#3832 Richard Swift - Dressed Up for the Letdown

3.5/5 soaked in music of a bygone era, jaunty and morose notes from across an ocean of time, spiked with these rare moments of pure joy, but often repeating himself just a bit too much. What must that be like?

And I fear friend, this could be the last song
But we're all good to go

#3831 No Age - Goons Be Gone

3/5 melodic, propulsive, enjoyable, but toothless, all the noisy edges sanded off. As Randal and Spunt creep up on 40, they just don't have that fire anymore - what must that be like?

#3829 Car Seat Headrest - Making a Door Less Open

3.5/5 what a mess! what a glorious, stupid, shitty, wonderful album, the most 3rd-album-feeling album I can think of, it's actual position in the discography (19th?(?)) aside. Impossible to critique - all the worst things about it are the best things about it - the disjoint structures, the uneven pacing, the clumsy performances, the weird lazy asides. At times it feels like forced roughness -- how do you make a ramshackle album this deep into a career this newly huge? Others it feels impossibly true and brave. And man Hollywood is an awful song. Like the twin peaks dougie arc - I'm not sure I even like any of it but man it's in my head

#3824 Sheep, Dog and Wolf - Egospect

3/5 SD&W's got a novel sound, all those lilting affected melodies over hyperbusy clattering rhythms. But it's the same basic trick for 45 minutes, and it's impossible to be delighted by it for more than a few songs

#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

#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

#3809 Chris Forsyth - Peoples Motel Band

3.5/5 some pretty exciting instrumental guitar jamming, finding the balance between waving about and cutting right to the quick. Excellent pacing for the patient

#3808 Once and Future Band - Deleted Scenes

3/5 so so slick. Shamelessly pop prog, reviving the least cool era of the least cool good music around, whitewashed jazzy flourishes, jamband wanderings, and some admittedly pretty great organ runs, all in perfectly bite-sized units. Undeniably catchy, tough to listen to with a straight face

#3807 Peel Dream Magazine - Agitprop Alterna

3/5 maybe I'm just getting bored around the three thousand eight hundred mark, but as I listened to Agitprop Alterna I wondered, how many reviews of this album will compare Peel Dream Magazine to My Bloody Valentine? Will it be all of them?
Or more, somehow?

Let it not be said I'm not a data scientist! Of the 9 different reviews linked to on the first google page of "Agitprop Alterna Review", it's a clean sweep!

• Udara Madusanka Perera - bearing a distinct resemblance to My Bloody Valentine
• Dan Macintosh - remind one of My Bloody Valentine 
• Kaelen Bell - function much like My Bloody Valentine's "Touched"
• Sophie Kemp - bearing a distinct resemblance to My Bloody Valentine
• Andy Von Pip - similar woozy disorientating rush utilised by My Bloody Valentine
• Maxwell Cann - a continuation of the experimental production methods of My Bloody Valentine
• Justice (?) - recalling the likes of Kevin Shields and Belinda Butcher of My Bloody Valentine
• Brian Polson - pays homage to the fuzzy, mod-flavored rock of acts like My Bloody Valentine
• Lizzie Manno  - undoubtedly an homage to shoegaze and drone-pop artists of yesteryear like My Bloody Valentine

There are a surprising number of ways to say that! Good job team! I'm not sure I have anything to add. Tychofied shoegaze: pretty, chill, out of ideas, taking no chances

#3806 Jeffrey Silverstein - You Become the Mountain

4.5/5 truly lovely, all the twinkling, sliding, swooning peace of a William Tyler landscape, with a streak of psychedelia and a dash of beats, making for some chill hybrid of Tycho and Delicate Steve at their best. That slide guitar, it surely is sweet. As mysterious and pleasant as anything I've heard in a long time, a patient journey through large spaces inside and out

#3804 Have a Nice Life - Deathconsciousness

4/5 I don't know that I like this. Maybe it's because it fits the times just a little too well (more on that when we get to Dan Mangan). But it's so patient, so unique, with just enough atmosphere and gorgeous slow-motion hooks, and earnest despair, I can't help but really recommend it as something you hear once (maybe save it for wave 2 or  3 of quarantine?). The kind of thing I want to remind myself to come back to again once a year or so.

All the smallness and zero-stakes earnestness of bedroom rock, but at such epic scale, songs stretching to strange lengths, buried in ancient distortion. I can't help but call it really _brave. You hear two guys making songs that are just the fucking songs they want to make, and they're shamelessly huge, without sounding like they have any pretension or aspiration at all, like they just had something they had to get out, and heck if that's not exciting to hear

#3803 Eerie Gaits - Holopaw

4/5 a pleasant little piece of introspection during a walk in strange woods. Every time Ross goes too sentimental, too close to some post-rock climax, a steadying piece of ambiance breaks out, revolving through awefilled mania and a quiet rumination (The Lure Follows Line being the best, wow).

There's borderline embarrassing excitement, balanced against moments of unexpected wisdom and peace, and I guess I see some version of myself in that, a version that balances the things that make me cringe and that I most admire, and knows that some of those are the same things

Holopaw feels like the earnest expression of a guy I'd like to know

#3802 The Spirit of the Beehive - Hypnic Jerks

4/5 you can't make a truly psychedelic album without some real surprises, some true left turns - more Olivia Tremor Control, less Tame Impala. Here's all this haze and wash, but with real fuckin _hooks, late Fugazi lean muscle caught by ambient trapdoors, and some of the most perfect Booksian samples around. That time dilation, no way all this adventure took place over the course of just 38 minutes

didnt I just take you there about an hour ago?

yeah, I'm the same guy. can you take me back to where I was before?

yes sir, right away! where were you before?

just take me there

yes sir!

#3800 Flat Worms - Antarctica

3/5 an underwhelming followup to Flat Worms' blistering debut

s/t was hot and fast, songs about Texas, acceleration, hot sands, motorbikes

Antarctica is, well, about things cold and slow, and it's just a mismatch to their strengths

And there's not the same urgency - I find out only afterwards that Ty Segall (!) and (!) Steve Albini are on board and, I don't know maybe that's just too much effort in play, some spark got blanketed. There's hooks, crunchy production, but it's Dad's clothes

#3797 The Stokes - The New Abnormal

3/5 with every passing year Is This It becomes better and its goodness becomes harder to understand. Years where a new Strokes album comes out doubly so. One thing science has settled on is that that album was very _cool, as in detached and effortless, and somehow perfect. The New Abnormal is not that. The band sounds tense and subtly sloppy, and Casablancas sounds like he's having trouble keeping up, tiny gasps and surges to push the words where they need to be, and no number of studio snippets and winking asides can cover for it. Even putting Basquiat on the cover broadcasts a doomed plan for engaging in looseness