#2867 Lindstrom - It's Alright Between Us At It Is

Those first 13 minutes are as gloriously ethereal and groove-packed as anything Lindstrom's ever done, swooping ever-smoothly between tones and styles. His moves into vocals are a miss though - Frida and Grace have great voices, but they distract from the Lindstrom sound, reducing it to generic club music and breaking up the album flow. Jenny Hval's turn on Bungl's weird enough that it works as 8-slot gonzo diversion, but it's not exactly a highlight.

Still, there's some great stuff here, further cementing Lindstrom's place as the captain of the Norwegian space disco starship 3.5/5

#2866 Preoccupations - New Material

All the dark atmosphere and subtle texture you could want from the latest coming of Joy Division. There really is some excellent production to roll around in: all flaky layers, wandering reverb, carbonated spaces sliced out of the mix - shame the songs themselves're mostly hookless misery 3/5

#2865 Serpent Power - Electric Looneyland

Swirly psychedelic stomp, full of literary horror-steeped songs that never quite bite. Electric Looneyland's full of credibly-retro texture, but light on actual ideas and melodies 2.5/5

#2864 1000 Homo DJs - Supernaut

An early Trent Reznor project with no ideas that've aged well. The title cover's noisy, nasty fun, but the 3 originals are one-riff wonders stretched way beyond the interest their blasted production drums up. And holy shit Hey Asshole is embarrassing at minute three and excruciating by minute six and then you still have two minutes more 2.5/5

#2863 Fugazi - Steady Diet of Nothing

Missing the edge of the early years, not quite matured into the artiness of Red Medicine / The Argument. It's an awkward transition album from Fugazi: loud monochrome without many moments that stick 3/5

#2862 JJ Doom (MF Doom) - Bookhead EP

Evidence Jneiro Jarel was the problem on Key to the Kuffs - the same verses shine on remixed versions. The all-star production's even spacier, more adventurous, but ____gasp lines up with the actual fucking lines. The new stuff's hot too. Nice save. 4/5

#2861 The Stranglers - Aural Sculpture

There's a _touch of The Stranglers' old edge. And the horn-laced production's pretty at times. But this is mostly just underweight new wave: no hooks, no personalities, no big ideas, nothing to fear. The Stranglers adapted to the 80's as well as any 70's punk band, but that's about as faint as praise can be 2.5/5

#2860 The Stranglers - Rattus Norvegicus

The Stranglers knew exactly what they were doing with that beat -- leaning right into your personal space.

There's confrontation, that frisson of impending conflict laced through every song. Not quite the viscera of the fistfight, but that electric charge right before it might or might not break out.

It's easy to scream and wail, but to find that perfect democracy of guitar/drum/bass/organ/vocals, that Damned/Minutemen sweetspot, that's a thing of [Italian-chef-kissing-his-fingertips]

As good as buzzy 2nd wave gets, riddled with nervous hooks and sluffing off of energy, deserving a slot right alongside Buzzcocks, The Jam, The Only Ones, Damned, etc 4.5/5

#2859 Spirit Club - Spirit Club

Spirit Club sounds like every Wavves song, every upbeat clatterer, every detuned meanderer, swirled into a median band. Its nasal disinterest is a passenger in a fast car, rolling past an excitement-flecked landscape with a head loll.

There's a band down there somewhere, through all the tape wobble, through all the stoney haze. And they're rolling surfwise towards a plan for going to the beach, dreaming of sun from afar. I tapped a toe or two three four and put it on again 4/5

#2858 Algiers - The Underside of Power

Distressed jeans music. Fisher can wail, and on paper I like soul + noise, but it doesn't ring sincere, doesn't sound like there's a band of musicians who care in there. There's weird beeps, but its sound of TV on the Radio backing the money truck up to Atticus Ross's house. Too many layers, too much production, too many pretty asides that feel designed to sell to a Starbucks crowd that's ready to turn on some of this trap music they've been hearing all about 2.5/5

#2857 Portishead - Dummy

as said in slack in thread about how I'd never actually listened to Dummy

' what does it say about me that I like something way more when I hear that it was recorded interestingly : / '

I don't really like any of the songs on this album. But I do like the druggy, dense feel of the full album listen. And I do like the production, doubly so when I hear how analog it was, how special that distant, detached feel really was. It's easy to mistake for all the cheap detuned fuckery we've gotten in the meantime.

An album I'd probably have loved if I'd caught it at the right time, but in 2018 I can only really appreciate it as an artifact. Shitty producers can do this shittily now, but good producers can do it better 3/5

#2856 Of Montreal - White Is Relic / Irrealis Mood

I wish I'd found this when I was 20 and bought 2 albums a month instead of listening to 40. Do you think the slashed album title cuts horizontally across track 1-3 / 4-6, or vertical across each of the split song names?

So much room for analysis activities!

In an era where upbeat bands make downbeat dance albums, this murky dance album's an unexpected upswing from the relentlessly miserable Barnes. It feels readymade for a live playthrough, a well-paced listen sliced grudgingly into half as many tracks as it actually contains, seducing you into losing track across 41 minutes of lurching, Bernie-slumpalong dance music. The interesting changes all slip in smoothly mid-track, all disorientingly listenable, all understatedly hooksome. The more I listen to it the more brilliant it is, could be a sleeper all-time great from an endlessly strange band 4.5/5

#2855 Hot Snakes - Jericho Sirens

Long-dormant-band comebacks have been on a hot streak lately! Hot Snakes didn't miss a clattering beat; surfy guitars rolling out, ever-sputtering on the edge of disaster; Rick yelping out his latest string of desperate demands. Good, noisy, frantic fun 3.5/5

#2854 Dungen and Woods - Myths 003

A mostly muddy mix of the two band's styles. Spacy, pretty, but with too many blurry layers piled on top of eachother to make much impression. It finally all gels on that last track -- too little too late 3/5

#2853 Gruff Rhys - American Interior

Gruff does his take on Muswell Hillbillies, rolling around in Brit-tinged Americana to tell the true story of a Welsh explorer chasing the false legend of Native Welsh-Americans. Electronic tones, strings, ragged guitars goose the dustier roots off track, because Gruff, and the tale's told loosely throughout, ranging from awkwardly specific to hypnotically abstract.

There' barely a memorable moment; the thematic carts lead the musical horses as usual, but American Interior gets by on its endless chugging momentum. The story predates the railroad, but there's something about the clipping rhythms, the too-long stretches of repetition, that captures something deeper about crossing the vastness of America, that speaks louder than any expository slice of libretto 3.5/5

#2852 Albert Hammond Jr. - Frances Trouble

Grabs hold out the gate, digs in deeper with every listen. This could've been the 3rd Strokes album and I'd have been perfectly happy. Freed from the obligation of being cool enough, Hammond makes effortlessly hooky, exciting poppy rock that changes lanes smooth as silk, from bristly indie-motorik to muted brushiness and back. One of the best bandmember-gone-solo albums in recent memory 4.5/5

#2851 The Men - Leave Home

The Men's Open Your Heart's one of my favorite albums of the decade, drifting effortlessly from immediacy to patience and back. Everything The Men did afterwards fell flat: failed at the simmer, the boil, and the movement between.

2011's Leave Home has some of that old magic though, even if the structure's a little more predictable. If You Leave... spends a solid 3 minutes getting going before stomping in place for 4 more; it's organic, live, exciting, connected. And then the fury goes up and up, staying way too long in the shrieking nothing of LADOCH, before making a miraculous recovery, winding its way back down through thrilling, textured punk-motorik contours.

I like noise, but those six LADOCH minutes in the middle are a total momentum-killer, sounding sloppy and indulgent, and it's a shame cause the rest is so good. These guys had a deadly sense of pacing, letting riffs spool our organically, hitting the subconscious and the pelvis in all the right ratios. A near-great album, at least made more memorable by its mistakes 4/5

#2850 Delicate Steve - Cowboy Stories

I'm a sucker for any touch of cowboy strut, those long tones and rambling runs on the title track are good shit. Steve's not going to blow you away with his chops, but damn he's got a super tasty guitar tone.  All the production, dang. Way too clean, with no personality whatsoever, but so pretty you're gonna wanna take it home anyway 4/5

#2849 Wreckless Eric - Wreckless Eric

Clumsy and arch all at once, plagued by some truly awful vocals. Clumsy, arch kids might find kinship, and those saxes are pure ragged sweetness, and Whole Wide World's a classic but oh god that singing knives in my ears 3/5

#2848 Bottin - I Have What I Gave

Super cool. All nightdrive momentum with Italian disco ambiance, everything so minimal and crisp, thin black ties and slick suits under laser light. The perfect combination of maximalist lean-forward and icy lean-back, touches of rockist energy with a DJ's touch for organic pacing and perfectly placed samples 4.5/5

#2847 Mock and Toof - Tuning Echoes

What a warm weird hug of buzzes and tones, slinking about like Siriusmo, Surkin, and the most listenable Aphex Twin. The best songs are sexy and strange, strutting through weird nightlights. The vocal tracks are a drag though, turning the lights up too high. Droll Punk. Warm Chip. There's 1/3 of a great album in here, pluck it out for your mixes 3.5/5

#2846 Warmduscher - Khaki Tears

an album that starts like you walked into the middle of something, a meandering jam, yelped at hour four of a upperfueled raveup that's intersecting its downslopes and upslopes. blurts and bleats, erratic electronics and shouts, frogs gone pavement, sonic youth gone enon, a bracingly unvarnished simmering lowercase deadpan shitshow worth pouring on your face, a real tight slice of dumb live bullshit to roll around in 4/5

#2845 The Men - Drift

Love The Men, but there latest stuff sounds like the kind of thing I'd make goofing around in a practice space if me and the mates had 60% more talent. Which's endearing in its way, and not without its hooks, but there's something soulless, amateur, put on, bloodless, about it. These guys used to have real fire, and nothing here catches. It's an exercise in hoping, under-desperately, that something will stick 3.5/5

#2844 Hannah Williams - Late Nights and Heartbreak

The title track's a stunner - Williams brings it, the song smoldering, smoldering, smoldering, flame. The rest's not up to those highs. It's all a big generous slice of 60's revival, those big Stax horns and backing vocals coming for your soul, but it doesn't quite escape the orbit of its influences 3.5/5

#2843 Shannon and the Clams - Onion

what sounds at first like a crass piece of 60's revivalism ends up being a surprisingly-great piece of 60's revivalism. You could slip any of these songs into a Nuggets comp and they wouldn't be out of place. Hell, most'd stand a chance of being a standout -- those organs, those swooning vocals, that fuzzed out production, I wanna sneer, but shit they stick the landing. As solid a collection of garagey psych cracklers as you're gonna find in 2018 4/5

#2842 All Against Logic - 2012-2017

Darkside's Nicolas Jaar is a goddamn genius, an absolute master of pacing and rewiring the human mind. A maddeningly listenable collection packed with perfect samples - this is Endtroducing // Play (less gross ed.)-level stuff. Live feel pours out of this record, that drunken sense that you can let go of the wheel - dude's got this. You're in good hands. Buzzes, repetition, slow turns against the grain, and all those perfect vocal snippets - an effortlessly great front to back listen, possible best album of 2018 so far 4.5/5