#3515 The Sound Defects - Volume 2

3.5/5 organs and horns and beats and muttered sentiments - smooth with a dusty, drifting cool. Better than most DJ Shadow-and-descendant albums, but not especially inspired. Tough to see why you'd listen to this over even Deadringer

#3514 Duval Timothy - 2 Sim

4/5 lived experience of African-British diaspora seeping, pouring through atmosphere, bracing like a dam breaking again and again. So clearly expressed, floated under your nose by the softest clouds of piano until you can't help inhale and fall

#3513 Sparks - Lil' Beethoven

3/5 regarded as Sparks' big modern masterpiece, but nah.

Repetition's the name of the game, again, this time over lots of strings. It's an inventive stab at not-rock. The opener's brazenly minimal as they come, and there's some knotty little jokes woven into the repetition; Carnegie Hall shows what it tells, and Your Call's Very Important to Us is a fun Zooropian piece of lived microdystopia.

But Sparks' streak of bitterness crosses a line into embarrassing this time out, ranting about modern bands and suburban homeboys, whining endlessly about women who only care about money -- it's gross, and undercuts the detached cool the rest of the album worked so hard to build

#3512 Sparks - Balls

3/5 it's easy enough to assign intentions to Sparks' previous albums of the era, but this is a weird one. Leaning right into big dumb British electronica a half decade too late, it's not quite a pop grasp, but its hard to imagine anyone being especially proud of it. Not awful to listen to exactly, but hollow and forgettable

#3511 Sparks - Plagiarism

3/5

This is bullshit! you can hear the Maels shout, finally getting a critical crumb or two, after decades of intermittent brilliance

So sure make those great old songs again, with strings, electronics, and faith no more (?) The album kicks off with, what else, a remake of Pulling Rabbits Out of A Hat, their ode to empty excellence, now swarthed in every flourish a symphony can afford. This Town Ain't Big enough, in particular, benefits from all that excess, pumping an overblown song past bursting into delightfully ridiculous.

But nobody needs hard-driving dance remixes or tacky guitar-driven versions of the rest, sounding cheap, like copyright-dodging karaoke versions. Unnecessary, if strangely understandable

#3510 King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard - Fishing for Fishies

3.5/5 cosmic, goofy boogie all night long, the boys sound like they're having a right good time, loose as the Dead with a darker tinge and a staggering stomp. As good a combination of the band's heavy and light sides as you'll find

#3509 Ty Segall - Deforming Lobes

4/5 a couple bars of riffing in, Ty stops the song, clarifies how a drum fill goes, apologizes, and the band kicks back in on the one. 15 seconds later, the fill comes. Budda-budda-budda-buppppa. Duly teased, it hits like fucking lightning.

And its the critical moment of the whole record, this moment of vulnerability, recovery, and  _payoff. A testament to how tight the band it, and how loose the sound feels -- its a thrill.

Segall's not a born frontman. His songs aren't _about much other than an excuse to stomp and shred. But that band's in top form here, so loud, so dedicated, 35 minutes is right. This isn't a concert experience, because that's not the sound. It's moment to moment to moment and that 8 songs is all it takes to give you the idea so