organic energy again and again
 - nice momentum heading into the last song, this does not end with the whimper so many of these albums seem to

The kind of album that leaves you grasping for summary points, and golly don't I love that, getting back to the true, wriggly spirit of acid arpeggiation. Aside: man, for all the focus on experience, these Goa trance albums fucking suck at album-scale pacing, almost every one just dropping you off at the bus stop mid-trip. Dicks.

I'm not sure this is actually the best of the lot, but its the one I'm most intrigued to return to 4/5

#2491 Pleiadians - IFO

Goa week pt 5!

Held up as the greatest goa/trance/electronic/music album of all time in certain circles, this certainly fucking goes for it. More outer space journey than most, more for easy chair journeys than dancing maybe. It comes for your shit, big beats and doubledup synths and a blitz of subtle layers to overwhelm and overcome. Inventive, squirrely, with its own jittery energy, well-herded sounds that pick the details of their motions themselves. Far more live, more ungraspable than the rest

I was exhausted by the end, but I've been spending 48 hours burning off homebuying stress listening to nonstap trance, so who'm I to judge. An undeniable keeper 4/5

#2490 Paradise Connection - Paradise Connection

Goa week pt. 4: this time you can feel the structure showing through a bit much. The gates, the bandpasses, the slow shifts in the beats. It's built for dancing, more so than most, and it feels by the book somehow, as clumsily under-artful as its cover art (even by the tacky "hey! computer graphics!" standards of the 90's). I dig this style, and it gets by, but you can do better 3/5

#2489 Dimension 5 - Transdimensional

More so than most from Goa week, this is shameless about bringing the big four unts unts unts unts, hitting you right_in_the_center_of_the_chest over and over again. Even if you're not programming in python at a million wpm, even if you don't know what that means, you will - you'll feel it.

It's a bold-move pickup artist, and if it doesn't work you'll roll your eyes at its synthetic, cloying maneuvers in the dark, its tacky scifi samples, its stereotypical tranciness. But if it gets its hooks in, shit, I don't know -- there's an upside to all that boldness. Once you take your sneer off, this shit taps into your soul, and then you're rolling 4/5

#2488 X-Dream - Our Own Happiness

Goa Trance pt 2.

Effective at trance, but...disorienting, like a trip where I wish I hadn't, where I'm in a little over my head and I want to get off. Admirable effect! It's a heady piece of music, undercutting you with offcenter tones and subtly suffocating production, but man I was kinda glad when it was over 3/5

#2487 Astal Projection - Dancing Galaxy

Goa Trance week!

Man this shit is good work music. It took over my life briefly and entirely; so packed with understated minor-key emotional manipulations and subconscious attitude retunings.

First up, a good middle ground starting point: sci-fi samples, unts unts thumps, proggy progressions, heady ambitions, but all in moderation. It's hooky as shit, super well balanced, ridiculously enjoyable electronic music perfectly aligned with your body's frequencies. A great place to start, in retrospect, and for all you just embarking 4/5

#2486 The Human League - Reproduction

When James Murphy checked Human League in his legendary Losing My Edge list, do you think he meant Don't You Want Me? Or...this? This icy, artsy, harrowing deadpan incarnation?

I'm guessing the latter. Its hookless coolness's right in line with the kind of joking-not-joking shit that list rubs elbows with. This's post-punk stripped to its bones, Gang of Four without the hooks, the kind of emptiness Steve Albini would envy. It's not any fun, but it makes an impression, a horror-drenched look at the onrushing 80's, a hyper-early look at industrial mechanism 3.5/5

#2485 Bronski Beat - The Age of Consent

Textbook synthpop - the the beats punch, the synths crunch, and Jimmy Somerville hurtles himself at the world's problem with keening desperation. But those endless waves of searing falsetto are a gauntlet: annoying almost immediately, repeated endlessly, goddamn exhausting by the time the hour's over 2.5/5

#2484 The Pretty Things - Get the Picture?

This is 2nd-tier rough-edged English 60's rock: better than 95% of the bands of the era, but lacking the hooks and swagger to reach the upper echelons. A dozen garagey rollickers spill out, all jangly guitar and yelpy vocals, and it's all charming and spontaneous enough. But some of the songs are underbaked, riding an idea so thin 2 and a half minutes is an overstayed welcome, and there's not a genuine classic in sight 3.5/5

#2483 BJ the Chicago Kid - In My Mind

The Kid's latest overflows with ambition - every song reaches for more and more. Dude landed Kendrick -- and Chance, the archduke of post-Kanye Chicago coolness himself, too, and he still reaches like he's the bigger star. Not in an arrogant kinda way, it's that effortless confidence thing. He's got Chicago in his name, but he's a Kid; BJ's just got a song in his soul, and production that can't be contained in conventional, and here it all comes. And if song's don't quite reach for Beautiful Dark heights, they reach for more than 3-and-done, more than 3xChorus, more than Chance3 even, maybe.


There's a little too much autotune, a little too much polish - this's far short of territory TBAP/MBDTF/Chance3, its ambitions notwithstanding. But I admire the reach: BJ finds a smooth, strange new land well worth the excursion 4/5

#2482 Chronixx - Dread and Terrible

Melodic, enjoyable Reggae overflowing with positive messages, cleverly phrased. A little overproduced (is that some autotune I hear?) but hooky enough to justify it 3.5/5

#2481 Los Doltons - Siempre...Los Doltons

Hooky, soulful Peruvian New Wave (different wave) -- that surf//garage backing's spot-on, with big bold vocals leading the way. A lighter version of Tropicalia's reinventions, the scene's still essential for anyone interested in the global side of the 60's explosion, and this compilation's a solid survey of one of the major players 3.5/5

#2480 Japanese Wallpaper - Japanese Wallpaper

The next wave of Garden-State-ready indie, blandly pretty vocals over blandly interesting electronic backing. Pretty! Interesting! Bland 2.5/5

#2479 The Go-Go's - Beauty and the Beat

There're those that try to reclaim the Go-Go's as cool-before-they-were-pop new-wavers -- the truth's somewhere in between.

Lush jangle, beats that bite harder than they have to, swaggery leads, layered backing, a generally inventive streak; yes yes yes. They're more than We Got the Beat. But that mostly lands them at also-ran cool-band: not arch enough to escape the pop orbit, not catchy enough to rule it, "great" mostly as a reaction to the underestimaters 3/5

#2478 Sports - Sunchokes

An impossible little minor masterpiece, a perfect storm of Interpol/Pavement cool, GBV microhooks and earnest, grasping Tacocat/Surfer Blood/Weezer surf-lite curlturning; if I fall into a pit of reference points they started it.

The vocals bite the edges, and lyrics trip into too-cute lines about 'jerking off to Al-Jazeera' too often, but this is the post]]modern post//not-post irony shitstorm -- we're selling Microsoft tablets with implausible loft-sketches of tent-dresses, might as well soundtrack the halfassed hatefuck 4/5

#2477 Sneaks - Gymnastics

Hyper-minimal post-punk cool, just Eva and her bass, sneering and slithering over drum machines, that perfect tone, rumbling under sharp, silky disinterest 4/5

#2476 Antioch Arrow - In Love with Jetts

Spastic punk from that school of out-of-control perfectly-timed start-stops - are they a total mess or operating on a level you just can't get with? The shrapnel of an exploded Mastadon, eight 90-second shards of bracing brace-yerself 3.5/5

#2475 Little Feat - Dixie Chicken

A very 70's rock album, packed with Southern slide guitars, gospel backing, Dr. John bleating, and a general air of reclaimed Americana. Perfectly enjoyable, but strangely unmemorable - musicians making music well, riding the choruses, never deigning to reach for the hooks, muso Southern rock paradoxically made possible, Stones gone Steely Dan 3/5

#2474 LVL UP - Return to Love

Man this starts off strong, Hidden Driver's overblown strums and desperate vocals out for blood like some great lost Neutral Milk Hotel song. The rest of the album is fine, full of heavy jangle and crunch, but it's on autopilot, a shadow of that first burst of energy, never reaching for / finding those same heights again. I've never seen these guys live, but I sense some deep-down energy that the album might be failing to harness 3.5/5

#2473 ABC - Lexicon of Love

Exactly the kind of cool/uncool 80's new wave that the Venture Bros' Doc and Jackson are obsessed with. It's got just enough swagger and bleaty deadpan to get by, observing all the madness from a perch of great height and great style, casting half-catchy manna to the masses, but its archness gets numbing by the halfway point and boring by the end 3/5

#2472 Chuck Johnson - Velvet Arc

Listen / buy here!

Johnson rolls out hypnotic guitar sounds, notes washing into tones into landscapes, shades of William Tyler and Scott Hirsch. This 37-minute album feels much longer, for the better - it melts time, bends mood, through endless repeating, reverberating guitar lines, backed by minimal backing. On the list of thought-drowners for overthoughtful days 3.5/5

#2471 The Mystic Number National Bank - Mystic Number National Bank

I love that one of the only things you can find online about this band is a rant by producer Stephen Barncard. What could I add to that? The band sounds like British blues revival without the Britain, effortful and underwhelmingly strange, with appealing little horn flourishes, adding a soulful Saint James Infirmary version that even Wikipedia hasn't cottoned to. Glenn Walters' vocals are passable, but unspectacular, reaching for something they never find. Most notable to modern audiences thanks to a DJ Shadow sample; which is to say, a totally fine 60's album by a totally fine band, with more interesting trivia than songs 3/5

#2470 Tofubeats - Positive

An intoxicating, slurred cocktail of Japanese hip hop, vaporwave, EDM, and outright twisted pop. Positive's got that first wave detuned taint that comes from bending every sound past breaking into the desired shape, but those shapes are weird and varied enough to make for a technicolor traipse worth taking 3.5/5