Weekly 4 Pack

Week One 5/1/10

Congratulations
MGMT


Is the fact that this album makes me wonder what a psychedelic Carol King record would sound like a good thing? Maybe. I read an interview with these boys in RS a while back in which they claimed to be getting wrecked on drugs because they were living like rock stars ironically. Have we reached the point in society where irony can be traded as cheaply as its made? Maybe. Does the fact that one can hear the bones of Muzak in almost every track mean there is something cloyingly artificial going on here? Maybe. Will I change my rating after my wife gets a copy of this and I listen to it a few hundred times driving around the north shore this summer? Maybe. Will my rating go up or down? Maybe. GRADE: C-



Here Lies Love
Fatboy Slim, David Byrne


Like its heroine's shoe closet, the album contains too much variety to please every set of ears (or feet for that matter, though long stretches are agreeable danceable in a NYC 70's disco kind of way, meaning it is easy to imagine white people gormlessly shuffling their feet). Unfortunately, the one constant is a kind of schmaltzy, musical theater execution. A team of extraordinary voices has been gathered to sing about a subject that not one sounds overly passionate about. Still, there is enough charm here, enough Byrneian love of rhythm and harmony to warrant a listen. GRADE:C


Volume Two
She & Him

Hangover music occupies a quite necessary niche in the life of a drinker. I should know I am one. With Vol. 2, She and Him have concocted a collection of songs to soothe one's aching mind as he contemplates whether or not he's going to be able to keep his eggs down, after a night of living like Ike Turner or at least Jamie Turner. "Me and You" is the real stand out track. It mixes dust bowl gospel chanting with dreamy, western Burt Bacharach like orchestration. This album steels one for the long day of recovery ahead. And yes junior, I'll have that coffee now. GRADE: B

Born Again Revisited
Times New Viking


Low-fi like it was recorded under several blankets that smell of patchouli, Times New Viking is certainly the best band ever to be named after a made up font. Organs buzz and crawl over jagged guitar lines, the vocals are more like echoes heard from the near distance, and yet it all manages to sound urgent and finished. A sheen of rough-hewn beauty creeps through on nearly every song. GRADE: B+