#1670 Lower Dens - Escape from Evil

Ever since their career highlight (Brains! gorgeous) I wanted to like these guys more. But they never lift off: slow motorik and lazy crooning, echoing off to nowhere, too caught up in its own loops to commit to a line forward 2.5/5

#1669 D'Angelo - Voodoo

Fifteen (!) years before he shocked the world with his Black Messiah comeback, there was this alone.

It's not so different: not nearly as heady // intoxicating // thrilling, but packed with layered crooning, horn flips, languid beats, all totally unafraid to go all night (13 songs across 80 minutes!). It's never really exciting, and D's falsetto gets old, but you're never quite bored, lost in atmospheric, endless groove 3/5

#1668 The Neville Brothers - Fiyo on the Bayou

Soul / funk's a tricky gumbo.

Fiyo on the Bayou's smoothness cancels out its funk grit // its funk pop kicks it out of cool - and the soppy Ten Commandments of Love is way out of line on any album. Can't put this on at a party, wouldn't wanna make love to it, not sure what it's good for 2.5/5

#1667 Sam Prekop - Sam Prekop

Sam Prekop used to make lil pop songs, who knew? 15 (!) years before his excellent minimal electronic manifesto The Republic those experimental notes were only glimmers on agreeable featherweight bossa nova ditties. Twinkling along on pastel pinpricks with electric tips, going full hornwash and bleep bloop for a 7 minute stretch in the middle - it's quietly not quite like anything you've ever heard while being damned pretty. That's a keeper 4/5

#1666 Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress

I do dig the purity of what is basically a one-song album:

10 MINUTES OF ANTHEMIC THUNDERING

15

min

drn

vly

13 MINUTES OF TOWERING NOISE.

I dig the rich detail, the albumlong listen, the fact that actual memorable melodies emerge from the darkness. There's cinematic physicality here, evoking the better parts of Mount Eerie, totally worth a listen through if you're into this kind of thing at all, though you may only need to see it once 3.5/5

Month in Review: March '15

Holy shit.

This was an *insanely* good month for music: lots of good new albums released, lots of good finds on an electronic kick, some playing-bonnaroo-driven finds and a dash of my usual trashy nonsense. Brace yourself!

Album of the Month
 
Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit - Actual lyrics get at this old heart of mine, this girl do have a wry way with saying words, with a reckoning rumble to back it up.

Also Recommended!

So much!

New releases:

Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly - A rich, ranting, blistering hip hop screed to remember.

Sufjan Stevens - Carrie and Lowel - Probably the most crushingly beautiful, sad album you'll hear all year.

Electronic stuff:

Zongamin - Zongamin - Glitchy, bouncy, subtly strange, completely listenable accoustic/electronic.

Krazy Baldhead - The Noise in the Sky - Rockist electronica with great hooks and flow, plus a spark of something new you just can't put your finger on.

Lindstrom and Prins Thomas - II -  Both at the top of their game: those krauty basslines, those helixical synth lines, pure space disco hypnosis.

Africa via roo '15

Songhoy Blues - Music in Exile - Intricate, toetapping guitar music that slithers all around the outside of "rock"

William Onyeabor - World Psychedelic Classics 5: Who Is William Onyeabor? - About ahead of its time as sounds come, beats and grooves so sure, so pure.

The usual:

White Reaper - White Reaper -Yep. Still a sucker for too-loud, too-fast, wheelscominoff garage rock.

#1665 Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell

Hey kid, wanna see a dead body? And then it's your dead body, and it flutters apart in streamers of light into a million pearly butterflies and you cry at the beauty of it.

Sufjan's masterpiece, destined to be an I See a Darkness / Sapphie kind of cult classic, he tells these stories of loss and pain with such grace that they become yours and transcend themselves all at once, bathed in ethereal sounds to perfect for human hands. It cuts so deep, so quick, so well, that it hurts just to listen 4/5