#2861 The Stranglers - Aural Sculpture

There's a _touch of The Stranglers' old edge. And the horn-laced production's pretty at times. But this is mostly just underweight new wave: no hooks, no personalities, no big ideas, nothing to fear. The Stranglers adapted to the 80's as well as any 70's punk band, but that's about as faint as praise can be 2.5/5

#2860 The Stranglers - Rattus Norvegicus

The Stranglers knew exactly what they were doing with that beat -- leaning right into your personal space.

There's confrontation, that frisson of impending conflict laced through every song. Not quite the viscera of the fistfight, but that electric charge right before it might or might not break out.

It's easy to scream and wail, but to find that perfect democracy of guitar/drum/bass/organ/vocals, that Damned/Minutemen sweetspot, that's a thing of [Italian-chef-kissing-his-fingertips]

As good as buzzy 2nd wave gets, riddled with nervous hooks and sluffing off of energy, deserving a slot right alongside Buzzcocks, The Jam, The Only Ones, Damned, etc 4.5/5

#2859 Spirit Club - Spirit Club

Spirit Club sounds like every Wavves song, every upbeat clatterer, every detuned meanderer, swirled into a median band. Its nasal disinterest is a passenger in a fast car, rolling past an excitement-flecked landscape with a head loll.

There's a band down there somewhere, through all the tape wobble, through all the stoney haze. And they're rolling surfwise towards a plan for going to the beach, dreaming of sun from afar. I tapped a toe or two three four and put it on again 4/5

#2858 Algiers - The Underside of Power

Distressed jeans music. Fisher can wail, and on paper I like soul + noise, but it doesn't ring sincere, doesn't sound like there's a band of musicians who care in there. There's weird beeps, but its sound of TV on the Radio backing the money truck up to Atticus Ross's house. Too many layers, too much production, too many pretty asides that feel designed to sell to a Starbucks crowd that's ready to turn on some of this trap music they've been hearing all about 2.5/5

#2857 Portishead - Dummy

as said in slack in thread about how I'd never actually listened to Dummy

' what does it say about me that I like something way more when I hear that it was recorded interestingly : / '

I don't really like any of the songs on this album. But I do like the druggy, dense feel of the full album listen. And I do like the production, doubly so when I hear how analog it was, how special that distant, detached feel really was. It's easy to mistake for all the cheap detuned fuckery we've gotten in the meantime.

An album I'd probably have loved if I'd caught it at the right time, but in 2018 I can only really appreciate it as an artifact. Shitty producers can do this shittily now, but good producers can do it better 3/5

#2856 Of Montreal - White Is Relic / Irrealis Mood

I wish I'd found this when I was 20 and bought 2 albums a month instead of listening to 40. Do you think the slashed album title cuts horizontally across track 1-3 / 4-6, or vertical across each of the split song names?

So much room for analysis activities!

In an era where upbeat bands make downbeat dance albums, this murky dance album's an unexpected upswing from the relentlessly miserable Barnes. It feels readymade for a live playthrough, a well-paced listen sliced grudgingly into half as many tracks as it actually contains, seducing you into losing track across 41 minutes of lurching, Bernie-slumpalong dance music. The interesting changes all slip in smoothly mid-track, all disorientingly listenable, all understatedly hooksome. The more I listen to it the more brilliant it is, could be a sleeper all-time great from an endlessly strange band 4.5/5

#2855 Hot Snakes - Jericho Sirens

Long-dormant-band comebacks have been on a hot streak lately! Hot Snakes didn't miss a clattering beat; surfy guitars rolling out, ever-sputtering on the edge of disaster; Rick yelping out his latest string of desperate demands. Good, noisy, frantic fun 3.5/5