#2728 Alice Cooper - Welcome to My Nightmare

Cooper's back in concept album mode for his first proper solo outing, putting out his creepiest set yet. He really does have a knack for offcenter structures, they do more to put you on your back foot than all the bugs and necrophelia stuff. It's goofy (Vincent Price!) and some of the pacing drags, especially towards the end, but it's as listenable as the best of his stuff, sneaking toetaps and shivers in through the back door 3.5/5

#2727 Alice Cooper - Billion Dollar Babies

After School's Out, Cooper flipped from sinister everyman to sinister overlord, a ringleader of a distopian creepshow of larger scale and scope, tracing a Whosian arc from disaffected youth to firebreathing rabblerouser. The riffs are bigger and hookier, the vocals bolder and glammier, but you'll miss the understated uncanniness and savvy structure of School's Out - ending on a shlocky shoulda-been B-side like I Love the Dead's just sloppy 3.5/5

#2726 Alice Cooper - School's Out

Songs like No More Mr. Nice Guy and School's Out make it easy to dismiss Cooper's stuff as dopey pop. But his albums are a lot more artful than you might expect. School's Out gets by on strange structures, whether its songs that zig where you expect them to zag, or an overall album structure that subverts the pacing you're expecting. There's no overt horror elements to speak of, but you're still left feeling like something uncanny's happened, as the whole album kind of slips through your fingers. An intriguing, mysterious little maze of hooks and asides that's a lot more subtle than the title track sets you up to expect 4/5

#2725 Leon Russell - Leon Russell

A rollicking set of southern yowlers, stewing some combination of Joe Cocker's desperation, Dr. John's piano madness, and the Stones' honkytonk revival. Potent! But Russel's debut never really finds any one thing it does better than anyone else, never puts its stamp on the sound. Solid but unspectacular 3.5/5

#2724 Joe Cocker - With A Little Help From My Friends

Man I love that album cover, Cocker all reared up, belting out a note // getting ready to launch into another, looking out of frame, maybe back at his band, maybe up to His Friends. It's got a live energy that matches what's on the record.

Cocker can sing, hot goddamn, and his band right rips, all those soaring gospel backings and organs take it higher and higher. Every song's an experience (Dylan song excepted, as usual), the whole album leaving you grinning and spent 4/5

#2723 VA - Agrim Agadez

So much good listening falls under unfamiliar (but interesting) and familiar (but pleasant).

Ten people // ten guitars // ten field recordings from Niger. Nary a word of English, only the barest flirtations with anything Western, except those guitars: strummed, plucked, slammed electric, over shuffling, circular beats - unfamiliar but intimate, welcoming, every string tied to a tincan. There's sincerity and humanity to spare, and you're invited to use your brain as much as you see fit, to ruminate on guitars and the people behind them, or to just slip into the web of rhythm 4/5

#2722 OCS (Thee Oh Sees) - Memory of a Cut Off Head

Thee Oh Sees have a massacre of frustrating albums in their wake (especially Floating Coffin and Putrifiers II) that start strong and unravel into wistful meandering. After the relentless guitarmageddon of Orc, it's inevitable the pendulum would swing back: here's a whole record of wandering freak-folk psychedelia.

That sound's never been their strongest suit, but it at least works better as an albumlong commitment. Memory of a Cut Off Head's a baroque, morbid simmerer, riding slow waves of energy, swirling around a drain of bloody anxiety. It's unique, strange, interesting, occaisionally beautiful - but detached, and never especially enjoyable 3/5

#2721 The Blasters - American Music

Props to The Blasters, who tell you what they're gonna do and then do it. American Music. Good old rockabilly rock and roll, no mixer, no garnish, no chaser.

Big clean guitars and boogie woogie bass lay down the foundation, and other than a wildly-better-than-average drummer, not a single sound or lyric betrays this as coming from 1980. Fans of Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Elvis, and (especially!) Gene Vincent will find a lot to like - for better or worse, The Blasters dig right into the sound and don't swerve one lick 3.5/5

#2720 D.O.P. - Musicians of the Mind

Perfectly fine Orby, housey thumpers, but nothing special. A lot of the endlessly-repeated vocal samples ("Let's just party!", "Get out on this dancefloor!", "Oh yeah!") haven't aged well 3/5

#2719 Air France - No Way Down

Air France never put out a proper album, but their last EP's an enjoyable, halcyon little record that basks in the overlap new-era Avalanches' sunny swerving and M83's synthy nostalgia. A mellow listen with just enough details to keep your brain busy 3.5/5

#2718 Hiroshi Yoshimura - Music for Nine Postcards

barely-wobbling rhodes melodies twinkle and loop, while glacial drones shift underneath. deeply eno-inspired ambient music, peaceful, but with a tinge of dissonance that keeps them from being altogether calming. like watching snow fall slowly on a silent street, with the faint awareness that it might bring down a power line 3.5/5

#2717 DJ Nu-Mark - Broken Sunlight

Broken Sunlight's the best of both worlds, a producer record and a DJ mix: sweeping across the hip hop spectrum and off the edges, it's an effortless, sprawling front-to-back listen. The first half's a romp through of laid-back rhymes, groovesome bangers, and soulful desperation, all the scratches and production tricks lurking in supporting roles.

But then Nu-Mark gives you an encore, packing the last 5 tracks with squirrely, adventurous whole-cloth songmaking. He could've done it all along, but he's savvy enough to know when the time's right. Dude's a _producer and a _DJ: he makes the songs and he knows how to use them 4/5

#2716 Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - Who Built the Moon?

If Liam Gallagher's latest was another lap around the Morning Glory memorial speedway, Noel's turn driving the Oasis time machine pulls it off the track and into a ramp; a few spins into a slow motion slide.

It's telling that Noel attached a band name to his project - the album's got muscle and power, reaching for something bigger than its infamous frontman. A swirling, slinky, buzzy odyssey flows out, with shades of Primal Scream's latent dancability, and a touch of (god forbid!) late-era Blur.

The droning structures descend into watch-checking repetitions, but it's a pleasant kind of boring, fully filling your headspace, taking your brain for a solid little vacation 4/5

#2715 Liam Gallagher - As You Were

The Gallagher brothers release albums within months of eachother, because of course they do. Their two albums act like alternative futures, each taking place a year after What's the Story Morning Glory. In Liam's version, the band goes back to the well, spinning out the same kind of sunny, swaying melodies. Completely pleasant, but sounding like 15 totally solid Oasis B-sides, duly relegated 3/5

#2714 Cut Chemist - The Audience's Listening

The Jurassic 5 DJ makes his solo debut, and his past collaborations with DJ Shadow show through - there's a similar sense of atmosphere and disorientation, it's that same kinda wander through a garden of samples and snippets. Grooves roll in, turntablist flourishes catch the eye; its a rocksolid, well-paced listen that feels like it was worked on very very hard. Which is to say, it hits the head more than the heart, more toetapping than headrolling, never quite sounding like something more meaningful than samples, very well arranged.

Still, for fans of instrumental hiphop, its a masterclass worth studying, a fun puzzle to rustle through the pieces of 4/5

#2713 Paul Cut - Basement Jam

The chopped, Jungle Boogie-sampling opening track's good fun, but it's a red herring. The rest of this EP's more sedate, all groovsome house; low-key, but dancable. It's locked into a deeper part of your backbone, a foundation of warm organs, laced with lively bass, and finished with a wash of old-school synth sweeps. Cut's onto something - this feels like a stepping stone to a breakthrough 3.5/5

#2712 Moebius and Plank - Rastakraut Pasta

There's this bit in Bob's Burgers where Bob gets into a wine-identifying showdown. The mystery wine turns out to be the spit bucket wine. It's a pretty thin joke to write an entire episode backwards to get to.

This says on the tin that it's Reggae-infused Krautrock, but the Reggae's slowdubbed into oblivion, and the rest is otherwise unspectacular, with shades of Super 16 laziness. The combination's double-dull too-close clashing; xanax and vodka, fries and curly fries, tan and taupe 2.5/5

#2711 Tubelord - Our First American Friends

Man, I don't know if all these bands were talking to eachother or what, but there was a great scene of bursting, blistering rock music pouring out of the UK circa 2009. The drums always a fraction of a beat ahead, guitars blasting out overcomplex riffs, the vocals yelping at the desperation of keeping up with the song //

like, life, man.

Good fun, packed with halting start-stops, easier listening than Dananananakroyd, trading some of their raw power for precision, for better or worse: there's no Some Dresses to be found, but it's a Japandroids-level smooth-rolling rider that you can put on and let your toe go to town on 4/5

#2710 Sky Larkin - The Golden Spike

Great, toetapping indie, ready to lean into really bringing the energy on that sweet Dananananakroyd // Campesinos // Tubelord level. 2009 really was a hell of a year for that UK burstrock scene. The chugging and chiming's infectious --- and let me call out the best thing about this record.

Some time around song 8 I click over to the spotify app and I skim that playlist and I'm like, man! 17 songs! I'm already getting kinda restless! And this is a case for not knowing when the end is coming when it comes to temporal media.

Because what the album actually does is end at track 12 (a totally standard ending pace!), rolling out on a glorious climax of proggy organ riffs, burning itself out with aplomb. Album over. Thank you for coming. What a show.

And 10 seconds of silence.

And an encore.

Untitled rolls up slowly, and Handsome slowly gears back in, subclimaxing with these great guitars that, again, would make Steve Hackett blush. And then a couple extra great little ditties, and by the time Sum Assault rides out you're euphoric.

As 17 songs it would feel stretched, overstuffed. But in the listening its just like a great rock show -- you're left wanting a little more and then you get a bit too much, and you walk out feeling dazed and satisfied.

This shit matters. It's so much better than it would've been without that break in pacing. Album flow matters. Audience experience matters because experience matters. Why is this so fucking underappreciated? Fuck, so much better than it has to be. I feel like I want to go back to this again and again, because the music is good, but because it's been laid out for listening, god fucking forbid 4/5

#2709 Andy Fairly - Fishfood vs Birth of Sharon

Clattering horseshit. Andy squeals and roars his deepest, shittiest thoughts over repetitive post-punk sheetmetal. It's impossible to escape how lazy this sounds. It's daring only in that it doesn't bother, where others rightly would have. Talking Heads without the pretentiousness. Fuck this, and fuck Talking Heads while we're on the subject 2/5

#2708 Marika Hackman - I'm Not Your Man

Is it just me, or are women the only ones making good 90's revival rock lately? There's a great strain of buzzing, bristling, charged guitar buzz, backed with similarly-energized sentiment, seething, maybe, against how little has changed, he brushed broadly.

Marika in specific, does not fuck around. And lumping her in with revival, or with anything, seems crass. There's thorns on every song, not a single chorus content to repeat itself without some barb tearing on the way out. It's small the way a knife is - narrow, sharp, incisive. The pacing lags, the pinpricks growing dull by the end, but there's something here 3.5/5

#2707 Woods - City Sun Eater In The River Of Light

Woods' have a groove, a layered sound that's worth riding along to. It's a shame one of those layers is Jeremy Earl's voice; still grating after all these years. There's a real sense of melody and atmosphere here, a clipping sense of rhythm, some burbling economy of mystery, but man that voice is pretty rough 3.5/5

#2706 The Juju Exchange - Exchange

Donnie Trumpet brings his own brand of funky, silky jazz-inflected groovery. It's all well-planned, the Steely Dan of jazz, shades of Hancock, but squirrely enough to feel alive, with unexpected instruments and tones wandering in from here and there, cloaked in reverb, tempos pulsing, and that too-sweet trumpet tone painting too-sweet melodies over top. It toes the line of overproduced, but there's some tap into something real that keeps it kicking. A chill listen for a laid back Summer, if we ever get another one 4/5

#2705 The Deep Freeze Mice - Hang on Constance, Let Me Hear the News

Guardian's got a list of obscure albums, most of which you haven't heard for a reason. But the main exception so far's this one: an often-gorgeous blend of art-rock, new-wave, and experimental nonsense. The bass insists the songs move forward, all those washes of sound keeping the heading, herding all those muttering vocals, erratic tempos and splattered samples into pleasure centers.

Check out Transparent Evil Plays for the microcosm, a shambling mess that breaks into start-stop nothingness before an enchanting bridge belies the wankery that came before and after. Ask Zappa - the secret to getting away with meandering nothingness is to prove you _could_ deliver satisfaction every time, you're just rationing it in the name of the bigger picture. There's a bit of that here - you sense genius, and sign up for whatever combination of bullshit and beauty it delivers 4/5

#2704 Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - The Tourist

Wolf Parade, Arcade Fire, now Clap Your Hands - there's not a lot of new bands making propulsive, pretty clippyclop indie, but some of the old guard's still kicking.

This's probably CYHSY's best front-to-back album, even if it lacks some of the bracing quirks of their early stuff (those opening tracks!). And Alec's nasal whine is still Corgan-tier alienating, but this is a shimmering, pretty, forward-tilted, cloud-breaking little slice of the last generation, full of overblown touches and hooky flourishes. This's the kind of quietly adventurous stuff we got spoiled on in the 00's, be thankful for these vestiges 4/5

#2703 DJ Seinfeld - Time Spent Away From U

Hazy, sentimental, house, all blurry edges and bloomed colors. DJ Seinfeld's sound isn't as synthwave-endebted as the name suggests: the tones are detuned but listenable, with minimum interest in kitsch, taking you on a trip just this side of a good time, riding a half-memory of a moment that seemed very important a long time ago 3.5/5

#2702 Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass - Whipped Cream & Other Delights

Bubbly little Latin ditties, the kind of thing you might find in cowboy-movie Mexico, or backing a Tarantino / Soderbergh mini-montage. It's enjoyable, but man, this is the epitome of melody, written-and-performed, polished squeaky clean until it sounds like library music. There's no vestige of jazz left, no soul left to lose. What's cowboy music good for without that friction? 3/5

#2701 Marilyn Manson - Heaven Upside Down

I reckon Manson's backed off trying to shock anyone anymore. Could he at this point? Would it win any new fans? What would be the utility? He's just kicking out the kind of noisy, distantly-blues-related noise that he's into, cranking riffs through an Albini-puncher, an Atticus-fuzzer, raging against Christianity in terms we're mostly numbed to.

I'm actually pretty into the racket, but it's hard to escape the staleness of the shtick. Actual song titles:
 - KILL4ME
 - JE$u$ CRI$I$
 - WE KNOW WHERE YOU FUCKING LIVE
 - SAY10

SAY10. SAY TEN. SAYTEN. SATAN. GET IT. Actual repeated lines from that song include "I say God. And you say Say Ten" and "Cocaine and Abel...". Ok, ok we all got shit doodled in the margins of sprial notebooks. This is totally passable late-industrial polished-not-polished racket, but lyrically it feels phoned in, bordering on self-parody. My decade-long quest to figure out if Manson is a talented provocateur or a total fucking hack continues 3.5/5

#2700 Frank Zappa - Apostrophe

Hot Rats remains my favorite Zappa Album - the purest expression of his mad, jazzy jamming and face-melting guitarwork, without all the goofy thematic trappings. Plenty of goofy trappings here: tales of husky piss, pancake restaurants, and psychedelic charlatans. But in between and underneath, goddamn them grooves. When all the muttering nonsense fades out, good god there's a good band back there making some really insane, really tight racket that will loosen your whole neck and shoulders right on up.

And heck, I admit it, even some of the goofiness won me over

"(this is a dog talking here)"

4/5

#2699 Wolf Parade - Cry Cry Cry

Apologies to the Queen Mary was one of my top 10 albums of the 00's, and Expo '86 is an underappreciated masterpiece. So don't take it too backhanded when I say this is the 3rd best album Wolf Parade's made; it's one of the best indie rock albums in years, whatever's that's worth, a reminder that heartfelt, yelping, borderline-dancable rock still has a pulse.

--

When Lazarus Online lays out its staggeringly straightforward tale of withering hope, you brace yourself for some old testament Modest Mousery. And there's flashes of desperation, bouyed by ragged horn flashes - but for the most part the middle section is a little bloodless, reading from the book of indie stompalong repetition, Wolf Parade gone Spoon. The best thing about Apologies was the way it felt like the wheels could come off at any moment, Spencer Krug hammering down the patches on a ship going down and racing at the jetty at a hundred knots. I miss those stakes, this feels polished for a vigorous festival heeltapping.

But by the 3rd act album highlight Who Are Ya comes along, and its all stuttering delivery and everything coming apart and start stops and you screaming in your head at the rain on a desolate night, and you get that flash of hope.

Not to obsess, but one of the best things about Apologies was its pacing. I challenge you to name a set of 3 second-side songs as good as tracks tracks 7-9 on that album. Nobody saves that kind of fire for their second salvo. Which is to say: After Who Are Ya, the last two tracks make a play for that kind of backloading boldness, as Wolf Parade lean on buzzy synths to raise the stakes and bring frission.

--

It's not fair to expect the kind of life-or-death desperation from a band this deep into its career. That this is the least bit interesting is more than most bands can expect 12 years on. And this has real spark.

It all feels a bit planned, a bit written, a bit knowing about what people will groove to at shows between Apologies' underground hits, but man, 4 honest to god good songs, plus totally servicable stompalongs in between? I'll take it in 2017 4/5

#2698 Pharoah Sanders - Tauhid

Not an easy listen. Free jazz packed with stretches of patient rumbling and slashes of squawking horns, with sections that are harrowing, endless, or both. Anxious and aimless.

But it gets there, making the case for music that is larger and stranger than human aims. Slowly all that meandering and thrashing takes shape, like some ritual in half-light that summoning melodies and beauty, arriving at some elemental and unknowable sound guided by unfamiliar contours. Too meaningful to be improvised, too alien to be composed, shocking that it even exists. It's transportive, if you're willing to be patient, to earn appreciation 4/5

#2697 Edgar Jones - Soothing Music for Stray Cats

A confounding, confusing set of songs out of line with linear time. Leading off with outright jazz, dipping into ghostly doo-wop, New Orleans dirges, R&B revenants, wax cylinder blues. None of the songs _are_ any of these styles exactly. It's all pale reflections, all songs _about_ styles, without any clear vision of their own, and I can't decide if its brilliant or a mess or both, landing somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle that 50's-nicking Zappa, graveyard-wandering Waits, and Play-era Moby adumbrate. A haunted hedgemaze of a record; I don't think I liked it, but bumping around in it was a fun little confoundance.

Definitely recommended to anyone looking for anything different, at least 3.5/5

#2696 Land of Talk - Applause Cheer Boo Hiss

Buzzy, bold, anxious, busy indie, led by Elizabeth Powell's swelling desperation, restless tempos tracking and pushing every song into new corners. Piles of guitars rise to shoegazey depths, waves upon waves, exhausting and thrilling as a ride gone wrong 3.5/5

#2695 Daniele Luppi - Milano

Sounds more like a Parquet Courts album with guest vocals by Karen O, so light is Luppi's touch.

But so what? This would be a fucking incredible Parquet Court album, packed with unexpected chimes and horns and flourishes, slathered in the atmosphere of retro Italian decadence, plus Karen O! An uneasy, overdrunk joy soaks into every measure, a curious, compelling little collision 4/5

#2694 Crass - The Feeding of the Five Thousand

Do They Owe Us a Living? is one of the greatest punk songs of all time. It's as angry and hooky and blunt and recklessly tight as anything out there, branding you with its message in a minute twenty.

And this is one of the great art punk albums, end to end. Harrowing, fearless, slashed with flashes of noise and screed, dropping to seconds of silence in the flash of an A-bomb, but packed with hooky moments and thrilling production. It's as unflinchingly furious and nasty as a totally enjoyable album can be. An unequivocal, bracing classic 4.5/5

#2693 The Jam - In the City

Arguably better than the more polished (great!) All Mod Cons and (also great!) Sound Affects. There's nothing to compete with Tube Station / That's Entertainment, and the pacing drags by comparison, and it's a little hook light, and..

So not as good, but The Jam sound rough, harried, hungry - its more true to the frustration at the heart of their sound, a more-perfect bridge between their punk / retro contradictions, and more exciting in its own way 4/5

#2692 DJ Python - Dulce Compañia

Icy, shimmering ambient / house, sliding into space slowly, finding wormhole shortcuts between Latin offbeats. Spacy, peaceful, but laced with tension, a trip just on the line of too much 3.5/5

#2691 Errorsmith - Superlative Fatigue

Too much human music. We've been at this for what, coming up on 40 years? And electronic music mostly still sounds grasping and immature. Maybe I'm applying rockist impulses where they don't belong, but I feel like I've got to do all the heavy lifting to appreciate some of this shit.

Behond Errorsmith showing off his million-wave additive synthesizer, or something. The first couple tracks are wanky human-not-human showoff reels. When it turns into actual music, sure, those're pretty rich tones, and they skitter like a skitterer do, but it feels like a demo reel more than anything worth hearing in its own right, a bunch of sounds in search of structure, melody, or movement 2.5/5

#2690 Spirit Adrift - Curse of Conception

A doom metal album that can't help but indulge in big soaring 80's guitar operatics.

Or maybe a 80's revival band walking resolutely into swampy suicide.

Out of step in two utterly inconsistent ways, changing tempos and tones constantly and subtly, hopeless and hopeful all at once. A conundrum, a weird piece of metal pieced together by aliens that don't understand human emotions, maybe better for it 3.5/5

#2689 The Rezillos - Can't Stand the Rezillos

Loose-as-fuck newwave/punk, dipping into the goofy scifi tip before just about anyone, with shades of psychobilly rollick creeping in. They sound like they're actually having a good time, very uncool in '78 3.5/5