#2155 Peanut Butter Wolf - My Vinyl Weighs a Ton

PBW keeps things simple - you feel the physical wax spinning into beats and backing, no whiff of DJShadow-style stacks of tricks and tracks.

The languishing, stoned vibe throws off some of the first rappers, sounding out of synch, wobbling on bikes too slow. But the instrumentals and turntablism fare better, and by the time you're a handful of tracks deep everything falls into place and you settle into the cut until you're swallowed up - a pretty heady groove once you get into it 3.5/5

#2154 Wipers - Youth of America

A hidden post-punk gem, Wipers chug and pulse with rocksolid tension and cool, spiked with hooky little rips and jags and exclamations. Propulsive in labyrinthine patterns, never standing still, never going anywhere, building walls of fuzz higher and higher just to give themselves something to knock over, climaxing in the writhing 10-minute title track.

I'm wildly consistent about the credit I give for getting in first, but I can't get away from appreciating that this was some cuttingedge shit in 1981 - shades of Gang of Four, Television, and all the greats, taken to frantic new extremes 4.5/5

#2153 Dead Moon - In the Graveyard

Noisy, ragged garage rock that pops with desperation and energy, every song on just this side of the end. Everything falls apart and shrieks and clatters, with an everpresent, wobbly surf surge keeping things mysterious. Exciting, messy stuff 3.5/5

#2152 Beat Happening - Jamboree

Lo-fi production, relentless chugging guitars, unflinching deadpan delivery -- I'm down with all that when it's backed up by hooks and songwriting (GBV, Pavement,Sonic Youth), but this is a plod to nowhere. What was clever in 1988, sounds lazy 30 years later.

The only thing that holds up is its indie-pop encapsulation of micro-scene, that inspiration that You Can Too, Kid. If you want to find your way to a place where your most personal thoughts are special and matter to your friends and your lack of grand inspiration's a roundabout advantage (and I say this all without malice or irony - what a wonderful mindset to find!) this bygone artifact might inspire 3/5

#2151 Todd Terry - Todd Terry Presents Ready for a New Day

Very 90's house music: all the ladies belting out inspiration, all the tacky horns and shouty samples, all the over and over and over and over again. It gets by from time to time on a certain disinterested cool, and occasionally a little heat sparks through, but it mostly sounds underbaked and boring - time's not been kind 2.5/5

#2150 Funk Factory - Funk Factory

A wildly writhing album -- a tangle of funk guitars, burbling bass, soulful rhythms, jazzy flourishes, swooping choral oooohs and scattershot vocal pops. Organ swoops through and out to space. Guitars light the floor on fire and jump out the window. Synthy burbles melt faces and melt themselves.

Superficially there's flashes of p-funk, and prescient touches of Kamasi Washington, but Funk Factory's soulmate might be Zappa - this is as restless as his bent pop, as knottily jazzy as his Hot Rats instrumentals.

Fuck, even that doesn't do this justice - one of the most lively, unpredictable albums I'ver heard in a while, a band twisting hard through chicanes only they can see 4/5

#2149 NZCA Lines - Infinite Summer

This starts off so promisingly, that cover art, those gigantic synths and heartbreaking string swirls - this is gonna be a journey, man. But what you get is another indie-dance-lite knockoff - there's whiny Hot Chip whining over every whiny song, packed with tacky Cut Copy beats and familiar Neon Indian bendups, hammered into predictable here-comes-the-chorus structures.

The production itself's got promise, but it's been buried in annoying tropes 2.5/5