#2373 Sigur Ros - Kveikur

Skitcky glitchery, noise, clipping as instrument, it's been seeping into production-as-instrument rock for a while lately, and Sigur Ros were arguably ahead of the curve with 2013's Kveikur. A band that'd mostly cloaked itself in perfection summons up acid and fire, nipping at the edges, and suddenly there are stakes -- not on the tail end of a right-paren, but right up front with the disintegration.

The band retreats at times, and there's no escaping the ever-increasing familiarity of Jonsi's vocal shtick, but it's still as truly textured and un-untouchable as the band's ever dared to feel, getting by on intricate, gritted detail more than sweeping mistiness to keep your attention. It's a gamble, a subtle shift that's hard to get your head around, a thrilling listen for anyone not yet completely exhausted 4/5

#2372 Sigur Ros - Valtari

Waaaay back at the very beginning of this review project I railed against Takk as too-samey. And on a recent trawl through Sigur Ros's discography I mostly stand by that. They're a conundrum of a band, ever the same, but at least trying to batter against every wall of the cell that Aegeay Bergantjjjjn built.

(Untitled) hitched itself to its climaxing structure and singleminded vocals, Takk indulged in strings, Meo Suo went Animal Collective jangle-drums. Piano's the centerpiece of choice this time around, and its a natural fit -- the earthy, rounded vibration puts that spacey Hopelanders down in the dirt where they can transmit bottom-up. It's a return to form that doesn't actually sound *that* much like their breakthrough, if you listen closely.

Valtari also draws into relief the band's ball and chain: Jonsi's vocals. Sigur Ros can never not sound like Sigur Ros with that keening sound lording so large over top. Truth his, his vocals are exhausting (doubly so on Untitled) and the fact that they disappear for most of the last 3 songs on this album are actually the best thing about it.

I've confessed before that I actually don't like Loveless -- those sheer guitars gut the subtle textures, wreck the balance. The same goes for those vocals. Let to drift, some of the band's prettiest moments shine through. Not quite something new, not quite a return to form, but maybe the purest reflection a band that's otherwise been hard to get a good look at 4/5

#2371 VA - The Super Sounds of Bosworth

TIL Libary Music is a thing -- built for backgrounds, soundalikes for every sound, session banged together, factory-direct. And yet, I rather liked this. It's well-done ; spacy, slick, careening around funk, electronic fuckery, overripe exotica, spy movie slinking, every cool thing about the 60's. Ripe fodder for the sampler (see: Hula Rock, Tribe via Madlib), familiar by backalleys. What a strange, fun diversion 3.5/5

#2370 The Grifters - Crappin' You Negative

So Spotify has a nasty habit of putting the reissue date as the release date on albums - and when I thought this was from 2016, it really threw me. It was so 90's, but so...different. The fact it's actually from the 90's makes it a little easier to deal with, but it's still a hidden gem, a total classic.

It's an album packed with offkilter tunings, startstops and subtle swerves, turning you off to turn you on -- whether that's by design of an artifact of the barebones recording? That recording, all the liveness of vintage Guided By Voices, those yelps and hitches and lofi buzzes, maybe a dasha Zappa? When your starting point's itself an erratic array, well, good luck.

Guitars rumble up, hitch, hook, simmer, zig when counted to zag, etc. It's an album I struggled to review - at first repelantly half-off, uncannily detuned, but...something. Scheherazade holding on long enough to catch my ear with its abstract argument, an album you felt exhausted by at track 3, and ready for a hundred more by track 13. An unknowable thing, a daringly, subtly inscrutable screed of guitar noise and plaintive yelping, Pavement cousins once removed and close enough for kissing, battering its influences, if any, into unrecognition --- a move worth all of your attention. Reeling still, can't tell if I like it or love it, points for keeping me wondering, hours and hours on -- candidate for one of the top albums of the decade, whichever its really from, if I can ever pull apart its straightout knots. These guys might be fucking geniuses. I can't even tell 4.5/5

#2369 Flatbush Zombies - 3001: A Laced Odyssey

Murky, doomed hip hop, boasts and swagger cut with existential doubt and a slow fall backwards into the abyss. Lines slurred and dragged, the production too, giant superbass wobbles on the interludes, druggy, detuned experimental shift from a few years ago circling back. Heavy trip 3/5

#2368 Krispy Kareem - Poussine

Krispy Kareem list Dad Rock as one of their main genres on bandcamp, and maybe they meant it as a self-effacing bit of irony, but it's bang fucking on. All those kids who grew up on Pavement and Built to Spill and Nirvana are dads now - underground/alternative is retro as fuck, banging out disaffected, wandering, brittle little bangers is downright square.

And these kids dug it out of the depths and found a way to keep it fresh, just when we thought we'd run out of ways to express yourself with guitars and as little as possible. They're spirited, burned out, the production paperthin and throbbing, every song squirming out from under itself, wandering down some alley to wonderland.

This rock thing keeps on lurching 4/5

#2367 Kraus - End Tomorrow

Kraus blows your mind out with paradoxes turned to 11 - loudness without aggression, fullness without complexity, straddling the start-stop boundaries between cuts, glitches, static, drum-fills, overblown clips, and shimmering guitar glazes, all neverending, a blitzkrieg of sheer-cliff decays, slathered with wordless distorted exhalations, neon chemtrails streaking. It's Lightning Bolt's daylight ghost, Deefhoof's pretty cousin, a war between 200 undead Zooropas - stressful, borderline painful, looped around the horn to a drowned catharsis 4/5