WEEK 4

Directions To See A Ghost
The Black Angels

The name Black Angels taken as it was from the Velvet Underground conjures a certain kind of negation of spirituality. They are not a band you dance to or clean up after your cat to or make love to your significant other to. We’re given directions to see a ghost and they lead us down a cavernous labyrinth of blind alleys across whose twists and turns we’re reminded of how fuzzy guitars and authoritative beats spell doom for other sounds. You listen to the Black Angels with the same attentive dread as you do a tin cup preacher, the difference is one’s noise warns of the apocalypse while the other refreshes us with the promise of change. GRADE: A-


B.R.M.C.
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

A rémoulade of blues funk power pop cooked down to a sludgy ooze. BRMC proves to be as essential as the primordial slime from which all music and life springs and no less organic. Listen to it at maximum volume to scare kids and old people alike. GRADE: B+

This is Happening
LCD Soundsystem

Sometimes music will come along and so perfectly speak to us that it is difficult to express properly exactly how it makes us feel. Is it enough to say that one finds in the music a kind of metronome for the soul? Maybe. Maybe not. The highest compliment I can think to give that which those who are unimaginative enough to be paid to label things call 'dance music' makes us want to move for the most obvious and sublime of reasons. Though our feet move long in advance of us understanding why. This is Happening is full of reasons to dance and the simple edict as if echoing in the beat belies a fantastic complexity that makes one want to listen to it again and again. Just ask my downstairs neighbors. I have heavy feet. GRADE:A