Review Round-Up: September 2013

John Wizards
John Wizards

By day, John Withers makes music for TV commercials.  In an utterly uncynical way, that fact feels directly relevant to the 25-year-old Cape Town native's remarkable debut album, if only in that, like the stuff of rapturous ad-man fantasies, this is music that's instantly, innately, wordlessly evocative (of summertime, adventure, tropical travel, first love, you name it...) while at the same time invitingly open to your own subjective experience.  It's directly personal in a broadly appealing way.  It's music that just makes you feel really good.  One big happy kaleidoscope of sounds that, on paper, comes across as impossibly frantic, John Wizards is a hydra-headed hybrid of disco-funk, airy electro, casio-enabled dub reggae, bliss-pop, jazz fusion, township jive, high-energy Shangaan dance music and playfully abstract, organic house.  Withers' wizardry is in somehow spinning that pan-continental patchwork laundry list into a dreamily relaxed, infectiously bubbly, hugely melodic whole, even shifting gears multiple times within a single track (as on opening showcase "Tet Lek Schrempf") without feeling forced or overambitious.  Somewhat inevitably, given the (welcome, if curiously understated) presence of Rwandan vocalist Emmanuel Nzaramba, it's tempting to think of this as a chillwavier, more autotune-friendly variant on Sweden-to-Malawi post-globalists The Very Best, but a closer reference point is the preternaturally summery "jamz n jemz" of Rhode Island sample-meisters Javelin – although it's hard to imagine that cheeky duo coming up with anything as earnestly pretty as John Wizards' beatific, Mali-inspired closer.

Ane Brun
Songs 2003-2013

A major star in her native Norway, and gaining substantial traction in her adopted home-base of Sweden – 2011's It All Starts With One, her biggest hit to date, overcame deep-rooted ancestral rivalries to make her the first Norwegian to top the Swedish album charts – warbly-voiced folk-pop songbird Ane Brun offers this abundant retrospective of her first decade; equal parts victory lap and crash course for newcomers.  Across the pond, with less context, it makes a somewhat unwieldy introduction – in either event, one could question the necessity of a thirty-two-track career-spanner from an artist with only four proper LPs under her belt (she's also issued two live albums, one record of demos and another of reworked duets, all amply represented here.)  But while a leaner set might've been more forceful, everything here is still emphatically worth hearing.  If the smattering of duets (with Peter Gabriel and José Gonzalez, among others) and covers (PJ Harvey, Nina Simone, Arcade Fire, a particularly magical take on Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors") break the spell ever so slightly, it's merely a testament to the power of Brun's own creations, and the haunting, slightly dark expressiveness of her singular voice, which, as this collection affirms, have been consistent from the very start.

originally published in Magnet Magazine

King Krule
6 Feet Beneath The Moon
[Folk-Punk/Singer-Songwriter]

Archy Marshall has a voice that double-dog-dares you to like it: audaciously blunt, brashly accented, borderline tuneless.  It might not raise an eyebrow if the 18-year-old Londoner – who sports the suitably garish sobriquet King Krule – were bleating alongside some squalling agit-punk outfit, but it's another story hearing him dribble his prickly-sour urban outsider poetry atop the chilled-out, noir-ish coffeeshop jazz that fills his remarkable debut; all languidly strummed major-seventh chords and the occasional dusty, sampled backbeat.  Give it some time, though, and damn if that disjunct doesn't just make 6 Feet Beneath The Moon (True Panther), in all its rough-edged beatnik spontaneity, all the more heartbreakingly poignant.

Jessy Lanza
Pull My Hair Back
[Pop/Electronic]

When Junior Boys started swirling svelte tech-pop with the seductive pathos of mainstream R&B, they sparked a quiet revolution whose influence and potential are still continuing to crystallize a full decade later.  It was only a matter of time before an aspiring electro-soul diva would enlist Jeremy Greenspan's production talents for herself, as Jessy Lanza does on her effortlessly elegant, house-damaged Hyperdub debut.  Pull My Hair Back plays, predictably and thrillingly, like a female-fronted JBs record, clinching that impeccable icy romanticism, although Lanza – a breathier, more restrained vocalist than Greenspan himself – makes it an especially discreet, coyly intimate affair.

Factory Floor
Factory Floor
[Techno/Dance/Industrial]

DFA Records' September album releases offer sharply contrasting visions of the label's post-punk/disco aesthetic: where Holy Ghost's sleekly aspirational synth-house is lush, smooth and warmly uplifting, Factory Floor's long-awaited long-playing debut is anything but.  The London trio have made some impressive friends lately – members of Throbbing Gristle, Joy Division and The Fall, among others – and it's not hard to hear why within these seven nightmarish extended workouts: sparse, deathly funky lockgrooves of loose-cannon percussion and acid-washed industrial squelch that churn like Kraftwerk at their bleakest, or like a hookless twist on the Knife's Silent Shout – spiked with Nik Void's steely, demented mutterings.  Your body may be powerless to resist; just try not to surrender your soul.

Califone
Stitches
[Americana/Experimental]

After a mightily productive first decade, Califone fell atypically silent for the last four years.  So Stitches ( Dead Oceans) needn't add anything to their well-stocked trick-bag to come as an especially welcome return: in this case, a rest is at least as good as a change.  Even if it's (debatably) the band's most streamlined, song-oriented offering yet, the album's crux remains their distinctive confluence of sounds: scrappy folk-blues and roughed-up digital artifacts; rusty slide-guitar scrapes, found-object percussion, lusty group harmonies and weird little noises, plus Tim Rutili's familiarly inscrutable, Pollardian language-play.  Sublimely strange business as usual for a group that still sound like none other.

Arp
More
[Art-Pop]

Arp (Alexis Georgopoulos) used to make hazy, minimalist synth music informed by 1970s German Kosmiche, so his third outing – an album that scampers from quaint music-hall piano ditties to buzzy guitar stompers, princely harpsichord filigree to swaggering saxophone chorales, with a majority of tracks featuring vocals – comes as quite a curveball.  His heart may remain largely in the same decade – Berlin-era Bowie and "rock" Brian Eno are obvious touchstones – but More (Smalltown Supersound) is more slippery than a simple summation of its influences: both breezy and lush; beautifully tailored and casually cluttered, it plays to both sides of the experimental/pop divide with a studied determination that feels gloriously effortless.

Arctic Monkeys
[Rock]
concert preview

Arctic Monkeys somewhat infamously saddled their debut with a breathless, cheekily cocksure mouthful of a title (to go along with their schoolboyish larf of a bandname, maybe) so A.M. (Domino) – the band's fifth full-length in just over seven years – is the closest they've come to a self-titled effort.  The name fits: the album is similarly stripped down; not just back to basics but, arguably, more primevally basic than they ever were to begin with, particular on a ferocious front-loaded run of snarling, blues-damaged riff-heavy rockers.  No longer the frantically antsy, punk-inclined lads of their early days, they've found their way to swagger and groove along with maturity and control; incorporating lessons from recent tourmates The Black Keys and former producer/guest axeman Josh Homme, plus the classic rock canon they've increasingly internalized (one song mentions the Stones by name; another cites "War Pigs" instrumentally but no less overtly.)  Those hip to Alex Turner's perennially punning ways may note traces of glam, psych and swooning, Beatlesque romanticism (the winkingly titled "No. 1 Party Anthem") but nothing you'd really call A.M. pop – the album's blackened heart, however, is unambiguously dedicated to the seedy, sex-soaked noir of the early A.M. hours.

Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
[Rock'n'Roll/R'n'B]
concert preview

A missing link in the lineage of wild-man rock 'n' soul shouters that runs from Little Richard and Screamin' Jay Hawkins to latter-day contenders like King Khan and Black Joe Lewis, Boston's Barrence Whitfield (born Barry White; stage name embellished for obvious reasons) built up a mighty reputation for tearing up stages (and record grooves) from the mid-80s and into the 90s, before mellowing out a bit and generally disappearing from view by the turn of the century.  But the man and his band of Savages – including several vintage punk rockers from the original line-up who'd been out of the fold for decades – are back in action, and on the evidence of the in-the-red, don't-you-dare-call-it-retro Dig Thy Savage Soul (Bloodshot), at least as hungry and unhinged as ever.  The new record's dozen scorched, greasy originals and covers of twisted record-bin obscurities muck up the lines between primal '50s R&B and jump-blues, gritty '60s soul, Nuggets-style garage rock and spirit-of-'77 punk just enough to remind you that there really wasn't any difference in the first place.

Wavves/King Tuff/Jacuzzi Boys
[Rock/Punk]
concert preview

In a goofy way, Wavves' Nathan Williams seems like the dependable, seasoned old timer among this stacked, tri-coastal scuzz-rock triple-bill, even though both of his tourmates have actually been kicking around a bit longer.  Maybe because he's shown the most signs of "maturing" beyond his (admittedly pretty puerile) blazed, beach-dissing skate scum origins – the San Diegan's recent Mom + Pop bow, Afraid of Heights, ups the fi once again and stands as his most presentable, earnest slab of grunge revivalism to date.  Florida trio Jacuzzi Boys followed a similarly slicked-up trajectory (relatively speaking) for their self-titled third long-player (Hardly Art) – their last album was called Glazin', but that title feels a little more applicable here – but their slack, surfy fuzz-pop still retains a certain neanderthalish thump despite the occasional baroque trumpet or glockenspiel.  As for Vermont's Kyle Thomas – his (self-appointed) majesty King Tuff – he flexed some stadium-worthy glam and power-pop moves on last year's triumphant, eponymous breakout, but 2008's excellent Was Dead (recently reissued on Burger) proves he and his drooling guitar can be just as credibly royal in scrappier surroundings, and just as much freaky, endearing fun.

Danny Brown/Action Bronson
[Hip-Hop]
concert preview

Danny Brown and Action Bronson popped up a couple years back as two of the most charismatic, appealingly quirky MCs in the underground.  Also, two of the most exquisitely filthy minds (and mouths) around.  Since then, the Queens-repping former chef Bronson has sacrificed some of his initial charm over the course of several generally on-point but increasingly graceless mixtapes, lately abandoning the goofball gourmet food metaphors that helped make his incessant, piggish sex brags a bit easier to stomach.  This year's Saaab Stories (Vice) is straight-up icky from the cover on down.  Meanwhile, Detroit's squeaky-voiced, frizz-headed Brown has proven himself as insouciantly good-natured as he is gleefully vulgar, making friends left and right with countless irrepressible guest verses and his inimitable hipster-raver thrift-store swag.  The forthcoming Old (Fools Gold) is a typically batshit party out of bounds, with everyone from A$AP Rocky and Freddie Gibbs to Purity Ring and Charli XCX  on the invite list and an amped-up Brown switching at will between ghetto life real talk and pill-popping debauchery, equally comfy atop Oh No's feisty, crate-digging boom-bap and next-level neon trap bangers from Rustie, A-Trak and SKYWLKR.

Austra
[Electronic/Pop]
concert preview

Next to the spartan black, white and mustard-yellow abstraction adorning 2011's Feel it Break, the cover of Austra's new-ish Olympia (Domino) is a startling thing to behold: a shot of bandleader/vocalist Katie Stelmanis, casually slumped in a pale pink pantsuit, her fire-orange hair popping almost palpably against the gaudy green and turquoise of a bucolic painted backdrop.  The Toronto outfit effect a similarly bold and vibrant shift here musically: without abandoning their basic operating template – crisp, statuesque electronics undergirding Stelmanis' otherworldly, demi-operatic siren wails – they've expanded upon their alluringly witchy but rather bloodless debut with an astonishingly human set of lush, colorful, classicist house-derived pop that suggests Hercules and Love Affair as fronted by Fever Ray.  Actually scratch that.  Even if Olympia isn't afraid of brazenly courting yet more dull-edged comparisons to mid-period Knife (consider the creaky gender trouble of "I Don't Care (I'm A Man)," or the island rhythms and synthetic timbales of "We Become"), it comes as an affirmation that Austra are their own singular entity, one that sounds increasingly comfortable in their own skin even as they venture beyond their icily reserved comfort zone.

Zola Jesus & JG Thirlwell
[Art-Pop]
concert preview

For many artists, releasing an album of old songs redone with a string section would be a clear sign of having run out of ideas.  For forbiddingly dark art-pop chanteuse Zola Jesus (Niki Roza Danilova), it feels like a vital move in the ongoing development of her musical approach: further stripping back the more off-putting and esoteric aspects of her sound (specifically, her inclinations toward lo-fi noise and industrial music) and downplaying her self-consciously gothic image manipulation to highlight the simple beauty and emotional potency of her songwriting and her singularly arresting voice.  Versions (Sacred Bones), which grew out of a performance last year at the Guggenheim Museum, is not exactly Sarah McLachlan territory – Danilova's co-conspirator here, who's written some highly complex and captivating arrangements for string quartet and the occasional drum machine, is experimental music stalwart JG Thirlwell (a.k.a. Foetus) – but it is tantalizingly close.  All those arty industrial vampires must be awfully confused.

Laura Mvula
[Pop/Vocal]
concert preview

The most striking moments on Laura Mvula's debut, Sing To The Moon (Columbia) – and there are many – come when the singer is surrounded by multiple copies of herself, swirling and swelling in thick, knotty, jazz-steeped choral harmony: the arresting a capella opening of "Like The Morning Dew," the lustrous baroque-pop ba-ba-bas of easy-flowing AM ballad "Is There Anybody Out There," the blithely defiant Swingle Singer stomp of "That's Alright," surrounded by blaring horns and martial drumbeats.  Sure, her voice is potent enough in the singular to do the soulful solo singer thing just fine, but she stands decidedly apart from the post-Winehouse parade of Emeli Sandés, Lianne La Havases, and so on.  A conservatory-trained composer and active choir director who brings her full arranging prowess to bear on her pop output, Mvula earns her overused Nina Simone comparisons more by hearkening to the icon's stately, sophisticated orchestral jazz and classical chops than her more frequently invoked earthier side.

Majical Cloudz
[Experimental/Singer-Songwriter]
concert preview

It would take surprisingly few tweaks in his musical approach for Devon Wright to come off as the new Rufus Wainwright.  He's already got the Montrealer roots, the slyly indelible sense of melody, the arresting, emotionally vulnerable, piano-based songwriting (electric piano, in this case, and admittedly more of an emo-indie confessional stripe than Wainwight's archly witty Tin-Pan-Alley-lineage pop) and, most crucially, the quavering, swooningly romantic voice.  Instead, being the type to pal around with arty electro-weirdos like Grimes and Doldrums, Wright has joined forces with production accomplice Matthew Otto, engaged in a bit of absurdist aesthetic misdirection via the unconscionably fey moniker Majical Cloudz, and cluttered the internet with a small smattering of weird, arty electronica.  The bewilderingly direct Impersonator (Matador), though, turns out to be only minimally weird (the title track's lovely, swirling wordless-vocal-sampling backdrop is about the extent of it), minimally, unobtrusively electronic, and arty only in a minimalist, radical-expression kind of way, a tack that's the conceptual launching point for live sets reported to be starkly, almost harrowingly intimate.

Dustin Wong/Dodos
[Experimental/Rock]
concert preview

Mild-mannered delay pedal phenom and longtime Baltimore scenester Dustin Wong (who recently relocated to his native Tokyo) has established a highly specific and uniquely rewarding approach to solo guitar composition/improvisation over the course of his three exploratory, loop-based Thrill Jockey opuses.  His latest – the carefully titled Mediation of Ecstatic Energy – is being billed as the conclusion of a trilogy, but it feels equally like a springboard for something new.  Whereas 2010's Infinite Love borrowed its name from a mantra, it's worth stressing that the first word of this record's title is not "meditation."  It may have its moments of daydreamy bliss – like when oddball-pop princess Takako Minekawa turns up to coo atop the lulling, airy final track – but this is easily the most adventurous, combustible and (at times) aggressive solo Wong has ever sounded; piling on fragmented, ping-ponging melodies in increasingly unpredictable, occasionally jarring ways, and expanding his timbral palette so much that it feels almost limitless.  Wong's visually unassuming but aurally resplendent performance should make a tangy and startling appetizer before the bread-and-potatoes indie rock comfort food of San Francisco duo Dodos, whose pleasingly meticulous new one, Carrier (Polyvinyl), finds more pedestrian but still highly redolent uses for the electric guitar.

Julianna Barwick
[Experimental/Ambient]
concert preview

Julianna Barwick's music has often felt impossibly delicate and personal; like a series of small, secretly whispered wisps of reverie that might just dissolve if they drift too far from the solitary world of her own imagination – perhaps the private paracosm suggested by the title of 2011's The Magic Place.  But for her third full-length album (and debut for macro-indie Dead Oceans), the Louisiana-bred, frequently bedroom-based Brooklynite took a trip to Iceland, island of vast glacial vistas, mythic intensity and general all-around epicness.  Also, not coincidentally, the homeland of her current tourmates and spiritual forebears Sigur Rós (i.e. the guys who almost single-handedly brought New Age to the indie/alt-rock masses), whose sometime confederate Alex Somers has helped impart a newfound expansiveness and grandeur to Barwick's ethereal meanderings.  The Somers-produced Nepenthe sees her augmenting a typically infinitesmal array of airy, wordless vocalizing with orchestral textures (courtesy of Sigur string sisters Amiina), piano, an additional cohort of choristers and even (fleetingly) discernible English lyrics, while also exploring considerable compositional space and movement beyond her usual pile-ups of endless inward-leaning loops.

Date Palms
[Instrumental/Ambient]
concert preview

You don't need to see the parched, limitless landscapes adorning the cover of The Dusted Sessions (Thrill Jockey) – or, for that matter, 2011's Honey Devash – to suspect that Bay Area zone-out unit Date Palms have a thing for deserts.  Taking their name from a species that does grow in California but which originated and proliferates most widely in the Middle East, their patiently unfurling drone-rooted compositions/explorations equally evoke the broad, arid expanses of both hemispheres, particularly now that they've expanded from a duo to a quintet; adding the otherworldly thrum of Michael Elrod's tanpura and the dusty rumble of Noah Phillips' electric guitar to Marielle Jakobsons' keening violin and the mirage-inducing shimmer of Gregg Kowalsky's synthesizers.  (Curiously, it's Ben Bracken's electric bass that often provides the most palpable forward movement, against the anchor of the hazy, slowly meandering collective ambience.)  The augmented line-up doesn't necessarily mean that more is going on in the group's music; rather, it makes the relatively little that does happen – the gradual swells and ebbs; the careful, mantra-like melodic elaboration – happen all the more richly.

Grails/Lilacs & Champagne
[Post-Rock/Experimental]
concert preview

Last year, when Alex Hall and Emil Amos, two members of Portland's heavy-psych post-rock unit Grails, branched off to explore sample-based cut-and-paste trip-hop as Lilacs & Champagne, it felt like a leftfield move even considering their main band's stylistic omnivorousness.  Hot on the heels of that duo's sprawlier, increasingly stoned and solo-happy sophomore jaunt, Danish & Blue (Mexican Summer), Grails' Black Tar Prophecies, Vols. 4, 5 & 6 (Temporary Residence) – which follows the same curious hybrid format as a similarly titled 2006 release; reshuffling one previously released EP and the band's portion of an earlier split release alongside entirely new tracks) – offers evidence that the group had already begun incorporating similar MPC-jocking methodologies well before Lilacs' on-record unveiling: "I Want A New Drug," from 2010's Vol. 4 EP, kicks off with an ancient, warped-and-warbly choral snippet, while "Invitation to Ruin" could pass as Rjd2 on a particularly dozy day.  Otherwise, while little here approaches the doomy drone extravagances of some past outings, it remains the case that nearly nothing is off-limits for these guys – acoustic or electric; jazz or folk; delicacy or force; beauty, terror, spiritual transendence or soundtrack-ish schmaltz – and they make almost all of it work extremely well.

originally published in Philadelphia City Paper

Review Round-up: August 2013

Sarah Neufeld
Hero Brother

Instrumental solo violin albums aren't typically a huge sell in the indie music marketplace, although being a full-time member of Arcade Fire and Bell Orchestre ought to give Sarah Neufeld a considerable leg up.  However they find their audience though, the eleven gorgeous pieces making up Hero Brother richly deserve it.  These are nuanced, intrepid explorations of melody, texture and emotion that make just as much sense approached as "pop" as they do when apprehended as "modern classical" or avant-garde music; drawing equally on post-rock, Reichian minimalism and the violin's dual lineage as a vessel for both art music and folk tunes (check the Appalachian-style fiddle threnody winding its way through "Right Thought.")  Neufeld has toured with saxophonist Colin Stetson, which is fitting on numerous levels (the two musicians share a city (Montreal), label (Constellation), and an enviable sideperson-to-the-indie-stars status) but especially so in musical terms.  Her playing, while technically impressive especially in its masterfully controlled expressiveness, may not have quite Stetson's jaw-dropping virtuosity, but her pieces have a highly comparable mesmeric, minimalist intensity and a similarly broad emotional range in spite of their deliberately restrained compositional means.

Moderat
II

Apparat and Modeselektor were never an intuitive match.  The Teutonic troika's self-portmanteau'd 2009 debut (following a 2003 EP) sounded like a tug-of-war between the former's inward-looking synthgaze and the latter duo's bass desires and twitchy, punch-drunk monkey business, with intriguingly wide-ranging if somewhat inconclusive results.  Their charming third-time regrouping manages a newly tenable truce, staking out a middle ground between dancefloors and dreamscapes akin to the one Jon Hopkins established on his billowy Immunity, wherein club-friendly thumpers are imbued with an uncommon warmth and emotionalism.  There are still a lot of styles and sounds surveyed here, with the prevailing aesthetic core – dub-leaning techno, digital shoegaze blanketry and the reggae-flecked residue of post-Burial dubstep – variably augmented by glitch, broken-beat, wobble-skank, whispery ambience and bouts of improbably po-faced pop-soul.  (About that... Apparat (a.k.a. Sascha Ring) has a surprisingly buttery croon for an avant-electro auteur, and while singlehandedly replacing the first album's circus of guest vocalists is mostly a smart move, his full-on, filter-free turns on "Bad Kingdom" and "Damage Done" could be a bit jarring for some sensibilities.)  If there's a complaint to be leveled it's that the odd threesome might have smoothed out their differences a little too much.  But it works: refreshingly, II never feels confused about where it wants to be, nor in a hurry to get someplace else.

originally published in Magnet Magazine

Jagwar Ma
Howlin'
[Rock/Pop/Dance]

Madchester – the ravey turn-of-the-'90s UK scene that prefigured big beat's fusion of acid house with rock'n'roll – doesn't get much love (or thought) nowadays.  But Aussie duo Jagwar Ma carry a bright, burning torch for the era on their tremendously fun, surprisingly fresh-sounding debut, finding equal space for chunky breakbeat loops and drowsy, sweetly harmonized choruses; hook-infested garage-pop and Simian Mobile Disco-style bleep workouts.  Sharing some DNA with their countrymen Tame Impala, and more with Primal Scream's recent output – though looser and dancier than either – Howlin'  (Mom+Pop) is an electrified flower-power feel-good freak-out par excellence.  Bring on the Andrew Weatherall remixes!

Robbie Fulks
Gone Away Backwards
[Country]

Robbie Fulks is a staunchly "alternative" country artist primarily in that his back-catalog is fairly rife with irreverence – sneering swipes at the Nashville establishment as well as goofball comedic posturing.  Musically, he's long been a traditionalist, even downright retro.  Gone Away Backwards (Bloodshot), the Chicagoan's first proper album in eight years, runs the gamut from bluegrass to Bakersfield, boasting crackerjack harmonies and some seriously mean pickin'.  And Fulks' songs follow suit with uncharacteristic earnestness, tackling archetypal country themes (nostalgia for bygone, simpler times; doomed romance; mortality; alcohol) with wit, poignancy and style, but – even at their most thickly-twanged and sentimental – nary a wink.  

Horse's Ha
Waterdrawn
[Folk]

The Horse's Ha – the intermittent folk concern of Chicago-based multi-taskers Janet Bean (Freakwater) and James Elkington (The Zincs, Brokeback) – pack their second full-length with plenty enough curious tales and anthropomorphic diversions to make good on their funny-sounding moniker.  But Waterdrawn (Fluff & Gravy), which flits between British and American idioms; jovial and haunting overtones, is best when the duo's spry whimsy is countered by a stark, fragile beauty, particularly when (as often) Elkington's dry, Bonnie Billy-ish baritone balances Bean's angelic soprano in sublime, delicate duet.

Dawn of Midi
Dysnomia
[Experimental]

Jazzers by background and, at least ostensibly, instrumentation – upright bass, piano, drums; all treated as fundamentally percussive objects – Brooklyn trio Dawn of Midi are really more like avant-garde minimalists with some seriously mind-bending chops, while their music, with its metronomic lock-grooves and precise, incremental builds, feels like an acoustic transposition of abstract, sparsely mechanistic techno.  Throughout the continuous nine-part suite that comprises Dysnomia (Thirsty Ear), the tension ratchets up from crisp Reichian calm to ominous, palpable agitation, while the mesmeric onomatopoeia of drips, clicks, blats and blips just churns ever steadily ahead.

Marek Hemman
Bittersweet
[House/Techno]

German producer Marek Hemman performs a decidedly unshowy but still, somehow, magnificent balancing act on his excellent second full-length, Bittersweet (Freude Am Tanzen); ten tracks of matter-of-fact tech-house that's studiously detailed but never dry, cheerful but not aggressively upbeat, pleasantly melodic but never at the expense of a trusty underlying thump and wiggly, quantized syncopations.  He has a light touch with coloration, deftly weaving in a dollop of churchy organ, a stray vocal sample or two, some strums for the comedown.  More than any other straight-ahead electronic record I've heard this year, this one is just a pure, consistent, quiet joy.

AlunaGeorge
Body Music
[Pop/R&B]

Thin-but-potent-voiced chanteuse Aluna Francis and two-step/Timbaland-loving producer George Reid – collectively known as (wait for it...) AlunaGeorge – combine '90s-style diva-soul with crisp, sophisticated techno-pop rather more artfully than they combine their names.  Body Music (Vagrant), making good on several monstrously hooky early singles, slots easily in between several other 2013 breakouts –Chvrches' electro-pop perfectionism; Autre Ne Veut's arty R&B throwbacks; the neon neo-garage of their London-based pals Disclosure – although the particular combination they nail here most readily recalls a spunkier, femme-fronted update of Junior Boys circa 2004.

v/a (Greco-Roman)
We Make Colourful Music Because We Dance In The Dark
[Dance/Electronic]

The title of wrestling-obsessed London/Berlin party crew/de facto record label Greco-Roman's first compilation offers a (longish) shorthand for sort of good-natured house and sparkly tech-pop they typically favor.  We Make Colourful Music Because We Dance In The Dark fills two bulging discs (hits; remixes) with spine-loosening goodies, encompassing Disclosure's divafied neo-garage, Hackman's cheeky, twitchy R&B re-tweaks and Grovesnor's joyriding yacht-soul.  Fittingly, many highlights come from mainstay/Hot Chipper Joe Goddard, including 2011's still-epic "Gabriel," Four Tet's playfully sweeping overhaul of "Apple Bobbing" and several recent collaborative thumpers, plus stray slow-jam "Home Time."

Honey Ltd.
The Complete LHI Recordings
[Pop/Reissue]

Following their great Lee Hazlewood campaign, the reissue champions at Light in the Attic records turn their attention to the Hazlewood-endorsed one-album wonder Honey Ltd.: four brassy-voiced, Detroit-bred knockouts who somehow managed to condense all that's great about the era's music – Motown-derived soul-funk intensity; a fiery counter-culture spirit; rapturously ornate baroque-pop arrangements; surprisingly spacey, far-out production, and intricate girl-group harmonies as rich and luscious as their namesake (sort of like the Mamas sans Papas) – into the dozen high-quality originals and imaginatively rendered contemporary standards (Laura Nyro's "Eli's Coming"; a brassy, funked-up "Louie Louie") on their criminally forgotten 1968 opus, unearthed with several attendant singles on The Complete LHI Recordings.

Belle & Sebastian
The Third Eye Center
[Pop/Indie]

While Belle & Sebastian's early singles and EPs were aesthetically discrete entities, every bit as canonical as the albums themselves, those from the period collated on The Third Eye Centre (Matador) – roughly  2003-2011 – felt, at the time, decidedly more ancillary.  But that doesn't make these nineteen B-sides (including three remixes) any less delightful.  This was, remember, the era when the band really loosened up and started having fun, and the spirit running through these bold, colorful takes on '60s pop, blue-eyed soul, funk, ska, bossa-nova, euro-disco, country, etc. is too infectious to remain solely the province of die-hards.

Octopus Project
Fever Forms
[Indie Rock/Electronic]

Bleepy, happy Austinites The Octopus Project – who'll bring their theremins, modular synths and other assorted carnival machinery to Johnny Brenda's this Tuesday – make music that's sort of electronic, sort of math-rock – if all their word problems involved counting sugary candies and cartoon characters – and all-the-way new-wavey weirdo pop, filled with the playfully manic spirit of Enon and Deerhoof.  Fever Forms (Peek-a-Boo), their album number five, stretches their typically instrumental approach to include several winsome, Stereolabby vocal numbers, making the proceedings all the more goofily infectious.

Run The Jewels (El-P + Killer Mike)
[Rap]
concert preview

Coming from a pair of decade-deep hip-hop vets who notched two of last year's fiercest full-lengths – El-P's Cancer4Cure and Killer Mike's El-produced R.A.P. Music – the thirty-minute internet freebie Run The Jewels (Fool's Gold) could've been a breezy, low-stakes victory lap.  Instead it's a slam-dunk: ten all-killer cuts of beats, rhymes and righteous fury that actually betters those twin 2012 career highs.  It's a master class in goonishly gory trash talk and no-sell-out truth-saying; a touching display of buddy-buddy tag-team synergy; a chest-rattling (anti-)Watch the Throne for the 99%.  The phrase "run the jewels," reiterated mantra-like throughout the record, is an LL Cool J reference betokening the duo's old-school-head bona-fides – but it could also be taken as a sly side-glance at that gilded 2011 Jay/Kanye luxury pageant.  Yeah, Yeezus and Magna Carta... have their moments, for sure, but they look pretty lumbering next to these guys.

Justin Timberlake/Jay-Z
[Pop/Hip-Hop]
concert preview

All hail, your (self-appointed) Summer Legends draw near.  Frankly, Jay Z (whose recent dehyphenization will hopefully last no longer than his putative "retirement") probably overstates his season-specific iconicity, "Dear Summer" notwithstanding: in fact, ten of his dozen albums have dropped in autumn.  If anything, he's a legend for all seasons.  He's not exactly ruling this one though; at least not on the merits of the fluent, familiar, pace-holding Magna Carta...Holy Grail (Def Jam), a perfectly proficient effort – though thematically conflicted and curiously free of obvious single fodder – that pointedly fails to validate its hubristic billing.  [(Incidentally, if he wants to convince us his "interest in art" transcends crass consumptionism and celebrity worship, he might want to learn the names of some artists besides Warhol, Basquiat and "Picasso Baby" – the Italian vacay itinerary he runs down on typically charming "Fuckwithmeyouknowigotit" notably omits mention of any museum visits.)]  As for Mr. Timberlake, who gave us the indubitably beach-ready likes of "Señorita" and "Summer Love," then promptly left us cold for six summers running: the lavish eight-minute suites of his still-simmering 20/20 Experience (RCA) campaign are distinctly improved by the present swelter, though there's nothing to rival, say, "Blurred Lines" (in the optometry pop sweepstakes?)  Does the fact that he's already courting controversy with pre-release singles from Vol. 2 mean that "Let The Groove Get In" – summer-jam-wise, the under-aired, Jacko-jocking highlight of Vol. 1 – won't get its time to properly shine in the sun?  But hey little lady: one summer don't make a legend, and there's no denying these two have the hits to last us well past winter.

Shuggie Otis
[Soul/Funk]
concert preview

Shuggie Otis' third and (to date) final album, the psychedelic-soul reverie Inspiration Information, was overlooked in 1974 – either despite or because of a singularity of vision that put it in a class with Sly and Stevie's contemporaneous efforts; nodding equally to Love and electric-era Miles while presaging Prince's similarly idiosyncratic tinkerings.  Decades of semi-reclusive obscurity later, a groundswell of crate-digger interest and a ballyhooed 2001 Luaka Bop reissue made it a widely-regarded if retroactive classic (even though Otis remains best known – and certainly best-paid – for the Brothers Johnson's cover of his peerless "Strawberry Letter 23." )  It's one of pop's great underdog-triumphant stories, and this year's added some surprising new chapters: a second high-profile reissue (this time on Epic/Legacy) came bundled with Wings of Love, a fascinating assemblage of cuts recorded between 1975 and 1990 (plus one live, potent acoustic slide-blues tune from 2000) veering from scorching funk-rock to treacly synth-prog to epic, flowery power ballads, plus a few Information-caliber groovers.  Better still, Otis is touring, for the first time in forty years (!) – by all accounts knocking 'em dead with his storied instrumental prowess (and sartorial finery), and generally making up for lost time.

Bad Rabbits
[Funk/R&B]
concert preview

You don't get too much call for plush, freaky booty-funk these days, which is why Bad Rabbits might initially come off as hopelessly out of step, or else like an overgrown, frat-friendly bar band.  But the Boston-based funk squad, who hearken equally to the heyday of Zapp, Parliament, Cameo et. al. and the libidinous strut of New Jack Swing, have the confidence and the chops to do their own thing, and do it damn right.  Their recently self-released party-starter American Love is a more than serviceable showcase for frontman Dua Boakye's gritty falsetto and good-natured sleaze, and the band's thick, nasty grooves, with nary a synth squiggle, bass slap, or chuckle-worthy come-on out of place.  But you know it's just a teaser for the kind of ruckus they can kick up in person.

Diarrhea Planet
[Rock/Punk]
concert preview

A lot of the fun of this Nashville sextet's sophomore album, I'm Rich Beyond Your Wildest Dreams (Infinity Cat), comes from never knowing precisely which strain, or era, of hard rock the band is going to draw from next: classic '70s punk or power-pop, '80s hair metal or underground noise-rock; '90s grunge and alt-rock or turn-of-the-'00s pop-punk and emo...  Not too many bands can pull off sounding like Thin Lizzy or Van Halen one minute, Sonic Youth or Dinosaur Jr. the next and Blink-182 or Green Day a third (this particularly, thanks to Hodan Dickie's joyously snotty vocal style) – in this case it involves a deceptive level of craft and songwriting versatility, plus a heaping ton of raw, fun-loving attitude, plus a line-up featuring no fewer than four guitarists.  "Skeleton Head" even proves they can get kinda pretty when the occasion calls for it.  Meanwhile, they've managed to make a name for themselves with their raucous, no-holds-barred live shows that comes astonishingly close to eclipsing the name they've made for themselves by, well, naming themselves "Diarrhea Planet."

Speedy Ortiz
[Indie Rock]
concert preview

The dream of the alternative slacker '90s is alive and smirking in Western MA, where Speedy Ortiz' Sadie Dupuis (I'm hoping that rhymes) wrangles her wry poet's diction and girly-tough, conversational coo – the kind that can't help but recall Liz Phair, Tracy Bonham, and/or Mary Timony – around whip-smart, self-skewering lyrics ("my mouth is a factory/for every toxic part of speech I spew") while her bandmates carve out scraggly, sinewy art-pop shapes redolent of – take your pick: Sebadoh, Built to Spill, Bettie Serveert, Sleater-Kinney...  But while Major Arcana (Carpark) is an undeniably fun excuse for hip nostalgists of a certain age to drop knowing college-rock name-checks, it's also a huge amount of fun full stop, packed with enough personality, caustically hilarious verse and grungy-melodic hooks to preempt any potential accusations of stock retro posturing as just so whatever, dude.

Daughn Gibson
[Country/Rock]
concert preview

Daughn Gibson has the kind of voice that almost sounds like a parody of itself: a big, booming, Johnny Cash-caricature of a baritone, which he doesn't shy away from using to maximum swooping, drunken-Elvis effect.  Me Moan (Sub Pop) the Carlisle, PA native's follow-up to last year's breakout debut, is chock-full of twangy guitars and blustery, borderline campy barroom crooning, but this isn't your granddad's country music, or even your hip uncle's alt-country.  It's more like the sort of thing Beck might make if he decided to indulge his found-sound sample-hop tendencies and his Lee Hazlewood-inspired troubadour fantasies equally on the same record; all misty-eyed honky-tonk balladeering and spooky, rough-hewn backwoods menace peppered with rickety drum loops, eerie vocal samples and weird, snaky guitar licks, plus one particularly resonant bagpipe riff.

Valerie June
[Folk/Blues/Americana]
concert preview

As you might expect from an album produced by a Black Key (the in-demand Dan Auerbach), Pushin' Against A Stone – Valerie June's mainstream debut following three self-released efforts – makes it clear that the Tennessee native can knock out some swampy, riff-driven modern blues-rock with the best of 'em.  But that's hardly all: she also takes on a hypnotic acoustic folk lament ("Workin' Woman Blues") that's curiously laced with Afrobeat-style horns; a sparse, creaky Appalachian lullaby ("Somebody To Love") with tattered fiddle and banjo accompaniment; a loose '60s girl-group shuffle ("The Hour") complete with wall-of-sound glockenspiels and ghostly gospel back-ups – and that's just the first three tracks.  While her voice, a reedy, high lonesome sounding thing, is potent enough, it won't knock you flat like, say, Alabama Shakes' Brittany Howard (June's hairstyle – a massive, Medusa-like nest of dreads – is another matter.)  But not too many singers can hopscotch between styles and decades, running down the whole damn Americana gamut from bluegrass to gospel, fiddle tunes to funk, and make it sound so artless, ageless and achingly truthful.

Laura Marling
[Folk]
concert preview

"I will not be a victim of romance," Laura Marling asserts early on Once I Was An Eagle (Ribbon Music), the fourth full-length of her young career.  But the evidence calls that declaration into question, as – not for the first time – she spends much of this sixty-minute song cycle poring over the ashes of a failed relationship (or several), imbuing it with an obsessive, allegorical weight.  Not that she casts herself as a victim, exactly: here she is a master hunter; there the titular bird of prey – to her erstwhile lover's dove, no less – trysting with Satan, conversing with water spirits, spinning bewitching but ineffectual love-spells... before winding her way toward guardedly optimistic reflections on lost childhood innocence and, ultimately, the uselessness of language itself: "words are sleazy/my love is better dumb."  The album's heady mixture of ferocity, bitterness, mysticism, rumination, nostalgia and joy come across musically too; building on her last record's florid jazz-folk explorations with stark, raga-influenced open-tuned meditations, often spiked with forceful Middle Eastern percussion and organ flourishes.  Of course, her guitar prowess is as formidable as ever, and she remains an utterly distinctive, continually astonishing vocalist.  While all of Marling's albums to date have included the first person pronoun in their titles, she's never made one this deeply, uncompromisingly personal.

Pure Bathing Culture
[Dream-Pop/Indie]
concert preview

Pure Bathing Culture's moniker (inspired by a Swiss spa), and the title (Moon Tides) and sun-streaked, coastal cover photo of their debut album (Partisan) all suggest a strong aesthetic link with the beach-suffused blog zeitgeist of 2009-10; a high tide for both chillwave's glazed retro-electronia and the shimmery slacker indie-pop of bands like Real Estate and Beach Fossils.  It's an apt connection: this is indeed luscious, langorous music, a swooning, semi-synthetic soundtrack for both nostalgia and indolence.  But several things set the Portland duo apart from the keyboard-toting, surf-evoking dream-pop throngs.  There's the shiny yet soft-focus production, with a crispness rendering their music as gleaming as it is swirly (and earns them countless Cocteau Twins comparisons.)  There's their memorable, strongly classicist way with melody, which makes their songs as distinctive as their sound (and helps earn them equally many comparisons to Fleetwood Mac. )  And then there's Sarah Versprille's voice: a bewitchingly rich soprano that frequently launches into fluid, semi-operatic quaver, placing her in the same soft-synth-pop lineage as Frankie Rose, Twin Sister's Andrea Estella, Austra's Katie Stelmanis and even Stereolab's Lætitia Sadier.

Ducktails
[Indie Pop/Psych]
concert preview

Across countless cassette recordings and his first three full-lengths as Ducktails, Matthew Mondanile gradually weaned himself from offhand, chillwavey bedroom sketches toward more "proper," conventionally presented indie-pop songs.  The Flower Lane (Domino), his most populous, populist foray thus far (featuring, among other pals, full-band contributions from fellow Jerseyites Big Troubles), is easily the most emphatic manifestation of that trajectory.  While brushing undeniably close to the sedate, suburban shimmer of the guitarist's better-known "day job" band, Real Estate – one could easily imagine the jangle-filled likes of "Ivy Covered House" or "Academy Avenue" among their property listings – it also ventures into frillier, colorful lite-pop and psych territory, scoping out some loose, chewy electric piano space-funk, patchouli-tinged sax solos, and a couple of spiffy, retro-redolent boy-girl duets.

Shigeto/Heathered Pearls/Beacon
[Electronic]
concert preview

From Matthew Dear to Gold Panda, School of Seven Bells and Adult., the better-known artists on Ghostly International – the Michigan label that's arguably the most visible face of American electronic music – tend to be relatively danceable, or at least reasonably energetic.  This package tour is a showcase for the imprint's softer side, beginning with the submerged, soporific soundscapes of Heathered Pearls – aka Ghostly A&R man Jakub Alexander, whose 2012 full-length Loyal is a naptime-ready study in aqueous textures and hypnotic, minutely-shifting loops – and the crisply moody, whisper-soft electro-soul of Brooklyn duo Beacon.  Topping the bill, Detroit native (Zachary) Shigeto (Saginaw) should liven things up a little, although his music is mellower than you'd expect from a producer who's also a percussionist.  No Better Time Than Now, his latest foray into jazzy IDM/instrumental hip-hop hybridity – looking to LA beatsmiths Flying Lotus and Daedelus as much as hometown heroes like Dilla and Dabrye – is his most vibrant, musically expansive outing yet, incorporating layers upon layers of his own impressively deft drumming (it'll be interesting to see how that works out live) while toeing an amiable line between head-nodding and nodding off.

Ulrich Schnauss
[Electronica]
concert preview

Between Boards of Canada's triumphal return and Jon Hopkins' breakthrough Immunity, it's been a good year for fans of broadly palatable, darkly atmospheric electronica.  You might credit Ulrich Schnauss with getting that particular ball rolling back in January, when he released A Long Way To Fall (Domino).  His first full-length in six years (discounting several recent collaborations), it finds the Berlin-based, New Age-indebted producer peeling back much of his familiarly enveloping shoegaze haze to reveal sweet, shiny-clean, laser-guided synth melodics that hearken to prime '90s IDM and '80s darkwave electro-pop; from the candy-coated pseudo-industrial churn of "The Weight of Darkening Skies" – his titles here have a distinct flair for the melodramatic – to the cheerfully chintzy Tinseltown traipse of "Like A Ghost In Your Own Life."

Maurice Fulton
[Disco/DJ/Electronic]
concert preview

A heavy-hitting House Nation lifer with mounds of cred and a perennial, boundary-blurring wandering eye, Maurice Fulton's rap sheet reaches back to Crystal Waters' 1994 mega-smash "100% Pure Love" (he's credited with "additonal drum programming") and encompasses solo ventures under a dizzying array of goofy aliases (Boof, Sticky People, Eddie and the Eggs, Ladyvipb...) and production work behind German neo-disco diva Kathy Diamond, Tanzanian-British Afro-soul funkster Mim Suleiman and uber-weird aggro-dance duo Mu (with his wife, Mutsumi Kanamori.)  In nearly all of the above instances, as well as his innumerable remixes (particularly for circa-2004 indie-approved dance revivalists like The Rapture, Annie and !!!), you're more or less guaranteed bucketloads of thick, rubbery basslines, scattered showers of playground-style percussion, and plenty of generally unpredictable fun.  A Blink Of An Eye (Running Back), released earlier this year under the sobriquet Syclops (ostensibly the work of three fictional Finnish ladies) runs a typically loopy gamut from quirky, percussion-stuffed disco-funk to squelchy acid techno and Squarepusher-esque prog-fusion, any or all of which could be up the Melbourne-based DJ's sleeve tomorrow night.

originally published in Philadelphia City Paper

Review Round-up: July 2013

Mayer Hawthorne
Where Does This Door Go?

As brilliant and uncanny as his earlier work's spot-on Motown evocations were, Mayer Hawthorne's too savvy to get stuck in a revivalist rut.  True to its venturesome title, the tux-rocking soulster's third opus keeps pushing things forward, in a backward-looking sort of way: retaining his old-school suavity while blowing up the retro rulebook; mix-and-matching the sort of blue-eyed Doobie Brothers yacht-soul broached on his previous album with smartly contemporary, hip-hop-edged production (complete with 2013's most fun-having guest artist, Kendrick Lamar.)  Another modernizing touch – a sprinkling of rap-style skits (one entitled "Problematization") contextualizing the easy elision between debonair courtship and booze-fueled hook-up culture – offers a perhaps unfortunately retrograde wrinkle to Hawthorne's dubiously chivalrous ladies man persona (see also: the man-eating anti-heroine of the deliciously grooving "The Innocent.")  But these are quibbles: Hawthorne's songwriting, crisply appointed arrangements and effortlessly gratifying croon – especially that gleaming falsetto – feel more casually confident than ever, making This Door a third straight slam-dunk.  Extra credit for a robot-themed love song that gleans fresh mileage out of an overused metaphor.
originally published in Magnet Magazine

Chance the Rapper
[Hip-Hop]
concert preview

Twenty-year-old Chancelor Bennett, alias Chance the Rapper ("please say 'the Rapper,'" he entreats, making even his no-brainer moniker into a catchy couplet) is having more infectious fun than just about anyone in hip-hop since the Pharcyde or maybe prime Ludacris.  His colorfully eclectic Acid Rap mixtape bounces between sounds like the DJ at a multi-generational block party, from throwback horns, hammonds and harmonies to chilled-out jazzy psychedelia, Chicago juke-style beats and crowd-friendly classic soul samples.  He's not joking about the rapper part either: the kid can spit, his deft, generously witty flow (punctuated by rowdy, excitable yelps) recalling a goofier Kendrick, a more level-headed Wayne, a slightly more relatable Danny Brown.  And while he keeps things mostly light-hearted he's not afraid to get deep; transcending weed-rap platitudes with some real talk on the complex emotional fall-out of Chiraq's summertime street carnage, and also tackling one of hip-hop's rarest commodities with several legitimately affecting love songs.

Future Bible Heroes
[Pop]
concert preview

Stephin Merritt, indiedom's very own curmudgeonly Cole Porter, is on a tear.  He steered his flagship Magnetic Fields back to electropop-land last year, which could make the return of long-running synth-pop sideline Future Bible Heroes feel slightly anticlimactic.  But Partygoing (Merge), if slight, is an utter delight; his most satisfying batch of songs since the Fields' 2008 Distortion.  The titular concern (presumably one of Merritt's least favorite activities) is dispatched with some brio, but we also get abundant wit (and atrocious advice) on such topics as parenting ("Keep Your Children in a Coma"), suicide ("Let's Go To Sleep (And Never Come Back)") and, naturally, alcoholism ("Drink Nothing But Champagne," featuring goofy caricature voices – of David Bowie and Aleister Crowley, no less!)  That most Merritt fans could probably imagine these numbers quite accurately based on their titles alone makes them no less worthy additions to the canon.  The twist with this tour is that Merritt himself isn't actually along for the ride – leaving us in the capable hands of veteran TMF vocalists Claudia and Shirley, plus Christopher Ewen, whose ever-sparkling synth arrangements have been sorely missed.  Honestly, though, he'd probably just spoil the fun anyway.

Camera Obscura/She and Him
[Indie Pop/Retro]
concert preview

Camera Obscura decamped from Merge to 4AD around the time of She & Him's 2008 debut, so the two retro-steeped indie-pop outfits never lined up as labelmates, but they're as well-matched on tour together as strawberries and whipped cream on a picnic blanket, and just as sweetly irresistible.  All the more so coming off two of this summer's most satisfying helpings of musical comfort food: the Glaswegian veterans returned after a fraught four-year absence with the typically enchanting Desire Lines, while the West Coast twosome carry on with their third numbered installment of reliably breezy cream-puff retro-pop.  Popular perception might, not inaccurately, differentiate between the groups as, respectively bookishly brooding and blithely bubbly; leaning toward literary introversion on one hand and Hollywood romance on the other – but they've definitely got more in common than not, from their deft, casually graceful understanding of '60s pop sophistication to the softly twangy altos of their respective doe-eyed frontwomen: She's Zooey Deschanel, whose pitch-perfect evocations of Patsy, Skeeter, Lesley and Lulu both affirm and transcend her readily-stereotyped quirky hipness, and Camera's perennially moony Traceyanne Campbell, whose bewitchingly heartbroken croon makes her, at least in certain circles, just as much of an icon.

Smith-Westerns
[Rock/Pop]
concert preview

Listeners who checked out after the raucous, no-fidelity Nuggets-isms of the Smith Westerns' gleefully scuzzy debut may have trouble recognizing the  sun-glazed shimmer of their third long-player, Soft Will (Mom + Pop), as the work of the same band.  Granted, the Chicago threesome have come a ways since 2009 in several respects – for one, they've long since exited their teens – and the glammy rave-ups on 2011's  Dye It Blonde (which now seems explicitly transitional) represented a roughly equidistant midpoint between them.  Still, it's tough to think of another band who've made such a dramatic, decisive sonic transformation after just three records (though it's fun to try: Liars come to mind; Primal Scream, maybe Talking Heads, arguably Radiohead...)  Who knows where they'll end up next, but the hazy, almost country-ish psych-pop mode they've arrived at for now feels more genuine and lived-in than simply another costume change: nostalgically redolent but not too overly retro, recalling the warmth of Big Star's sweetest jangles; the lushest moments of The Wrens' Meadowlands, and even (as on soaring instrumental "XXIII") classic Pink Floyd.

Savages
[Punk/Rock]
concert preview

If punk rock classically operates on a spectrum between abandon and austerity – arguably, its greatest moments are carved out of the tension between those two poles – the scuttlebutt on Savages places them squarely toward latter end.  There's a cultivated emphasis on discipline and restraint all over the London foursome's self-presentation, from the emphatic anti-cellphone/camera policy at their live shows to the grandly worded political poetry of their manifestos and the moody, monochrome design of their tersely titled Matador debut: Silence Yourself.  Yet this is ultimately a self-abnegation of life-affirmation; austerity as a means toward truer, more complete abandon – after all, what is abandon but a rejection, a literal discarding of those infinite seductive mundanities interfering with actually experiencing your life, right here, right now.  While the album displays a masterful control of post-punk dynamics, from visceral fury to controlled, smoldering contemplation, it's also not hard to hear why they've described their sound as "written for the stage."  And while the writing they've inspired is, like their music itself, notably full of angles, Savages are undeniably, above all, a band with a point; sharp, burnished and vital: if you want to feel it, you'll just have to be there.

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists/Waxahatchee
[Rock/Folk]
concert preview

Ted Leo hasn't gifted us with a Pharmacists album since 2010's typically excellent The Brutalist Bricks (Matador), although he has lately been making moves with something called #BOTH – a duo project with fellow '90s-vintage pop'n'roll lifer Aimee Mann which, as a songwriting team alone, sounds like straight fire.  Then again it's not like we ever need an excuse to catch New Jersey's beloved indie rock patron saint in action.  If you do, well, there's always the unbeatable "it's free."  Better, it's an opportunity to catch Waxahatchee, aka recent West Philly transplant Katie Crutchfield, who takes a similar array of DIY punk, pop and folk ingredients to create something just as vital and charismatic filtered through her own sweetly affecting, curiously (Southern?) accented voice (she shares her musical moniker with the creek beside her parents' Alabama lake house.)  After the sparse acoustic intimations of last summer's roughly recorded, Cat Power-ish American Weekend – which still cuts like a faint whispering breeze through stifling heat – she stretched out on the equally personal but just-cleaner-enough Cerulean Salt (Don Giovanni), which includes the band-enhanced, more conventionally summery fuzz-pop of "Coast to Coast" and jaunty shuffle "Lips and Limbs."

Jamaican Queens
[Art-Pop/Indie]
concert preview

Right off the bat, Jamaican Queens' debut album, Wormfood (Notown), gives the impression that it'll be something of a downer; from the blood-dripping cover model to the mordant humor of its title.  (The corresponding eponymous tune is, indeed, a fittingly macabre would-be nursery rhyme.)  But the Detroit-based trio (a new project from former members of the bands Prussia and Our Delay) are not the types to let things get quite so straightforward.  Yes, they've professed a strong affinity for the grisly Southern rap of Gucci Mane and Three Six Mafia, to the point of labeling their music "trap-pop" – a tag which may be slightly overstating the case, although it's certainly one ingredient in the group's rather erratic post-industrial beatscape.  While mortality and violence are indeed frequent concerns here, along with unflinchingly frank sexuality, the overall effect is less that of a bloodbath or a morbid wallow than a sort of emo-glam confessional, a sometimes tortured, decidedly cynical ("I've begun to think of love as an impossibility/I've begun to think of sex the way I do money"), yet still ultimately affecting set of observations on modern love and friendship.  Musically speaking, that leads to delightful cognitive disconnects like the standout "Kids Get Away," whose peppy sunshine strums and eruptive electro-bubblegum breakbeats intercept a quizzical lyric seemingly following the aftermath of a violent assault (and perhaps burglary) which somehow leads to the come-on "I wanna get in your shower."  The band's open-eared experimental-pop playground incorporates subtly-deployed samples from an astonishingly broad array of sources – from Odetta, Roy Orbison and ELO to D'Angelo, Portishead and fellow Detroiter Matthew Dear – although it'd be hard to peg any of them as direct influences on their sound.  Save for some undeniable echoes of Bowie's Thin White Duke in Ryan Spencer's vocals (particularly at their most dramatically soulful and strangulated) the most readily viable stylistic reference points are a roll-call of inveterate indie inscrutables: Islands, Phedré, Black Moth Super Rainbow, maybe Yeasayer at their screwiest.  It's a scraggly heap of misfits, but these Queens are laying a strong claim to wear the crown.

Julia Holter/Jessica Pratt
[Art-Pop/Folk]
concert preview

Classically-informed chamber-pop chanteuse Julia Holter made waves among academically-inclined listeners with last year's fascinating if rather chilly Ekstasis, which drew on both ancient and high modern literary sources.  Loud City Song (Domino), her third album in as many years, seems to poised to carve her a slightly larger niche when it sees release next month – while no less arrestingly strange, it's notably warmer, more outgoing and rhythmically dynamic.  For now, Saturday's performance should preview the album's inclinations toward mid-century pop, dreamy ambience (sometimes both at once, as on a velvety cover of Brenda Lee's torch classic "Hello Stranger") and Joni Mitchell-esque collaborative excursions into modern jazz.  In contrast, the placid finger-picking and sweetly affectless alto of her fellow Californian Jessica Pratt feels practically artless.  Pratt's self-titled debut (Birth) would pass with nary a squint as a lost, turn-of-the-'70s pastoral folk gem – Vashti Bunyan being the nearly inescapable point of comparison, though you'll also hear a far less jumpy Milk-Eyed-era Joanna Newsom.

Lenka
[Pop]
concert preview

After the effervescent, piano-led chamber-pop confections of Lenka's self-titled debut – with its cutie-pie breakout hit/licensing goldmine "The Show" – and the zingy, electronic leanings of 2011's more eclectic but equally winsome Two, the odds were stacked pretty high against the breathy-voiced Australian pop-sprite suddenly turning to dark, moody art-rock, or even mildly miserable balladeering.  Indeed, despite its title, Shadows (Skipalong), turns out to be her most good-natured, sentimental outing yet.  Inspired in part by her newborn son, Quinn (whose in utero heartbeat thumps softly under one track), it's an album of lullabies, sweetly swaddled with a mixture of orchestration and gentle electronics: elegantly crafted but nevertheless resoundingly soporific.  Consider bringing a pillow and curling up on the World Cafe Live floor – at least it's (partially) carpeted.

When Saints Go Machine
Infinity Pool
[Pop/Electronic]

Danish electro-art-pop outfit When Saints Go Machine approach their third album as if determined to out-weird themselves – and they do a pretty convincing job; bookending Infinity Pool (!K7) with an incongruous (if head-nodding) Killer Mike feature and eighty out-of-nowhere seconds of trebly breakbeat rave.  In between comes a maze of meandering melody and textural abstraction (limned with Nikolaj Vonsild’s elusive, vaguely Kermit-ish falsetto) that only occasionally approaches the sublimity of 2011's curiously elegant Konkylie.  But there's real beauty to be found, underneath all that woozy circuitry – and, bizarrely, hooks too.  Besides, can you really deny a song called "System of Unlimited Love"?

Bitchin' Bajas
Bitchitronics
[Drone/Psych]

The word "bitchin'" probably isn't the first thing that comes to mind when you think of ambient music.  Neither are ripping distortion solos.  But that's how Chi-town dronemeisters Bitchin Bajas roll; shredding righteously through the heart of the gooey, synthy unfurlery pervading the expansive opening cut ("Transcendance," natch) on Bitchitronics (Drag City).  Later it's flutes and Frippertronics ("Inclusion"), tambura-esque Alice Coltrane hat-tips ("Turiya") and other, less discernible shoals of cosmic resonance – the basic gist being these cats take an active, full-throttle approach to spiritual surrender and serenity, and piff on the pure-minded, chin-stroking beauty of your typical, mincing ambient clinicians.

Walton
Beyond
[Electronic/Bass]

The recent UK bass/post-dubstep trend of warped/ghostly R&B vocal samples has yielded some killer singles, especially at its 2011 peak (cf. Jacques Greene, Blawan), but no real album-length explorations to speak of.  Beyond (Hyperdub), the debut LP from Manchester-based producer Walton, fills that void and then some, weaving hauntingly down-pitched snippets of Adina Howard and Mary J Blige in and among an omnivorous spread of deep, nocturnal house, acid techno flashbacks, nasty garage workouts and precision-tooled glitch-funk; finding cohesion in the face of his pointedly genre-blind eclecticism by maintaining a consistent, darkly seductive mood.

The-Drum
Contact
[Electronic]

Floating in a parallel new age/sci-fi netherworld to the slippery, wooze-inducing likes of Teengirl Fantasy, Nguzunguzu and James Ferraro, the debut LP from recombinant Chicago production duo The-Drum has the forbidding look and feel of a recondite critical-theory treatise (complete with wholly extraneous dystopian framing concept.)  But it doesn't feel that way: abstract, elusive and unpredictable as it is, Contact (Audraglint) is also consistently, curiously alluring on a sensual level, playfully sifting through several decades of digital audio detritus (chintzy synth presets, liquid percussion shards, splutters of metal-coil slap bass) while splicing footwork and dub techno with the acid-washed hand-me-downs of slow-rolling crunk hip-hop, to somewhat queasily narcotic effect.

Congo Natty
Jungle Revolution
[Jungle/Reggae]

Ragga jungle doesn't get much play, but it birthed some of the most thrillingly vibrant sounds of the early '90s, whose echoes still reverberate loudly.  Congo Natty (aka Rebel MC, aka Conquering Lion...), arguably the genre's chief instigator, comes roaring back with Jungle Revolution (Big Dada), his first proper album in forever, to show us how it's done (ludicrous rewinds, pure-adrenaline breakbeats, guest drops from a bonafide whos-who of toasters); school us on some vital roots of the UK bass/dance music continuum (nodding to everything from drum'n'bass and rave through autotune and dubstep, with flashes of unadulterated roots reggae) and just basically throw one killer party.  Bombaclaat!

Primal Scream
More Light
[Rock]

Perennially plucky Brit-rock underdogs/serially self-reinventing Stones fetishists Primal Scream seem to average one truly killer album every ten years.  If the ambitiously epic More Light (Ignition) isn't an unequivocal jawdropper on the level of Screamadelica or XTRMNTR, it's more than enough to satisfy as this decade's allotment; echoing both of those landmarks (the former, most blatantly/gleefully, on rapturous feel-good finale "It's Alright, It's Okay") amidst a super-saturated, back-catalog-blenderizing psych/blues/punk/gospel/orchestral/acid-funk melting pot of ecstatic, full-throttle jams.  Spring for the deluxe edition if you can: even the bonus tracks kick!

Mavis Staples
One True Vine
[Soul/Gospel]

Alongside a few public domain gospel numbers and one refurbished, fuzzed-up Staple Singers chestnut, Mavis Staples' One True Vine (Anti-) includes such seemingly improbably selections as a months-old Low tune, an early Funkadelic jam, and an obscure Wilco single (less surprising given Jeff Tweedy's presence here as producer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and drummer-father) – but it never has the grab-bag "songbook" feel of, say, Bettye Lavette's recent efforts.  In the hands (and still-electrifying, if generally understated voice) of the Philly-born, septuagenarian soul legend, each song becomes subtly and inimitably personal; the whole a moving, thoughtful personal exploration of faith, doubt and redemption.

Van Dyke Parks
Songs Cycled
[Pop/Americana]

Songs Cycled (Bella Union), Van Dyke Parks' first (more or less) proper full-length outing in a quarter-century, is a triumphant return for the legendary, lately-resurgent arranger/composer and inveterate musical fantasist/archivist.  Rummaging through a gleeful grab-bag of new originals, far-ranging covers and re-recorded selections from across his catalog, it's an excellent (re)introduction to his quaint, quirky, polymathic style, full of characteristically lavish and rickety shoe-string symphonies, drawing on ragtime, chanson, tango, calypso, shape note folk-gospel and 19th-century Impressionism to craft a wistful (and slyly polemical) patchwork travelogue connecting his "Missippi" boyhood, Parisian reveries, 9/11 Wall Street and other sundry points along our collective memory lane.

originally published in Philadelphia City Paper