#1120 Laurent Garnier - 30

A trancy (?), housey (?) electronica mix, dead simple in some aspects, swirly and infinite in others, 4/4s blocking out the space in hard lines for a while, and then the beats splintering and wandering and giving way to layered waves. The flow's great, head-bobbing in some places, head-melting in others, a journey you'll barely remember afterwards 3.5/5

#1119 Sloan - Navy Blues

That's about as killer an opening riff-and-beat as I've heard in a long time, promising some serious Thin Lizzy-style 70's romp-and-stomp*. The rest of the album doesn't really find a way to reach that highwater mark again, but its a lot of fun watching the band scramble against the wall anyway, whipping out the best Beatles, Oasis, Smiths, and Stones moves they've got, speeding up, slowing down, digging in, flying high. It all sounds like a band that loves making rock and roll, making it as good and hard as they can, finding some impossible, endearing combination of effortlessness and desperation that'll keep you grinning 4/5

* And boy to they deliver (check that Boys are Back in Town solo on Iggy and Angus, even)

#1118 Echobelly - So

Stick around, even if you hate overinflected singing like I do, even if you're worn out on chorused, reverbed vocals that smear all over themselves like I am. Singer Sonya Madan puts a lot of that on display here, and it hits you right up front, but underneath is a strangely infectious, detailed, pretty little 90's alt rock album worth hearing, full of swirly guitars and details.

And it actually gets better on the second half (rare for 90's alt rock!), with the piercing lines of Something Hot in a Cold Country, the Smithsy stomp of Four Letter Word, the slide-guitar shoegaze of Dark Therapy. Those vocals aren't my thing, but they're romping across an awfully pretty backdrop 3.5/5

#1117 Cheveu - Cheveu

Yeeeeeessssss.

This is how you do arty punk, jumping between batshit styles and sticking every landing, finding 11 ways to sound noisy and unignorable and dumping them all on a disc. Everything's overblasted, Mint Chicks huge, full of buzzsaw guitars, tape experiments, casiotone clicks, disgusting imagery worthy of Sockeye, electronic glitches, all built into weirdly catchy little ditties with hard beat backbones and flapping, iridescent skin 4.5/5

#1116 A-Ha - Searching High and Low

Aka the album with Take On Me. Which is an ok song, but nothing special.

The rest of this is made up of limp versions of the same: plinky synths that are never quite as catchy, moaning vocals that never quite reach the same soaring heights. There's some creepy slickness in the doubletime beats, and The Sun Always Shines on TV has a thunderous presence, but there's too much emphasis on Morten Harket's mouthy sub-Morrisey yowling, crushing any appealing details, keeping me from remotely getting into this 2.5/5

#1115 Niagara - Encore Un Dernier Baiser

French synthy pop straight out of the 80's. Is it cooler than our 80's music because its French, or because its in French, or because it's just that cool? Probably a little bit of each, that sheen of foreignness gets my 80's-hating heart past the sound, the hitchy little structures and disco flourishes keep it unpredictable, and that fact I can't understand the lyrics probably keeps me from rolling my eyes. I dig this more than I probably should 4/5

#1114 Less Than Jake - Hello Rockview

Pop-punk riffs, big bleaty ska horn licks, shouty shouts, and not much else - here's a rocket of pure youth energy. Hello Rockview's severely bratty, nearly impossible to take seriously, with only the barest sneer clouding its sunny skies as it all bounces along, blithely going 90 end to end. I'm too old and jaded to get there easily, but I'll bet if you can really get in the right state of mind this is a blast 3.5/5