#3563 Norma Tenega - Walkin' My Cat Named Dog

3/5 Tenega's got great ragged edges and galloping energy, the rock songs are thrilling, sounding full and close. The folk songs are folk songs.

#3562 Kevin Ayers - Bananamour

4.5/5 by the time I got off the bus it was torrential. 5 steps out and I was as soaked as I was going to get, may as well walk it. Blinding at first, a chest full of bracing cold, and then like a perfect Northeast squall, the sky started to clear, the hand of god sifting its fingers through the clouds, yellow and grey and flashes of blue, just as the soaring horns of When Your Parents Go to Sleep hit their stride, and I was in no hurry at all.

Assured, soulful, patient, cascading with exalted backing chorus and endless washes and wavering ruts of the blues. Unexpected, humbly thrilling.

#3561 Cloud Becomes Your Hand - Rest in Fleas

3.5/5 blisteringly inventive, only occasionally pleasant. See Menomena for this kind of man-machine confusion, the kind of composition that feels bracingly inorganic, but too strange to be generated, a willful alien revolt against structure. When it feels good its great, but man, man this's only casually interested in being listened to

#3560 100 Gecs - 1000 Gecs

3.5/5 as I said to Aaron

i listened to this album and i hated it at first but some time around stupid horse I kinda started to like it, and then the rest actually has a kind of mad sentimentality to it that's pretty nice. once you kind of get tuned into its bonkers wavelength its a lot of fun. good find, thanks!

add a reiteration that it's really quite unpleasant to listen to, but in the vein of the best of Baltimore, there's undeniably thrilling adventurousness here. The possibility of next-album iteration is exciting, whether it goes swings for more listenable or less I'd wager it's gonna be worth hearing

#3539 Thee Oh Sees - Face Stabber

4/5 This is the natural path of Thee Oh Sees sound, a single 80 minute track (cowardly they hide behind 14 song titles). Those endless loping baselines, those simple driving beats  As a single track it becomes unassailable, a stoner metal masterpiece with flecks of punk'ed yelp, rolling and growling, hesitating tactically, but never stopping, time-melting pitstops spiked with near-death swerves - be not fooled

#3538 Kishi Bashi - Omoiyari

3.5/5 Ishibashi continues to make the prettiest indie this side of Bon Iver making soft love to the Shins. Everything here is hooksome, gentle. Why does it make me feel so deeply sad? It's a wonderful, tragic trick, a flower unfolding to die. Like those cover birds, free and fake, reminders of things soon lost

#3537 Jeremy Jay - Airwalker

4/5 the space in these songs, echoing off light-polluted starscapes, wandering, with the whole night ahead of them and no place to go, but for the hope of a date with Zevon's ghost; watching, enchanted by the time spent in their aura

#3536 Kelley Stoltz - Que Aura

3/5 big fan of Stoltz, big fan of reinvention, but this is a move even further into bass leads, into electronic hum, and I don't think it runs with the grain of his songwriting. Songs are mostly aimless, repetitive, dusted with near-hooks and glancing off hypnosis but never striking home

#3535 Kelley Stoltz - The Scuzzy Inputs of Willie Weird

4/5 props to Stoltz, he commits to his weird persona and it works. Like -- the less you expect the better it works, and the album bakes in this lowered expectation, some mutation of Beck and Zappa, manipulating itself into your confidence. And to be clear, less great than each, but never heard anything quite like this dusty, mad little world.

Also, props to Goodbye Porcupine Hat, best-named jazz almost-cover around.

#3234 Particle - Live 9/7/14

3/5 Online here! So much pitch bend! So much bass groovery! It swings, in its way, perfectly good to bob to, and I dig the keyboard lead focus, but there's no real soul here. Even the Hornitz sound out of place.

#3533 Kwiaty - Kwiaty

3.5/5 solid record held back by being very familiar (the very 90's underground/shoegaze sound) and very unfamiliar (the to-me unintelligible Polish lyrics). Also, too many slow songs. But flashes of frission

#3532 Je Suis France - Pro Smell

2.5/5 Love these guys, love the nerve to barf out all these analog noise nonsense dalliances and call them an album, but its a meandering fuckabout mess and I can't in good conscience recommend it to anyone

#3531 Oso Oso - Basking in the Glow

3/5 I like what these guys got going, all those big grasping sentiments and shameless chords, pure pop-punk exaltation. But they stick to the same nasal vocals, the same middle tempos, they made the same song 10 times and frontloaded the best few versions - need to find another dimension

#3530 The Car is on Fire - Lake and Flames

3/5 TCioF veers off the dancepunk road to nowhere, sands down its spikes, adds a lot of atmosphere and production, and ends up with something much richer. A sprawling, 23-song indie romp, packed with ideas, none of which really grab me, but I admire the band's nerve to become something wildly more interesting than their blueprint

#3529 The Car is on Fire - The Car is on Fire

2.5/5 Brittle dancepunk, the yelp of the Dismemberment Plan prickled into Hot Hot Heat bristle. The nasal vocals are pretty rough, and the angular hopscotching gets exhausting

#3528 The Car is on Fire - Ombarrops!

3/5 TCioF continues to evolve on their last album, bouncing from idea to idea. Songs morph constantly, electronics and production tricks in every exposed seam.

It's all very clever, but the lack of personality and urgency hold the band back. If these songs are about anything (sleeping seems to be a theme??) it's more of a puzzle than I can solve, and tricks are no substitute for hooks

#3527 Kelley Stoltz - To Dreamers

4.5/5 Stoltz truly hits his stride here, confidently making propulsive, pretty songs, effortlessly packed with hooks, finding every possible permutation of tempo, pop, rock, jangle, and fuzz. And then there's that special thing we get so seldom these days: a gorgeous, showstopping closer, the kind of beauty that waits in the wings of every future listen, putting every song on a path to somewhere; Bottle Up's an indie rock gem worthy of the Shins and the Kingsbury Manx.

The kind of album I'd have been obsessed with in my younger days.

After 8 albums and 15 years, a breakthrough seems unlikely. Stoltz is probably destined to be cult hero at best. But with songwriting talent like his, never count him out - this is his masterpiece, so far.

#3526 Kelley Stoltz - Circular Sounds

3.5/5 maybe it's a trick of the title and the cover, but there's something _round about these songs, all soft sounds, elliptical loops, lulling and pleasant, with just enough Kinksy bristle to keep you stirring. Great background music, in the best way possible

#3525 Kelley Stoltz - Below the Branches

3.5/5 a transitional album for Stoltz, missing the warm, open feel of his debut, but lacking the consistent pop punch of this later stuff. Too many songs lack a plan, toddling along at midtempo before just ending. But there's a couple of great flashes, the goofy joy of Birdies Singing, lost Kinks masterpieces like Memory Collector and Prank Calls

#3524 Kelley Stoltz - Antique Glow

4/5 Spotify's image for this album is different than the actual album cover - I don't know where it came from, but its perfect. It's all there: Stoltz, his piano, and the apartment the album was recorded in, all high ceiling and extra space. It's that space that's the star here, lending an enchanting breadth and warmth to the sound, letting all those extra touches bloom. A minor Americana masterpiece

#3523 Kelley Stoltz - Natural Causes

3/5 pretty moments and Stoltz can't help but pepper hooks here and there, but his recent slower, duller turn continues to underwhelm

#3522 Eno Moebius Roedelius - After the Heat

3/5 Cluster and Eno, having shipped their practice tapes a couple times, figure out their electronic trickery and dickery enough to make some some songs. There's slow moments given time to breathe, landscapes, melodies, reflection; enough structure from which to appreciate the squonkery. It's still not _great, but at least they came with table stakes.

#3521 Cluster, Eno - Cluster & Eno

2.5/5 Cluster's previous album sounded like clumsy Eno experiments, and now we're official. Lots of "hey that's a weird noise, keep making it, here's another one", too little music that evokes mood or setting

#3520 Cluster - Sowiesoso

2.5/5 beatless and boring for krautrock, tuneless and ugly for ambient. Adventurous in invention but lazy as musicmaking execution

#3519 Bon Iver - i,i

3/5 I listened to this on a very long walk home, and again on a long bus ride, in spaces more befitting its charms than my usual work soundtracking, and it still left me cold. 22 A Million got by because it was so adventurous in its explosion of the Bon Iver sound, and this has touches of that, but mostly it's unsticky crooning and production ornamentation (Hey Ma the only exception, and even that's half the gutpunch of Over Soon or Creeks).

#3518 Justin Jay - Everything Will Come Together, pt. 1

3/5 pleasant enough, but halfhearted and slight. So midtempo and consistent and unadventurous compared to Home. Everything Will Come Together, pt 1, makes me want to remind Jay that no it won't, not on its own (or maybe it's outlining a plan to make pt 2 the good one?)

#3517 Sparks - Hello Young Lovers

3.5/5 for my money, I'll take this over Lil' Beethoven for my late-era Sparks repetition-fest. More quietly strange, without the sharp edges of cringey bitterness. From the unpredictably direct opener to the closing howl against obscurity, everything swoops in placing, seemingly content to amuse itself. 20 albums deep, this might just be Sparks finally out to pasture, humming to themselves about what might have been

#3516 Brian Witzig - The Iron Horse

3.5/5 funky enough, and gets the production dust and pop right, that bit of retro mythology elevates, everything a bit road-worn. pretty good poker music

#3515 The Sound Defects - Volume 2

3.5/5 organs and horns and beats and muttered sentiments - smooth with a dusty, drifting cool. Better than most DJ Shadow-and-descendant albums, but not especially inspired. Tough to see why you'd listen to this over even Deadringer

#3514 Duval Timothy - 2 Sim

4/5 lived experience of African-British diaspora seeping, pouring through atmosphere, bracing like a dam breaking again and again. So clearly expressed, floated under your nose by the softest clouds of piano until you can't help inhale and fall

#3513 Sparks - Lil' Beethoven

3/5 regarded as Sparks' big modern masterpiece, but nah.

Repetition's the name of the game, again, this time over lots of strings. It's an inventive stab at not-rock. The opener's brazenly minimal as they come, and there's some knotty little jokes woven into the repetition; Carnegie Hall shows what it tells, and Your Call's Very Important to Us is a fun Zooropian piece of lived microdystopia.

But Sparks' streak of bitterness crosses a line into embarrassing this time out, ranting about modern bands and suburban homeboys, whining endlessly about women who only care about money -- it's gross, and undercuts the detached cool the rest of the album worked so hard to build

#3512 Sparks - Balls

3/5 it's easy enough to assign intentions to Sparks' previous albums of the era, but this is a weird one. Leaning right into big dumb British electronica a half decade too late, it's not quite a pop grasp, but its hard to imagine anyone being especially proud of it. Not awful to listen to exactly, but hollow and forgettable

#3511 Sparks - Plagiarism

3/5

This is bullshit! you can hear the Maels shout, finally getting a critical crumb or two, after decades of intermittent brilliance

So sure make those great old songs again, with strings, electronics, and faith no more (?) The album kicks off with, what else, a remake of Pulling Rabbits Out of A Hat, their ode to empty excellence, now swarthed in every flourish a symphony can afford. This Town Ain't Big enough, in particular, benefits from all that excess, pumping an overblown song past bursting into delightfully ridiculous.

But nobody needs hard-driving dance remixes or tacky guitar-driven versions of the rest, sounding cheap, like copyright-dodging karaoke versions. Unnecessary, if strangely understandable

#3510 King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard - Fishing for Fishies

3.5/5 cosmic, goofy boogie all night long, the boys sound like they're having a right good time, loose as the Dead with a darker tinge and a staggering stomp. As good a combination of the band's heavy and light sides as you'll find

#3509 Ty Segall - Deforming Lobes

4/5 a couple bars of riffing in, Ty stops the song, clarifies how a drum fill goes, apologizes, and the band kicks back in on the one. 15 seconds later, the fill comes. Budda-budda-budda-buppppa. Duly teased, it hits like fucking lightning.

And its the critical moment of the whole record, this moment of vulnerability, recovery, and  _payoff. A testament to how tight the band it, and how loose the sound feels -- its a thrill.

Segall's not a born frontman. His songs aren't _about much other than an excuse to stomp and shred. But that band's in top form here, so loud, so dedicated, 35 minutes is right. This isn't a concert experience, because that's not the sound. It's moment to moment to moment and that 8 songs is all it takes to give you the idea so

#3508a Chance the Rapper - The Big Day

3/5 pretty enough, packed with little rhyme puzzles, with no hunger or stakes at all. Chance in a Life is Good shirt, rapping from his porch with some flow-killing skits stuffed in between. It's a bad sign that Randy Newman's the guest that fits in best. I'm glad he's made it, married his lady, is appreciating things, and is honest enough to speak from that place, it just doesn't make for an especially essential listen

#3508 Sparks - Gratuitous Sax and Senseless Violins

4.5/5 Sparks go away for 6 years and come back with a revelation. A wonderfully bizarre bent-pop record with songs riffing on Frank Sinatra, Charlie Parker, Gone with the Wind, Liberace, and Chinese filmmaker Tsui Hark. You know, 90's stuff.

From its Confidential magazine cover and blaring sensationalism, its an album out of time, a frantic thrashing against celebrity, peaking with the flayed I Thought I Told You to Wait in the Car. From ruminations on the ennui of owning the BBC, to trancy micro-experiments - it's a complete 180 from their pop-grasping lows.

But the signature song is The Ghost of Liberace, a pop fairy tale of what remains of fame, reflected in the story of a man once scourged by Confidential itself. It's hard not to see it as autobiographical. Elegiac and hopeful that one will be remembered fondly, it's Sparks accepting that it's better to burn out bright on your own terms. If this had been their last album, it would have been strangely perfect, but the story's got a couple twists yet

#3507 Sparks - Interior Design

2.5/5 the dying gasp of pop-desperate-era Sparks. Limp new-wave bopping and uncomfortably uncool ballads, it doesn't seem like their hearts were even into selling out anymore. The cover's all wrong too. An album made by nobody, mislabeled and misfiled

#3506 Ty Segall - First Taste

3.5/5 No guitars this time out? You wouldn't know it by the sound, we're spoiled by the breadth of Ty's fuzz arsenal, this all slots right in. Like many of Segall's many albums of the last few years, the gimmick is just a different route to the same place; this falls into the same blur as Fudge Sandwich, Joy, Emotional Mugger, and Ty Rex. It's no Ty Segall ('17) or Freedom's Goblin. A fine racket, but other than the refreshing Ice Plant, the clattering The Fall, and the screeching closer, nothing much sticks

#3505 Los Doltons - Siempre...Dos Doltons

3.5/5 scuzzy smooth perfection, rough-edged garage with a full-bodied Spanish croon. Some of the covers (Matrisuicidio!) out-energy the originals nicely, all a delight

#3504 Sparks - Music that You Can Dance To

2.5/5

Sparks goes all the way down the rabbithole, making music so pop it almost goes around the horn and is _about pop music. Almost!

Layered with the tackiest possible synths, these are just songs called Music You Can Dance To, Armies of the Night, and Let's Get Funky, which more or less do what they say on the tin. Fingertips sounds like a prescient dancepunk song without the cool:

Everybody say yeah! Everybody have a good time! Just one more time! Clap your hands just a little bit louder!

Again, it _almost works, you can _almost admire it, but it never escapes the orbit of its brazen intentions. Plus the songs just aren't very good to listen to

#3503 Sparks - Pulling Rabbits out of a Hat

2.5/5

if you want to understand the sixteen year, six-album fistfight with the world that this album kicked off, look no further than the title track.

You can almost picture the Maels having a beer with friends one night when, in a moment of wellmeaning drunken candor, someone drawls

"you guys are such talented songwriters! how come you've never had
you know
a hit?"

detached, one replies

"we could have, could have had dozens. If that was that's what we were going for"

And then Ron and Russel were challenged to prove it.

--

Of course, its not that Sparks were ever _aggressively disinterested in having a hit. But they'd never stooped to making something in the basest terms of what was popular. And in the mid-80's, stooping was a pretty all or nothing proposition.

And so with much swagger does this album kick off, announcing that, for my next trick, I will make pop music, and people will love it. And this is the easiest, most basic trick there is, the pulling a rabbit out of a hat of songwriting. And I have performed so much grander tricks: made a pauper a king, raised the titanic, made legitimately great music for a decade.

And even the choice of phrasing: I am pulling rabbits, one after another, out of this hat. Not one rabbit. Not out of multiple hats. I am _churning _these _hits _out until the room looks like the cover of fucking Hello Young Lovers.

But then the crux of the matter in the song's whelp of a chorus:

_pulling rabbits out of a hat
_pulling rabbits out of a hat

_all I get is polite applause!
_applause, applause, applause, applause, applause 

It is as fine a run of 11 words as you'll find in music, and 6 of them are the same one. A disdain for the payoff of this trick, that the applause is polite, that the appreciation is critical, but halfhearted, and certainly without commercial payoff. For all its confidence, the song betrays an anticipation that this all will fail. Polite applause, who needs it. But Russell continues!

Applause! he repeats again and again, desperate and ecstatic and failing, as if flogging one team of horses and being flogged by another.

is that all I get? god yes the applause! more, more you fallow fools!

it is cheap and hollow and its all that I want and there will never be enough.

a wracked, complicated song, sneering at the audience and desperate for its affection, wrenching itself ouroboran into operatic glam self-loathing. An overlooked art-pop gem.

--

Of course, Sparks was not successful. The album is packed cheap, bouncing pop songs, each packed with budget synths and endless repetition of the name of the song. There's flashes of wry humor, but nothing that matches the apparently-worthy-of-400-words opener, and certainly nothing unscathed by its brazen attempt to hit a single by scattershot.

It's like the Maels made this album on a bet, but they weren't really sure they wanted to win it.

--

Stick with us for Sparks Week 2 - The Repetition Era, where we'll see a descent into nothingness, a surprising resurgence, a swing at cosmic justice, and the most overrated ending since The Usual Suspects!