AMG review round-up, volume XXII: 2010 third quarter, -ish

gotta wrap it up. here's a bunch of records, mostly from july-september 2010 (with a few secret stragglers, including some a year or two late), roughly in order of what they're like and how much i like them.

Allo Darlin': Allo Darlin' review

Allo Darlin' are a quintessential, dyed-in-the-wool twee pop band (and a pedigreed one at that – frontwoman Elizabeth Morris plays in Tender Trap with twee icon Amelia Fletcher, while bassist Bill Botting is a member of Darren Hayman's Secondary Modern) but their potential appeal extends far beyond the typically homespun, insider-y indie pop scene, since their music conveys all the genre's sweetness and enthusiasm without (or at least without too much of) the sappy infantilism and amateurish shambling that turn off most listeners of the genre. On the basis of their self-titled 2010 debut, it's not hard to imagine this London outfit finding the kind of widespread devotion enjoyed by leading lights like Camera Obscura, the Lucksmiths, or even Belle & Sebastian. Certainly, Allo Darlin' is most reminiscent of these artists' earlier, scrappier efforts, but the sophistication is there, most crucially, in Morris' songs, which strike just the right balance of clever and heartfelt, wittily specific, and broadly relatable. And, without exception, magnificently tuneful. Vocally, she's got all the charm of, say, Camera Obscura's Tracyanne Campbell, but with a much more upbeat, outgoing personality (and her Aussie-via-London accent – even just her pronunciation of the word "telephone" – is worth melting for). The band never stray far from the Platonic template of crisp, vibrantly produced '60s-style guitar pop, with tinges of soul, country, and Afro-pop, generous use of ukulele and lap steel, and a healthy sprinkling of ba-bas and sha-la-las. The playing is consistently strong and, with a few tender-hearted exceptions, briskly bouncy and grooving – particularly apt for the first three songs, which are about going out dancing (though they're also about heavenly embraces, Polaroid photographs, and youthful cash deficiency, respectively.) Other pivotal topics covered include falling in love (in an amusement park; whilst making chili) and listening (and making references) to pop music. In the time-honored tradition of the Pooh Sticks, Morris fills her songs with canny cultural nods: lifting lines from Weezer, quoting Johnny Cash and Doris Day, citing fellow twees the Just Joans. (Meanwhile "Woody Allen" – which switches to film references for a change – is melodically reminiscent of the Magnetic Fields' "Strange Powers," while the blissfully lovely "Let's Go Swimming" lyrically echoes their "All the Umbrellas in London.") Maybe best of all, "My Heart Is a Drummer" reps for Paul Simon's Graceland: "we know it's everybody's favorite/deep down in the place where music makes you happiest." Clearly, that's a place that Morris and Allo Darlin' know extremely well.

The Books: The Way Out review

"Welcome to a new beginning" declares a voice at the start of The Way Out, and this album does indeed mark a fresh new chapter for the Books: a return to record-making five years after the fantastic Lost and Safe, on a new label, with a newly open-ended, wide-ranging approach to their work. It may not initially sound that way: opener "Group Autogenics I," one of several pieces that draw on guided meditation-style self-help recordings, feels almost like Books-by-numbers, with a gently humorous, disorienting oddness, juxtaposed with genuinely deeply relaxing sonics, that will be immediately familiar to fans of their past albums. After that, though, the duo stretches beyond its comfort zone in multiple directions at once, pushing at the boundaries of an already utterly singular style. The acoustic strings (primarily guitar and cello) that dominated their earlier output are still present, but they share space with a dizzying array of instrumental and quasi-instrumental sounds, from twinkling music boxes to a full-scale sample-generated orchestra of archaic brass and woodwinds. And while scavenged spoken word samples remain the most defining element of the Books' music, anchoring each of these cuts save for the four sung, lyric-based "proper songs" (including the gloriously geeky, math-worshiping chorale "Beautiful People," which announces, slightly disingenuously: "We genuflect before pure abstraction"), they're less concerned with constructing linguistic puzzles out of their samples here – cleverly editing them to evince a sublimely witty illogic and absurdity – than with exploring their emotional nuances and often surreal humanity. Most tracks focus on a small number of voices, creating a sense of context and resonance without necessarily allowing for full comprehension. Hence, we get a tentative, intimate series of answering machine messages; a nonsensical bedtime tale about a Peter Rabbit-like character named Hip Hop; an inexplicably prickly grammarian vehemently insisting that "I Am Who I Am." "A Cold Freezin' Night" is a hilarious, slightly chilling tour de force built around a battle of (increasingly violent) words between a young brother and sister, set to a thumping disco beat. "I Didn't Know That" is even more striking musically – the closest thing yet to a Books pop hit, and definitely the funkiest they've ever been, recalling Squarepusher's nimble bass playing and Akufen's micro-sampled funk barrages. The stated intention for The Way Out was for each track to be "its own rabbit hole," and the album does indeed manage to survey an impressively disparate set of worlds and modes. Still, each one remains readily recognizable as belonging to the Books' own unique, unequivocal universe, which, happily, seems to be expanding at least twice as rapidly as our own.

ceo: White Magic review

ceo is Eric Berglund, one half of the Tough Alliance and co-CEO of Gothenburg's Sincerely Yours label; his first solo venture is another clear winner from that inscrutable but highly dependable camp. While its brightly colorful melting pot of indie pop, ersatz tropicalia, chintzy new age, and electronic dance-pop doesn't stray far from the distinctive, neon-hued sound of TTA, White Magic feels tighter, lusher, and more polished (especially vocally) than most of the duo's output, with an earnest, romantic emotional outlook far from TTA's typically enigmatic, performative sneering. Berglund wastes no time announcing his ambitions here, starting with the swaying orchestral expanse of "All Around," over which he declares: "I'm coming home to face the demons on my own." It's a grand opening statement, but it's only one part of the ceo equation: alongside weightier material like the ruminative "Oh God Oh Dear" and a solemn, churchy rendition of "Den Blomstertid Nu Kommer" (a hymnlike ode to summertime that's traditionally sung at the close of the Swedish school year) that ends the album with the same string figures that opened it, the balance of White Magic's eight tracks consists of cheerfully melodic dance-pop. "Illuminata" and "Love and Do What You Will," in particular, are about as buoyant as they come, and "Come with Me" is widescreen Balearic pop at its glistening, tuneful best. The title track shades slightly darker, with its vaguely sinister, pulsing tribal techno punctuated by jungle noises, steely guitar flourishes, and percolating pan flutes, while TTA's recurrent hip-hop-inflected fascination with violence rears its head on the otherwise blithe-sounding "No Mercy" with an excellently deployed knife-sharpening sample (the song also features offhand lyrical references to bondage, incarceration, and smoking crack). Without shortchanging Berglund's melodic abilities and his knack for sharp, effective mood juxtapositions, ceo's greatest attribute is his fearlessly inventive, highly detailed approach to arrangement, bringing together an unpredictable assortment of sounds on nearly every track, and somehow making these largely synthetic productions feel dynamic and vibrantly alive. Phil Spector and Brian Wilson come to mind – the baroque strings and clip-clop percussion of "Oh God Oh Dear," specifically, suggest discreet nods to each – and, indeed, pace Wilson, the whole affair might be aptly summed up as a "quarter-life symphony to God." At under 30 minutes, White Magic could feel painfully brief, but it's so dense with creativity, melody, and life that it seems churlish to want more.

Clubfeet: Gold on Gold review

At first blush, Clubfeet seem like yet another of the countless faceless bands plying the intersection of rock, pop, dance, and electronic music in the early 2010s, but this Capetown-via-Melbourne trio is slightly more of a puzzle than its "sounds like" list suggests. For one thing, despite the band's floor-friendly moniker and appearance on the dance-oriented Plant label – and despite its sleek, synthy sheen and plethora of electronic beats – Gold on Gold feels too restrained and contemplative to really come off as a dance album. You could probably dance to most of these tracks if you had to, but on the whole it's more of a mood-setter than a floor-filler, recalling fellow Melburnians Cut Copy at their less vigorous (but still lushly anthemic), suggesting a sprightlier, fleshier take on the xx's darkly stylish veneer and updating the epic romanticism of early U2 (specifically their guitar textures) and early Stars. For a band so centrally concerned with tone and texture, Clubfeet's most impressive feat here – and what sets them apart from many of their contemporaries – is the amount of personality they're able to convey while maintaining a consistent dominant mood. It operates in subtle ways – never overbearing, nearly genteel – but their distinctive charm is nevertheless apparent throughout, often in the touches of humor and lightness they bring to what's largely a sober-minded affair: an oddly chipper tropical beatbox undercutting the lavish melancholy of "Fall from Up Here," a sweet, simple piano figure running through the achingly languorous "Six Days," or the spoken word group chants in both "Teenage Suicide (Don't Do It)" (which, Heathers-referencing aside, seems essentially straight-faced about its titular subject, making for a noble message of perhaps dubious utility in a dance-pop song) and "D.I.E. Yuppie Scum" (which, contrarily, is pretty plainly a gag). The latter two songs are the album's most immediate, attention-getting standouts and most likely dance jams, mostly by virtue of those chanted hooks, but ultimately neither one measures up to "Count Your Lovers," which gets by on pure melody and prettiness. Another highlight is a candy-sweet synth pop rendition of James' "Say Something" which, in addition to being a well-chosen and beautifully executed cover, is one of few moments where Clubfeet set aside their guitars entirely, meaning that perhaps the most electronic thing on the album is a version of a rock song. Who needs pigeonholes anyway?

Dragonette: Fixin' To Thrill review

It's telling that Dragonette titled their second album Fixin to Thrill, and not just straight-up Thrillin', even if it absolutely makes good on that stated intention. Notwithstanding the band's uber-stylish panache and the dangerously glitzy, fabulously sordid rock & roll lifestyle their music projects, there's no denying that the frequently fantastic fun and giddy thrills to be found here are the upshot of some serious craftsmanship. Dragonette are, above all, pop perfectionists, carefully culling all the shiniest bits from '80s new wave (from Duran Duran to the Go-Go's), '90s alt pop (they bear a passing resemblance to No Doubt, a more striking one to the sweet 'n' dirty electro-rock crunch of Garbage), and full-throttle '00s teen pop to concoct an obviously familiar but still effortlessly modern sound to match their punky-spunky energy. But that wouldn't count for much if not for the earworm-y melodies this album boasts in spades, with almost every cut packed full of naggingly catchy synth riffs, vocal hooks, and guitar lines. Fixin may lack a clear, massive standout to match Galore's "I Get Around" (the title track's a decent attempt, but it falls a bit short) but otherwise it marks a slight but noticeable improvement on the band's already-pretty-great debut, a more consistent batch of songs paced so that the highlights keep on coming. For the most part, the odd-numbered songs tend to be the strongest, including the sinuous, sinister "Liar," the goofy, superhero-themed "We Rule the World," and the irresistibly bouncy "Okay Dolore," quasi-cheerleader pop with enough (synthetic) handclaps to do Toni Basil proud. While the band's tendency for oddball stylistic detours is toned down here next to Galore's unscheduled excursions to Bollywood and Tin Pan Alley, the peppy banjos on "Gone Too Far," the kids choir breakdown on "Stupid Grin," and gentle cabaret stylings of "You're a Disaster" keep that sense of playfulness alive in a somewhat more integrated fashion. But the most striking and promising new development here may be an emotional one. "Easy," by some margin the album's best song, is an unusually tender expression of doomed, devoted love with a slinky, sparsely funky electro groove that drops out partway through for a rare moment of vulnerability from the normally all-sass Martina Sobrara: a sweetly harmonized, awkwardly phrased plea imploring her lover not to play games with her fragile heart. It's a total sucker move coming from these guys, an arresting, affecting moment regardless of whether you hear it as unfettered emotionalism or simply a top-notch example of how true pop greatness is to be found in the small details, a lesson that these crafty popsters have definitely taken to heart.

Copy: bio and Hard Dream review

Though he restricts himself to a palette of retro-sounding synths and straitlaced, reasonably dancefloor-friendly drum programming, never straying too far from the distinctive (if hardly earth-shattering) instrumental techno-pop vibe he's made his signature, Copy (alias Portland beatmaker Marius Libman) still covers considerable ground, emotionally, and stylistically. Hard Dream, Copy's third full-length, is titled after and loosely conceived as a score for an unrealized horror movie concept – for a flick about mysteriously televised nightmares – and, fittingly, it has its share of dark, moody, and menacing passages. But it's got plenty of pep and sweetness too, thanks to Libman's unrepentant tunefulness and full-color approach to composition; his synthesizers, which often manage to sound gleaming and gritty at the same time, are just as likely to sparkle and soar as to burble and brood. At the album's frequent best, he's often got multiple synthetic strands of melody going at once, layered into a dense, satisfying analog stew, as on the eight-minute opener "One Less Time"– a slow-building, slow-motion disco epic which might not quite live up to its Daft Punk-baiting title, but still finds some frothy, intoxicating territory to explore – or the sunnier, rather ornate "Breakfast." Copy also does well in sparser settings – "Real Scared," juxtaposing music box arpeggios and archly Baroque synth leads against a spare, swaggering, hip-hop beat – is a clear standout (and one of a few tracks to blatantly recall sometime-confederates Ratatat), while "Stay Away from It"'s herky-jerky, 8-bit bleep-thrash closes the album on a particularly fun, frenetically chirpy note. Only a few tracks are functionally devoid of melody, and they're the weakest links here: the murky, fairly generic dubstep foray "I Didn't Know" and the jittery, Kraftwerk-ian autopilot chase scene music of "It Could Have Been More" make for fine-enough mood shifters in the context of the album, but mostly they seem like rote genre exercises whose failings can be summed up by the latter's title. Generally, though, Libman's compositional gifts don't steer him wrong, and Hard Dream is much more nuanced and engagingly listenable than its stylistic trappings initially suggest. Deliberately or not, Copy's music tends to come off as primarily party fodder, well-crafted but essentially superficial, trading heavily on novelty and kitschy '80s nostalgia, but it's equally possible to see it in the tradition of thoughtful, palatable electronic "listening music," of the sort once peddled by µ-ziq and Plaid, and lately revived by Copy's West coast peers like Eliot Lipp and Nosaj Thing.

Restless People: bio and Restless People review

Restless people indeed, the members of this Brooklyn foursome cycled through several permutations and projects together – as three-quarters of dance-punk second-stringers Professor Murder; as the neotropical production/remix duo Tanlines – before emerging with this concise but emphatic statement of purpose, which can be seen as a synthesis of all that came before it. Taking Tanlines' lighthearted, percolating electronics as a jumping-off point, Restless People add an equally upbeat, accessible pop/rock songwriting slant, arriving at a very 2010 middle ground between the poppy, globe-trotting indie dance of Delorean, Cut Copy, and El Guincho, and the danceable, globe-trotting indie pop of Vampire Weekend, Foreign Born, and Yeasayer – think of them, perhaps, as Williamsburg's answer to the Very Best. At first blush, the album feels even slicker and poppier than any of the above, bursting out of the gate with the Day-glo synths and air horns of "Days of Our Lives," a glossy, euphoric club cut with a relentless stream of simple, continually recycling vocal hooks. "Constant Panic" is even more insistently kinetic – high-NRG neo-disco with a Caribbean lilt, canned handclaps, chopped vocals, and a couple of well-placed percussion breaks. Even the relative breather "Little Sky," which brings down the pace with a nostalgically poignant lyric ("I was born under a great big sky/Now I look up and see a little sky"), is a gleaming, widescreen synth epic that would've been a sure-fire radio staple were it released 25 years earlier, in the age of Peter Gabriel and "In a Big Country." Even with considerable rhythmic variety – "Don't Back Down" crossbreeds new wave piano pop with hiccuping ska; "Practical Magic" shapeshifts from half-time reggae to a frenetic soca jump-up – Restless People has a tendency toward sonic samey-ness: it might all seem like so much faceless, peppy prettiness if not for Eric Emm's enthusiastically earnest vocals. Though not a conventionally great singer, Emm sounds clear-eyed and charismatic, urging on the crowd with a motivational energy pitched somewhere between dancehall toaster and positive hardcore frontman. His intermittent shouts of "Ay, Restless people! Okay!" comes across as both a rallying cry to his bandmates and a sincere, if slightly lackadaisical, life-affirming call to arms for anyone within earshot. That mostly latent punkish energy comes to the forefront on closer "Victimless Crime," the album's only serious misstep (or at least misfit), whose cheerful mess of synth squiggles and incoherent chanting atop a crunched, chugging groove can hardly keep pace with the streamlined pancultural effervescence that preceded it.

Tanlines: Settings and Volume On reviews

A short list of artists for whom Tanlines have provided remix work – El Guincho, the Tough Alliance, Memory Tapes – gives an almost too-perfect snapshot of the stylistic terrain this Brooklyn duo traverses. Along with their True Panther labelmates Delorean, these acts are at the forefront of a particular late-2000s approach to electronic music that's decidedly poppy and danceable but without the formal rigidity of dance-pop proper, featuring plush, treble-heavy synths, thickly burbling percussion, and warmly layered, tropical-flavored grooves. That's a fairly straight-ahead description of what you can expect to find on Settings, a highly enjoyable release that nevertheless tends to blend into its surroundings (both aurally and stylistically) rather than asserting its individuality. The clearest standouts, or at least the most memorable moments, come with "Real Life" and "Policy of Trust," both enhanced (though not exactly dominated) by Eric Emm's appealingly low-key vocals, which ruminate on life's unknowable roads ("For a minute I was lost/I looked away/My destination was unknown") and make sideways nods to Depeche Mode. The third vocal cut, "Bees," is less melodically engaging, flirting with slightly more aggressive, calypsonian rhythm, while the closing "Z" is a lovely, more electro-leaning showcase for the glassy, wordless vocals of labelmate Glasser. At six songs and 24 minutes, Settings comes off as a reasonably generous EP, not least because it seems like about the limit for what these guys are able to accomplish without in some way broadening the parameters of what they do – any longer and its commendable cohesiveness might start to seem more tiresome. A true full-length effort from these two could be a very appealing prospect; they might just have to vary up their portfolio a bit to pull it off.

Arp: The Soft Wave review

Alexis Georgopoulos' debut as Arp, 2007's In Light, was an almost forbiddingly minimal collection of glacially paced analog synth excursions and sparse, meandering drones. The Soft Wave follows that outing with a set that's equally subdued and nearly as restrained in its compositional approach, yet feels strikingly rich in comparison to the utter starkness of its predecessor. There are a few obvious departures here, including an expanded sonic palette – featuring electric guitars and basses, pianos, beatboxes, and even (on one track) vocals in addition to the expected array of vintage synthesizers (which occasionally veer into patches of fuzz and abstract noise instead of remaining clinically pure) – and the fact that many of these pieces boast what could legitimately called melodies, or at least melodic motifs. But the biggest change is more than anything one of mood: while both albums are calm and contemplative, there's a warmth and restfulness to Wave that was distinctly absent from the sometimes naggingly unsettled, sometimes downright chilly In Light. It's right there in the track list: titles like "Catch Wave," "High Life," and "Summer Girl" evoke a pretty specific vibe, and they're not lying – the latter two in particular offer a hazy tunefulness that makes them, along with the groovily fluid guitar-looping "White Light," the first Arp tracks that could be considered infectious. You're probably unlikely to jam them on your way to the beach, but they're perfect for laying back and dreaming about summer, regardless of the actual outdoor temperature (well, as long as you don't mind the occasional squall). The same is equally true of the lengthier pieces that make up The Soft Wave's two poles: the stately, gently triumphant two-part opener "Pastoral Symphony," which is the closest this album comes to In Light's hermetic analog purity, and the blissfully languid slow-motion bossa "From a Balcony Overlooking the Sea" (the aforementioned vocal number, reminiscent of "rock album" Brian Eno and, curiously, the Sea and Cake), clearly the farthest thing here from Arp's established wheelhouse. Though these two pieces don't sound very much like one another, the feeling they create is surprisingly comparable. Much as Georgopoulos' compositions gradually evolve and mutate out of an initial sense of stasis, he's found a way to vary his approach – if only, in the scheme of things, fairly slightly – that moves it forward, slowly but surely, from simple clarity toward a rare luminescence.

Drivan: bio and Disko review

Norwegian producer Kim Hiorthøy has a knack for cobbling together small scraps of sound and melody in a careful but seemingly arbitrary fashion that can make the simple and familiar seem oddly curious and make the coarse and unexpected feel innocently sweet. Disko, the first output from Drivan – a group consisting of Hiorthøy and three female performance artists who serve here primarily as vocalists and co-architects – is the least overtly electronic recording he has been involved in, although most of its tracks do feature his typically low-key, rough-hewn, hip-hop-styled beats for at least a portion of their running time. For the most part, the album uses the melodic but not particularly song-based linear structures familiar from his solo work. Tracks tend to build from a basic rudimentary riff, melody, or chord progression, typically picked out on acoustic guitar or a slightly out of tune piano, with the vocals – exclusively in Swedish, usually solo or in unison, and tending toward a plain, uninflected tone that sometimes takes on a childlike, singsong cast – layered on top. Beats filter in and out, tracks develop and disintegrate in fluid but unpredictable ways, and Hiorthøy tacks on little bits of incidental noise and sonic detritus: the ambient sounds of talking, laughing, scuffling of papers; spectral, unidentified samples of this and that; whistling and squeaking electronic toys and synthetic strings and cheap-sounding keyboard organ solos. There's one clear standout and centerpiece in the six-minute "Det Gör Ingenting," which is the fullest-sounding and most melodically compelling piece here, its sweetly hypnotic throb suggesting an epic, pulsating dance track as performed by children, or heard from several rooms away through slightly worn-out speakers. (It's the only time the album comes close to the danceability suggested by its devious title, though it's still probably a bit too mellow for that.) Otherwise, it's all gently shambolic, mildly folky, slightly inscrutable, and generally quite likable. One gets the sense that Hiorthøy and his cohorts could easily continue turning out these strange, sweet, and satisfying songs in similar fashion for quite some time, if they so chose, and it would be hard to complain if they did.

K-X-P: K-X-P review

A good deal heavier and murkier than the electronic prog-disco fare sometimes associated with Smalltown Supersound – though far from unrelated to that aesthetic – K-X-P is the first fruit of the eponymous project fronted by Op:l Bastards' Timo Kaukolampi. Effectively a synth-bass-drums power trio – with the slight twist that the lineup alternates between a pair of drummers – K-X-P specialize in dark, elemental, monolithic grooves with an obvious debt to your typical slate of gritty, texture-oriented post-punk minimalists (Suicide, Spacemen 3, This Heat) and motorik Krautrockers (Can, Neu!). Each of these eight cuts has its own distinct rhythmic flavor – "Mehu Moments" sports a simple, steady jazz-funk beat; "Elephant Man" rides a hypnotic, herky-jerky tribal pounding; standout "18 Hours (Of Love)" is a stomping T. Rex/Goldfrapp/Battles shuffle – but they maintain a fairly consistent tone and approach, with plenty of groaning, throbbing drones, noisy squalls of synth noodling, and other bits of psychedelic electro-sonic detritus. Vocals crop up occasionally on three or four of the songs, but they're typically too distorted to make much of an impression – the exception being "Pockets," wherein they're intelligible as English and recognizably melodic though fairly grating (after grappling, largely successfully, with conventional song form, the track's second half retreats into an unexpected morass of fluttering, electro-disco synth arpeggios). As the album progresses, it grows more heavily electronic and increasingly spacy, with the gauzy soundtrack synths of "New World" offering a more subdued moment of cosmic reverie and "Epilogue" closing things out with some beatless, meandering organ drones and wispy wordless vocals. Despite its general seedy overtones and occasional moments of harshness, K-X-P is far from an unpalatable or unpleasant record; indeed, its relentless intensity can even feel oddly calming.

Eddy Current Suppression Ring: Primary Current review

Eddy Current Suppression Ring's second album is essentially of a piece with their self-titled debut, meaning here are ten more blasts of direct, primitive, tuneful punk from the bowels of Melbourne. Rough and scrappy but too giddily enthusiastic to come off as snotty or sneering, ECSR tap in to the primal, fun-loving energy of frill-free rock & roll, a spirit that feels every bit as immediate and relevant as it is familiar and timeless. Their sound may be derivative (of any number of past clatter-masters – perhaps most notably the Stooges, but also Wire, the Fall, the Feelies, and on and on), but it's not formulaic, and certainly not monotonous: Primary Colours employs a fair amount of rhythmic and textural variety within its basic template of straightforward lock-grooves and minimalist guitar shredding. So for every all-out skronkfest like "Sunday's Coming" and "Which Way to Go," which maintain a fairly steady barrage of thick guitar noise, there's a sleeker, spindlier cut like "Memory Lane" or the bored anti-media rant "Colour Television" ("Another Wheel of Fortune/Another million tortured") to keep their squalls in check for just the right moment of release. Punk love song "Wrapped Up" is bouncy and infectious with a strong, slinky riff, the Feelies-esque instrumental "That's Inside of Me" finds a herky-jerky funk groove, and "We'll Be Turned On" loosens up even further with some sloppy organ pounding and a righteously bashed-out rhythm track. That song also features a particularly goofy turn from frontman Brendan Suppression who, with his affable Aussie twang and unpretentious reflections on ordinary stuff like relationships and modern life (or, in this case, sex and television), comes across like a far more relatable version of Mark E. Smith.

Kathryn Calder: Are You My Mother? review

The most striking moment on Kathryn Calder's solo debut comes early. Halfway through the prettily subdued opener, "Slip Away," the song bursts unexpectedly free of its gently dappled piano tones and measured calm, the drums kick into rollicking gear, and Calder lets loose a joyous, irresistible, wordless vocal line strikingly like the ones her uncle, Carl Newman, used to write for Neko Case to sing with the New Pornographers. But those glorious, fleeting seconds (the eruption happens again later in the song) are the closest Are You My Mother? comes to the unbridled power pop/rock favored both by that group (of which Calder has become an increasingly active member) and by Immaculate Machine, the band of high-school chums turned indie rock pros that was until recently her primary outfit. Somewhere between a "traditional" singer/songwriter album and an exercise in one-woman popcraft à la Newman's band-based solo records, Mother finds Calder alternating between rhythmically driven uptempo numbers (the peppy, noodly two-step "Castor and Pollux"; the frantic, somewhat slapdash-sounding "A Day Long Past Its Prime") and mellower, more introspective fare. She strikes a happy medium on the folksy, metrically quirky "If You Only Knew," a jaunty singalong complete with handclaps and shambling, desultory group percussion, and on the breezy "Follow Me into the Hills," which manages to suggest both loping acoustic country and tiki-lounge exotica with its mandolin breaks, swaying tropical beat, and big twangy guitar. But by and large, in spite of Calder's rocking pedigree, Mother is generally most effective at its most restrained. With repeated listens, cuts like the autumnal, string-laden "Down the River" and the wistful waltzes "Arrow" and "So Easily" (the former a piano-based lilt, the latter stripped down to the sparsest picked acoustic guitar notes and featuring an understated harmony from Case) stand out as the album's most resonant, if only because their sparer settings allow Calder's finest gifts – the strength of her melodies and the girlish sweetness of her winsome vocals – to shine through most clearly. Despite its poignant back-story – Calder recorded the album at her family home in Victoria while caring for her ailing mother, who died a year before its release – Mother's emotional impact tends to be more indirect and evocative than specific and tangible. Its varied but always thoughtful musical character, as much as its nuanced, sometimes ambiguous lyrics, make it feel like an understated, vital reminder to bring a gentle approach to life's struggles.

Jenny Wilson: Hardships! review

The second album by this acclaimed Swedish songstress largely jettisons the appealing if skewed pop sensibility of her debut, along with most of that album's electronic underpinnings, for a prickly, nebulously political collection of songwriterly art-pop, emphasis firmly on the "art." While Love and Youth wasn't exactly light listening, it could somewhat reasonably be mentioned in the same breath as Wilson's friends and collaborators (and compatriots) Robyn and The Knife; Hardships!, though, plods a portentous path far from the Scandinavian synth-pop superhighway, evoking instead the idiosyncratic likes of Kate Bush and Tori Amos. Wilson's curious, powerfully theatrical soprano has earthy hints of gospel and soul, while the piano-led chamber arrangements offer occasional flashes of levity, particularly in the percussion department – though the album's menagerie of handclaps and xylophones can just as easily sound sinister as cheerful. But most of the interest here (human or otherwise) derives from the lyrics, which deal explicitly with domesticity and motherhood, forming a loose song cycle/concept album that addresses those topics primarily through themes of struggle, escape and disillusionment. Wilson combines narrative details redolent of rural poverty (strong-willed horses, threadbare socks, burnt soup and potatoes) with military, maritime, natural world and nursery-rhyme imagery to create vivid, uneasy juxtapositions, not unlike the rifle she wields with such impassive poise on the album's cover. The dinner-time escalation in "Pass me the Salt" is typical: "Come on now eat your food/cartridges, fried and stewed/this table has become a combat zone." The title song likewise compares the trials of motherhood to the stuff of bloody battlefields, bemoaning the unheralded heroism involved in an implacable, oddly antagonistic tone that reduces a well-reasoned feminist viewpoint to bleak, heartless logic. Wilson adopts a similarly chilly, queasily pragmatic, almost resentful view of family relationships throughout, with partners and children alike: when she wails, by way of a lullaby, "I wanna leave you baby/but our veins are entwined," you get the sense she really does want to leave her infant. The final two songs represent something of a thaw, musically as well as lyrically (one features a loose-limbed sax solo) – tellingly, they're the only ones save for the surreal memoiristic opener "The Path" ("I wanted to be born, so I crawled out of my mother") to contain the word "love." Love does not come easily in a world filled with hardships. And Hardships! is not an easy affair on any level.

i keep dancing on my own

this was an awesome summer for dance-pop. really, the whole year has probably been the best, quantity+quality-wise, since 2006, which might have been the last year i was excited about dance-pop on a large scale (the year of paris, etc.) even if there was sort of a dearth of bona-fide massive summer jams – which i define as massive enough to penetrate the consciousness of my relatively pop-averse friends (katy perry came close, i guess. rihanna, the erstwhile queen of summer, got her smash on in the springtime, rudely enough.)

sadly, though, there didn't seem to be all that much actual dancing, at least in my world. save for a couple-few transcendent daytime dining-room get-down sessions to Lazerproof. there was a pretty promising start to the summer with the /\/\ /\ Y /\ release party (once we made it through the album, that is.) and I did see LCD in NYC, and The Rapture at Making Time. but then La Roux had to go and cancel their tour... at least Robyn and Kelis came through – and how! though, again, i went by myself. i think i only dj'd that one real party all summer, too (heat activated.)

but, at least i made this mix, pretty casually, and it is, i think, pretty close to phenomenal – little credit to me, but to our faithful friends the pop pros, who cranking out jams on all fronts. still, what's a summer jam without a pool-party posse to share it with?

sort of a fabricated document, then, of a summer of fun that never exactly was. maybe the problem is that i made the mix on cd. and who listened to cds in the summer of 2010?

title: Froth of July
date: July 2010
format: cd-r; daydream

1. The Spell – Alphabeat
2. Shampain – Marina and the Diamonds
3. Nothing on You – B.o.B ft. Bruno Mars [Villains Remix]
4. You've Changed – Sia
5. XXXO – M.I.A. ft. Jay-Z [Fulton Yard/Waltboogie Remix]
6. In Ruins - Fol Chen
7. All The Lovers – Kylie Minogue
8. Seasun – Delorean
9. Swoon – Chemical Brothers [Don Diablo Remix]
10. One – Sky Ferreira
11. Drunk Girls – LCD Soundsystem [Holy Ghost! Remix]
12. Come With Me – ceo
13. 4th of July (Fireworks) – Kelis
14. Take That – Wiley & Chew Fu
15. Push It Fembot – Robyn vs. Salt 'n' Pepa [A Rokk Pie N Mashup]
16. Daydreaming – Kid Sister [Telephoned Dreams Version]
17. Wile Out – DJ Zinc Ft. Ms Dynamite
18. Tenderoni – Kele [Ryan Hervé Re-Fix]
19. Dan – Grovesnor
20. Independent Kill – La Roux & Major Lazer ft. Candi Redd
21. Dancing On My Own – Robyn [Jakwob Remix]

quasi-mixed – that is, sequenced and edited for reasonably beat-smooth transitions in most places, but no actual dj tweaking. this ranges pretty far over the map, geographically, stylistically, all across the indie-mainstream divide and back. (what divide you say?)

notable omissions (cut out for space reasons only): Ke$ha, Katy Perry, Big Boi, Goldfrapp (i still haven't really gotten into Head First, though i feel like it should really be up my alley...still, the first two tracks are lovely in that frothy way), Hot Chip (was still rocking One Life Stand hard at this point, though it had been out for a pretty long time.) and the Scissor Sisters album hadn't even come out yet.

the Alphabeat feels a bit like a throwaway intro (though i do love that song in the context of its album...which for whatever reason hasn't quite stuck with me the way i thought it would.) Kid Sister probably wouldn't have made it (that's a 2010 remix, i think, of a 2009 track) except i had just written her up for CP and had belatedly realized that it's a pretty darn sweet album (though that remix may not be too representative.) likewise, the Delorean, which i love, is a belatedly-discovered favorite from their 2009 ep which is sadly better than anything on their (generally quite good) 2010 album. otherwise, the vast majority of these are still solid favorites, some surprisingly so (Marina; Fol Chen.)

the real question is whether i'm going to reuse/recycle many of these for year-end mix, so that this will end up feeling like scrap fodder for that, or whether i'll try to keep this as a strong separate entity. time will tell...

AMG review round-up, volume XXI: 2010 second quarter (misses), plus bonus strays

three more from second quarter '10 - decided non-favorites, which didn't make the last batch due to per-post label character limits (wha?) - then six pretty great ones from 2009, reviewed this year (incl. one reviewed for citypaper) - then three more recent-ish AMG reviews of even older things, including one of my very favorite albums of the decade (well, ok, #96 according to my list. still pretty fave.) and this, i am pretty sure, brings me completely up to date in terms of reposting all of my review output here (!!) for the first time in maybe ever. except for the two reviews i wrote last week. so stay tuned...

-------2010

We Are The World: Clay Stones review

L.A. art freaks We Are the World make no bones about the fact that they are not really a band -- they prefer the term "outfit," which seems vague enough to encompass an undertaking whose modes of operation include choreography, elaborate costuming, video, and all-around immersive visual spectacle in addition to their music. In any case, it's clear that the fullest expression of the group's project is to be found in the aesthetically adventurous, quasi-political performance art of their live shows, rather than on a piece of plastic or some digital files. That makes it difficult to know how to properly assess this debut album, which by the same token is clearly meant as more than a mere soundtrack or souvenir. Taken unto itself, divorced from its visual/experiential counterpart, Clay Stones still delivers plenty of visceral intensity: it's a breathless 45 minutes of violently propulsive electronic rhythms and stark, eerie atmospherics. Engaging but hardly easy listening, it's melodically minimal (beyond the throbbing bass, blank-eyed vocals, and scattered twitchy synth lines, harmonic content is typically scant) and emotionally monochromatic (even when the kinetic energy slackens, the mood remains relentlessly dark and edgy) but far from monotonous: primary musical instigator Robbie Williamson wrests an impressive textural and polyrhythmic array from a palette of black and grey, culling his constantly shifting sounds from industrial, minimal house, electro-clash (fellow techno-visual spectacularists Fischerspooner come readily to mind), and the twisted synth pop of the Knife. One frustrating weak point: Megan Gold is not by any means a tremendous vocal presence -- she adds a nicely bluesy, sub-Polly Harvey yowl to the pummeling title track and the glam-thrash stomp of "Goya Monster," but her vapid singsonging elsewhere (and flimsy nursery-rhyme rapping on "Fight Song") tends to detract somewhat from the album's dramatic drive where a more commanding vocalist could have helped transform it into something truly remarkable. Despite a promising start (the insistent yet inscrutable rallying cries of the first few tracks) and some inspired programming throughout (check the jittery tech-funk instrumental "Sweet Things Are So Hard"), Clay Stones remains conceptually intriguing and admirably sculpted, but a bit too stony to fully embrace on its own terms -- though it's easy and enticing to imagine how this could be tremendously effective stuff in person.

First Aid Kit: Drunken Trees and The Big Black and the Blue reviews

Suburban Stockholm's Söderberg sisters put their best foot forward on this, their first full-length outing as First Aid Kit: the album opens nearly a cappella, with a few slow strums and then a full minute of nothing but the haunting close harmonies that are the duo's strongest and most distinctive musical asset. In the 40-odd minutes that follow, the sisters' simplistic, repetitious song structures may start to grow stale, and their fine but unfussy folk instrumentalism may seem less than inspiring, but those harmonies are never far from hand, ensuring that The Big Black and the Blue is never less than an entirely pleasant listening experience. And it has potential to be much more than that -- taken individually, many and even most of these tunes have ample charms to offer, among them the sweetly melodic "Waltz for Richard," the wistful "Heavy Storm," and the intriguing "I Met Up with the King" (which bears a striking resemblance to Neko Case). Taken as a whole album, though, the songs lose a lot of their distinctiveness, and the uninterrupted loveliness can start to feel oddly dreary. The Big Black certainly doesn't dash the promise suggested by the duo's Drunken Trees EP (which in its final form was only four songs and 14 minutes shorter than this album) -- although that release's mild, playful experimentalism and small inklings of stylistic range are scrapped here for a more sober-minded American folk traditionalism that's perhaps commendable but not altogether compelling -- but it leaves that promise yet to be completely fulfilled. It feels entirely probable that they'll get there: the Söderbergs are still (astonishingly) young -- 20 and 17 at the time of this album's release -- and they've shown clear evidence of their raw talent and artistry. Their level of engagement is admirable: in addition to their genuinely prodigious vocal gifts and their more than competent handling all of the varied instrumentation here, save for the drums on several tracks, the sisters are credited with co-production and mixing, and they're also responsible for album's stunning, antiquarian-styled artwork. If they want to secure their place in this young century's burgeoning classicist folk wave (see also: Laura Marling, the Tallest Man on Earth), they'll merely need to come up with some songs that can truly make good on their otherwise considerably distinguished overall package.

Here We Go Magic: Pigeons review

Here We Go Magic made waves in early 2009 with an eponymous debut that was the one-man home recording project of indie folker Luke Temple; a curious, sonically hazy album essentially divided between sketchy ambient noise instrumentals and simple, tuneful, loosely tribal-feeling folk-pop nuggets. A little more than a year later, HWGM is now a full-fledged five-piece band with extensive touring behind them and a deal with big-league indie Secretly Canadian, but while their follow-up effort, Pigeons, varies from its predecessor in plenty of ways, the band's musical approach remains puzzlingly, if not unpleasantly, undefined. The most substantial through-line from the first album is one of sound, which remains dirty, dreamy, psychedelic, and swirling -- produced and recorded by the band in a house in the Catskills, Pigeons offers no substantial increase in recording fidelity, which turns out to be a good thing. More surprisingly, this album essentially jettisons both of the primary stylistic modes explored on the debut: the white-noise instrumentals are gone (and scarcely missed) but, with a few exceptions, so are the ambiguously ethnic, gentle world-pop vibes and much of the mantra-like melodic minimalism that contributed so much to the first album's appeal. Opener "Hibernation" floats fragmentary vocals atop a dense, stuttering Afro-beat lope, while the final two tracks, the circular chant "Vegetable or Native" and wordless, herky-jerky "Herbie I Love You," are built on layers of skeletal, intriguingly polyrhythmic percussion -- but that's about the extent of this album's global grooving. The eight intervening tracks form a motley, unfocused assemblage of eclectic indie pop, sometimes with a worked-up rhythmic drive -- the jaunty single "Collector" and the submerged-feeling "Moon" suggest either the mechanistic intensity of Krautrock or, less charitably, tepidly frenetic, warmed-over post-punk -- sometimes more ethereally floating. "Bottom Feeder" is vaguely countryish, making fine use of Temple's thin, overstrained pipes (shades of Neil Young reediness), while the curiously carnivalistic "Old World United," definitely the oddest thing on here, recalls the debut's old-timey waltz "Everything's Big." There's nothing particularly wrong with any of this, but despite this expanded stylistic and instrumental palette (and some notably lush, lovely vocal harmonies), it's hard to escape the sense that this album is, ironically, even more of an indulgently dabbling affair than its home four-tracked predecessor, which at least had an appealing simplicity and directness of approach. In the words of this album's prettiest tune: "it's casual, not mindshaking." And that's just OK.

-------2009

Think About Life: Family review

No points for guessing what this well-named Montreal threesome thinks about life -- at least assuming that listeners can judge from the sound of this humbly hewn but highly enjoyable sophomore album, the band's outlook and overall aesthetic are unmistakably vibrant, messy, enthusiastic, and riotously colorful. At their best, Think About Life marry the sort of hyperactive, upbeat kitchen-sink pop purveyed by the likes of Junior Senior and the Go! Team to a more guitar-centric indie rock foundation, occasionally bringing a muscular, dance-punky edge to the proceedings. With live drums carrying the groove on every track but one (the New Order-ish electro-pop of "Nueva Nueva"), Family maintains a loose, live, almost ramshackle vibe throughout, although the band also makes fairly prominent use of electronics, with all manner of buzzy keyboards and a handful of cleverly integrated samples. There are flirtations with Afro-pop and Motown (the lovely, laid-back "The Veldt," whose chorus interpolates "My Girl"), a splash of hip-hop (the opening moments of "Set You on Fire," before it settles into more of a pedestrian indie-dance jam), and some frenzied neo-new wave ("The Wizzzard"), several of which come with a curious midsong breakdown of some sort. The grooves are typically on point, Martin Cesar's throaty vocals -- split between impassioned midrange warbles and a Princely falsetto with strong shades of TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe -- are pleasantly distinctive, and the whole album feels comfortably crammed with ear-catching trinkets and inventive arranging ideas, even if the band can't always come up with the melodic goods to make its sonic concoctions fully stick. The first four tracks form the most consistent stretch, with top marks going to the slinky disco strut and touching teenage love soap of "Sweet Sixteen" and the herky-jerky, horn-assisted funk-rock of "Johanna," which features a particularly gritty, determined vocal turn from Cesar as well as a brief, unexpected detour into polyrhythmic trombone Dixie. While the rest of Family doesn't always stand up to those high points, it does always sound like the bandmembers are enjoying themselves, and for the most part that sense of fun is infectious. And sure, it can also grow tiresome and overly familiar at times -- as with so many things, it's mostly a question of perspective. But if Family doesn't make you think about life, at the very least it ought to make you think about dancing.

An Horse: Rearrange Beds review

An Horse's tuneful, classically crunchy two-person indie rock fits in well alongside engagingly personable contemporaries like Wye Oak, Mates of State, and their sometime tourmates Tegan and Sara (who were largely responsible for introducing the band to American audiences), but it also owes a great deal to the meatier old-guard indie duos of the 1990s, groups like the Spinanes, Quasi, and Royal Trux. Like most if not all of these acts, An Horse derive a certain scrappy urgency and directness from their stripped-down, no-frills lineup: it's just Kate Cooper on guitar and lead vocals, Damon Cox on drums and backgrounds, but their limited numbers don't stop them from kicking up plenty of racket. The approach -- gritty and muscular but too melodic to come off as especially tough -- is wonderfully well-suited to the frank, up-front songwriting on their debut, packing a wallop of nervous energy that mirrors the emotional immediacy of Cooper's heart-sleeved relationship confessionals while moving briskly enough from hook to hook to preclude too much wallowing in earnestness. (The few exceptions, "Listen" and "Little Lungs," wherein the pace momentarily slackens, function just fine -- and even explicitly -- as breathers.) Opening shot "Camp Out" is the clear highlight, a bouncy four-chord jumble of sexual angst and exultantly hopeful confusion that builds to anthemic proportions, but the remainder of the album, which follows in a largely similar vein, is nearly up to that level. Ultimately, it's the sound as much as the songs that make Rearrange Beds so thoroughly enjoyable, that warmly familiar, tried but true indie rock buzz that An Horse seem to have offhandedly mastered, capturing all the necessary torment and jubilation of adolescence and rock & roll, and almost always coming out smiling on the other side.

Javelin: Javelin review

This limited-edition 12" EP -- packaged in screen-printed, re-purposed thrift-store LP sleeves -- distills the irrepressibly fun-loving, sample-based shenanigans that Javelin unleashed on their self-issued Jamz 'n' Jemz CD-R (and would soon extend to their Luaka Bop debut, No Más) into a highly concentrated five-track party. There are vocals here -- disembodied snatches of throaty R&B interjected into the bass-popping slo-mo funk of "Unforgettable Super Lady"; a brattily incanted schoolyard rhyme and a fluttery bit of goofball rapping buried in "Soda Popinski"'s 8-bit hip-hop hoe-down; even a full-fledged sung melody on the half-baked "Radio" -- but it's really all about the grooves, which are fairly bursting with kaleidoscopic cut-n-paste charm all on their own. In fact, it's probably just as well that the preposterously named "Lindsey Brohan" (a holdover from Jamz) is instrumental; its sugary day-glo electro cake could hardly handle any more frosting. Snatch it fast.

Joe Goddard: Harvest Festival review

Joe Goddard's solo debut, recorded for his own Greco-Roman imprint, is a largely instrumental, wholly electronic set that finds the chipper Hot Chipper displaying much the same affable good humor and nifty, nuanced knob-twiddling that he brings to his main band. The album's fruit-based titling scheme is an apt one: alongside their generally frisky, frivolous feel, these tracks have an analog warmth and inbred musicality that make them far juicier and more flavorful than your typical faceless techno fare, even sticking within a fairly limited, simple, and at times rather tinny-sounding sonic range. Hot Chip fans looking for an extra serving of the group's full-spectrum emotional electro-pop may find it wanting -- the only proper vocal song, "Lemons and Lime (Home Time)," is likably lush and croony, and makes a nice palate-cleanser in context, but it's fairly slight by the band's standards -- but Harvest Festival offers plenty of its own delights, with its nicely balanced track list spanning fully club-appropriate material and several mellower and/or murkier pieces. "Apple Bobbing" opens the album somewhere in the middle of that range and is an instant highlight, gradually layering one sweetly burbling synth melody over another as a classically styled Chicago house drum track jacks slinkily in the background. The grooves deepen through the disc's dancy first half, nodding to dubstep's woozy bass wobble and twitchy syncopations as they build toward the full-on thumping goofiness of the Biggie-biting "Go Bananas." The back half of the album is more abstract (i.e., not particularly danceable) and moodier, if not necessarily less playful, with a tendency to feel slightly unformed and unfinished -- though "Sour Grapes," with its serene churchy organ figures atop a rolling sea of dubbed-out liquid clicks, is headed in an intriguing direction. Nothing here suggests Goddard ought to consider leaving his day job, but it's a worthy diversion that should please most fans and onlookers curious enough to seek it out.

Pink Skull: Endless Bummer review

Endless Bummer is the second album-length Pink Skull release, but even though it has plenty in common with the woolly, chameleonic onslaught of 2008's Zeppelin 3 -- lots of percussion-happy, mainly instrumental disco-rock workouts, a pronounced psychedelic bent, nutty non sequitur track titles -- it feels somehow less like a straightforward follow-up than its own discrete venture, or even something of a reset. Perhaps that's due to Pink Skull's fluidity as a musical entity (live band/DJ collective/recording project), which has veered more in the full band direction in the intervening year and a half, or to the D.I.Y., project-like distinctness of each of their releases. (This one, for instance, was issued only on MP3 and vinyl, with an initial run of 1,000 copies in unique handmade letterpressed sleeves each emblazoned with a different "bummer" -- "Ingrown Toenail," "Fake Orgasm," "Ethnic Cleansing," "Emo," etc.) Arguably even less accurately named than Zeppelin 3, Endless Bummer is in fact both relatively concise and a considerably more positive-spirited and agreeable affair than its predecessor, with markedly less electronic wankery and only one true foray into all-out inscrutability (the noodly "Fast Forward to Bolivia"). Opener "Peter Cushing" is about the closest thing imaginable to a Pink Skull pop single, foregrounding Julian Grefe's self-harmonized vocals and a cheery flute riff with a simple sprightly beat and rubbery bassline harking back to the heyday of dance-punk. Predictably, things get a bit weirder and more expansive from there on out, but the basic template of organically fluid, disco-infused live-band grooves -- best exemplified by the hard-driving title track -- remains fairly constant, with just enough variety (skronking sax and chipper scatted doo wop vocals on "Chicken Dream Inside Egg"; glitchy electronic interjections on "The Inconsiderate Neighbor...") to keep things interesting. The flip side to this approach -- the album's other primary mode -- is the spacy, beatless synth exploration assayed on "Wheet" and "Fired So Fired," and on the two longer, more preposterously named bonus tracks, which achieve true ambient restfulness (another first for these guys) with no small debt to '70s kosmische musik. Pink Skull may not be doing anything all that new, but it's still a delight to hear the confidence and openness they've achieved here, settling into a groove without losing their appealing looseness and devilish sense of fun. If Zeppelin 3's itchy, dizzying eclecticism seemed desperate to make a statement and wound up barely skirting incoherence, Endless Bummer feels like it has less at stake but, paradoxically, something more to say.

Cornershop: Judy Sucks a Lemon for Breakfast review

Back in 1997: Cornershop felt like real envelope-pushers with their simmering Anglo-Indian curry of breakbeat chop-ups, Filmi-flavored funk and sunny guitar pop. Back to basics: After a seven-year recording hiatus, they're staunch Brit-pop old-guardists, lacing their reincarnated riffs with sacred cowbell, goopy gospel singers and scads of sitar (which is pretty darn classic rock when you think about it), and covering both the Kinks and Manfred Mann (who knew "The Mighty Quinn" sounded so much like "Brimful of Asha"?) Back in business: Still sounding most fundamentally like themselves, with quirks sanded down only slightly, the 'Shop can still churn out an unbeatable summer soundtrack.

-------2008

A Mountain of One: Collected Works review

As singular and imposing as their name foretells, U.K. trio A Mountain of One wholeheartedly embody the spirit of transcendent psychedelia, with all the beauty, lushness, grandiosity, pomposity, and ridiculosity that entails. The cosmic forefathers conjured in these grooves -- Tangerine Dream, Pink Floyd, Ash Ra Tempel -- may be fairly oft-cited as influences, but rarely have they been echoed with such solemn, magisterial fervor. The group's links to the space-case electronic purveyors of the Scandinavian neo-Balearic wave (artists like Lindstrøm, Low Motion Disco, Meanderthals, and, in particular, balmy noodle-meisters Studio, who've remixed their "Brown Piano") are readily evident as well, but despite the burbling disco grooves lazily coursing through many of these cuts, and the synth-kissed cover of Ginny's 1985 Italo-disco slow burn "Can't Be Serious," Mountain of One aren't exactly a dance act. It doesn't seem quite right to call them a full-fledged rock band, either (for one thing, all three core members are credited with programming in addition to various live instruments), but perhaps that's because moody, spacious synth odysseys, epically extended guitar explorations, and somberly intoned, quasi-spiritual vocals just aren't the sorts of things we expect from rock bands anymore. The "works" collected here -- two five-track EPs and a pair of new songs -- span driving, flamenco-assisted Latin-psych bombast ("Ride"), unabashedly soppy soft pop schmaltzballs ("Your Love Over Gold"), hypnotically free-floating flights of cosmic fancy ("Warping of the Clocks," "Arc of Abraham"), and even a few properly vocal-driven songs (the beatless, blearily blissed-out "Freefall" and the sublimely soaring "Innocent Line," whose gossamer disco-rock amble is stretched out to more than double its length with the Air-ish instrumental reprise) whose potently simple melodies slowly wend their way into your skull. Whether this is just the stuff to fuel your personal rocketship, or whether you find it all a bit too bloated and overbearing to handle, ultimately comes down to a question of taste -- not, clearly, these dudes' chief preoccupation -- but for those willing to climb aboard, Collected Works makes for a spectacularly smooth ride. Either way, it's hard to deny that A Mountain of One are an exceptional band, working with a level of ambition that doesn't come along nearly often enough and -- equally rare -- the chops and the commitment to see it fully realized.

Adem: Takes review

A covers album of a particularly personal stripe, Adem Ilhan's third solo record has all the intimacy and hand-crafted charm of a beloved mixtape, bringing the warmth of spirit and imaginative acoustic palette of his earlier works to bear on a handful of his favorite songs from the formative period (for Adem himself and for indie music in general) between 1992 and 2001. Anyone who was an ardent follower of the burgeoning "alternative" scene during these years should find something to smile at among Adem's song choices, which cover many of the era's big names (Smashing Pumpkins, PJ Harvey, Björk) but steer clear of familiar hits in favor of more obscure single sides and album tracks. Despite a fair breadth of source material (given the constraints of time and milieu), Takes functions quite cohesively on its own terms, and there's plenty to enjoy here whether or not listeners are familiar with the original versions. Many of the picks play to Adem's strengths in obvious (and thoroughly effective) ways -- the fluid, melodic guitar lines of Pinback ("Loro") and Bedhead ("Bedside Table") translate naturally to his layered acoustic picking style, while the spare, serenely transcendent emotionalism of Low's "Laser Beam" and Yo La Tengo's "Tears Are in Your Eyes" make a fine fit for his achingly rich, just-slightly-gritty voice (which, if anything, is perhaps a tad forceful for these utterly delicate songs.) Other selections involve a bit more reinvention -- it's no surprise to see Tortoise on the track listing, given Adem's post-rock backstory with Fridge, but he twists the lengthy rarity "Gamera" to his own unexpected ends, using the original track's introductory guitar figure as a launch-pad for a fast-and-loose free-folk excursion. Most intriguing, and perhaps the album's standout moment, is his Aphex Twin homage, which combines two tracks off The Richard D. James Album, smoothing out the freakish vocals of "To Cure a Weakling Child" and grafting them onto an impressively detailed acoustic transcription of "Girl/Boy Song," with surprisingly mellow, cheerful results. Elsewhere, dEUS ("Hotellounge") and the Breeders ("Invisible Man") get stripped of their rougher, grungier elements in favor of lusciously thick arrangements replete with glockenspiel, harmonium, piano, and an array of plucked string instruments -- all of which, along with dulcimer, Autoharp, violin, and assorted found percussion, make up the bountiful sonic trick bag from which Adem draws intuitively and judiciously throughout the album. Not an especially consequential offering, but a tremendously lovable one, Takes may be aptly and cleverly titled (punning on at least three senses of the word), but it's absolutely an act of giving on multiple levels as well: a showcase for the considerable musical gifts of its creator, a sincere token of tribute to his inspirations, and a generous treat for his listeners.

-------2005

Why?: Elephant Eyelash review

There were some glimmers of articulate clarity and likably wry charm amid the mumblings and meanderings of Why?'s first full-length, Oaklandazulasylum, but they hardly anticipated the dramatic leap forward into approachability that marked their second. ("Their" because, between the two albums, Why? had mutated from an arty quasi-rap solo project alias to a full-fledged if hardly conventional indie rock band) Though still far from easily digestible, the challenges Elephant Eyelash presents aren't so much about trying to piece together a head-scratchingly oblique, willfully incomplete puzzle as simply taking the time to process and integrate its veritable flood of musical and, especially, lyrical content, an outpouring suggestive of a long-withdrawn, self-absorbed introvert who's suddenly become desperate to communicate with the world. What gets communicated -- in essence, the manifold nooks and crannies of Yoni Wolf's psyche -- is by turns playful, philosophical, insecure, morbid, and sentimental, and while that communication is still happening on Wolf's own terms -- which means reams of voluble verbiage peppered with nerdy absurdities, cleverly convoluted wordplay, and free-associative filigree, usually delivered in a nasal, over-articulated singsong that was really his only viable remaining link to hip-hop (and a pretty tenuous one at that) -- the upshot is a singularly striking set of images and insights well worth the scrutiny. Somewhere between intimate journal entries and free-form poetry, these songs float from factual, anecdotal snapshots -- like a vivid depiction (in the opening verse of "Sand Dollars") of watching a water-based graffito dissolve in the rain, or the casual specificity of "Yo Yo Bye Bye"'s scene-setting opening lines: "I was walking through San Antonio before soundcheck/looking for some pole to do pull-ups on" -- to probing meditations on aging and mortality (brooding closers "Act Five" and "Light Leaves"), inscrutable phantasmagoric whimsy ("The Hoofs"), and coded but no-less-heartfelt ruminations on love, loss, memory, and the alarming intensity of human connection (perhaps most affectingly on the wonderfully imagistic "Gemini (Birthday Song)." The subject matter can get fairly weighty, sure, but it's tempered by Wolf's deft balance of wit and sincerity, and by the delicately skewed indie pop backing of his bandmates. Indeed, Elephant Eyelash's music is nearly as remarkable and distinctive as its words; wispy, crunchy, structurally off-kilter compositions that are difficult to classify but favor a certain ramshackle charm and melodic sweetness, and in a few cases -- among them "Rubber Traits," "Gemini," and especially "Sanddollars" -- wind up feeling oddly, downright anthemic.

AMG review round-up, volume XX: 2010 second quarter (hits)

i know i've been doing a poor job of chronicling it here, but i might have mentioned how excited i am about music in 2010. it's been an awesome year so far, kicking off right out the gate with some tremendously great albums in the first two months, including the three that are still my #1-3 favorites of the year to date, and plenty more still-banging first-quarter jams that i posted about here (AMG reviews) and here (CP song blurbs).

the second quarter of the year has perhaps not quite maintained that supreme level of unbelievable awesomeness, but it definitely hasn't been far off. here are a dozen of the records i reviewed in april, may and june. presented, again, in the order they're currently slotting in on my best-of-2010 list. which, curiously, makes for a rough progression from more mellow/folky/organic to more upbeat/dancy/electronic, not that's necessarily indicative of what sounds i've been enjoying more.

Sam Amidon: I See The Sign review

This is the third set of interpretations of (primarily) traditional, public domain material from multivalent modern folk artist Sam Amidon. Like its predecessor, 2007's All Is Well, it was recorded in Iceland with producer Valgeir Sigurðsson and features the subtle, masterful orchestral arrangements of Nico Muhly; key contributions also come from drummer/percussionist Shahzad Ismaily and from Beth Orton, who sings alongside Amidon on four songs. Each of these collaborators adds to the album's rich, expansive, textural palette, allowing considerable psychological range within its generously subdued tone, from the urgency of opening murder ballad "How Come That Blood" (with Ismaily's tense, churning percussion and pointed mini-Moog jabs) to the lush, billowing sweetness of "Pretty Fair Damsel" (Muhly's florid celeste and woodwind figures), and the fluid tranquility of "Climbing High Mountains" (a restful treatment that tempers the song's world-weary lyric.) But always at the forefront are Amidon's voice --which recalls Will Oldham in its restraint and slight rustic roughness -- and, especially, the songs he has chosen to make his own. These include several tunes from the Georgia Sea Islands, learned (via Amidon's folksinging parents) from the powerful renditions of Bessie Jones, and sung in duet with Orton: the "singing-game" "Johanna the Row-Di" and "Way Go, Lily" (refashioned from a peppy handclapping jingle into a gently yearning ballad), and the admonishing folk-gospel number "You Better Mind," given a fervent, rousing reading and a vigorous arrangement that's at once stately and spirited. Christian themes (and apocalyptic imagery) crop up elsewhere, notably on the spare, somberly portentous title track and the simply sung lament "Kedron," but even the selections that aren't explicitly religious are treated with a gospel-like solemnity and directness of feeling. Muhly's playfully inventive arrangements work marvelously throughout to complement this seriousness with a delicate balance of levity, but the album's most lighthearted (and unexpected) moment is also perhaps its most spiritual: "Relief," a simple, deeply felt paean to the persevering goodness of life, might appear in this context like an old-time folk number -- after all, what kind of knucklehead would pen a line like "what a relief to know that the war is over" in days like these? -- but in fact it's by R. Kelly, salvaged from the unreleased 2008 fiasco 12 Play: 4th Quarter. And it's stunningly gorgeous; further confirmation, if any were needed, that Amidon's instincts and talents as a musical conservationist, interpreter, and reanimator are to be wholly trusted and cherished.

The Mynabirds: What We Lose In The Fire We Gain in the Flood review

Ornithologically speaking, myna birds are noted for their talented vocal mimicry, which makes them a partially fitting but ultimately misleading namesake for this musical brainchild of singer/songwriter Laura Burhenn. True, the Mynabirds' debut outing does an uncanny job recapturing the spirits of its 1960s-era influences -- artists like Carole King, Bobbie Gentry, Jackie DeShannon, and Dusty Springfield who mined the fertile crossroads of soul, country, folk, and pop -- and much of that is due to Burhenn's marvelously rich, earthy vocal presence. But the effect is more an evocation of a certain vital, timeless mood than the re-creation of any specific sound; the album has a genuine warmth and tenderness that extend far beyond impersonation, and despite the undeniably vintage feel it's blatantly reductive to label it "retro." For one thing, these sounds have been broached frequently enough in recent years from various angles -- Leslie Feist's urbane soul-pop, Jenny Lewis' and Neko Case's roots-country redefinitions and, especially, Cat Power's Memphian sojourns all come to mind -- that they hardly sound out of place in the indie music world circa 2010. But Burhenn, working here with producer and fellow pop nostalgiast Richard Swift, makes them her own. The sepia-tinted cover image makes a good analog: it looks archival, but that's actually Burhenn -- an iconic, doe-eyed blonde -- seated in a church pew in a shot that underscores the album's pronounced devotional bent (with just a vague, impious hint of Dusty waiting to meet that son of a preacher man), That the gospel strains here, evident throughout but especially conspicuous on the thumping, slow-burning title track with its ineffable, pseudo-biblical mantra, are informed by Burhenn's readings of Jung and Sufi poetry (and her personal experiences of loss) rather than a Pentecostal upbringing makes them no less spiritually resonant. But if there's darkness and pain in these grooves there's also plenty of lightness and joy, with a consistent, compassionate message of redemption through acceptance -- as Burhenn sings on "Ways of Looking": "It can be easy if you just let it." That simplicity informs both the album's unstudied songwriting and its deft, uncluttered arrangements, ranging from that song's few breezy guitar chords and sparse tambourine to the pounding piano and garage rock swagger of "Let the Record Go" to the New Orleans-style brass backing up "We Made a Mountain"'s bluesy gospel and the strings bringing a perfect touch of gloss to "LA Rain"'s charming pop.

Tracey Thorn: Love and Its Opposite review

After the eight-year recording silence which lasted from the start of Everything But the Girl's indefinite hiatus until Tracey Thorn's triumphant re-emergence as a solo artist on 2007's Out of the Woods, the singer took only three years to return with a follow-up. Love and Its Opposite finds Thorn again working with Berlin-based house producer Ewan Pearson, but it effectively jettisons its predecessor's scintillating electro-pop for a more subdued chamber-folk style akin to that album's quieter moments; it's easily Thorn's least electronic work since EBtG's dramatic danceward shift in the mid-'90s. Then as now, the change of musical scenery hardly disrupts the caliber and sophistication of Thorn's songcraft or the power of her inimitable voice, which remains as gloriously warm as ever. Given that mood and maturity have always been her hallmarks, aging gracefully is scarcely even a concern: now that she's in a position to deliver a set of songs about the complexities of, in her phrase, "real life after forty," it feels utterly natural, a continuation of the emotional navigations she's spent her career documenting with characteristic insight and sensitivity. Stately waltz "Oh, The Divorces!" observes the seemingly inexorable progression of marriages dissolving around her with a creeping unease barely masked by its Sondheim-worthy elegance and verbal wit ("he was a charmer/I wish him bad karma"), and is deftly juxtaposed with the childhood nostalgia of "Long White Dress," concerning a life-long dread of weddings. (Perhaps tellingly, Thorn and EBtG-mate Ben Watt married in 2009, after 28 years of partnership.) On a lighter note, maybe, the bouncy "Hormones" comments breezily on menopause (the singer's) and adolescence (her daughters'), while "Singles Bar" is a wry treatment of aging-singles scenes and all their attendant hope and desperation ("can you smell the fear?"), in a tone that could be bleak or comical or both. Throughout, but especially in her poignant meditations on domestic relationships -- the achingly uncertain "Why Does the Wind" (given a nimble funk backing by Hot Chip bassist Al Doyle and Invisible stickman Leo Taylor), Lee Hazlewood's brooding "C'mon Home to Me" (sung with Jens Lekman), and the quietly self-scrutinizing "Late in the Afternoon" -- Thorn's romanticism is tempered by a hard-earned sense, approached with a mixture of comfort and resignation, that love and its opposite -- fear, perhaps, of loneliness or abandonment or simply death -- aren't truly opposed, but are necessary working complements, each enabling the possibility of the other.

The Tallest Man on Earth: Shallow Grave and The Wild Hunt reviews

In nearly every respect, Swedish troubadour Kristian Matsson's second full-length outing as the Tallest Man on Earth is a direct continuation of the stripped-down roots folk style he introduced on his debut — an album that was deeply, unambiguously steeped in rural American folk tradition but also the product of a strong singular vision and voice. Arguably the most significant difference this time out is the wider stateside distribution that The Wild Hunt will enjoy thanks to its presence on Dead Oceans, and, hopefully, an attendant increase in exposure. It's richly deserved: even if — as may initially seem to be the case — this album offered nothing more than another ten songs cut from Shallow Grave's rough-hewn yet rarefied cloth, it would be considerable cause for celebration; for an ostensible one trick pony, Matsson's got a hell of a trick. But he's more than that: his distinctive gifts as a songwriter are more than equal to his undeniable flair as a musical stylist, and if the uncanny anachronistic effect of his work isn't quite as revelatory the second time around, this set offers the subtler treat of hearing an artist carve out further space for personal nuance and expression within an already well-established approach. Careful listening reveals a newfound looseness and emotional range here, particularly in the vocals, with tender moments like the sweetly sung "Love Is All" and bittersweet relationship dissection "The Drying of the Lawns" balancing the typically visceral, nearly strident delivery of songs like "You're Going Back" and jaunty highlight "King of Spain" (which wryly tips a hat to Matsson's most undeniable forerunner with its reference to "boots of Spanish leather"). Lyrically, too, his writing has grown somewhat more lucid and expressive, with even his characteristically poetic evocations of the natural world connecting on a more human and relatable level than past abstractions (from "Burden of Tomorrow": "I'm just a blind man on the plains/I drink my water when it rains/And live by chance among the lightning strikes"). Still, The Wild Hunt could hardly be called a reinvention. Save for the unexpectedly Springsteen-esque closer, "Kids on the Run," wherein Matsson trades in his trusty six-string for a piano, anything here could have slotted neatly onto Shallow Grave. And that's no trouble at all: when you sound like virtually nobody else out there, it's hard to complain about more of the same.

Tunng: And Then We Saw Land review

Continuing to edge farther afield from their pastoral past, Tunng's fourth full-length finds the London folktronic outfit weathering a slight reshuffle (essentially a consolidation of their live and in-studio lineups, with the notable departure of founding member/songwriter/habitual non-performer Sam Genders) and emerging in fine form with their fleshiest effort yet. Taking off from its pop-leaning predecessor, Good Arrows, extending that album's broadened instrumental palette and decreased reliance on digital tweaking, And Then We Saw Land ventures in several complementary directions without sacrificing the group's distinctive combination of bucolic folk and whimsical electronic interventions. Right away, the highly hummable "Hustle" marks a clear departure, with whirring synths giving way to a jaunty banjo-led bounce that's the brightest (glockenspiels!) and boldest (drums!) the band has ever sounded. "Don't Look Down or Back" veers between sedate, bittersweet verses and a rollicking group-sung chorus, and is one of several numbers here featuring fiery electric guitars juxtaposed with the group's more typical acoustic fingerpicking -- the most striking case being "Sashimi," whose blend of crunching bursts and pinprick counterpoint stabs (recalling Point-era Cornelius) lives up to the elegant, pungent delicacy of its namesake. Elsewhere, Tunng hew closer to their sometimes somber rustic roots, as on the darkly melodic waltz-ballad "October" and the pensive, downcast "With Whiskey," both of them relatively unadorned, classically styled British folk (notwithstanding the a-ha shout-out in the latter's refrain.) Throughout, but perhaps on these songs especially, And Then We Saw Land makes an excellent showcase for its two fine, understated vocalists, with Mike Lindsay's slightly gruff but soothingly warm, gently accented voice frequently doubled by Becky Jacobs' purer, girlish tones (Jacobs is a newly prominent vocal presence on this album, taking several leads including the sweet, nautical sing-song "These Winds"). And as they've evolved into even more of a collective (this album marks the band's most collaborative -- and notably, lengthiest -- writing and recording process to date), Tunng don't pass up several opportunities for group vocals, most memorably on the beautifully simple, gradually layered singalong at the core of "Weekend Away" (a multi-parter preceding the spare, unlisted closer.) While it's hardly the stark, across-the-board tonal sea change suggested by several of its most immediately ear-catching cuts, And Then We Saw Land is at once an adventurous outward journey and an invitingly familiar return from an always intriguing, intrepid, and under-heralded band.

Grovesnor: Soft Return review

Rob Smoughton's debut as Grovesnor is a glistening, spot-on tribute to the silky-smooth soft pop and Styrofoam soul sounds of 1980s hitmakers like Hall & Oates, Lionel Richie, and Phil Collins -- one of the few patches of the Reagan-era musical landscape that had not undergone an extensive process of reclamation and reintegration by the early 21st century, at least not without a heavy irony factor involved (cf. Chromeo). Call Soft Return a winking pastiche if you like, but it's not parody and it's not mockery: the degree of artistry and care that Smoughton brings to this material, both in terms of stylistic accuracy and straight-up musicianship and songcraft, is too great for it to come off as anything less than heartfelt homage. Which is hardly to suggest that it's lacking in humor -- indeed, the album's sense of fun is perhaps its greatest quality, coming through in the breezy tunefulness of its hooks and arrangements (replete with lush keyboards, tinny drum machines, and the occasional sax solo), but even more so in the lyrics, which use the appealingly louche Grovesnor persona to skewer playfully the genre's sensitive loverman conventions. These faintly preposterous first-person narratives, delivered in Smoughton's thin but serviceably soulful tenor, could easily be premises for exactly the sort of romantic comedies likely to be soundtracked by Grovesnor's primary influences. In the fantastically catchy "Dan," he's a prospective best man debating how to break the news that he's been kicking it with the bride-to-be, while "When I Saw You Dance" relates the wacky tale of a love affair blossoming at a high-school reunion. Even at his more serious -- and many of these songs do come across as surprisingly, legitimately heartfelt -- Smoughton's still liable to toss in a line like "I'm pretty sure I'm the guy for you baby/That's why I act so nonchalant." The album is somewhat top-heavy -- after the brief, funky, talkbox-aided tone-setter, the three strongest cuts are slotted right up front, including the glitzy, smooth-sailing "Taxi from the Airport" (with a groove on loan from Joe Jackson's "Stepping Out") and "Nitemoves" (which boasts both Smoughton's most sensitive crooning and his most hyperactive beat programming) -- but the quality never dips significantly, even if the obligatory handful of ballads and the Rundgren-esque titular instrumental aren't quite as riveting as these highlights.

Lucky Soul: A Coming Of Age review

Greenwich retro-pop darlings Lucky Soul took three years to follow up the (modest) surprise success of their delightful debut, with band mastermind Andrew Laidlaw near-penniless and literally living in the studio during this album's extended, painstaking gestation period. When it arrived, the well-named A Coming of Age found the group gracefully refining its vintage-leaning aesthetic, growing more ambitious and assured with its arrangements, and shedding just a bit of its youthful breeziness for a more restrained, slightly darker tone. Not that the band's unabashed fondness for 1960s girl group pop and sophisticated soul sounds ever overwhelmed its work to the point of novelty or pastiche, but here those influences feel even more seamless, natural, and strikingly, viably modern. There are a few slight but savvy outward steps: some heavier guitar leads here and there, vague countrypolitan inflections on "Upon Hilly Fields," a touch of disco glam to the rousing opener "Woah Billy!" (a song inspired, curiously, by the evidently effortless nonchalance of veteran troubador Billy Bragg), and the swirling, bombastic Bond-style melodrama of the terrific title track (an epic three minutes if ever there were). But Lucky Soul's best move is keeping their sound largely intact, simply offering more of all the things that made their debut so immediately, lastingly lovable: more handclaps and horns, more luscious, lavish strings, more of Ali Howard's swoony, girlish vocals, and best of all, even more irresistible throwback dance grooves. Assured uptempo standouts like the Motown-via-Dexys twist 'n' skank of "White Russian Doll," the organ-led bounce of "Ain't Nothing Like a Shame," and the strutting Northern soul stomper "Up in Flames" more than hold their own against the first album's fizzy floor-fillers. Strangely, where this album falls short of its predecessor is on the slower, sensitive numbers, which tend to be amiable, doo woppy ambles rather than all-out ballads (only the pleasant but ultimately undistinguished "Warm Water" approaches the mark there). There's no shortage of lovelorn lyrics (perhaps puzzling given the romance that bloomed between Laidlaw and Howard), but nothing with quite the emotional heft and potency of songs like "My Darling, Anything" and "Baby I'm Broke," moments that elevated The Great Unwanted from a brilliant piece of pop to a truly timeless creation. If that minor shortcoming relegates A Coming of Age to being nothing but a consistent, consummate, brilliant piece of pop, listeners can still count themselves very lucky indeed.

Sia: We Are Born review

If Some People Have Real Problems, upon its 2008 release, felt like Sia's "pop move," its warmly personable brew of mellow coffee shop soul offering a more approachable contrast to the sober soundtrack-fodder chill-out with which she -- and in particular, her increasingly ubiquitous, jazzily innocuous voice -- had become near-synonymous, what can we make of We Are Born? With this, her fourth proper album, recorded for yet another new label (pop/hip-hop titan Jive), the Australian singer has made a massive pop leap: a sunshiny, highly caffeinated set of frothy dance tracks and feel-good lite-funk. And it's a great look. It's hard not to smile in agreement when she sings, in the tremendously hooky chorus to the irresistible, disco-fied first single (a revamped Lauren Flax collaboration): "You've changed... for the better!" As Sia tells it, it's less that she's changed than that she's finally made the album she'd been itching to make for years, the catalysts including her increased distance from the evidently dictatorial market forces of downtempo and her recent romantic linkage with DJ JD Sampson (Le Tigre, MEN). Unexpected though the shift may seem, it still feels like an entirely comfortable one, a liberating opportunity to revel in the natural exuberance she's always held in check. It's a treat, then, but hardly a surprise, to hear how well Sia works her ever-expressive pipes in full-on club-diva mode, as on the aforementioned single and the equally delightful "The Fight." She displays impressive vocal versatility throughout, cooing and crowing like vintage Gwen Stefani on the awesomely ska-punky "Bring Night"; drawing on her reserve stock of quavering Winehouse-isms for the blue-eyed R&B of "Be Good to Me"; getting throaty on the decidedly emo piano ballad "I'm in Here," which recalls any number of tortured '90s alt-rock songstresses (ditto her extravagant take on Madonna's "Oh Father.") Much as her vocal flexibility lets Sia navigate a considerable array of pop styles with nary a hitch, her solid songwriting chops find her fully satisfying the conventions of each form she tackles, albeit rarely transcending them. Meanwhile Greg Kurstin, by now a past master of breezy, contemporary, grown-up girl pop production, supplies a likable balance of gloss and glitter, with plenty of fun, playful touches (toy pianos, synthesized orchestra bells, kids voices.) While We Are Born occasionally lapses into the anodyne, overly tasteful pop-folk balladeering of Sia's past, overall it's a charmingly cheery, light-hearted romp looking nowhere but sweetly, sanguinely forward.

Tame Impala: Innerspeaker review

The limpid lysergic swirls and squalling fuzz-toned riffs that populate Tame Impala's debut clearly owe a hefty, heartfelt debt to the hazy churn of late-'60s/early-'70s psych rock, but the members of this Perth threesome are hardly strict revivalists. In comparison to their similarly inspired contemporaries, they chart a course somewhere between Dungen's lovingly meticulous replication of their chosen style and Malachai's deconstructive, electronically enabled pastiche of same, deftly skirting the potential for parodic excess that comes with either extreme. Balancing an obvious reverence for their sonic forebears with subtly contemporary production tweaks, they make straddling two disparate eras feel like the most comfortable, effortless thing in the world. And that sense of unforced, unpretentious ease is fundamental to what makes Innerspeaker so simply, viscerally pleasurable: there's so much that Tame Impala get so wonderfully right here -- a distinct but understated undercurrent of melody, a relaxed but ever-present sense of groove, a crystal crispness and deliberateness to the sound even when it's treated with a healthy dousing of buzz and reverb -- without seeming like they're trying at all hard. Despite a classic power trio configuration and relatively limited use of overdubbing, the album frequently feels so sonically massive, so thick with ringing guitars, walls of effects, and tremendous, reverberating drums, that it's hard to believe it's the work of a mere threesome. Kudos are perhaps in order to neo-psych mainstay Dave Fridmann, who mans the mixing boards here with a relish and restraint that helps make this one of the most tasteful (and tasty) records on his recent résumé. Credit frontman Kevin Parker's lazily drawled, remarkably Lennon-esque vocals, too, (frequently Leslie'd or otherwise processed, which helps) with giving the album an extra air of free-floating authenticity (while only occasionally giving up anything as specific and tangible as a substantially intelligible lyric). It's only infrequently that individual songs manage to stand out from the surrounding fluid, atmospheric haze -- typically when the band decides to leave its hooks a bit of space to breathe, as on the chunky, chugging closer "I Don't Really Mind" or the crisp, snakily phased guitar lick cementing the deliciously poppy "Solitude Is Bliss." But the dearth of standout tracks here hardly feels like an issue -- indeed, Innerspeaker coasts so beautifully on its blissful, billowing waves of sound that readily discernible hooks almost seem like gratuitous distractions.

Diskjokke: En Fin Tid review

Joakim Dyrdahl's second full-length outing as diskJokke occupies the same realm of tunefully grooving, slightly spacy electro-disco as his eminently likable debut, terrain that finds the good-natured Norwegian in fine company with his countrymen Hans-Peter Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas. While Staying In collected tracks from a span of several years, En Fin Tid was conceived as a complete piece. Its title, which translates to "A Happy Time," describes the period surrounding its creation, during which Dyrdahl became a father and decided to focus on music as a full-time pursuit. The happy times in store for diskJokke's listeners, musically speaking, are hardly a new development, but there is a definite shift here from the playfully giddy and sometimes goofy excursions of his debut to a calmer, more patient sense of contentment, reflected in significantly longer tracks (extending well beyond six minutes is now the norm rather than the exception) typically featuring fewer ideas that are allowed to germinate, percolate, and crystallize over lavish spans. The album indeed works well as a gently, gradually arcing whole, building to a frisky kinetic peak between a pair of indulgently languorous poles. While every track is to some extent undergirded by a sturdy 4/4 beat (real or implied), there's a vast range between the yawning opener "Reset and Begin" -- whose hazily meandering synths and dubby, inconclusive dribble of percussion, vaguely tethered to an intermittent bass thump, barely manage to fulfill the second half of its titular précis -- and strictly physical workouts like "Big Flash" and the deliciously funky "1987," both of which lock down their insistent, unswerving, bassy grooves and require little else beyond some decorative keyboard fluffery. Dyrdahl finds a happy middle ground on the slow to unfurl "Rosenrød," which punctuates its propulsive, pulsating acid squelch with moments of blissed-out expansiveness, and the darker-tilting "The Bund," with its slo-mo disco murk and fuzzed-out 303 riffs. But despite the considerable spectrum of energy levels, these tracks all share a sense of casual, inquisitive exploration, inviting a similarly curious investigation of whatever response seems appropriate -- dancing or daydreaming or some combination thereof -- without necessarily demanding much focus on the gentle twists and turns. Even on the seemingly more involved journeys -- the title track's Lindstrøm-esque harmonic peregrinations, for instance -- we're welcomed to gaze off into the distance from the passenger's seat, assured of diskJokke's firm, friendly hand behind the wheel.

Ellen Allien: Dust review

Ellen Allien's sixth full-length in just under a decade is something of a hybrid affair, revisiting familiar territory for the producer while also flirting with a few new ideas (guitar rock, tropicalia, songwriting) as befits her noted capacity for subtle reinvention. Decidedly more approachable than the austere, mechanical Sool, but often equally distant from the warmly embodied, melodic techno that comprised Orchestra of Bubbles, Dust's core aesthetic is a relatively stripped-down, minimalist version of electronic pop. Admittedly, Allien has her own, perhaps somewhat alien, understanding of "pop." Vocals feature significantly throughout, creating the album's most coherent throughline, and while her thin, electronically warblified voice doesn't particularly lend itself to melody, it carries an intriguing glimmer of personality. Indicative of its nebulous character, Dust is divided ambiguously between cuts that are clearly "songs" and others that feel more like "tracks," with most falling somewhere in between. The former category includes overtly guitar-based outliers "Sun The Rain" and "You" (one a pretty, surprisingly conventional shoegaze tune, the other an almost non-electronic piece of poppy, melodic post-punk) and the breezy bossa nova-tech of "Huibuh" (an unexpected yet natural fit for her whispery vocals.) These sit alongside striking but structurally unembellished dancefloor workouts like the instrumental "Ever," with its no-frills house thump and shimmering cascades of bell-like organ tones, and the hypnotically sparse, Latin-infused breakbeat funk of "Dream." Cheeky stomper "Flashy Flash" is an enjoyable throwback to Berlinette's hooky electro-clash, but the album's most appealing, humanizing moments tend to be subtler and less forced: the gentle clarinet chorale that pops up in the final minute of "My Tree," the kitchen-sink playfulness of shape-shifting closer "Schlum!" Ultimately, each piece offers its own discrete charms and its own limitations. Differently-inclined listeners may find some tracks too rote and uneventful, others too meandering and unfocused; likewise, Allien's evident inclination to have it all ways at once could come off as a timid or tepid, a failure to strike a strong, distinctive course for the album. But there's something inviting about her willingness to dabble and play here, trying on various stylistic hats and embracing the pleasures and potential pitfalls of each. Despite the considerable range she explores here (and the presence of yet another collaborator, veteran producer Tobias Freund) it's never difficult to hear the Ellen Allien in each of these tracks; the sound of one of electronica's most alluring chameleons growing a bit more comfortable within her own skin.

To Rococo Rot: Speculation review

To Rococo Rot's first proper album in six years (their sixth overall) finds the veteran "listening electronica" trio returning refreshed and reinvigorated, after the rather staid, perhaps overly-familiar Hotel Morgen, with their loosest, least electronic work to date. Recorded at Faust's studio in rural Southern Germany (the pioneering Kraut outfit's Jochen Irmler plays a self-made organ on the extended ambient closer "Fridays"), Speculation frequently approximates the sound of a live band playing in a room together, which is reportedly not far from the truth. Not that this is a full about-face into acoustic music: indeed, the record opens with a stiff, machine-calibrated pulse, though its dull precision merely forms a baseline anchor against which "Away"'s instrumental elements -- a plodding bass vamp, restrained hi-hat drumming, spindly guitar -- begin to slowly, steadily stretch away. For the most part, electronics serve primarily to add textural nuance to the live instrumentation that gives these cuts their musical meat; there are sometimes percussive or simple melodic loops present, but it's not usually clear (nor particularly pertinent) whether they were played or programmed. Especially on the album's first half, there's a newfound emphasis on groove, with the group settling into and briefly exploring one relaxed, supple vibe after another -- the rippling, circular "Horses" and the buoyant, marimba-led "Forwardness" are particular standouts -- sometimes calling to mind the soft-edged indie-funk of Fujiya and Miyagi (thanks largely to Stefan Schneider's nimble, economical bass playing), with a generous, organic give-and-take rendering the frequent comparisons to their alphabetical peers Tortoise more apt than ever. After a short, disruptive burst of squelching and the sparser, more rigid paranoid disco of "Working Against Time," Speculation winds down with a handful of less direct, more abstract pieces more comparable to TRR's earlier work ("Place It" in particular wouldn't have sounded out of place on The Amateur View), though here, too, there's a free-floating looseness, verging on clutter at times, that marks a clear break from their formerly pristine sonic and structural precision. The aforementioned "Fridays," a ten-minute scuttle-and-drone fest, marks arguably the album's greatest departure, even though it may not lead anywhere in particular. As always with these guys, the journey is the destination and the process is the experience; as studied or sophisticated as the ideas behind some of these sounds might be, it's an utterly simple pleasure that they've continued to find new moods and modes to experience along with us.