#3725 Bonnie Doon - Dooner Nooner

3/5 (not to be confused with Bonny Doon!) clumsy Sonic Youthy punk racket, lofi in every way possible - unremarkable, but charming in an indie pop kinda way

#2596 Dan Melchior - Fire Breathing Clones on Cellular Phones

Can always use more Cowgirl in the Sand guitars! Perfectly nice one-man, I-made-an-album album. The songs are a little too repetitive and Melchior's solos occasionally degrade into practice scales, but its charmingly rough around the edges, and the saxes are a nice gravelly flourish 3/5

#2388 The Warm Fuzzies - Extinction

Chuggy Weezer guitars spiked with tangy synths and twee winkies, sounding like a totally decent unexpected local band that makes you say "I'd see those guys again!", meaning it more than usual.

The Fuzzies're hooky and fun, somewhere between poppy Cars and poppy Devo, but sound a bit like a band that's still a little too focused on making sure they play the songs justright, unable to let them burn with their own frisky energy. The Laura-fronted songs do best, shoutout to Say What You Mean, sparking with a looser exuberance 3.5/5

#2459 Glows in the Dark - Research and Development

Part of the long-overdue turning point in jazz and hip hop's decade's-long clumsy getting-to-know-eachother process. The horns are lay down smoky atmospherics, and the rhymes settle to meet them; an underground kind of sound, belied by a deft, rich smoothness. Everything hooks together nicely, a quietly, intimately cool album 4/5

#2457 Alex Cuervo - 4-Song Solo EP

It's weird. I like this, but even though its sub-10-minutes long, by the time it's over I can barely remember a thing about it. This kind of chug is just too familiar by now, Bass Drum of Death deadened by Deerhunter drugs, its edge falling off by degrees. bigger dose needed 3/5

#2456 Eat Electricity - Tooth House and Sick Teen

Listen / buy here!

I dig Geoff's note on his bandcamp, and his music drips with that kind of homemade one-man layer-plus-layer production. He's got a Matt Mahaffey talent for melody, alongside a knack for texture, a krauty rhythmmotor, and no small dose of vibrant baselines. It adds up to a really pretty Tycho/Cavern of Antimatter rock/electronic pulse, with flecks of Atticus Ross's rusty darkness - relaxing, propsulsive, intricate, accessible, with little flashes of Grasscut/Moby inexplicable emotion [soundslike bomb]]

The way you can kind of see the method shining through, the seams on the layers, breaks the spell a bit, but the knack's undeniable, momentum's irresistible. A great hidden gem from young 2017 4.5/5

#2455 Detroit Pulse Machine - Polygraph

Noisy, clausterphobic techno (?), the kinda stuff vampires dance to in a slightly-cooler version of a Blade movie. Ink bleeds through every beat, everything a half-step too slow until dank sexiness emerges, blinded by sweat and darkness and glint 3/5

#2454 Stick Pulse Projekt - Let Da Musik Talk

Soulful, quietly adventurous dub, with a real sense of community and simmering dissatisfaction and sending out feelers for allies around the world. This kind of global rhythm-nicking has been tainted by the Starbucks-ready Bonobo-types, but if you can get past that it's a quietly inventive album, weaving a soothing tapestry of atmospheres 3/5

#2453 Sonic Pulse - Lager than Live

Stuck in a rut with all the same bands and all the same scenes, I've taken to searching random words and plucking albums that have interesting names / covers. Cratestreaming. Streamdigging? Workinonit.

Turns out these guys are from Boston, and cover the Adventure Time theme.

Off to a good start.

Just check that logo, with the soniC Pulse battleaxe. Check that impossible cartoon lady, all boobs and beer and boobs. Check songs called Queen of Beers, Bong Zombies, and -- fucking, combining all aspects of DnD nerdery and Andrew WK shitcockery with banal punnishness: Eye of the Beerholder. I've never seen a song title sum up a band so well.

It's all good, dumb as shit fun. Totally committed to a lack of commitment, utterly unabashed lets-get-fucked-up rock and roll, the real Wyld Stallyns, when Bill and Ted grow up and get dumb jobs and get baked and accept the joys of their lives as they actually are.

Accepting the joy of life as it actually is, that's all Sonic Pulse delivers.

Who could ask for anything more 3.5/5