#2688 Eater - The Album

Covers in punk.  A whole thing there. If you're gonna do it, at least fuck it up.

Eater drags Sweet Jane over the coals, pumping adrenaline into its wistful regret; puts manic uncoolness in the horny desperation of Queen Bitch; and shit, they just just straight knock 3 years off of I'm Eighteen and leave it feeling freshly reckless. The originals follow suit, throbbing along at triplespeed. Eater doesn't have time. They're a band of the moment -- what's punk but a fuckyou to the past and future anyway 4/5

#2687 Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile - Lotta Sea Lice

When you look at Barnett and Vile, its obvious that they should work together and obvious that it probably wasn't going to quite... work. At least not at first.

Barnett's an incredible singer and lyricist who brings enough guitar punch to save her from singer-songwriter doldrums. But she needs that intimacy and presence, she's not one to carry a song with her guitar work (Depreston excepted).

Vile's a meandering mumblepuss, and again, a just-ok guitar player, chopswise. But he gets by on feel, just about the best out there when it comes to weaving atmosphere and stretching space and time with some magical sense of patience and tone.

Which is to say, here's two artists who aren't wizards musically, but who have their own magical thing going that makes them special, and the kind of thing that requires a real commitment to vision. Can that commitment survive collaboration?


Nah. Mostly not. The unsurprisingly front-sequenced Over Everything is the one exception - god its gorgeous, that stretched-out Vile pacing, Barnett meandering over top, and their own special guitar tones dancing over top.

But mostly it's just a bit Travelling Wilburys -- blunted, Courtney's sense of personal relation undercut by Kurt's involvement, with no sense that the songs can bear to wait for his sense of timing to unfold.

It's telling that the two other songs that work are On Script, where Barnett gets full vocal duties, and the guitars surge and pile and sweep away, and the seemingly Barnett-solo Peepin' Tom. The songs where the two sing together just don't land, sapping that sense of the actual.

Yet.

I can see it. These are two pointy objects that don't mesh together naturally. But I can see it working, and I hope they stick with it. This feels slapdash. They both need to bow to eachothers' quirks -- let Courtney sing, let the songs run long, and the whole thing could be a sprawling gorgeous mess. I'd die for an album with 4 ten-minute songs, where her words push and give way to spiraling guitar interplay into forever -- that'd be an album that played to their strengths. This is not that album, yet 3.5/5

#2686 Larry Williams - Here's Larry Williams

It's easy to forget how rock and roll ran its entire course around 55'-57' and disappeared for at least as long.  In retrospect, rock and roll is here to stay / will never die / is only just now dying in 2017. Hah! Hah hah!

By 1957 Larry Williams put out his biggest hit, Short Fat Fanny. It's good fun, but already as played out and derivative as imaginable. Nicking longtime friend Little Richard's delivery, the big dumb sax of a dozen songs, and altogether rolling around in rememberthat. Doubt it? It's right on the sleeve, the lyrics dropping references to Blueberry Hill, Long Tall Sally, Heartbeak Hotel, Tutti Frutti, Hound Dog, Blue Suede Shoes, Jim Dandy, and a little bit of gettin' Fever. It's as overtly postmodern a song as the era's got to offer...57! It's kinda brilliant that roundabout way.

But Williams is riding the last wave in, singing about a brand new dance, and great balls of fire, flogging the innuendo that lead us to rock with only the barest concession the the second entendre. Hell, the serpent eats itself mid-collection: he even calls back to his own Bony Moronie on another song.

It's all good rockin stuff, but man, no wonder people thought rock was over and done as the 50's came to a close - this's a feast of freshly rotten nostalgia 3/5

#2685 Satoshi-Makoto - CZ5000 Sounds Sequences

Listen here!

All made on one synth, blahbitty meow.

The result's perfectly pleasant, but familiar: shades of Eno, Gas, Selected Ambient Works, and general nice-tone chinscratchery. There's a juicy, pastel glow to the sounds, but they're in an awkward middle ground between ambient and melodic. There's a great album in this sound, but this isn't it 3/5

#2684 Yaeji - Yaeji

Cool-warm vocals, a shimmering sense of hipness, glowing synth tones -- all worth something. But this feels detached, clinical even in its grasps at connection. Human music 3/5

#2683 Future and Young Thug - Super Slimey

as I said to Aaron:

man, I don't like this, and I feel like its the same underlying thing that makes me not like a lot of modern hip-hop. its not that i hate autotune, maybe I just dont like the way its done here? And the production seems suitable for being really stoned to, but definitely doesn't get me excited. what am i missing?

2.5/5

#2682 Midnight Oil - Deisel and Dust

Much ballyhooed, downright anointed in the Australian press - maybe for its unflinching look at the blood on the hands of the white man. Noble, but wrapped around a bunch of clunky, repetitive songs, leaning hard on anthemic choruses, cloying synths, and gated snares to make totally anonymous pop music with a thin shell of Big Message 2.5/5