#3405 Bill Fay - Time of the Last Persecution

4/5 Mournful and beautiful and resigned, with enough honkytonk shuffle to keep things from getting dreary. Rich backing matches Fay's confident delivery perfectly. Soulful stuff

#3404 Steelism - ism

3/5 pleasant but unexciting, slathered in clever steel guitar. Exactly the kind of album you expect veteran studio musicans make: expertly done in every way, without any concept of how to have attitude, personality, or any of the things that make a band, a set, an album

#3403 The Crystals - He's a Rebel

3.5/5 For my money, the title track's the greatest girl group song of all time, full of glorious energy and ingenious rhythmic tricks. But the Crystals otherwise didn't stand out from the pack; the rest of the collection's bog standard and pleasant enough, dripping with all the harmonies, strings, and longing for boys you'd expect

#3402 Geowulf - Great Big Blue

3/5 The cloyingly sunny Sunkist vibe is pleasant when you don't think too much about it, and the production's full of pleasant shimmer. But none of the songs are about much more than summer and beaches and weekends, and some (Only High, Drink Too Much) sound like music for teenagers who want to pretend to have grown up problems and no thanks

#3401 Steve Reich - Reich: Drumming; Six Pianos; Music for Mallet Instruments

3.5/5 The first drumming track's what I want the rest to be: pure drums without any overt melodic contribution, letting the music come out of all those reverberations and overlaps. The others bring in pianos and vibes and chimes and sure, conjure all these extra harmonics etc, and it was all very groundbreaking at the time, but in retrospect that first track's the most adventurous and most interesting, making for a weirdly-paced listen

#3400 The Flamingos - Flamingo Serenade

3.5/5 not a lot of personality, but very easy to listen to, those so smooth harmonies all so so deeply in love. The blownout production's annoying, but lends a scruffy charm to the crooning crooning crooning

#3399 VA - re:works

3.5/5 Pleasant, flowing armchair electronic, spanning atmospheric, thumping, and bleepbloopy styles. Each artist takes things pretty far into their respective direction, leaving only the barest skeleton of the classical inspiration, but better that than another run at Switched on Bach