#2129 Dire Straits - Dire Straits

The humble, pub-rock shuffle-and-groan makes for a right pleasant pulse, and that signature clean guitar sound's as pretty as it ever got. Other than Sultans of Swing (still one their best songs) there's nothing that sticks, but it'll get you though the afternoon 3.5/5

#2128 Mean Jeans - Tight New Dimension

Chuggy Ramonesey dumbness with a spike of fuckit funtimes - somewhere between FIDLAR and Jeff the Brotherhood on the SOFUCKINWASTED scale. Riffy fun, probably a grinner live. There's songs named Croozin' and Are There Bears in Heaven and 4 Coors Meal -- what more could I add?  3.5/5

#2127 William Tyler - Modern Country

Jesus there've been a lot of really unexpectedly great albums coming along this year.

That clean guitar it rings off the universe and back, coming back with miles attached, backed by the wandering buzz of electronics and electrics, a bunch of country-adjacent and country-opposite sounds coming together to make one of the most gorgeous ambient records I've ever heard, like every great Yo La Tengo moment distilled and evaporated -- such an unlikely source, made of such unexpected, anonymized, endless parts.

Those first and last songs, they take me mind out gently, turn it to dust, and blow.

I don't even want to ruin it with more words. An impossibly beautiful album 4.5/5

#2126a Thee Oh Sees - A Weird Exits

Thee Oh Sees always had promise, some shredding genius always lurking in between their go-nowhere soundscapes. But motherfucker are they on the rise. Following their true-form arrival on Mutilator, they pile on with their heaviest, most solid record yet. It lack's Mutilators thrilling rush, but holy fuck that guitar // bass production is on another level, it is a thousand pound sword swung with precision and power, those riffs are _cut_, they hit you like a ton of damn bricks again and again. One of the great guitar records of the modern era that's doomed to go underappreciated 4.5/5

#2126 Car Seat Headrest - Teens of Style

God its so inevitable that this was the album that preceded the excellent Teens of Denial, a post-written prequel that sets it all up. It's those same soaring OOOAAAAAAAS with perfect crunch crunch crunch crunch, but with the muddy bedroom sound to match Denial's bedroom-gone-legit gutpunch. Toledo's drowning in the mix, railing against the pillowey suffocation of adulthood. There's those same incisions, those moments of clarity, a brilliant, personal, struggling little lo-fi gem.

It makes me appreciate Denial that much more, how thoroughly that latest album weaponizes this potent isotope. A minor majesty in its own right 4/5

#2125 Bongzilla - Gateway

Full on stoner metal. Every song's named after weed, packed with samples about weed, rolling the same rock-solid, dead-simple zone:

enormous
monolith of
fuzzedout
guitars rolling
out fast-slow
over and over
and over and over

Unexciting but unboring, catchy in its relentless Sabbathy way. You barely even notice the goofy goblin voice, just raspy mist between the stones. Flashless, flawless music for working or not working at all 3.5/5

#2124 Brainiac - Hissing Prigs in Static Couture

Noisy, wailing punk, spiked with electronic fuckery and dissnonant guitars - this should be right in my wheelhouse. But it sounds sloppy, substituting scattershot dissonance for songcraft, its gimmicks aging about as well as its n3mb3rs 4s v0w3ls song title gimmick 2.5/5