#2380 Autechre - Amber

Golden age 90's IDM, with all the offkilter beats and abrupt tones that make this music _difficult_, that make listening to it feel like _work_. But unlike a lot of the lazy Aphex-toos of the era, there's just enough warmth there, just enough structure, to make the work worth it. Even as my jaw's on edge I see the structure that drives my desperation, marvel at its impossible geometry, and every now and then fall into its sense of space 3.5/5

#2379 Herbie Hancock - Death Wish OST

Nah, outside of the kickin opening theme, this is all movie background music, and it shows, lying limp without the scene its setting, Herbie Hancock or not. There's flashes of jazzy genius, but not nearly often enough where you'd ever really put this on, publicly or privately 2.5/5

#2378 Haywyre - Two Fold Pt. 2

I'm a total sucker for this album structure, two pairs of counterpoint songs, a pivot song, and two more pairs of counterpoint songs -- this is the kind of shit I'm always working into mixes. And I think it matters - song structure as poetry's a burgeoning theoryof mine.

Related point courtesy of Jo: song lengths as sentence lengths, good albums as good paragraphs.

And in the actual tunes --- a post-dubstep mix of big beats, swoops and whomps and swoops and wanders, inventive, sweeping, unconventional, unpinnable, knob turns and overlays and melodic doodles, shades of white whale Feed Me, it's got chopped funk and a lot of soul, packed to the brim with little inventions (an honest to god solo piano track in the endgame), untethered to any particular style, tough to sum up, impossible to predict, and totally something I'm gonna revisit. That structure's not a gimmick, it feels put in place to help you navigate, all the subtle references and kaleidoscopic styles and lurking architecture of Jonathan Blow's The Witness, as sound 4/5

#2377 The Front Bottoms - The Front Bottoms

I kinda get the appeal - there's a generalizable detail-packed personalness to Sella's lyrics, a smart sad friend to get you through smart sad days, Mountain Goats for the terminally mundane. But a lot of its just overdone, slathered in asides and flourishes, until it feels more performative than sincere. Take this from opener Flashlight:

She's says a lot of the kids we graduated with are now homeless
which puts them in mad shady situations, with mad shady people
if not every day, then on an every-other-day basis 

It starts off kinda poignant, but what does that "every-other-day basis" bit buy you? Nobody talks or thinks like that. It's forced, baroque everydayism, and the album's *packed* with lines like that. With nothing musically to save it (the broad trumpet notes get old, the propulsive tempos disappear) it's not something I'd revisit 2.5/5

#2376 Silkworm - Firewater

Pretty standard post-Pavement desperation crunch. Lyrics endlessly circle alcoholism and being a band, but other than a brilliantly detailed Miracle Mile, its mostly vague, forced-clever and generally 90s-overwrought. The main draw's the meaty, wandering bass and shimmering, twisting guitar tones. That guitar sound, it keeps moving, transforming, floating like metallic mist before hitting like a fist, while the moaning vocals play backup 3.5/5

#2375 Neil Young - Peace Trail

Such an understated album, no big productions, no long tracks, no epic solos, just a rumination, not quite outraged, simmering at the state of things, keeping time, grimacing at the world going by. The audacity of Psychedelic Pill's been beaten down, one foot in front of the other.

The flourishes of robotic autotune are, again, understated, welcome. The grumble of guitar a welcome splash of reason, tracks like Peace Trail and My Pledge strike a striking balance. But so many other songs ring with Get Off My Lawn, of step behind step-keeping - Indian Givers thudding on its one-note joke, Texas Rangers and John Oaks too blunt to resonate, My New Robot pure gimmick.

Young sounds left behind. And maybe that genius in its own way. Aren't we all. But I can't help but hope for more, for one last charge against the night 3.5/5

#2374 Haux - All We've Known

Very pretty, but too by the book. Too Bon Iver, too Postal Service-lite, too full of familiar plinky guitars and infinite reverb and sensitive confessions to sound anything more than familiar 2.5/5