WEEK 3

Nobody Said It Was Easy
The Four Horsemen

Just listened to this one for the first time in more than a decade. I remembered thinking only the first two songs were good. Now I see I was wrong. GRADE:D

The Bachelor
Patrick Wolf

Garage chamber music from outer space? Pacha's last cowboy DJ on mescaline? I'm not sure how to describe Patrick Wolfe, except to say his music takes you on a tour of a world that would be better never to exist but only because flesh is weak and we are all the heroes if only in his dreams. Easily one of '09's best records (I know it was a pretty dire year). GRADE: A

Preliminaires
Iggy Pop

Actually, I found this strange piece of work, combining as it does two of my favorite humans (the Ig and Houellebecq) an irresistible curiosity at first. On subsequent listens, I've been enchanted by its subtle beats as well as Iggy's well rehearsed French phrasing. The songs melt together into a jazzy river of unfilled dreams. The album somehow manages to capture the ennui of the expat American arriving in the left bank only to realize he is decades too late and that Paris is gone.

It doesn't compare with the stooges but stands alone. Fish Tank, if that is his real name, owes me a pint in Boston. GRADE:B

Swim
Caribou

Moving from 60's psychedelic pop to 70's psychedelic funk, Caribou has made yet another album that I will listen to again and again. I suspect it will not fail to improve my mood each time I do so. There is something in this approach to music that calls to my soul. Sure, much of it is electronic but it manages to sound more organic
by way of the ENIAC as designed by Leonardo's dreams. Dance the dance of the cosmos to this one, it is the soundtrack we'd all like our lives to live up to. GRADE:A

WEEK 2

Straight To Video
Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments

Lighter than punk, heavier than garage the unfortunately (or perhaps inspirationally) named Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments offer the kind of full frontal straight ahead rock that sounds more melodic and controlled than it has any right to be. The guitars often sound as though they are being played by a cheese grater rather than a pick. There is as much steel as skin in the percussion and the bass spends most of its time trying to keep up. The lyrics (as embodied by "Outside My Scene") both celebrate and lament the life of the drunken bar band. Straight to Video represents a kind of joyous bacchanal held during the dark night of a lost soul where anything is possible but we’re not disappointed when only rock happens. GRADE: B+


This Nation's Saving Grace
The Fall


I always loved stretching out in my parent's basement and so apparently does Mark E. Though the basement where he recorded This Nation's Saving Grace sounds as though it is located beneath Vivian Westwood's OBGYN practice and above a 18th century smithy's hut. Punk doesn't disappear on this album so much as grow from the angry growl of the band's 70's work to a more impressionistic growl that portends the electronics and sonic layering they would increasingly adopt to redoubtable ends in the coming years. . GRADE: A-


Through The Windowpane
Guillemots

Plays great on a ride through the heart of Manhattan. As I learned when my now wife, then girlfriend took our first trip together. I was amazed at her boldness, demanding that we drive all the way to our midtown hotel. So this review will be colored in the best way, as all music we share with lovers is, unless of course they leave us.
Avant-pop seems like a fair label if only because back in the day in a church somewhere near, say Cologne someone said the same thing about Bach. That's right I'm comparing this to Bach.
"Redwings" is the highlight here, balancing as it does harmony and emotion; those exquisite layers of gossamer. GRADE: A-


They Live On The Sun
Cloud Cult


These clouds float by looking all too familiar. Fuzz, beeps, blips and whole lotta meh. Listeners are better advised to listen to the Clouds Taste Metallic by The Flaming Lips. GRADE: D+

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+