#3693 Jason and the Scorchers - Lost and Found

3/5 _barely raucous enough to escape the orbit of its honky-schlock gimmick. All the songs are deadfocused on a single riff on a single subject, and the production's just rough enough to make it sound live. but like, really, to be clear, just ___barely

#3692 The Long Ryders - Native Sons

3.5/5 indie-country frivolity that finds its legs on its rougher, looser, second half

#3691 The Dream Syndicate - The Days of Wine and Roses

4/5 possibly the best Paisley Underground album, barely-contained dissonance rumbling along to rock and roll rhythms, pressurized into something exciting and listenable, lashing out with a mind of its own

#3690 The Dream Syndicate - These Times

3.5/5 grown-up twitchy rockers stretch their legs, put on some pretty production and some miles, spin out a pleasant low-stakes trip

#3689 Sigur Ros - Liminial Sleep

2.5/5 pretty in a barely-there kind of way, but mostly dead boring, without the commitment of Route 1. Too dissonant to even sleep to

#3688 L-Epee - Diabolique

3/5 once they lock into a groove, that's the one for the song, drones building from a 6 to a 7, detached vocals drifting. You kind of admire the commitment. What a boring band to play bass in.

#3687 Rocketship - Thanks to You

3.5/5 lush shoegaze packed, overflowing with little moments, synths and breakdowns and buildups and clearouts. Very pretty and very clever, though all that complex, planful structuring undercuts the passion and excitement

#3686 Parquet Courts - Wide Awake!

3/5 all angular bristle at the order of things that mostly just doesn't land. A messy melee of mostly-agreeable minutemen and gang of four moments that don't come off as sincere and don't commit to anger, neither dance_ nor _punk, and not finding much outside the spectrum, undercut by thin, flat vocals. Freebird II's pretty as heck tho

#3685 Swervedriver - Future Ruins

3/5 pure 90s swirly shoegaze timecapsule, all those guitars blurring into the vocals, textured, chunky, without a single jagged edge; delivers you to space without a single chance taken  -- not such a bad thing when it comes to going to space

#3684 Kaytranada - Bubba

2.5/5 this is the year I really truly feel out of touch with what's it. pretty good beats, and then a slurry of gasoline production rainbow, and guest after guest and I'm just not attuned to it, goes right through me

#3683 Pearl Jam - Vault 9: Live in Seattle 12/8/93

3.5/5 a set from the Ten/Vs era that delivered exactly what a Pearl Jam fan of the era probably wanted: precisely-delivered wall-to-wall riffs, endless growls and howls, with few breaks and few surprises. Too raw to be dismissed as "too clean", but the band doesn't take a lot of chances, doesn't mess with the songs, keeping the energy turned up to 8 the whole set long. Probably great to attend, but a bit of a playlist listen. One exception: a right ripping I've Got a Feeling

#3682 Lucy in Disguise - Sunset Radio

3/5 this sure is synthwave, a style I have no ability to rate because every song fades into a hazily pleasant background as well as any other. nice crunchy bass sounds though

#3681 Kali Malone - The Sacrificial Code

3/5 endlessly, glacially patient organ notes, 10 tracks averaging 10 minutes each, with minuteslong themes reoccurring an hour apart. The conceptual commitment's admirable, and there's a certain meditation to the listen, but when it ends, without achieving any particular motion or lateral transcendence, you haven't been given anything you can take with you into your day, intellectually, emotionally, or otherwise. The exercise is hollow

#3680 Mikal Cronin - Arsonist / Tsinosra

4.5/5 a gorgeous, adventurous EP, unfolding and folding slowly. Both epic-length tracks work as perfect compliments. I'm a sucker for a truly patient long song, this is as brilliant as they come

#3679 DJ Shadow - Our Pathetic Age

3.5/5 the first disc of instrumentals is ok. no Endtroducing ghosts, not even Mountain visceralia. The main draw's the 2nd disc of hip hop production, tracks that are very of the Pathetic now, of crippling internet attachment, surveillance, oppression, and all the webs in between. Not a fun listen, but the exactly the one 2019 deserves

#3678 Je Suis France - Back to the Basics of Love

3.5/5 still love these guys, the most overlooked band of the 21st century. I'm so glad they're still kicking.

Their latest falls short of their best stuff, sounding like a tired version of Coleslaw III Drymouth -- but that's still good! its fucking 2019, that's the best you can hope for. full of easy hooks and stoned diversions, short songs and long songs and endless texture and that unflagging belief that making music is fun

#3677 The Mattson 2 - Paradise

2.5/5 what the fuck happened to these guys? all that jazzy frisson gone, left with soft, noodling rock, somewhere between Tycho without the texture and Steely Dan without the hooks

#3676 The Mattson 2 - Agar

4/5 hard-driving bass and explosively busy soft drums make for a jazzy, thrilling listen, washed in ambient touches. You can feel the focused energy of two well-aligned voices, hammer and anvil making sparks

#3675 Jeff Rosenstock and Laura Stevenson - Still Young

3/5 4 Neil Young covers that don't take too many chances, without much Rosenstock energy, if that's what you were looking for. Just a pleasant curio of a jam, earnest and nice

#3674 King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Infest the Rat's Nest

3.5/5 I'll never kick a king gizzard album out of bed, and this is rippled with pleasures as always, but the lack of editing continues to show. They pull off "stripped down metal", and I'd welcome this does of heavy live, but there's no real reason to listen to this over something by someone more specialized

#3673 Flowers Must Die - Kompost

3/5 just 6 more months till I can quit this project. none of this made an impression on me, all its swirling and yowling and warbles and surges and rages just mix to grey, or maybe I've gone colorblind

#3672 Anthony Phillips - The Geese and The Ghost

3/5 pleasant enough for the prog fan. But hemmed in, riding classical coattails without enough of a voice to carry things to the next level. A departure from the soon-expanding Genesis feels inevitable in retrospect

#3671 Beck - Hyperspace

2.5/5 I still don't know what the fuck is going on with Beck. I can't fathom that someone would make this because it was their vision, but I can't figure out who the fuck it's selling out to. Saw Lightning's kinda fun, but the rest is limp, barely there, empty of intention

#3670 Kurt Vile - Bottle It In

3.5/5 even by Kurt Vile standards, this's a slow one. As committed to letting the songs unfold as anyone -- is laziness the weakness or the point? Not much of it lands but maybe its not supposed to, you gotta admire a coast this long

#3669 Jacco Gardner - Somnium

3/5 pretty, catchy even, but with a squeaky-clean, voiceless lack of stakes that lands somewhere between exotica and library music

#3668 Gaz Coombes - World's Strongest Man

4/5 slow to start, with that kind of solo artist overstudied stiltedness, at first. Indebted to Albarn and Yorke in increasingly good ways. Invested in making an album that smolders, starts to burn on the second side, climaxes just before the end. Committed to making an album that plays as an album and isn't that refreshing

#3667 The Midnight Hour - The Midnight Hour

3/5 a way with a groove, but the vocals don't slot in, transplanted from another session.  vtfdrds4 b=gASD KLKGVZXK
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