#3822 Super Flu - Heimatmelodien

3/5 missing the unexpected momentum and playfulness of their later stuff, everything here's locked in and by the book. Some clever moves but man they come in slow

#3821 Super Flu - Musik 3

3.5/5 a roundly enjoyable hour fourteen, balancing housey patience and simmering momentum, with some real highlights: V13a with its playful knobtwiddling, Gausa with its Moby-via-The-Range emotional shifts, even that red herring opener's a good time

#3820 Spirit of the Beehive - Pleasure Suck

4/5 this kind of smoothshifting bipolar indie rock is my religion. Sludgy and pretty, warping and snapping into shape, dipping into raging bursts of speed and back, unwaveringly catchy and lushly textured the entire way through. Take 21st Road Trip as a microcosm -- effortlessly thrilling, every twist unexpected and inevitable

#3819 Woods - Strange to Explain

3.5/5 Jeremy Earl's voice remains Pumpkins-level defining of the band's sound, and it's still a bit much, but Woods've found a nice, busy rhythmic propulsion on their latest, slathered in _so_much delectable mellotron

#3818 Jeff Rosenstock - No Dream

4/5 more so than ever before Rosenstock sounds like he's just letting it rip. Worry was perfect, album of the decade full stop, that entire back half is Abbey Road to me, and Post felt as shellshocked as any of us did around then, trying to put the pieces together. But any sense of structure's out the window now. Relentlessly, joyously anxious, with bursts of hardcore speed, all barfed out with a roadtrip throughline that hasn't planned it's destination.

Take ***BNB - starts with a dopey, jokey premise, but instead of locking into the concept as a chorus, it fakes you out with a one-timer, mutating the verse feel again and again into something messier and messier and shoutier and Jeffier and Jeffier. Song lengths splinter, speedups and melodies leap from alleys - blistering, confusing, as welcoming a shrepa as you could hope for in likewise times. That I might live to see this fucking legend just one more time

#3817 Dope Body - Home Body

4/5 I'm a full on sucker for offkilter hooks and strange electronic dalliances, in the grand tradition of Je Suis France and Single Frame, here with subtly brilliant, insistent drums as a bonus. Wonderfully catchy, quietly curious

#3816 Erik Hall - Music for 18 Musicians

3.5/5 probably better, as pleasant listening goes, than most performances. So let's be glad it exists. But the thrill was always undeniably in the insidious madness of the physical playing - it's hard to recommend this _too enthusiastically

#3815 Kara-Lis Coverdale - Sirens

2.5/5 clever, all those tones and voices interchangable, stretching infinite landscapes - but man it's a rough listen for listening, often harsh, usually tense, like a soundtrack to a difficult film

#3814 Floating Points - Late Night Tales

4/5 a lovely little ambient opener is a fakeout into a long sidechannel of obscure soul, before drifting back for some extended meandering electronic jams. There's a swoop to the flow, it gets smoothly from one mood to the next, by the end leaving you feeling like, well, like you've made a night of it

#3813 Blur - All the People: Live at Hyde Park 02/07/2009

3/5 it's easy to get caught up in the energy of this one. The setlist is a great trip through the eras, with an unexpected emphasis on older stuff. It's a striking reminder of how many great songs these guys really have. And, the crowd's mixed pretty high, singing along like you've never heard, and you get a real sense of being there in this overwhelming sea of enthusiasm.

But then you start to realize -- or at least wonder, anyway: does Blur suck live?

At very least, they're not _great here. Every song is played tight to spec. No variation, extension, transition, elevation; not one verb you could dredge up that would elevate this beyond a well-currated playlist + crowd noise.

And then there's the fact that they rush so many of the songs, sometimes giving a frenetic live energy, but mostly just sounding sloppy (and there's plenty of missed notes besides). And then there's the fact that Damon just can't really hang with the fast songs, sounding out of breath and a bit desperate. For example: the issues intersect on End of a Century, where the "as you get closer..to fifty" (nee 'thirty') line doesn't have a fraction of the beat it needs to land, Damon gamely working past every line like a child powering though his vegetables.

A worthwhile listen for the medium-to-hard-core Blur fan, but you might find yourself trying to convince yourself you're having more fun than you are

#3812 Dan Mangan - Oh Fortune

4/5 Mangan's voice is weathered and true, and he's just got this effortless knack for making lilting, swooping songs, flecked with horns, ending in elegies. But the real gutpunch is just the prescient feel of this album, the sense of ominous space and burgeoning dread that pervades every song, and feels devastatingly of our current moment 


What happens next
East to west
Lunatics
And it started slow
Ends in a rush
Starts with them
And ends with us
Just pray in the night these walls are enough

#3811 Sunwatchers - Oh Yeah?

3.5/5 you do get a sense of a real band back there. There's a real live feel, a subtle push and pull, alternately rounded and angular, laying the groundwork for that majestic sax. Love the comeback sax is making in rock lately, and these guys really put it front and goddamn center

#3810 Keith Kenniff - Occasus

3/5 pretty, but feels cribbed from a well-worn playbook. All the plinky piano and uncertain wobbles and slathered reverb start to sound like a perfectly blank canvas, here to make you feel, you know, the thing you feel, the ambient version of the pop song railing against generically outlined problems. Maybe that's the point? With that big empty space on the album cover? Probably not