#3785 Skatebard - Skateboarding Was A Crime: In 1989

3.5/5 shamelessly repetitive, retro synths, with that signature Norwegian crunch and a sneakily playful spirit

#3784 Pearl Jam - Gigaton

3.5/5 some nice rough edges on the production, little cliffs and hitches. And the do lyrics have some bite. But Vedder's voice sounds worn out, the whole album's more like a shadow of the glory days than usual. This all might have made more sense 6 months ago, but now we are defeat

#3783 Nils Frahm - Empty

4/5 spare even by Frahm's standards. A trio of a piano, a body at the piano, and the room. slow, and small and afraid and achingly aware of our surroundings

#3782 Robert Shredford - Robert Shredford

3.5/5 crunchy, catchy, charming enough, a slack step slower than most

#3781 Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts V: Together

3.5/5 I wonder how this will sound on the other side of the pandemic. Now, it sounds like a glimmer of hope, a silver string of connection, beauty in the slow endlessness, marbled with thick veins of sympathetic anxiety*. This is a good time for long slow songs.

* I still haven't finished Locusts, which is a solid block of anxiety

#3780 Ulla - Tumbling Towards a Wall

3/5 all the hiss and motionless rotation of Gas's Pop. Mysterious, tapping into something less universal, more mechanical

#3779 Chuck Johnson - Balsams

3/5 still chasing that Chill Out dream. Ambient pedal steel sounds like a perfect recipe, but it's actually too much, too samey, a little tuneless, can't find that empty space

#3778 Circles Around the Sun - Interludes for the Dead

3.5/5 as ambient and endless as we need. The songs that hew too close to their Grateful Dead inspirations are distracting, the rest are perfect interstitials for shows that never start

Ten Years Holy Fuck

Man, I started this thing ten years ago today, just kind of as a goof.

I thought, it'd be kind of neat to know when I first heard an album.
And while I'm taking note of that, I might as well give it a rating.
And while I'm at it, I might as well write a little review.
And whoops an album a day, plus a hundred or so.

It's a silly little blog that very, very few people have read, and as far as I know nobody reads regularly, and I have no damn idea why I stuck with it so long other than that's kind of my thing to never quit anything. Dr Alex Eagle Scout.

It's made me more thoughtful about music, but maybe to a fault by now.

I turn 40 in June, and man that's a weird sentence to actually write and then read.

By then I'll have reviewed every album I heard for the first time in my 30's, and I think maybe that's where I can argue that I've made my point. So let's sneak in another hundred or so, and I'll give it all a proper sendoff thenabouts. Thanks for reading - I don't know who I did this all for, but maybe it's you!

#3777 Childish Gambino - 3.15.20

3/5 strangely paced songs that run into eachother, or maybe those are just the days. the timestamp tracknames, mocking anchors. the best songs stomp, dressed and ready for now-cancelled festivals

#3776 Dogleg - Melee

3/5 relentless rolling sheets of guitars and one very specific kind of shouting, with brief bursts into Japandroids exaltation. numbing before long

#3775 Porridge Radio - Every Bad

3.5/5 Dana Margolin chant-yelps at her demons, an exorcism lit by blistering guitar shimmer, as difficult and gorgeous a rock record as you're likely to find in a single package

#3774 The Districts - You Know I'm Not Going Anywhere

3.5/5 the first four songs* are just gorgeous, swelling, swirling wonders of texture and longing, reverb and atmosphere rising off like night heat. A really exciting new direction. Which makes the rest so disappointing -- aside from the only rocker (a pretty good one!) barging in at the 9 slot, it's mostly aimless and unmemorable. They seemed to know what to frontload, here's hoping this's a step towards a masterpiece

* the first four songs were great, full of harmonies and mystery, and everything that came after was a letdown? is this a concept album about TV on the Radio's career?

#3773 Vundabar - Either Light

4.5/5 they don't make em like this any more, blooming with details, shimmering with easy momentum, vintage Shins meets vintage Strokes, some lost '01 classic.

Vundabar's early stuff was fucking brilliant, one angular, surfy hookstorm after another. They never quite recaptured that magic, but this is a clean break*. Synths lead the way like never before, backing vocals swoop in and flank, Hagen's vocals and guitar work showing subtle new depths. Less Dick Dale, more Brian Wilson, the kind of lushness that blurs the seams in its craftsmanship. The kicker's the way it all hangs together, a solid, well-paced front-to-back, put-it-on-again listen that you just don't get too often these days

* never gonna stop missing Antics' drums though

#3772 Folke Rabe - What??

3.5/5 what if not music? Very nearly pure math, waves changing so slowly you can practically see them, a slowmotion timelapse of a city sunrise, notes turning into LFOs and back, the real song hiding in the harmonics between the choices, like switched on Strumming Music (humming music?). A three-half-hour chinscratcher, but not without real, if subtle, moments of beauty

#3771 Keith Fulleton Whitman - Playthroughs

4/5 ambient is all I want to listen to these days. A lovely one. Something this patient and pretty and simple is surprisingly hard to find. Modena's nearly perfect, a communion with essential waves

#3770 Trifonic - Emergence

3/5 some pretty gestures, some interesting skitters, but more Postal Service than Boards of Canada; the insistence on _always being pleasant holds it back. man those breathy vocals have aged badly

#3769 Weedeater - God Luck and Good Speed

3.5/5 hookier than most stoner metal (Wizard Fight!), with some variety peppered in (Alone!), but still sludgy and heavy enough to be your weighted blanket. Shame about the goblin vocals

#3768 Luomo - Vocalcity

3/5 extremely patient, older-school deep house, riding one well-shaped loop, it only ever so slightly, shifting the ground underneath a bit more, for 10-15 minutes at a time. A pleasantly stoned kinda listen

#3767 Nubya Garcia - Nubya's 5ive

3.5/5 i know nothing about jazz. good flowing energy, playful solos, a wonderful rhythm section that evolves the songs with rolling textures

#3766 Antoine Berjeaut - Moving Cities

4/5 anything Makaya McCraven touches is worth your attention. His signature future-looking tightness is here, so hooksome you're not sure it's jazz, but too adventurous to be anything else. Hard to say how much credit he gets, but his name's on the cover, so. Either way: a swooping, skittering bewildering textured shapeshifter, Kamasi and Thundercat via King of Limbs with an extra thousand volts through it

#3765 Ovlov - Greatest Hits, Vol 2

4/5 great, simple songs elevated by great production - those crisp drums, that luxurious guitar fuzz. pure crunch for days

#3764 Summer Salt - Driving to Hawaii

3/5 hawaiian prom band swayalongs, low key beach boys just drifting along. what a strange record to make. pleasant enough but damn if I know what to do with it. maybe its just what i need, but too far away

#3763 Ratboys - GN

4.5/5 luscious, crunchy guitar textures with a thousand tricks up their sleeves, alongside chiming vocals, effortless hooks, and _fucking _pedal _steel. A real special slice of perfect indie. Any album that puts a song on all three of my playlists for hanging out with Jo must have done _something right

#3762 Caribou - Suddenly

3/5 those tactile, legible synths, those wonderful vocal bends and chops, all this adventurousness undercut by endless straight-up mopey, crooney singing

#3761 Wasted Shirt and Ty Segall - Fungus II

3.5/5 Segall's monuments of fuzz circled by Chippendale's manic Steadman-raven fills, a slowmotion social disintegration. Harsho's a highlight, sputtering apart like it's melting your hardware. Insidiously patient and strange