#3810 Keith Kenniff - Occasus

3/5 pretty, but feels cribbed from a well-worn playbook. All the plinky piano and uncertain wobbles and slathered reverb start to sound like a perfectly blank canvas, here to make you feel, you know, the thing you feel, the ambient version of the pop song railing against generically outlined problems. Maybe that's the point? With that big empty space on the album cover? Probably not

#3802 The Spirit of the Beehive - Hypnic Jerks

4/5 you can't make a truly psychedelic album without some real surprises, some true left turns - more Olivia Tremor Control, less Tame Impala. Here's all this haze and wash, but with real fuckin _hooks, late Fugazi lean muscle caught by ambient trapdoors, and some of the most perfect Booksian samples around. That time dilation, no way all this adventure took place over the course of just 38 minutes

didnt I just take you there about an hour ago?

yeah, I'm the same guy. can you take me back to where I was before?

yes sir, right away! where were you before?

just take me there

yes sir!

#3795 Bjorn Torske - Byen

4/5 almost every song on Byen has a backbone of deadsimple old-school synths, some foundation of tangible, visible, hard-edged waves. And on top of that familiar, elemental crunch comes disco, rumbling drums, sparkling synth lines, samples of birds, and a million ways to bob your head and move your ass. A wonderful hybrid. The Norwegian scene lives.

#3794 The Necks - Body

3/5 remember those big brick pocketknives with like, 50 tools, until it doesn't fit in your pocket? Arty, timemelting minimalism into a jammy raveup center into an ambient fadeaway. An advertisement for a show I'd go to, but a better ad than a tool. I can't think of any possible hour of my life where this wouldn't be all wrong for some 15 minutes of its runtime

#3791 Ed Schrader's Music Beat - Riddles

3.5/5 I can't help but give Dan Deacon a lot of credit for this one. All its best moments, those twinking piano backings, those huge buzzy basslines, the general manic spirit - are the producer's hallmarks. All the actual songwriting and vocals and melodies are good enough, but not especially memorable

#3767 Nubya Garcia - Nubya's 5ive

3.5/5 i know nothing about jazz. good flowing energy, playful solos, a wonderful rhythm section that evolves the songs with rolling textures

#3757 Trace Mountains - A Partner to Lean On

3.5/5 I can't tell you exactly what makes this feel like NMH. Something about the melodies, that lilt that weaves though the dreamed and the real, those moments where a chord hangs suspended in air and levitates you with it. And then there's that really direct quote 2/3 of the way through the opener. However you get there. It taps into something sentimental, unclear which tolls paid to get there. K and E6 and all the rest. It's not a knock exactly, but it inspired me wonder about the alchemy that lead to the greatest indie moments of a bygone half-generation; a fun journey but a bit of a distraction, but right pretty if you can see the forest for the trees

#3753 Tera Melos - Treasures and Trolls

3.5/5 spiky jelly and big crunch peanut butter done all double decker

#3748 Tokyo Police Club - TPC

4/5 wherin i treat every review like I'm trying to get the right answer on a test, because that's how I'm wired, which I must confess to myself is not very rock and roll. tempering that pure pop from Mellon Collie into something more worthy of the reference, hooky, ansty, full of fuzz and beauty, great pacing -- that great little act break of Ready to Win

#3723 Klaus Johann Grobe - Du Bist So Symmetrisch

2.5/5 retro-synth-packed Swiss dancepunk with German lyrics, half-familiar and difficult to remember

#3712 Night Shop - In the Break

4/5 some of the slow songs drag, but man Justin Sullivan is a wonderful songsmith, spinning out open-road slow-burning energy, overflowing with skin-prickling detail. There's no unnecessary note in the backing, just an endless scrolling backdrop of endless sky, shades of Josh Ritter and bandmate Kevin Morby

#3686 Parquet Courts - Wide Awake!

3/5 all angular bristle at the order of things that mostly just doesn't land. A messy melee of mostly-agreeable minutemen and gang of four moments that don't come off as sincere and don't commit to anger, neither dance_ nor _punk, and not finding much outside the spectrum, undercut by thin, flat vocals. Freebird II's pretty as heck tho

#3670 Kurt Vile - Bottle It In

3.5/5 even by Kurt Vile standards, this's a slow one. As committed to letting the songs unfold as anyone -- is laziness the weakness or the point? Not much of it lands but maybe its not supposed to, you gotta admire a coast this long

#3669 Jacco Gardner - Somnium

3/5 pretty, catchy even, but with a squeaky-clean, voiceless lack of stakes that lands somewhere between exotica and library music

#3668 Gaz Coombes - World's Strongest Man

4/5 slow to start, with that kind of solo artist overstudied stiltedness, at first. Indebted to Albarn and Yorke in increasingly good ways. Invested in making an album that smolders, starts to burn on the second side, climaxes just before the end. Committed to making an album that plays as an album and isn't that refreshing

#3667 The Midnight Hour - The Midnight Hour

3/5 a way with a groove, but the vocals don't slot in, transplanted from another session.  vtfdrds4 b=gASD KLKGVZXK
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#3662 Beach House - 7

3.5/5 awkward cause I'm real light and late on the Beach House train. There's moments, hoo boy, some of those synth slices and production flourishes are staggering, and its all pretty, but a bit washy, indistinct, unmemorable

#3655 Justice - Woman Worldwide

4/5 self-remixing, flow-conscious, show-length: by all accounts an electronic live album in the spirit of Alive X7, but not actually done live: studio-clean and clear of crowd noise. Clever. And it works. It's not Alive-tier, and its a real slow burn for stretches, but it's always overwhelmingly listenable, and the highlights land with earned expectation when they come. And yes, excellent work music

#3648 Bonny Doon - Longwave

4/5 wonderfully straightforward and chill. strums and mutters about how things actually are, for you to float in. and the songs aren't flashy, but you feel people playing them. fuckin solid.

#3630 Harenemuri - Harutosyura

3.5/5 packed with frantic energy: frayed post-punk guitars vs. laptop electronics vs. tacky pop-metal vs. pure idol choruses, shot through with endless clipped rap-singing. More annoying // more pleasant than it sounds; disorienting - anxious - joyful