#1305 Bathory - Under the Sign of the Black Mark

I don't wanna be a black metal philistine, but what the unholy fuck is with goblin voice? I'm all for the thrash, this chugs on like a thresher of souls with a busted bolt, whip whip whip whip -- soul soul soul soul -- fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck yall. All sheetmetal guitar that cuts your brain in half, all drums that crush the chaff to dust.

But why you gotta be all _eeeeeeuuuaaauuuuughhhhhhhh_ over shit. It sounds goofy as hell.

This wins at *something*. It fosters palpable unease, it gets in your subconscious brain and bores around and makes you think that humanity is rotten at the core. But if your *conscious* brain ever pokes its head up it's gonna go "this guy sounds like a fucking 14 year old trying to sound scary" and it breaks the whole illusion.

Your millage will vary directly proportionally to your ability to deal with goblin voice 3/5

#1304 Ronald Jenkees - Disorganized Fun

This is pure video game music. Not just that it has that squareedged sound, not just that its all Go Team pure energy, but that it's enjoyable, overcomposed, and inescapably disposable - it's not quite Michael Bay, but it might be J.J. Abrams.

It's hooky! Fuckit, it's masterful. But the hands of man are all over it, and those hands they done have crafted and crafted. It's the opposite of Endtroducing, the opposite of Chuck Berry, even as it swings for a bit of each.

I love it as I hate it. It's gourmet fruit stripe, pure 80's maximalism through 00's perfectionism, Ratatat stripped of its robot soul.

Also, those rap tracks at the end. Yikes. No no no man. Know when to put the brakes on the novelty bus.

3/5

#1303 Echo and the Bunnymen - Crocodiles

Joy Division drudgery and Gang of Four angularism, these guys sneer and shimmer and bassbassbassbass+drumdrumdrummachine their way through 12 backhanded whytry pre-Smiths giveup simmerings. Slowly slowly.

It's the perfect bridge from the 70's to the 80's, post punk through and through, with little synthy touches, with nuanced, shimmering, glitteringly faceted guitar tones all throughout, with a couple of choice fucking lines (I caught a falling star // it cut my hands to pieces -- is this the blues I'm singing?)

Admirable, curious, unfun, an unignorable bauble, a shiny object you pick up on the side of the road and go "huh!" and either take home and treasure of set back down and are very slightly haunted by forever 3/5

#1302 Mint Royale - See You in the Morning

These guys get compared to all manner of crossover electronica hitmakers, but put my vote in for Surrender-era Chemical Brothers, with those loping basslines, those guest vocals, that tentative adventurousness, to say nothing of the fact that Harpy's a dead damn ringer for Surrender's title track.

The Fatboy Slim comparisons are fair too - the genre-hopping and general borrowing is shameless, and the best tracks might be the farthest astray: the heartbreaking quaver of The Effect On Me, the sprightly hip hop bounce of Something New, the Lemon Jelly loopism of Singin' in the Rain.

It's all a little overslick, not regularly dancable, with a whimper of an ending (World??) - but I gotta admit, for those first 8 tracks or so this works as a damn pleasant little headphone spaceout jam 3.5/5

#1301 Circulatory System - Mosaics Within Mosaics

As swirly and intricate and formless as ever, Mosaics Within Mosaics continues the Circulatory tradition of whorling horns and bass and acoustic strum and voice and voice and voice into a bewildering vortex of sound, settling into a more purely psychedelic take on Will Hart's former Olivia Tremor Control sound.

Tape tricks, more so than ever, are woven into the record's fabric, with the whines and swoops of acceleration standing tall as a full-fledged instrumental presence. It's a consequence of method: Hart recruiting E6 alums to make parts to be stitched into the whole. But it's also a stylistic move, one that helps scrub the process of creation, reducing it all to echoes of moments that stretch and stretch.

It's all intricate and admirable, but it's too fluid, too lacking in songs and structure, to really recommend strongly. Whereas the OTC classics felt like intricate puzzles of ingenious design, this feels more like a crash of legos, hazily assembled, tempting you to make them into something more 3/5

#1300 Mikal Cronin - Mikal Cronin

If you like Ty Segall (and why wouldn't you?) and you liked Reverse Shark Attack (natch) why haven't you checked out Shark Attack copilot, sometimes Ty Segall Band member Mikal Cronin? Subtract Segall's impact (shrieking vocals, guitar fireworks) from that EP's title track and the negative space looks exactly like this album: waves of acoustic texture, swirling guitar vortexes, horn squalls, and a delicate embrace of the existential.

Which is to say, it's fucking brilliant - hypnotic and exciting, enthralling from the first and rewarding of curious returns. Just when I think I hate all music these California surf punks draw me back in. It's the only scene going today that's worth following 4.5/5

#1299 Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost

Impossibly beautiful poppy indie rock, all swirling with gossamer and silk, full of guitar shoulders to sink into forever and ever. It uses up most of its best idea in its first half though, and after the climax of Vomit (fun phrase!) all that's left is a sensitive little protagonist that has by then grown a little Kevin Barnes-pathetic and a little tiresome. If you're feeling vulnerable and sad this might be just the ticket, but otherwise be prepared to duck out of the party when things get a little Lesley Gore 3.5/5

#1298 The Reatards - Teenage Rage

Unrelentingly scuzzy rock, The Ramones banging around in a brokedown clothesdryer. Between Jay's hellflayed shriek and the blownout recording this has tetanus edges to spare, with flashes of the brilliant Jay Reatard solo work to come. A garage rock shitshow of the highest degree 3.5/5

#1297 Cheap Trick - Cheap Trick

Going with the original CD release tracklist (the band now claims "Side 1" first is canon, but indications are that "Side A" was originally officially first and I'm holding em to it). Not that it matters, there's no particular album flow, this is a collection of 10 perfectly solid, vaguely catchy tracks that swing between Journey and AC/DC without being as slick/bratty as either. There's nothing here as memorable as either though, and it's no coincidence that this debut contains none of the band's best known songs. There's scruffy soft-hard-rock charm here, a perfectly enjoyable listen, but outside of He's a Whore there's nothing here I'm clamoring to hear again 3/5

#1296 Los Lobos - How Will The Wolf Survive?

A bouncy little ball of enthusiasm for dancy old-school R&B and rock and roll with plenty of Chicano flair, whirling out a little bit of everything, sounding at times like dusty sunset riders, like Gene Vincent's alternate universe backing band, like 80's pop rock superstars. There's a little too much of the latter that hasn't aged well, but on the other hand lookit how much fun they have with their cover of I Got Loaded compared to the recently-reviewed Wood Brothers' reedy, laconic take.

A real good time for those without too many pop music hangups 3.5/5

#1295 ZZ Top - Tres Hombres

Now here's the antidote for all that modern noise. Here's that ZZ Top Texas bar band swagger from before they got all goofy - it's actually a damned solid, enjoyable blues-driven rock and roll record, sporting plenty of variety on its dusty, gritty, goodtime slowroll. It's got nowhere to go and is going to have a good time getting there 4/5

#1294 How to Dress Well - Total Loss

The production's the star: notes stretch to disintegrating horizons, glitches shuffle into shape, bass glowers godlike, expectation-defying structures all powerfully evoke tangible space.

But then Tom Krell's voice is in that space there with you, keening and wailing and ooing and eeing on and on and on. It works for a while, an instrument stretched beyond reason, outlining pure white emotion, but you can only listen to breathy falsetto for so long before it gets exhausting, and I hit that point around track 7 on my first listen and about track 3 on my second.

It's a challenging, rewarding listen, but you can't help but feel like its more challenging than it needs to be. Sigur Ros, Bon Iver, can't anyone make otherworldly music without going all

oooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiieeeeeeee

over it anymore? 3/5

#1293 Longpigs - The Sun is Often Out

I feel bad dismissing another of Robin's favorite albums of the 90's, but I'm just missing some Britpop gene or something. On & On is heartbreaking, and little yelps like on Far are catchy, but this is set to "anthemic" for its entire duration, with the same basic tones and tempos blending into eachother. Really tried to give this a chance, but after 3 full listens I'll be damned if I remember a single note of it 2.5/5

#1292 Mr. Scruff - Friendly Bacteria

A hodgepodge of samples and electronic gestures that outlines a funky kind of synthetic soul music, but never ends up having much actual soul. Deep analog buzzes provide texture and grind, Denis Jones slinks about on a handful of tracks for slickness, horns and organs and upright bass do their darndest to breathe life - all the piece are there, but lightning never quite strikes, the beast never stirs 2.5/5

#1291 Thorns - Thorns

I'm new to black metal, more used to the bass-driven sound of, well, damn near everything else. This is so light, so quick and clean and bristling with subtle industrial details that it feels less like a slumbering god, more like eldritch quicksilver, gaining power not from hammerfall but from the speed of a thousand blades. Still terrifying, still overwhelming, this is fast zombies, this is instant death. The stylistic swerves, the changes in tempo and tone, its fucking thrilling, a viciously perfect killing machine 4/5

#1290 Mr. Flash - Sonic Crusader

Mr. Flash, true to his name, is a showy bloke, whirling a cape of styles in a rainbow flash.

- Disco revival? Word.
- Spacy 80's revival romanticism? Yep.
- Atticus Ross grinddowns? Check.
- Jason Forrest-style sample driven raveup? Boom.
- Meandering ambience? Mmmmhmmmm.
- Terje-swank jams? Uh huh.
- Hip Hop tracks featuring hardhitting dudes and drawly ladies. Done and done.*

It's cheap to review by reference. He started it.

The surprising thing is that it flows pretty goddamn well - it's exciting, spacy, and sexy all at once, strongly recommended for indie fans with eclectic electronic tastes 4/5

* tracks 9, 7, 12, 2, 14, 5, 3, 11

#1289 Lone - Galaxy Garden

Loops come in and loops come out and they all turn and glow like that wonderfully cosmic cover art.

Better suited for stroking beards than bobbing heads (to say nothing of moving asses), this'd be ambient if it wasn't so busy, sounding at times like two ambient-era Aphex tracks playing at once (I swear I've heard those exact 4-beat surges on Lying in the Reeds somewhere else before). Perfectly good to tuck into if you're bored with your Orbital records, with production quirks in the details, but it's all too scattered to and distantly familiar to really catch my attention 2.5/5

#1289 Randy Newman - 12 Songs

Damn that voice, that twangy mouthful. These're some damn fine little songs, full of sunlight and soul, all grass and timeless nostalgia, soothing and energetic both. But Newman's voice, 45 years ago (!) as now, is such a boorish presence, stomping all over everything on its way to the front of the stage, rasping and moaning and drawling cud-soaked hairpins around the vowels, flicking spittle in the good peoples' lemonades. It will not be ignored.

Would I like this better if I'd never heard any of Newman's more recent, comically rambling, cloyingly folksy, mealy-mouthed chestnuts? Probably a little. Can't kick the association. But it speaks for itself regardless - less'd have been more 3/5

#1288 Nick Cave - From Her to Eternity

Less an album than a collection of slavering sketches, hollow spaces hemmed by bass and percussion and industrial cracks, all echoing damply while Cave barks and raves from the catacombs. It's pure primal expulsion, all atmosphere and mossy claustrophobia, a stagger through disused sewers with machines in the walls, a lurching Tom Waits robot with a wire loose. Incredibly fascinating, wildly brilliant, deeply unpleasant stuff 3/5

#1287 Pulp - Different Class

There's a disatisfied-with-England streak running through most of Britpop: Blur's post-Kinks smirking, Supergrass's youthful otherness, Oasis's general sneering, etc. etc. but this takes it to the next level, this is just *miserable*, and all the more British for it I suppose. Mis-Shapes comes out swinging, but the rest of the album's a halfhearted grimmace, a sardonic sulk, loathing pointed inward and outward in equal measures.

The hits are well-earned. Common People: staggering, oily brilliance. Disco 2000: heartbreaking beauty.

But everything else is "look at the horrible man this world has made me" or maybe "look at what a pathetic bastard I am, and aren't I just like everyone". Underwear in particular seems like a misstep, taking that forlorn sketch from Disco 2000 and running the puppy love smack into uncomfortable rapeyness. I don't know if these are supposed to be sketches of a rogue's gallery of British stereotypes that just happens to be told in the first person, but a nearly completely unlovable protagonist takes shape thenabouts.

Musically, it's lush and inventive, and this is great commentary in places, and man, those two songs really are classics. It's probably even a really good album, but god, is it joyless, like a PT Anderson movie where you go "wow that was good. I'm really glad it's over." 2.5/5

ps sorry Robin

#1286 White Lung - Deep Fantasy

I'm sure it undercuts my credibility that I compare so many bands to Pretty Girls Make Graves, but damn if that particular brand of lady-shouting and buzzsaw/chiming guitars doesn't remind me of (the legendary) Good Health.

This is Good Health with a rocket attached, pure sprint, completely relentless, packed to bursting with riffs and starts and stops and swerves, banging repetitions that can't justifiably be called choruses, no time for pretty interludes or reflections. It's exhausting at 22-minute and wouldn't be better with more, a clockwork killer with crannies I've yet to unpack 3.5/5

#1285 Silver Sun - Silver Sun

A blast of 3-chord fun streaked with neon highlights, chugging with Weezer/Oasis/Queen-via-Bryan Scary brilliance. Robin called them the Beach Boys on crack, and in that regard they out-SFA SFA.

It feels crass to go full soundslike reductionist on these guys, but what they do is so about the combination: firing out deadsimple feelgood, plus just enough flourishes to keep you weaving, plus enough operatic scope to keep you caring. It's hard for there to be standout moments when you go this all-out maximalist for 14 songs (remember when albums had 14 songs?), but if you're feeling youthful and knocking out to the beach this will soundtrack those coastal miles just fine 3.5/5

#1284 Jack White - Lazaretto

I date these based on the listen date, not the review date, which is why this 6/10 post can assert that Jack White fucking RULED at Bonnaroo. A soaring, lacerating show, equal parts bluesman gravitas and shitkicking garagerock energy, it featured plenty of songs off this album.

Which is why its confounding that this album is so...unexciting. It's good, full of clever turns, ups and downs, big moments heavy and light. But there's no particular spark, no particular liveness, and no particular listening experience takes shape.

The problem is that this doesn't commit to being a riff-driven garage rock album (White is credited with playing electric guitar on only five of the eleven tracks), doesn't commit to being a country rock album, and doesn't pull off doing both (facemelting riffs shatter any burgeoning sense of drifting prairie peace; backing vocals from Ruby Amanfu and Lily Mae crush any accrued thisfuckingrocks energy every time they wander in, track sequencing makes no attempt at transitions).

The problem isn't that this doesn't pick a genre, it's that it doesn't find any vision that encompasses the ones it dabbles in, and you end up with a pastiche that shows a surprising, disappointing lack of showmanship 2.5/5

#1283 The Juan Maclean - Everybody Get Close

MacLean goes fully for full album respectability, leaving most dancepunk angles behind, settling into house hypnosis and longrunning experimentalism (isn't Deviant Device the spitting image of a Darkside track? In a good way - this came first). There's the occasional assmover, but mostly its a sprawling headphone jaunt that glances off a dozen genre blends and retro touchstones, a listen that slips through your fingers and beckons you back 3.5/5

#1282 Tubeway Army with Gary Numan - Replicas

A quietly brilliant album, taking the inherent angular coldness of synthesizer-driven new wave and exploding it into a full fledged concept, weaving a disillusioned, fractured, existentially bankrupt world nonetheless full of distant wonder. Musically it sounds quite a lot like the less-ambient tracks off an early Brian Eno album, and strikes about the same 80/20 interesting/fun balance, with fewer wild innovations and more self-assured cool. Decidedly worth hearing once 3.5/5

#1281 Bobby Bland - Two Steps From The Blues

Killer, soulful blues shouting on this big soulful blues album, full of grit and Stax-style hooky flair. All the songs, the slower searchers, the bopping rockers, all pop and smolder with fire and ice, with Bland's unstoppable voice driving the train. Powerful, underappreciated stuff 4/5

#1280 Nine Inch Nails - Hestitation Marks

Look, this sounds like a Nine Inch Nails album. It's better-paced than the indulgent The Fragile, less atmospheric than the ephemeral Ghosts, and prettier than the clenchy Year Zero, it's probably the most listenable, well-crafted, least dangerous NiN album ever. Take that as you will.

It's inventive in its small ways, perfectly enjoyable, wielding some of The Social Network OST's  subliminal coasting, but it doesn't exactly break the mold 3/5

#1279 Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet

Still aware of how thoroughly I dismissed Raising Hell, an album PE's Chuck D himself once called the greatest rap album off all time. But I stand by it, maybe even more so once I heard how much better, in every way, this album is. I know it came 4 years later. Sure, you need a foundation to build a house, but is it my fuckup if I like the house better than the slab? The house is nice to live in, and full of artistic flourishes and courtyards and scones and shit. The foundation's just real sturdy and made of concrete. You hit the limit of what you can say about it real fast.

This, here's where the payoff's at. This is smart as shit, with beats that aspire to actually move your ass and mind and succeed on all counts. Each and every count. Success. This is on the shoulders of giants, but it climbs swift, stands firm, jumps high and backflips. It's fucking packed, packed, with clever, insightful, provocative moments, hurtling by you at mach holyfach.

The production's double-dense and officially awesome as hell. The rapping takes those end of lines and explodes them, doubling up the cappers, breaking out into bum bum bum tripleups, hairpins conclusions into roundabouts and doubleback counterpoint. I don't know where exactly rap became awesome, but it was some time between Raising Hell and righthere 4.5/5

#1278 Parquet Courts - Sunbathing Animal

The album's good. It's got some fun angles, strange textures, and an endless torrent of wonderfully batshit lyrics. Even if the tempo's a little too consistently languid, and half-ironic screeds like Dear Ramona feel thrown from glass houses, it's a totally good album.

But the Pavement angle really is unfair to music writers. Parquet Courts had a choice: you've got a frontman that sounds almost exactly like Stephen Malkmus, maybe don't make chuggy, angular, slightly absurd sunbaked proto-indie in all Pavement's favorite keys and tempos.

Do you know how hard it is, as an amateur and generally amateurish music writer, to avoid reviewing bands in terms of the bands they sound like?

Pros: will appeal to Pavement fans.

Cons: sounds too much like Pavement.

3.5/5

#1277 Gomez - Bring It On

An intoxicating mix of simple and complex, rustic and grand, blues-simple and frontier-seeking, landing somewhere between being the British Wilco and the British Beck. On one hand it's epic, running for a solid hour, packed with ideas, electronic burbles, strange Spanish samples, and a good old 9-minute track. On the other hand its downright homespun, specked with folksy stumbles, slide guitar swoons, and bushels of brushy drums. The sides offset eachother damned well, never letting things get boring, never letting them get overblown.

I suppose that means it never quite becomes the British White Stripes, nor the, well, also-British Radiohead, but I guess you can't have it all and have it all too.

And yeah, I'm rating this way higher than Raising Hell. I'm pretty goddamned white sometimes 4/5

#1276 Run-DMC - Raising Hell

The seminal rock rap breakthough, Walk this Way, obv, but Tricky and the title track are build on guitar foundations besides. Classic new school straight through: dead simple beats, endaline rhymes, lessons on what makes a rapper real. It's fun enough, tight, hard, maybe great, but just too simple for my liking, too hard to relate to across the gulfs of time and place and culture 2.5/5

#1275 Leonard Cohen - Songs of Love and Hate

Lyrics, he's got some, some of the most pure poetry you'll hear put to song, lines that unfold and reveal themselves and echo and reflect, beating out Dylan easily in my book. Unfortunately, there's even less to appreciate musically than on a Dylan record, as meandering backing seems put there just to justify calling these readings songs. Scant melody, little movement, pure backdrop. Worth hearing for the words, but there's little to recommend as music, even as a strange curiosity draws me back, still 3.5/5

#1274 Trap Them - Blissfucker

I'm an acquaintance of Trap Them's new drummer Brad Fickeisen, so, disclosure?

This is frantic, heavy, thunderous metal, full of lightningfast bursts and soaring guitars and spells of oceanic oilslick simmering. It inspires the hopelessness of doom // the invincibility of thrash, a last defiant scream in a dying world. After the frantic opening it all gets a little exhausting, but the closing track puts an atmospheric signature across the wasteland that echoes long afterwards 3/5

#1273 Thelonius Monk - Genius of Modern Music Vol. 1 (8-song 1951 ed.)

Like the also-1951-released, just-reviewed Dizzy album, this is  made up of mostly 3-minute little songs. But this is harder jazz, big horn blasts, simmering moods, strange little rhythmic hitches and room to breathe (Misterioso!), especially during (unsurprisingly) the piano solos, knotted little bejewled baubles, each. It's fascinating, unknowable, cool, plenty of notes landing off-center and settling into place a half-measure later, playful and intricate, worthy of close listens 3.5/5

#1272 Ben Frost - Aurora

Glitch gone operatic, this has Atticus Ross electric tension piled into M83 builds.  There are highlights: Venter has a brilliant vertigo-inducing rise, Secant climaxes into fragile tunefulness, and early moments provide subliminal punch, but it mostly just bluntly induces stress with dissonance and clatter. The commitment to minimalism's impressive: tracks exist as entities beyond enjoyment, and long periods of (near?) silence drive gulfs between tracks, but its far more easily admired than enjoyed 3/5

#1271 Dizzy Gillespie - School Days

Funky, ragged bop, with charm to spare from the strained, gravely, rumbling, shoutin' vocals. Those vocals, formed into verses, molded into sub-3-minute tracktimes, make this read as more traditional than most any jazz that came after, sounding in 2014 more like pop songs with jazzy backing and horn solos. As that goes, it's hooky, inventive, strange, and brimming with character and clash 3/5