#3760 Tycho - Simulcast

3/5 it sure is a Tycho album. a nice little listen full of pretty textures and polite beats. But man I couldn't pick these new songs out of a lineup of Tycho songs -- I can't remember the last time an artist spent 4 albums exploring so little territory

#3759 Tracy Bryant - Hush

3/5 pleasant enough clopalongs, with all the deadpan swoon of Kurt Vile, if lacking some of the gumption - not a lot of chances taken not much stands out

#3758 Kelley Stoltz - In Triangle Time

3/5 still think Stoltz is wildly underrated, but this collection of songs feels a bit phoned in, as geometrical and predictable as its thematic triangles

#3757 Trace Mountains - A Partner to Lean On

3.5/5 I can't tell you exactly what makes this feel like NMH. Something about the melodies, that lilt that weaves though the dreamed and the real, those moments where a chord hangs suspended in air and levitates you with it. And then there's that really direct quote 2/3 of the way through the opener. However you get there. It taps into something sentimental, unclear which tolls paid to get there. K and E6 and all the rest. It's not a knock exactly, but it inspired me wonder about the alchemy that lead to the greatest indie moments of a bygone half-generation; a fun journey but a bit of a distraction, but right pretty if you can see the forest for the trees

#3756 Chastity Belt - Chastity Belt

3/5 dating these things by listened-time rather than review-time creates weird gaps, a symptom of treating this blog as data before expression, an infection that insidiously pervades the project. I sit here burned out and a month behind and in the right thick of a global pandemic (historians: March 20th feels like the thick of it, and I do hope that doesn't seem grimly hilarious in retrospect). And this is maybe the right time for Chastity Belt's final abandonment of hook and spark. Such an honest album. What else could you feel around now. A rainy day spent in bed waiting of the night to come.

#3755 Boris - Live at Third Man Records

4/5 blistering, capturing all of the scathing texture of Pink with a spark of live energy. Proof that Boris is a legitimate threat, from whiplash thrash high to smoldering stoner low

#3754 Flat Worms - Flat Worms

4.5/5 it's not that Flat Worms don't come out the gate hard. their relentless post-motorik hits from beat zero, songs that so go go go with names like Motorbike, Goodbye Texas, Accelerated.

But that's all windup, something subtle happens that ignites all that laid powder, that shoves that momentum into a drift and pedal down, right around White Roses, into 11816, into Fault Line, and there's that sense of something that in increments grew out of your control, a speed wobble a third of the way down a hill of unimaginable steepness and abrasive potential. That texture roughens, the complexity ratchets, and you can't say that the album's changed exactly, but that you failed to appreciate the cumulative effect of psychic acceleration. One of the insidiously excellently paced albums, rivaling Faux Ferocious and The Men for irresistible forward tilt into breathlessness

#3753 Tera Melos - Treasures and Trolls

3.5/5 spiky jelly and big crunch peanut butter done all double decker

#3752 The Men - Mercy

3.5/5 like one of those saturdays you wake up off cycle and can't get going, even coffee dulled. The strangest pacing; a negative image of Open Your Heart's roaring start; endless, lumbering Americana stirring only reluctantly to gather scraps of rock vigor. current mood.

#3751 The Egyptian Lover - On the Nile

4/5 you couldn't make this now. electro so simple and pure, a punk of moment. deadpan, weird, cool, something ancient in those textures

#3750 A Strangely Isolated Place - The KLF's Chill Out (A New Dimension)

3.5 (listen here) pleasant ambient, with vague hints of what made Chill Out great, but doesn't capture that road feel at all, and that's the thing that makes the original so special

#3749 Tame Impala - The Slow Rush

3/5 on the subject of how long things take. Lush, pretty, easy enough to space out to, one long samish song, same tempo, falsetto, feel, an hour of variations on a theme for better or worse

#3748 Tokyo Police Club - TPC

4/5 wherin i treat every review like I'm trying to get the right answer on a test, because that's how I'm wired, which I must confess to myself is not very rock and roll. tempering that pure pop from Mellon Collie into something more worthy of the reference, hooky, ansty, full of fuzz and beauty, great pacing -- that great little act break of Ready to Win

#3747 Tokyo Police Club - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Radness, Pt 1 and 2

3/5 like a moth to the flame of that amazing album title. still got those hooks, too goddamn pop though, without even a touch of that old edge, just look at those song titles

#3746 Battles - Juice B Crypts

3.5/5 what hubris, to take months of work, a lifetime of practice and ideas, and try to sum it up in a crapped out daily afterthought. what the fuck am I doing with this project. loopy swoops, a melodic twin of their history of rhythmic perversions, disorienting fun

#3745 Young Guv - GUV I

4/5 didn't think they made jangle like this any more, a weird, swooningly pleasant long 80's psychedelic throwthrowbackback, just getting over the ever rising lip of my heart

#3744 Beatrics Dillon - Workaround

3/5 good title, songs driven by some curved math, intellectually strokey but frustratingly belligerent about avoiding any one straightforward thing, leaving hooks to the negative space

#3743 White Reaper - You Deserve Love

3.5/5 as sunny as big-riff rock comes, pure Thin Lizzy // Cheap Trick soaring, one foot on the ground before liftoff. Simple, hooky, could have been a hit if this kind of thing was remotely in style, all the bolder cause its not

#3742 Endless Boogie - Vol I, II

2.5/5 I love a long songs and I love a good crunchy guitar sound, but man. An hour and a half of very ok jams that sound like they were real easy to make - expect Vol. XCIX, C any day now

#3741 Jamie xx, Gil Scott-Heron - We're New Here

3/5 Richard Russel gets inspired by the xx to make a weird Scott-Heron album, Jamie xx makes even weirder, even less Scott-Heron remake. This sounds more like a Jamie xx album that samples the late great master, which is fine, but the least of the 3 (so far!) versions

#3740 Gil Scott-Heron - I'm New Here

4/5 a noisy//quiet, ever-strange album that finds that sweet spot - far enough afield to be exciting without tipping into discord. Scott-Heron's words are backed with sparse, harsh energy, one moment bristling with electronics, the next laid bare with nothing of the sort. And the words themselves are personal and precise like few others could muster. One that'll stick with you

#3739 Makaya McCraven, Gil Scott-Heron - We're New Again

4/5 maybe it's the singer-producer disconnect of the original that makes I'm New Here such tempting fodder for remaking. Richard Russel took Scott-Heron's contributions in such a strange direction, what others might be possible?

Contrast with the ouroboran influences that lead to Jamie xx's dilution of I'm New Here's best qualities - McCraven's take sounds more like what the original album could have been; it seems very safe to say _should have been. Jazzy, weird, and fucking __immediate, and critically keeping the bookending monologues intact, making them even more impactful by weaving them into the album's essence. Unpredictable, alive, live, paced to float and sting and gloat at the center of the ring, before succumbing to drink. Weathered, weary, bracingly vulnerable, but still dangerous

#3738 Kiwi Jr - Football Money

3/5 slack, agreeable, one-hook wonders, one after another - an enjoyable game for remarkably low stakes

#3737 Yellow Magic Orchestra - Public Pressure

3/5 YMO's stilted bleeps make the transition to the live setting surprisingly well! The vocals give it the songs some urgency, and the live synth parts have little imperfections that bring human excitement to the lockstep grooves. It sounds downright danceable, cool, even?

#3736 Yellow Magic Orchestra - Yellow Magic Orchestra (US)

2.5/5 very clever at the time, making those melodies out of such basic electronics, with those plinky exotica flourishes. But I can't remotely recommend you bother with these baubles in 2020 except out of historical curiosity

#3735 Ryuichi Sakamoto - Thousand Knives

3/5 ahead of its time, deeply quirky, dipping into sparse soundscapes and roughshod electronic beats and understated loungey piano. But this hasn't aged especially well, sounding quaint, arch, almost weird for its own sake by now

#3734 Daedelus - The Bittereinders

2.5/5 a suite of electronic experiments that leave an awful lot of work to the listener. I don't think it's worth it. Daedelus evokes plenty of atmosphere - under all the shimmer there's a specter of grinding tension, of oppression and heat, of horror lurking just out of frame. But the connection to the historical inspiration is _real abstract. If the music's going to be this uninterested in being listened to, the thematic throughline's gotta be a lot more legible before I can be bothered

#3733 Dogleg - Remember Alderaan?

3.5/5 a scrappy little fist of angular anger. a fun listen that sounds like it was even more fun to make