#3832 Richard Swift - Dressed Up for the Letdown

3.5/5 soaked in music of a bygone era, jaunty and morose notes from across an ocean of time, spiked with these rare moments of pure joy, but often repeating himself just a bit too much. What must that be like?

And I fear friend, this could be the last song
But we're all good to go

#3830 1 Trait Danger - 1 Trait World Tour

3.5/5 deeply dumb, just loose as hell, two dudes having a hoot. Those early skits and intros are rough sledding, but you get Clap When I'm Dead and Multiple Computer Mark, and man -- you just don't get hooky, actually pretty funny shit like that to stick unless you're throwing whatever you got. This wouldn't have been better if it was better. be glad it exists exactly as it does. bonus, kinda helps explain Making a Door Less Open's quirky energy

#3808 Once and Future Band - Deleted Scenes

3/5 so so slick. Shamelessly pop prog, reviving the least cool era of the least cool good music around, whitewashed jazzy flourishes, jamband wanderings, and some admittedly pretty great organ runs, all in perfectly bite-sized units. Undeniably catchy, tough to listen to with a straight face

#3777 Childish Gambino - 3.15.20

3/5 strangely paced songs that run into eachother, or maybe those are just the days. the timestamp tracknames, mocking anchors. the best songs stomp, dressed and ready for now-cancelled festivals

#3760 Tycho - Simulcast

3/5 it sure is a Tycho album. a nice little listen full of pretty textures and polite beats. But man I couldn't pick these new songs out of a lineup of Tycho songs -- I can't remember the last time an artist spent 4 albums exploring so little territory

#3747 Tokyo Police Club - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Radness, Pt 1 and 2

3/5 like a moth to the flame of that amazing album title. still got those hooks, too goddamn pop though, without even a touch of that old edge, just look at those song titles

#3705 The Darkness - Easter is Cancelled

3.5/5 such thorough, unwinking commitment to the huge awesome riff and the shriek of sweetest anguish from the heart. Hooky, glammy, shameless joy, even if it starts to lose its punch on the second half

#3703 Lizzo - Cuz I Love You

3.5/5 blasting pure-pop production, Lizzo can belt, and has a lot to say. Good swaggering, strutting, staggering fun - though the self-love message feels a little pushed sometimes

#3684 Kaytranada - Bubba

2.5/5 this is the year I really truly feel out of touch with what's it. pretty good beats, and then a slurry of gasoline production rainbow, and guest after guest and I'm just not attuned to it, goes right through me

#3671 Beck - Hyperspace

2.5/5 I still don't know what the fuck is going on with Beck. I can't fathom that someone would make this because it was their vision, but I can't figure out who the fuck it's selling out to. Saw Lightning's kinda fun, but the rest is limp, barely there, empty of intention

#3664 The Beach Boys - Sunflower

3.5/5 The Beach Boys, some flashes of Pet Sounds aside, a little cloying, obvious, very nearly annoying. A lot of these songs are one-note concepts smeared out to multi-note harmonies without a whole lot of inspiration beyond the multiplication. And hoo boy is Add Some Music To Your Day a near-self-parodic piece of shit.

But there are those flashes where the magic strikes and how; the first and last tracks, in particular, are that kind of magic song that flits and slips through your fingers. That's how you make a song about music, by making good music. Jesus what a weirdly religious piece of shit that song is.

#3663 Ayeon - Sketches of Home

3/5 a little logo in the corner of the cover aligns this album with internet-via-LA-based label Jazz Hop Cafe, which in turn unironically aligns itself with sipping coffee. And that's fine. That's nice. And so is this music, which is pretty and pleasant, as whimsical as the pink and spaceship of the rest of the cover. And I didn't fail to enjoy a second of it but it dared zero times to make a move that might distract me from my coffee

#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

#3624 Natalia Lafourcade - Musas

3.5/5 pristine production, an effortlessly evocative voice, endless sprightly latin flourishes: it's an utterly pleasant listen. But truly, be warned, it is _squeaky clean, and look out for a clam of a That's Amore cover right in the middle

#3616 Melody's Echo Chamber - Bon Voyage

3.5/5 starts off paralyzingly French, unfolds into something much stranger and more psychedelic and paralyzingly French. It's all so archly, willfully, baroque! And in a way I love its endless tricks and flourishes. But they mount and mount and bury any semblance of a throughline, until you're moaning stop faffing about and do the fucking thing already, like the science of sleep, but music

#3601 Fleetwood Mac - Tango in the Night

3/5 sure is a pop album, with a slow, persistent pulse that sounds like it's meant to inspire a kind of light, almost entirely vertical, bounce-dancing in time with its choruses. Better than most such silliness, but doesn't come close to escaping the gravity of the 80s

#3578 Iggy Pop - Apres

3/5 You gotta admire Pop's nerve to make an album this French and different. His voice's calcified into something endless over the years. But it's hard to say you'd bother listening if this wasn't Iggy Pop, and its hard to imagine his fans would care for it. Who's this for? James Newell Osterberg Jr. himself, I suppose. Bold move.

#3574 Tredici Bacci - Amore Per Tutti

2.5/5 there's flashes of cowboy grace and euro cooing cool, but mostly this sounds like session musician-made library music, with community-theater vocals lent from friends

#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.

#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