Review Round-up: July 2013

Mayer Hawthorne
Where Does This Door Go?

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

Chance the Rapper
[Hip-Hop]
concert preview

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

Future Bible Heroes
[Pop]
concert preview

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

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

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

Smith-Westerns
[Rock/Pop]
concert preview

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

Savages
[Punk/Rock]
concert preview

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

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

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

Jamaican Queens
[Art-Pop/Indie]
concert preview

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

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

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

Lenka
[Pop]
concert preview

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

When Saints Go Machine
Infinity Pool
[Pop/Electronic]

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

Bitchin' Bajas
Bitchitronics
[Drone/Psych]

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

Walton
Beyond
[Electronic/Bass]

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

The-Drum
Contact
[Electronic]

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

Congo Natty
Jungle Revolution
[Jungle/Reggae]

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

Primal Scream
More Light
[Rock]

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

Mavis Staples
One True Vine
[Soul/Gospel]

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

Van Dyke Parks
Songs Cycled
[Pop/Americana]

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

originally published in Philadelphia City Paper

Review Round-up: June 2013

Here's my output for June – minus the two reviews you already saw (Disclosure and Jon Hopkins.)  Not much that's too super amazing stuff, but plenty of good stuff nonetheless.  Magnet stuff seems to no longer be available online, so no links for those.

Tunng
Turbines

Tunng have made it through five full-lengths and a full decade as a band without ever really coming across as professional musicians.  Not that music on Turbines (or any of its excellent predecessors) is in any way sloppy or amateurish – indeed, the delicacy of its craftsmanship is evident and enviable – but they've managed to retain a sense of innocence, freshness and pure joy in the act of creation that's well-conveyed by the name of their long-time record label, Full Time Hobby.  Some of that has to do with their chosen musical approach: fingerpick-friendly folk-pop which lends itself well (and frequently) to whole-group singalongs, crossbred with gently playful electronica that's less about banging beats than subtle, whimsical sonic inventions and interventions.  Turbines doesn't offer anything vastly new or different for the British six-piece, but it's a welcome consolidation of their crafty communal vibe, a reminder that novelty can be overrated when there's so much pleasure to be gleaned from simply reexamining (or gently tweaking) the wondrousness of the everyday.

Zomby
With Love

Where were U in 2008?  Zomby was juggling the dubstep-rooted explorations of his early singles with a gaze cast back to the past, darkly, on the hardcore rave throwback of his first full-length.  Five years on, that initial, promise-filled "post-dubstep" moment – Hyperdub's late-decade heyday – feels strangely, insurmountably distant, but the residue of its grainy, grimy, grayscale ethos still looms large for the idiosyncratic producer, underlying a faltering futurism that's still streaked with plenty of backwards glances.  As a 33-track double album, With Love (which is technically short enough to fill a single CD) has space for a small village's worth of memory lanes, including manic drum'n'bass ("Overdose," "777"), 8-bit video game twinkles ("Shiva"), airhorns'n'breakbeats ragga-jungle ("It's Time"), bleary-eyed sample-soul ("Rendezvous") and ravey 808 tech-house ("This One,") while the more somber, unified back half is dominated (almost oppressively) by the tense, trendier twitchery of trap music (though none of its joyous abandon.)  Zomby remains resolutely uninterested in coherent presentation – these all-too-brief tracks jam awkwardly into one another when not fading out unceremoniously like so many Amazon.com preview samples, and the arbitrarily alphabetical track-listing suggests a wanton approach to sequencing, track titling, or both – but he's got life in him yet; maybe even a bit of love.

Emika
DVA

You can practically hear Emika's resumé – classical piano and composition training, a degree in Music Technology, work as a sound designer for Native Instruments, ample time in the club scenes of Bristol and Berlin, collaborations with the likes of Pinch, Mala and Amon Tobin – in her music, which is every bit as moody, stylish, ominous and immaculate as you'd expect from her life experience.  On the other hand, an album like DVA could be equally well explained as the product of having spent an unhealthy amount of time internalizing Massive Attack's Mezzanine (perhaps with Portishead's self-titled as a palate-cleanser.)  Even with all the ample production prowess in her corner, Emika seems to struggle for a way truly forward.  Her classical credentials come to the fore on haunting orchestral fare like "Dem Worlds" and the opening "Hush Interlude" (with an almost throwaway cameo from Czech soprano Michaela Šrůmová), and her icy diva-wails sound even lonelier and more Beth Gibbons-ish than ever, but the more intriguing, harder-edged dubstep inflections of her eponymous debut have largely receded.  The results are gorgeous but frustratingly circumspect: twitchy, mournful, would-be futuristic dark-pop that's almost comforting in its claustrophobia.
originally published in Magnet Magazine

Eleanor Friedberger
Personal Record
[Pop/Indie]

While her brother Matthew constructs his solo albums as abstruse, hermitic wormholes of weirdness, Eleanor Friedberger's are quirky and personal in an entirely different, decidedly more approachable way.  Personal Record (Merge), the second set of sweet, chatty, retro-minded pop from the Fiery Furnaces' distaff half, practically doubles as a short story collection; reflecting on love and loss, friendship and solitude in a life lived through music (with characters including several oddly bewitching chanteuse types – "how could anyone resist a girl with such a big setlist," runs one pertinent punchline), in songs packed with wit and diaristic narrative detail set against  '50s-tinged balladry and warmly breezy classic rock riffs.

Safety Scissors
In A Manner Of Sleeping
[Pop/Electronic]

Little wonder, perhaps, that Safety Scissors' first album in eight years is most reminiscent of music made a decade ago: Morr records and microhouse; the plush, tender lap-pop of Styrofoam and the Notwist and the moist, gnomic skitter-twitches of Herbert and Schneider TM.  Not that it feels derivative or even outdated – with its chipper analog squiggles and whimsically heartfelt songcraft (interspersed with dreamily curious 'ludes like the well-named "Lemon-Scented Moist Pillowette"), In A Manner of Sleeping (BPitch Control) plays like the photo-positive inverse of Baths' weighty Obsidian, arriving right on time to herald the micro-pop revival we didn't know we were missing.

Kölsch
1977
[House]

1977 is Kölsch's first full-length for Kompakt, following numerous contributions (all collated here) to the dance-inclined Speicher sub-imprint – but it's a fine example of what the label has always done best: even-keeled, warmly melodic tech-house full of rounded synth tones and cheerful thudding grooves, hotwiring the chassis of trance without all the filter-y filigree and emotionally manipulative theatrics.  No, the emotional manipulation here is refreshingly guileless and straightforward.  While you can definitely dance to it, somehow the drumbeats never hit as hard as those heart-tugging pianos and soft synths, particularly on lavishly sentimental dad-disco centerpiece (and sole vocal cut) "All That Matters."

various artists
After Dark 2
[Electronic/Disco]

Moving from strength to strength, NJ's Italians Do It Better label follow 2012's epic Symmetry and Chromatics LPs with After Dark 2, a sequel to their ethos-defining 2007 compilation.  By now we know what to expect: eighty generous minutes of languorously leaden disco, seedy synth atmospherics, and dispassionate vocals, typically delivered through vocoders, thick accents and/or blank-eyed stares – basically, it's music for sad, haunted discotheques (although Glass Candy's contributions, at least, take on a brighter-than-usual cast.)  It's another decadent, indulgently lush bounty; expansive yet distinctly unified thanks to the potent, pervasive production aesthetic of Johnny Jewel.

Chvrches
[Pop]
concert preview

Chvrches' Lauren Mayberry leaves you with basically no choice but to envy her: she's smarter than you (she holds both a law degree and a journalism masters – and she's only 25), cute as a pint-sized pixie button with an abominably adorable Glaswegian accent to boot, and – oh yeah – she's also in one of the shit-hottest bands on the planet right about now.  But just look at all the things she and her bandmates (thirty-something veterans of broody Scottish rockers Aerogramme and The Twilight Sad) have done for you.  They put that "V" in their name, not to be all consonantal and hip, but just to help you search for them on the internet (okay, that one's really a win-win – but it does make their name more fun to say!)  Then they gave us "Gun," the most immaculate, deceptively effortless electro-pop single of the year, complete with rewind-worthy lyrics (it's basically 2013's answer to Chairlift's "Sidewalk Safari") and enough discrete, icy-cool hooks to keep your serotonin receptors flooded all summer long.  Jerks!

Baths/Houses
[Art-Pop/Electronic]
concert preview

Will Weisenfeld introduced Baths with the beguiling glitch-hop/lap-pop of 2010's texturally-oriented Cerulean.  Three years (and one severely debilitating bout of e. coli) later, he's back with Obsidian (Anticon), and the difference mirrors the stark contrast between those titular hues.  The new record pairs a striking lyrical focus on mortality and bodily concerns – unflinching, brutely poetic treatments of sex, suicide and the general abjection of human relationships – with a huge leap forward in musical inventiveness, self-assurance and charisma.  You'll hear stately, ethereal classicism a la Active Child and echoes of Jimmy Tamborello's work with Dntel and the Postal Service alongside clattering shards of metal and industrial – "No Eyes" brilliantly jacks the seedy thump of Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" – but is truly an album without clear precedents.  Similarly domestically-inclined (and domestically partnered) tourmates Houses made a comparable (albeit less traumatic) shift between albums; translating their debut's demure, atmospheric electro-pop into more organic, song-based slowcore/space-rock territory.  The aptly-named A Quiet Darkness (Downtown) has the low-key, loop-friendly earnestness of a bonsai Joshua Tree; it also – fun fact! – incorporates field recordings of actual (abandoned) houses.

Quadron/Barbarossa
[Soul/R&B]
concert preview

Quadron's members seem to network as expertly as they make music: jazzy-voiced chanteuse Coco O. has been turning up everywhere from Odd Future records to the Great Gatsby soundtrack, while Robin Hannibal, probably best known as the producer/instrumentalist half of indie-soul sensations Rhye, is an ever-prolific collaborator.  The Danish duo's second LP together, Avalanche (Vested in Culture/Epic), finds them at the tipping point of a burgeoning wave of (quasi-)indie R&B, brightening up their debut's moody, smoke-filled grooves with standouts like the summery Motown/disco-touched "Hey Love," which has the potential for Adele-style mega-success (only partly due to a piano riff that's recycled pretty much whole-cloth from Rhye's bedroom killer "The Fall.")  Hopefully, should that comes to pass, opener Barbarossa (aka James Mathé) will be right behind them: Bloodlines, the excellent debut from the London-based soulslinger/guitarist (and sometime sideman to headliners Junip), which is due in August on Memphis Industries, takes Rhye's sensitive-guy sultriness in a slightly rockier, electro-funky and tremendously hooky direction.

Tricky
[Trip-Hop]
concert preview

Unlike his Bristol trip-hop progenitor peers, Adrian Thaws has rarely gone more than a few years between records, so there's no way False Idols – Tricky's tenth album, on his newly minted label of the same name – could approximate the comeback impact of, say, Portishead's Third.  Still, it's being widely touted as a return to form; Tricky himself having gone so far as to assert its superiority to his career-defining 1995 landmark/albatross, Maxinquaye.  And it's certainly a resounding return to the spirit – that dark, existentially brooding spookysexycool – of that album (and perhaps equally, the tension-spiked R&B of his true coming-out party, Massive Attack's Blue Lines), as well as its sparse, gritty breakbeat loops and samples.  Idols initially seems to practically broadcast a dearth of new ideas – opener "Someone's Sins" cribs hard from Patti Smith; two cuts later "Valentine" recycles perhaps Chet Baker's most recognizable phrase – but then again he's frequently at his best when riffing off and (re)contextualizing the work of others, via samples, cover versions and vocal collaborations (ideally with haunting, airy-voiced females to contrast his deep, mumbly rasp, still a solid formula.)  Tricky is, above all, an auteur of moods; it's been ages since his bad vibes have felt this good.

Mikal Cronin
[Rock/Pop]
concert preview

Mikal Cronin may be a charter member of San Francisco's feverishly fertile garage/psych posse – readily spotted as sideman and collaborator to high school pal Ty Segall, among others – but as his second solo venture should make crystal clear to anyone within earshot, there's a lot more to the longhaired twenty-something than fuzzboxes and freakouts.  The simply titled (sidestepping a too-easy relativity pun) MCII (Merge) posits Cronin as heir apparent to the line of sweetly trepidatious West Coast power-pop auteurs (Jason Falkner, Jon Brion, Elliott Smith), while equally recalling hook-happy grunge-era holdouts like Weezer and Sloan.  Cronin, who's responsible for nearly all the playing (and singing) here, has no problems kicking in some well-targeted guitar crunch when the moment calls for it, but he's just as likely to stick to sunny, stress-free strums, sneak in some string orchestration or plop down at an unadorned piano – all the better for his ambivalence-ridden lyrical quarter-life crisis come through in mellifluous, multi-tracked harmony.

Patty Griffin
[Folk/Americana]
concert preview

The title of American Kid (Columbia/New West) – Patty Griffin's first set of original material since 2007 – refers to her father, a WWII vet and high school teacher whose impending passing in 2009 inspired many of these songs.  But it doesn't need to: while the album comes across as a touching tribute, reflecting on the fullness of his life as much as mortality and loss, Griffin's language, as imagistic as it is (potentially) biographical, is never so narrow as to suggest that this story, these experiences and emotions, are her dad's alone.  It's ultimately irrelevant which details are specifically his and which belong to the broader, all-American 20th century "greatest generation" history/mythology that's evoked equally vividly in the music's loose, natural interweaving of blues, gospel, country, and melting-pot folk.  Griffin's powerhouse of a voice is, as always, phenomenal throughout, but it's perhaps most dynamic (and fun) on the numbers where she adopts a male character's perspective, including scene-setting swamp-stomper "Don't Let Me Die in Florida," teeth-gritting piano balled "Irish Boy" and the good-naturedly bawdy wedding night waltz "Get Ready Marie."

Glenn Jones
[Folk/Instrumental]
concert preview

Glenn Jones' genial, gossamer, contemplative pieces for solo acoustic guitar and banjo are so effortlessly casual and fluid as to feel practically improvisatory.  Indeed, some of them – including several on his latest, Jersey-honoring opus My Garden State (Thrill Jockey) – apparently were extemporized in the studio – but catch him playing them live and you'll realize just how meticulous a player and composer he is, with not a single note out of place from the recorded versions.  And while Jones' albums feature the spiffy bonus of artwork culled from his collection of antique German postcards of animals (and in this case plants) playing stringed instruments, what you do miss out on is his between-song storytelling, which is as nearly as memorable and folksy as the music itself.  This being Philadelphia, he'll probably spin a few yarns about his dearly beloved buddy and fellow American Primitivist virtuoso Jack Rose.  Ask him to tell the one about the time they brushed their teeth with shaving cream.

Steve Gunn
[Folk/Rock]
concert preview

Steve Gunn is a busy man: an active player in numerous groups, all amply prolific, which happen to bear his name – Golden Gunn, Gunn-Truscinski Duo, GHQ – as well as a collaborator with the likes of Meg Baird and Magik Markers, and, most recently, a touring member of (and opener for) Kurt Vile's mighty Violators.  If we're to take the title of his new trio record as a leader – whose release Saturday's gig celebrates – at face value, even his Time Off (Paradise Of Bachelors) effectively amounts to a busman's holiday, although this music is so preternaturally warm and blissful it's hard to imagine it feeling much like work to make it.  The album's six tunes stretch out to fill nearly forty minutes with patient, dappled semi-acoustic drone-folk jams; Gunn's modestly masterful American Primitivist roots commingling with raga undertones, bottleneck blues and a loose, beneficent Grateful Dead vibe – but each also stands as a fully serviceable song, in an indie-friendly, sing-along-ready sense, thanks to his appealingly low-key vocals and subtle, chiming hooks.

Peals
[Instrumental/Post-Rock]
concert preview

The two members of Peals play in two of Baltimore's noisiest, most boisterous art-rock outfits – William Cashion in Future Islands; Bruce Willen in the recently defunct Double Dagger – but the music they make together, as showcased on their Thrill Jockey debut Walking Field, feels very far removed the world those groups inhabit.  It's also considerably more varied and engrossing than you'd expect from a record of utterly relaxed, even-keeled instrumental meditations.  Performed primarily on ringing, clean-toned guitars, but sometimes using actual bells (true to their moniker; the difference isn't always immediately obvious), as well as one languorous visiting cello, these open-hearted sound-surges range from elegant, slow-moving drones to pointillist stipples reminiscent of their scene-mate Dustin Wong and the curiously juicy/metallic sonics of NJ guitarist "Delicate Steve" Marion, but – unlike much music made in this vein – the duo's textural explorations are balanced by an equally prominent focus on melody, which is abundant, typically multi-layered and often delivered with a pleasantly country-ish feel.

originally published in Philadelphia City Paper

¿donde viven los bangers?

breaking from normal practice to post a couple of reviews ahead of schedule – these were slated to run in city paper (and online) today, but got bumped back due to space constraints... but i wanted to share b/c for once it seems i am (semi-inadvertently) in lockstep with the daily pitchforkgeist, in the sense that these albums both got Best New Music, today and yesterday respectively.  (and now it will maybe look like i was trailing hype trends by a week behind...oh well whatevs.)  sweet tunes, lame covers, check it:

Disclosure - Settle

Daft Punk can keep their randomly accessed analog memories; British brother duo Disclosure are using much more precise, calibrated means – pinprick-crisp digital beats, icy smart-missile synth hooks – to summon a very specific place (London – the predominant home turf of their myriad guest vocalists: Jessie Ware, Jamie Woon, AlunaGeorge...) and time (the turn-of-the-century heyday of sleek, syncopated UK Garage.)  No slight on our beloved Parisian disco-bots, but Settle (PMR/Island) – a crossover-ready club thumper that plays like Basement Jaxx's Remedy as reimagined by two-step maven MJ Cole – is looking like the dance party album to beat this summer.

Jon Hopkins - Immunity

Jon Hopkins is no stranger to warmly inviting, ambient-leaning soundscapes, as his collaborations with Brian Eno, Coldplay and Scottish folkie King Creosete all attest, but the producer's fourth solo album finds him aiming for something a bit rougher.  Just a little bit.  Six of Immunity (Domino)'s eight cuts are solidly beat-based; most of them appreciably danceable, many of them more expansive takes on The Field's lush, feathery minimal trance, commingled with Dntel's warmed-over glitch techno.  It all sounds pretty glorious, but it's the glacially-paced, nearly beatless, title track – the most luxuriantly billowing bliss-out Four Tet never made – that's perhaps most heartmeltingly resonant.

No big surprise that Disclosure got the BNM status (though impressive that they leap-frogged Daft Punk on the score – more on that later); seems like a third of the tracks on the album were already being heavily hyped, and anyway it's just an obviously great album.  Though I haven't completely decided if I really think they're the second coming of early-period Basement Jaxx, which seems to be everyone else's go-to comparison (and mine) – if only because it's a lack we've been feeling for so long (if their next album gets as wild and wide-ranging as Rooty I'll be truly impressed; so far they seem to be mostly fitting their guest vocalists to their specific mold/choosing from within a narrow range, rather than letting collaborations broaden their approach – which is a totally reasonable approach, at least for now...anyway...)  But the Hopkins review was a bit of a surprise; as much as I'd been enjoying the record it seemed like the kind of thing that p4k might sniff at.  I guess you never know.  Anyway (as I wrote), it's the closing title track that really does it for me – precisely because it sounds almost exactly like one of the slow/gentle cuts on There Is Love In You.  It's the kind of perfect that could be stretched to an hour long and be all the better for it.

so anyway, yeah – as nate asked me recently (in english) – where do bangers live?  if you'll notice my unusually up-to-date "2013 scene" sidebar, i'm developing a pretty sturdy canon of 2013 hits.  i'll probably fashion these into a summer jams mixtape before too long (probably with that as a title) but in the mean time i thought i'd share a few of the most notable.  oh hey soundcloud (apparently that's the answer.)

  
most recently, i've been crushing super hard on this song by CHVRCHES (are we allowed to call them Chrvches in polite company?) – actually overplaying it to the point where I feel like I'm in danger of wearing it out.  not so far, though.  still sounds like crystal clear summertime sprinkles.  i guess i still need to fully parse the lyrics, but in the mean time it hits a whole bunch of tried-and-true electro-pop marks just so meticulously, and often with a little twinge of something extra... one of my favorites is the slightly martial (definitely live-sounding) re-entry of the drums after the breakdown (around 2:40)   dance with me?


not sure i can fully explain why this song has stuck with me so strongly – the rest of caitlin rose's album is good but this is a head-and-shoulders stand-out – but it just feels like utterly perfect pop.  i connected with it immediately when i saw her play live (before hearing the record), so that probably helped.  lyrics are great too, even the loose tennessee williams references which could so easily feel forced.  also great for such a sweet sounding song to be about such a dark destructive impulse.

 
so this is a "minimix" of all the different remixes on the 12", which is especially fun b/c it's exactly the kind of goofiness i would get up to. (qv my treatment of "mixed bizness" on superstar djs and "dancing on my own" on the 2010 mix.)  been banging this all year but it's clearly built for summer.


so i'm just hearing this remix for the first time now... nice stuff! reminds me a lot of the avalanches treatment of "i'm a cuckoo" (one of the all-time greats.)  i'm not gonna say it's better than the original, but it does a good job of translating the song's gooey saccharine sweetness into something very different.  hard to beat those super-chimey chirrupy mandolins, but hyperactive multi-tracked slap bass is a pretty good approach if you're gonna try.  what do you think?


I'm sure this song will get its due time to shine (VW don't like to go about things orderly, which is just fine), but as far as i'm concerned this is far and away the banger from MVOTC.  (It obviously doesn't come close to "Giving Up The Gun," which is one way, at least, in which the new album is a let-down – but it's a solid shot.)  I always want the blazing pianos to kick ("I know I love you...") when the bottom drops out instead ("I'm not excited...").  Why they gotta hold back like that?  (I do like the handclaps in this live version.)  Meanwhile "Obvious Bicycle" is so utterly beautiful, and "Hannah Hunt" works so well that it's really tough to pick a favorite track from the album as a whole...



feels so cheap (not to mention clunky! - i know it's supposed to feel casual but omg those dubbed-out curse words are just sloppy – even if actually including the curse words would be 10x worse) but dammit it works.  #on repeat.

as for Daft Punk...i didn't mean to pick on them in my Disclosure review, it was just an easy target.  I'm taking my time with Random Access Memories, have only given it three or maybe four listens thru so far.  So I don't feel ready to make a definitive statement.  there's a lot of fun stuff there, for sure, but it is clear that sequencing is a major issue – "Giorgio by Moroder" would make so much more sense later in the album rather than killing momentum on track three.  and what's up with putting a slow-jam second (in the "Aerodynamic" slot, if you will.)  a lot of the best stuff is in the middle of the album - esp. "Instant Crush" (Julian!!) and "Lose Yourself To Dance" although that song is just begging to be sped up a good ten clicks.  I guess I'm a little undecided on "Giorgio" but some of the other epics do work pretty well, especially "Touch."  (also "Get Lucky" is much improved at this length and with proper song structure.)  anyhow, i'll keep on living with it, gettin comfy.

Review Round-Up: May 2013

May was Massive.  This is partly just due to the quirk of it being a month with five Thursdays, but even so I had a lot to write about; enough that I'm splitting this round-up into two parts.  First, the record reviews:

Bibio
Silver Wilkinson

"I like the idea of comparing albums to seasons," wrote Stephen Wilkinson in the lead-up to his seventh Bibio album. And while he didn't call out any seasons specifically, you could perhaps take some hints from the album's May release date, dandelion-esque artwork and song titles like the opening "The First Daffodils." But this stuff is more than lovely enough to play year-round. It's fitting that the album is, seemingly, obliquely self-titled (in fact, "silver wilkinson" – like "bibio," and like the recurring seed-like shape on the cover – is a type of fly-fishing lure), as it has something of a full-circle, retrospective quality, reconnecting the UK producer with the gentle, naturally-inspired folktronica of his earliest albums for Mush. Ergo: lots of twinkles, dapples, hums, a sprinkle of rippling water sounds, and bucketloads of placid acoustic guitars. But the dramatic palette-expansion and eclecticism of his adventurous last two albums are hardly forgotten – they're just more fully integrated than ever before. So while "Raincoat" could share an umbrella with something from XTC's Skylarking, and the marvelously muted "Dye the Water Green" meanders from subaqeous folk blur to stately synthcraft, "A tout à l'heure"'s jaunty lo-fi funk of bests anything by Toro Y Moi, "You" blossoms into improbably sweet Star Slinger-ish glitch-soul and "Business Park"'s blurty, portamento'd IDM recalls vintage Plaid. This one's a keeper.
originally published in Magnet Magazine

Vampire Weekend
Modern Vampires of the City
[Pop/Rock]

Don't let the grisaille cover-shot fool you: Modern Vampires of the City (XL) fully earns its summer-baiting release date.  It may be the subtlest, quirkiest, least immediate Vampire Weekend LP yet – it's arguably half ballads, and those pesky, overproblematized Afro-pop guitars are long gone – but the buoyant, ineffable lightness remains.  Even in the face of religious differences and ticking mortality, there's plenty of room for contrapuntal finery, hip-hop hypertext and '50s rock'n'roll dalliances ("Unbelievers"' delirious "Peggy Sue" beat; "Diane Young"'s pitchshift-Presley babybabybaby hiccups.)  Meanwhile, the band's melodies and bon-mots have grown ever richer and bonnier, and Ezra Koenig's singing voice has blossomed into a minor miracle.

Dungeonesse
s/t
[Pop/Electronic]

Baltimore-rooted synth-pop duo Dungeonesse resurrect a whole slew of turn-of-the-'90s dance styles on their joyous, generous, not at all crabby self-titled debut (Secretly Canadian): some hip-house, a little Hi-NRG rave, even a touch of New Jack Swing.  But their best stuff – giddy-in-love swoon-along "Show You"; achingly pretty breakbeat torch-ballad "Soon" – is closer to the soulful, warmly sophisticated electro-R&B of Soul II Soul or Walking Wounded-era Everything But The Girl, with Jenn Wasner (better known as half of indie bed-rockers Wye Oak) as an impressively potent, dulcet Tracey Thorn/Caron Wheeler substitute.  Now I just really want them to tour with Dragonette.

The Boy Least Likely To
The Great Perhaps
[Indie-Pop]

Not too much changes for The Boy Least Likely To.  Theirs remains a twee fairyland of notebook-doodle cartoon covers, tender little anthropomorphized hearts and cheery cotton-candy wisps of melody.  Even when they're singing about heartbreak, death and existential loneliness – as on a considerable portion of The Great Perhaps (Rough Trade), which is frequently more simultaneously cuddly and bleak than you might've imagined possible – they generally sound like they've just been given a jumbo-sized lollipop and a brand new pony.  The big news is that they've discovered synthesizers and drum machines, but naturally, Boy being Boy, only the very sparkliest, cutest ones are allowed into their toy box.

Sam Amidon
Bright Sunny South
[Folk]

Bright Sunny South (Nonesuch) is Sam Amidon's fourth album of artful folk revisionism, full of starkly evocative recastings of mostly traditional, public-domain material – shape-note hymns, British and American folk songs – plus smuggled-in Tim McGraw and Mariah Carey covers.  Despite the title, it's generally bleak stuff, time-worn meditations on a "short life of trouble" given new breath through Amidon's captivatingly plain, unaffected singing and sparse, thoughtful, occasionally volatile arrangements, and if it lacks the compelling thematic sweep of his previous albums it offers just as many moments of arrestingly human, history-warping resonance.

Dustin Wong and Takako Minekawa
Toropical Circle
[Experimental]

Baltimore-based delay-pedal virtuoso Dustin Wong and Tokyo's quirk-pop kewpie-doll Takako Minekawa are a couple of lonesome, loopy dreamers, and it's little surprise that their on-record rendezvous, Toropical Circle (Plancha), would float in an enchanting, delightfully fantastical sound-world unto itself.  Those who've missed Minekawa's breathy, perennially girlish coo – this is her first musical output since c. 2000 – know to expect some nursery-rhyme-grade cutesiness (indeed, "Mary Had a Little Lamb" gets riffed on a couple times here), but any whiff of pennywhistle preciousness is counterbalanced by a more inviting (if similarly childlike) aura of gentleness, curiosity and wonder that pervades the duo's wispy ambient daydreams and exquisitely odd noise-baubles.

Eluvium
Nightmare Ending
[Ambient]

Each of ambient composer Matthew Cooper's recordings as Eluvium has found slightly different tools to generate his dependable blanketing warmth and meditative calm, but the eighty-four minutes of Nightmare Ending (Temporary Residence) survey nearly the entire breadth of his soft arsenal: amorphous orchestral swells, texturally-distressed drones, gently chiming processed guitars and, most crucially, his patient, Satie-inflected piano playing, either starkly unadorned or enrobed in thick (and occasionally engulfing) clouds of static.  Apt finale "Happiness" somehow finds ample space for all of the above, plus a lovingly mellifluous tuba, ringing harmonics and a surprise visit from one of indie's most familiar, beloved voices.

Secret Circuit
Tactile Galactics
[Electronic]

Tactile Galactics (Beats in Space) is a remarkably apt designation for the psychedelic, electronic disco of LA's Eddie Ruscha, whose productions as Secret Circuit bear some family resemblance to the crisp minimalist precision, saturated color and inviting openness of his pop artist pop.  "Galactic," since they play like a more meticulous spin on the nebulous cosmic transmissions of Lindstrøm, Prins Thomas, et al; "tactile" for the vivid clarity and conspicuous thinginess of his sounds: brisk, brittle high-frequency percs and wormy, spiraling melodics suspended above thick, chewy, acid-touched basslines, with acres of warm, welcoming, luminous space floating in between.

The Black Dog
Tranklements
[Techno/IDM]

Among the few producers still active from the "Intelligence Dance Music" salad days of the early '90s, Sheffield trio The Black Dog are well past the point of futzing with newfangled or ostentatious genre machinations: the music on their awesomely named eleventh album, Tranklements (Dust Science), is techno, both pure and simple.  Sometimes noisy, often bleepy, occasionally near-ambient, but always delivered with an industrial precision that belies its amply human musicality (body-bating machine-funk grooves, surprisingly lush melodicism) and, per longstanding tradition, neatly stitched together with quirky, interludic "Bolts."

originally published in Philadelphia City Paper

(P)review Round-Up: May 2013

Here are all the concert previews I wrote for last month.  

Stornoway
[Indie Pop/Folk]
concert preview

Stornoway are at once meticulously modest and epically, almost outrageously ambitious.  Four well-groomed, unassuming lads – quietly consummate musicians, top-notch harmonizers – they take their name from a remote, romantic-sounding maritime town in Scotland's Outer Hebrides (which features prominently in BBC weather reportage), though they actually hail from suburban Oxford.  Led by Brian Brigg's heart-meltingly earnest, Ben Gibbard-ish tenor, their songs focus on familiar, intimate things – pastoral and domestic pleasures; the little quandaries and quagmires of love and young adulthood – but somehow conjure up far grander, more mysterious horizons.  Their 2010 debut paired indelible indie-pop earworms like "Zorbing" with arrangements that had a sneaky way of swelling, at the slightest provocation, from understated folksiness to towering quasi-orchestral bombast.  Tales from Terra Firma (4AD) follows suit on both accounts, offering could-be campfire anthems like the Celtic-tinged "The Bigger Picture" – all tremulous mandolins and a chorus so sweetly buoyant it's almost unbearable – while elsewhere layering on the strings, trumpets, zithers, dulcimers, Dixieland clarinets and spoons to the bursting point.

Classixx
[Electronic/Pop]
concert preview

Even if Daft Punk's new album somehow mysteriously fails to live up to the ludicrous levels of hype surrounding it, this still feels like a banner month or two for retro-minded electro disco, between the domestic release of Breakbot's fabulously cheesy (and very Daft Punk-ish) debut LP, the surprise return of fake-French electro-genius Jacques Lu Cont, and the tasty promise of new Phoenix remixes.  Add the full-length bow of long-time DJ duo (and sometime Phoenix remixers) Classixx to that list, with a bullet.  The LA-based twosome have been lighting up the decks and the B-sides of other people's 12"s (including easy RIYLs Holy Ghost!) for over a half-decade now, but Hanging Gardens (Innovative Leisure) readily justifies its long gestation: it's an ideal, summer-ready sampler of dance bangers and chill interludes, with crucial vocal spots from Junior Senior's Jeppe, Active Child's Pat Grossi and Nancy Whang of LCD Soundsystem and The Juan Maclean.

Little Boots
[Pop/Dance]
concert preview

Victoria Hesketh is the reigning queen of metaphor pop.  The British electro-popstress' 2008 breakout single "Stuck On Repeat" was a naggingly unforgettable pop song that likened love to...a naggingly unforgettable pop song, while other numbers from its fantastic attendant album found similar analogs for love (and dancing) in subjects like medicine, driving, radio broadcasting, and both algebra and geometry.  Her slightly darker-toned follow-up Nocturnes (On Repeat), another set of classically-styled synth-pop that could pass for prime Kylie Minogue, covers comparable ground on "Crescendo," "Satellite" and "Motorway" (shades of St. Etienne?), while also repeating "Repeat"'s feat with "Broken Record" (with the requisite additional glitchiness), paying homage at the shrine of Madonna ("Every Night I Say A Prayer") and emphasizing the dance half of the dance-pop equation on literal-minded, tech-housey highlight "Shake," produced with Simian Mobile Disco's James Ford.

James Blake
[Pop/Soul/Electronic]
concert preview

With his self-titled 2011 album, James Blake emerged, already somehow reluctantly, as the first, de-facto poster boy for the still-exotic-seeming music known as dubstep.  Two years down the line, that label has seen so many boundary disputes and tastemaker redistrictings that, wherever it may be at in 2013, it's got almost nothing to do with the dreamily glorious music contained on the UK producer's second LP.  It's not, as some have feared, that he's simply yielded to his flickering singer-songwriter inclinations.  Indeed, while he remains a formidable singer, it's curious to note that, aside from covering Feist and Joni Mitchell (and, on "Wilhelm Scream," his little-known prog-rocker father), he's rarely trafficked in "songs" per se, preferring to repeatedly loop and tweak a single verse or line of his burnished, gospel-inflected crooning (or, in one instance, RZA's slightly dubious rapping) against a rich, deftly mutating sonic backdrop.  Sidestepping genre distinctions almost entirely, Overgrown (Universal Republic) opts to play it all ways, showcasing Blake's heart-tugging sensitive-soul vocals and somber, nocturnal pianism side by side with his forward-thinking beat science, including some surprisingly tough-edged slo-mo funk and some awesomely clipped, Portishead-style ride cymbals.  Win-win.

Colin Stetson
[Instrumental/Experimental]
concert preview

The sounds that Colin Stetson conjures up with (or through, or upon) his saxophones – especially the honking humongous bass sax – constitute some of the strangest, most utterly remarkable music you're likely to hear.  First there's the physical fact of its creation.  Even understanding how he does it – circular breathing technique, multiphonics, vocalizing through the horn; basically, unimaginably precise control over every aspect of his playing, plus close-mic'ing of his breath, clacking keys, etc. – and even (perhaps especially) when confronted with the huffing, puffing, beyond-intense muscularity of his live performances, it still feels mystical, unfathomable, beyond the reach of human capability.  It's no less astonishing as pure sound: churning, cycling, susurrating waves of tone and timbre that, in the service of his meticulous, minimalist compositions, can be savagely disturbing, hauntingly eerie, lulling and mesmeric; sometimes all at once.  To See More Light (Constellation), the final volume of Stetson's enigmatic New History Warfare trilogy, finds his Bon Iver bandmate Justin Vernon turning up, somewhat incongruously, to contribute ethereal multi-tracked harmonies and guttural, cod-metal barking.  (The last installment had Laurie Anderson.)  But it's not like we needed the distraction.

Phoenix
[Rock/Pop]
concert preview

Phoenix have had – to invoke their fiery namesake – quite the majestic rise, from their early 2000s emergence as a quirky second-tier French electro-pop band to a head-scratching headlining slot at this year's Coachella.  They've done it on the wings of an absolutely killer run of singles – their eventual best-of comp's gonna be a firecracker – but, impressively, without sacrificing or even really toning down their considerable eccentricities: the evocatively meaningless accidental poetry of Thomas Mars' lyrics; their commitment to a garishly synthetic production aesthetic which should feel faceless but is somehow actually unmistakable; a defiantly non-linear approach to song structure wherein ample hooks rarely conform to verse-chorus pieties.  Bankrupt! (Glassnote/Loyaute), their fifth album, is the first to feel comfortable rather than hungry – doubling down on established terrain instead of grazing new stylistic pastures – and their most idiosyncratic.  It's also the first whose contributions to their stuffed canon of hits – the chintzy "orientalist" riffs of gaudy kick-off "Entertainment"' perhaps excepted – aren't blindingly obvious, if only because, mirroring Mars' ruminations on jet-set excess, it's their most thoroughly lavish and consistent work, more of an album-length suite than a set of pop hits.

Ghostface Killah
[Hip-Hop]
concert preview

Ghostface has been plenty prolific in recent years, but his latest project is a particularly enjoyable one: a full-on collaboration with composer/producer/crate-digging sample scholar (and also actual entertainment law scholar) Adrian Younge, Twelve Reasons To Die (Soul Temple) is a beautifully conceptualized narrative rap opus – doubling as a series of comic books – that pits Ghost's lively yarn-spinning against sinister, sumptuously stylized beatscapes, steeped in '70s Italian film soundtracks and psychedelic soul, from Younge's band Venice Dawn (who are also backing him up on tour.)  The openly referential but neatly self-contained narrative is the stuff of fantastical Wu-Tang/Marvel comic-book dreams, recycling familiar blaxploitation archetypes and reinventing the Tony Starks/Ghostface personae in a tale of mafioso warfare, double-crossing, reincarnation and sweet posthumous revenge exacted via vinyl records.  Along for the ride is a cast of Wu regulars, plus Philly soul icon William Hart, fresh from the Delfonics' recent Younge-helmed revival album.

Charles Bradley
[Soul]
concert preview

The good folks at Daptone records have well established themselves as loving inheritors of the 1960s Southern soul flame, keeping post-millennial record racks stacked with Stax and Muscle Shoals wax facsimiles.  But the latest from Charles Bradley – the toughest, rawest belter on the roster, who like most Daptone singers is old enough to have been there the first time around – takes a slightly different tack.  Victim of Love kicks off with three brassy, predictably masterful cuts more or less in the label's familiar mold, but things get a lot woolier after the dramatic pivot of the title track, a sparse, acoustic folk-soul ballad with echoes of Richie Havens (R.I.P.) and the late-period Rascals.  From there we get a couple of feathery, flute-laden blaxploitation grooves before a hard left veer into gritty, socio-political psychedelic soul taking its cues from the Temptations' "Ball of Confusion," with Bradley's impassioned, Wilson Pickett-caliber groans riding a roiling sea of fuzz-tone guitars and dubbed-out funk.  This ain't your old man's retro-soul.

Gold Panda
[Electronic]
concert preview

Scan the track list for Gold Panda's forthcoming, curiously entitled sophomore LP, Half of Where You Live (Ghostly International/Notown) and you'll notice a clear preoccupation with residential-type places, from "An English House" and "The Most Liveable City" to seemingly invented (a la Bon Iver) but actually existing toponyms like "Flinton" and "Enoshima."  It makes sense in that the producer – who himself lives in Berlin, though he hails from Chelmsford, UK – makes music that invites habitation: warm, comfortable sonic architecture which tends to create and embellish atmospheres rather than calling overt attention to itself.  Half continues Panda's habitual (and eminently worthy) pursuit of sounding more like Four Tet than even Four Tet does anymore, crafting intricate, naturalistic, bonsai-like beatscapes of pitter-pattering percussion, bell tones and the occasional touch of gentle exoticism (kalimbas, wood flutes, kotos, etc.), though, keeping pace with the times, you'll also find an uptick in concessions to denizens of the dancefloor, as on the pumping-piston pulse of "Community."

MS MR
[Pop/Rock]
concert preview

Many aspects of MS MR's backstory have a distinct quality of deja vu – or, less charitably, done-to-death – they're based in Brooklyn, they built up blogosphere buzz via an artfully curated web presence (specifically – and this is ostensibly a point of distinction – on tumblr), and until relatively recently they upheld their blankly anonymous-sounding moniker by maintaining actual anonymity.  Their unabashedly huge-sounding, lavishly theatrical debut album, the aptly titled Secondhand Rapture (IAMSOUND), expands the picture somewhat, even as it conveniently recycles most of their tumblr hits.  It's not hard to find reference points for their style of darkly anthemic pomp-pop either – Florence + the Machine, Bats for Lashes and former tour partners Marina and the Diamonds are maybe the most obvious go-tos – but (MR) Max Hershenow's adventurous, widescreen production style and (MS) Lizzy Plaplinger's legitimately spellbinding alto are strong and distinctive enough to stand alone, particularly with a strong and infectious batch of songs that veer from martial trip-hop ("Hurricane") and thunderous orchestral rock-soul ("Bones") to stately classicism and the self-explanatory (but still intriguing) "Dark Doo Wop."

The Uncluded
[Folk/Hip-Hop]
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The Uncluded is the long-in-the-works superhero team-up of Aesop Rock and Kimya Dawson, two artists who seem like weirdos even within their respective established genres (hip-hop and indie-folk), making the collaborative Hokey Fright (Rhymesayers) a thoroughly improbable, head-scratching proposition.  On paper, at least.  Once you hear it, the pair's underlying commonalities are obvious: both are writers, first and foremost (and musicians only secondarily), who use a mixture of wit, absurdist humor, and kid-like logic – including gleefully unflinching riffs on fleshly and grotesque (or just plain-old gross) concerns – along with a penchant for refreshingly specific topicality (subjects explored here include laundromats, organ donation, fear of flying, sandwiches, aquarium ecosystems and pubescent sexual confusion) to get at unexpectedly universal, if sometimes uncomfortable, truths.  You might imagine the forbiddingly cryptic Aesop would supply the titular "fright" while cutesy, chummy Kimya brings all the hokey, but it's not such a straightforward equation: her squeaky sing-song can be deceptively simplistic, and the geekily oblique verbosity of his spitting often obscures its considerable playfulness.  If they only rarely sync up in any conventional sense, they illuminate and play off one another beautifully, making each one's idiosyncrasies all the more compelling.

The Thermals
[Rock]
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After stretching out a bit – at least relatively speaking – on their last couple records, The Thermals's sixth full-length in a decade (which continues the band's survey of old-guard indie rock labels – Sub Pop, Kill Rock Stars – with a new home at Saddle Creek) ratchets back to the tightly-wound, frill-free immediacy of their blistering early work.  Desperate Ground's scrappy hooks, grit-caked production, breathless tempos and pithy track times (even if half of the numbers nudge closer to three minutes than 2:30, which with these guys practically qualifies as bloat) all signal a triumphant resurgence and/or comfort-zone retreat for the Portland indie-punk fixtures – either way, a move worthy of some fervent fist-pumping.  The album's loosely conceptual lyrical approach, meanwhile, takes a decidedly less comfortable, non-triumphant tack on familiarly psycho-political themes; it's a song cycle sung from the perspective of a nightmare-wracked but unrepentant, bloodthirsty killer.  The details are sketchy (is he psychotic? ex-military? both?) but the passion and pain are unmistakable, particularly as punctuated by the urgency of Hutch Harris' terse, adenoidal yelp.

Beacon
[Pop/Electronic]
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The Ways We Separate (Ghostly International), the eminently elegant debut full-length from Brooklyn electro-pop duo Beacon, is available on vinyl, CD, digital download, blah blah blah.  Or, if you prefer, you can buy it in the form of a ten-pound, thirteen-inch-square box made entirely out of sugar.  (It's allegedly 100% archival, which has gotta involve some seriously potent epoxy action.)  There are probably some deep, heady metaphors to be gleaned there regarding the interrelationship of substance and superficiality; beauty and artifice; decadent, intoxicating sweetness and mannered, icy inaccessibility – all of which are certainly salient aspects of the group's music.  Mostly though – and also very much like the music – it's just really damn cool (albeit at the same time undeniably, capital-A arty.)  The moody, enveloping warmth of the synthesizers, the flickering Timbaland-via-Junior Boys rhythms and the blurry soft edges of Thomas Mullarney III's vocals all code as R&B, but there's also an immaculate, bloodless perfectionism here that separates these guys from fleshier neo-indie-soulsters like Rhye and Inc.

Mt. Kimbie/Holy Other
[Electronic]
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Mt. Kimbie came up within the hazy, niche-filled "post-dubstep" milieu, but the London duo's early output had as much to do with the wistful, muted pastoralia of Boards of Canada and early Four Tet as their bass-dropping Hotflush/Hyperdub peers – to riff off key track "Carbonated," it felt fizzy, light and understated as seltzer, with a similarly mellowing, refreshing effect.  Queerly-titled second LP Cold Spring Fault Less Youth (Warp) retains that effervescence and a modicum of dappled intimacy while also following their pal James Blake's lead into notably more extroverted territory, exploring meatier instrumentation, edgier textures and dance-leaning beats, and regularly sporting proper vocals – i.e. voices that haven't been delicately sampled and spliced beyond coherence – including pair of spots from punk- and rap-informed singer-songwriter King Krule.  If you do want blurry, manipulated, subaqueous vocals and deep, immersive sub-bass, Manchester's Holy Other – whose Held (Tri Angle), all ghostly, R&B-refracting vocal splinters and swampy dub'n'click atmospherics, was probably the most satisfying album to descend from the dark, slippery witch house trendlet – is probably your guy.

Charli XCX/Little Daylight
[Pop/Electronic]
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"Nuclear Seasons," Charlotte Aitchison's broodingly anthemic breakout 2011 single, cast her in an intriguing, darkly twinkly electro-goth light – co-signified by the song's ominous title and, perhaps, her nonsensically redundant roman numerals – but the unexpectedly glittery, swooning chorus of last year's magnificent "You're The One" complicated that picture.  Full-length bow True Romance (IAMSOUND) finds her enviably poised between tastemaker cachet and big-budget pop ambition, playing a bit of a magpie – sampling Todd Rundgren; appropriating Gold Panda's beatific "You"; paraphrasing Blu Cantrell's timeless "Hit 'Em Upstyle" – on a solid set of oblique-angle electro-pop allsorts.  But – unlike some would-be neo-divas (Little Boots, I'm looking at you) – where Charli really shines, and that ambition feels fully substantiated, is as a performer; flashing her infectious grin, stage-owning spunk and nonstop dance moves, and rocking a noisy, neon Hot Topic fashion sense that feels like a throwback we haven't quite seen yet.  Also: don't miss openers Little Daylight, whose single "Overdose" may be this year's purest, sweetest synth-pop thrill-ride.

The-Dream
[R&B]
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It's no coincidence that, for once, the word "love" appears nowhere in the title of Terius "The-Dream" Nash's long-delayed, guest-stuffed fourth artist album.  Even the actual title – IV Play  (Def Jam) – is a slight misdirection, as made clear in a title track which, somewhat hilariously, equates foreplay with "procrastination."  Sure, bluntly unabashed bedroom talk has always been central to the chart-dominating hitmaker's rakish charm, but his R. Kelly-ish mitigating wit wears awfully thin here: "Equestrian" never bothers to flesh out its hackneyed central conceit, would-be MJ homage "Michael" hardly even invokes its ostensible subject, while the titular metaphor of the intriguing (albeit b-bomb-littered) "New Orleans" is simply left unexplained.  Here's sex made just as empty, joyless and mutually degrading as the red-eyed, remorse-strewn variety assayed by Drake or The Weeknd; more upbeat if only for being less self-aware.  Of course, The-Dream being The-Dream, he'll win you right back again with the very sound of the album: plush, woozy, detail-studded, lavishly synthetic slow-mo R&B that's pretty undeniably perfect for...well, foreplay, for a start.

originally published in Philadelphia City Paper