The fourth volume in the endlessly innovative group’s long-running series reminds us that they often dropped their best work away from their full-lengths.

Stereolab: Electrically Possessed (Switched On Vol. 4)

In his book Retromania, writer (and occasional Pitchfork contributor) Simon Reynolds called Stereolab “the ultimate record-collection rockers” to describe their crate-digging, obscurantist aesthetic. But the label also applies to the group’s approach to releasing its own music. Stereolab’s discography is littered with singles, limited-release EPs, and compilation appearances—manna for their fellow vinyl junkies. The band gathered up this non-LP material for a series called Switched On. Stereolab released three such collections through the ’90s and, to cap off their recent run of deluxe album reissues, have put together a fourth volume, subtitled Electrically Possessed.
The sneaky secret that these comps keep revealing is that the group often dropped some of their best work away from their full-lengths. Bouncy fan favorite “Lo Boob Oscillator” first appeared on a 1993 single on Sub Pop, and the lush soundtrack Stereolab created for sculptor Charles Long’s exhibition The Amorphous Body Study Center was originally only available to purchase at New York’s Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.
Switched On Vol. 4 is no exception. Primarily made up of work Stereolab released from 1999 until their initial hiatus in 2009, this compilation is a bounty of highlights from a rich period when Tim Gane was writing pop songs with multi-layered, almost-proggy arrangements to better support frontwoman Lætitia Sadier’s dense sociopolitical lyrics.
The highlight of this compilation is the band’s 2000 EP The First of the Microbe Hunters. Recording during a particularly fruitful creative stretch that yielded two brilliant full-lengths (1999’s Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night and 2001’s Sound-Dust), it’s a bubbly, groove-heavy rush. The steady motorik drive and incessant marimba melody of “Outer Bongolia” is almost trance-inducing, but reality keeps intruding via a clash of synthesizer and electric piano solos. On “Household Names” and “Barock-Plastic,” Gane, drummer Andy Ramsay, and bassist Simon Johns lay into Meters-like breakbeats that dovetail neatly with the warmth of Sadier’s vocals.
Microbe Hunters proved to be an evolutionary step for Stereolab, bridging the jazzy sprawl of Cobras and Sound-Dust’s thick, complex pop. The best of the tracks that make up the rest of Electrically come from this same time period. “The Super It,” originally found on the 1999 tour single The Underground Is Coming, predicted the sound of Microbe Hunters with its loping funk rhythm and the gloriously knotted-up vocals of Sadier and the late Mary Hansen.
That same year saw the release of “Calimero,” a collaboration with French vocalist Brigitte Fontaine that sounds like an effort to condense Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson into six minutes. And “Free Witch and No Bra Queen,” one of two songs released on a 2001 single, echoes Sound-Dust’s multi-part compositions. It starts with a looped sample of a jazz record that falls out of sync with itself a la Steve Reich’s “It’s Gonna Rain” before smash-cutting to a bit of swinging psych pop that feels constructed from stray pieces of other Stereolab tunes.
Gane would return to this concept of spot-welding two dissimilar sounding songs together throughout Stereolab’s pre-hiatus period, on tracks like “Captain Easychord” and throughout the 2003 EP Instant 0 in the Universe. That extends to work like “Solar Throw-Away,” from a 2006 tour single, which shifts from a canter to a skip to a disco strut, and the marvelous “Dimension M2,” which begins and ends as a Giorgio Moroder homage with a trudging breakdown in the middle. Somehow, even at their most abrupt, Gane makes these transitions feel logical.
As an odds and sods collection, Electrically Possessed naturally doesn’t move along the same deliberate course as a proper album, at least once you get beyond Microbe Hunters. The material compiled here isn’t sequenced chronologically, so the mood and sound jumps from track to track and there are a small number of nonessential inclusions, like a previously unreleased, demo-quality snippet from the Dots and Loops sessions.
But even in this scattershot form, what’s remarkable about this edition of Switched On is how Stereolab was able to maintain such consistency even as they kept cranking out albums and EPs, enduring the death of singer Mary Hansen in 2002 and the dissolution of Gane and Sadier’s romantic partnership. And now that the band has resumed activity along with the reissue of seven of their studio albums, Electrically Possessed feels like a final cleaning of the archives that will hopefully inspire them to look ahead to new horizons.

Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here.


Long, also known as the ambient artist Celer, uses the static meter of deep house to explore themes of inertia and stasis in dance music, politics, and society.

Long Trax 2

For the past couple of years, Will Long has kept up a steady stream of deep-house releases for labels like DJ Sprinkles’ Comatonse Recordings and Smalltown Supersound, and his debut album, 2016’s Long Trax, was mirrored by Sprinkles' own album-length remix. But Long also releases music as Celer and boasts a formidable discography (both solo and with his late wife, Danielle Baquet-Long) totaling over 120 albums worth of ambient abstraction.
It’s that project’s sensibility of restraint and narrowed parameters that drifts over to Long Trax 2, where Long uses the seemingly unchanging meter of deep house to explore themes of inertia and stasis as they pertain to politics, dance music, and society at large. That’s a lot of heavy lifting for some canned claps, a steady kick, sustained chords, and judiciously sprinkled vocal samples to carry, but Long prefers casting a spell with a minimal amount of materials. Across six tracks that clock in at over an hour in total, Long Trax 2 tends to melt in and out of the background, making it an ambient album that almost makes you want to wiggle a little, or a house album content to exist as wallpaper.
In moving away from micro-edition ambient releases and toward programmed dance beats, Long still has a ways to go to get to the level of someone like Theo Parrish or Kenny Dixon Jr., producers who can make something revelatory out of the sparest of kit sounds. “You Know?” is nearly 10 minutes of a stiff, metronomic beat and soft-focus keys that lilt upward and back in the mix. It’s a track that seems unwilling to budge toward dance music’s sense of release; instead it offers something as gauzy and indistinct as a throw pillow’s stuffing. A muffled vocal sample from Jean-Michel Basquiat rustles just beneath the surface, all but inaudible except for the line, “I don’t remember.” It’s a fitting encapsulation of the music itself: a Lethean track that fades away having left little distinct impression.
Long strikes the best balance on the centerpiece “The Struggles, the Difficulties.” The elements—melancholy chords and a beat as low-key and incessant as a ringed finger on a wooden desk—sound like what Boards of Canada might utilize if they were making deep house. As the chords billow upwards, they sound less like a pleasant, drifting cloud and more like an overcast pall. “The struggles, the difficulties, that’s supposed to be in the past,” pleads Angela Davis, her inflection expressing dismay at the ways that racism, injustice, poverty, and suffering continue to shadow us at every turn.
There’s a nonchalant air to the way that Long triggers these samples. When Richard Pryor says, “Sorry, Jack” in the midst of “That’s the Way It Goes,” you can almost hear the shrug emoji in the spaces in between. Yet there’s also a hefty sense of ambition in making a house track featuring the 44th president of the United States saying, “Nothing’s changed.” That 11-minute track summarizes Long’s political outlook in two succinct words, even as he drops in other snippets of Barack Obama’s voice (“Should we pretend that we’ve got a colorblind society?”; “I’m a very angry man”). The detached tone feels telling, and Long’s backdrop—a basic grid of kick and claps—makes these statements feel all the more perplexed and uncertain. Which is to say, if you wake up daily in 2018 and feel borderline despair and a cosmic sense of futility, hearing the former most powerful man in the free world say again and again, “Nothing’s changed,” won’t do much to move the needle.
As mellow as Long Trax 2 presents itself, there is ultimately something that feels disingenuous. Drawing on African-American voices—be they famous artists or members of the Black Panthers and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—and sprinkling them atop lethargic and rote deep house (a music originating from the inner cities of Chicago and Detroit), Long ends up draining both the music and the words of their sense of urgency. It seems a damning luxury to drift off to it.


The debut LP from this Canadian folk-pop trio radiates immediacy and approachability.

If I Am Only My Thoughts

The members of Loving bonded during summers spent planting trees in the Canadian wilderness, giving them an origin story like Vampire Weekend meeting at Columbia or Justin Vernon retreating to a Wisconsin cabin to make For Emma, Forever Ago: it’s so vivid you can imagine the band’s music without hearing a single note. For the British Columbia trio, that means simple, sun-dappled folk-pop, like Whitney after a thimbleful of magic mushrooms. Their full-length debut If I Am Only My Thoughts radiates approachability. It’s easy to imagine these songs beaming from a covered porch or a bandstand in your local park, brought to life by the scruffy guys who tend bar around the corner.
After stumbling into a large online fanbase with an EP that collected little more than polished demos, David Parry and Jesse Henderson — the band’s third member is Henderson’s brother, Lucas — retreated to tiny Gabriola Island to write, setting up a recording studio in a home that had belonged to the Hendersons’ late grandmother. It’s hard to imagine a more idyllic setting in which to make music. The British Columbia seaside is as temperate as Canada gets, with towering evergreen forests edging up to serene beaches and sandstone sculptures, and If I Am Only My Thoughts reflects that beauty through its clean, gentle melodies and lack of clutter. The album also radiates a charming spontaneity, a benefit of the band’s decision to record to tape without a great deal of editing or looping; when “A Mirror for Two Voices” begins with a false start and a quick count into its fingerpicked intro, the band feels close enough to touch.
There are moments when it feels like Loving might be capable of offering more than pleasantries. Opener “Visions” is the band’s sturdiest composition, with a slippery structure and an arrangement that slowly adds layers: snappy drums, a glowing Wurlitzer, plush piano chords, liquid guitar leads. (It also features the album’s most compelling lyrics, including a first verse full of clear, definitive images that sounds like an inversion of Big Thief’s “Not.”) The title track begins with sleepy tambourine and twinkling melodies; when the drums finally kick in after a minute, it feels like throwing open barn doors to flood a space with light. And the meditative “Only She Knows” coasts through its final minute on a series of rippling riffs that crest and recede like deep breaths.
All of these highlights feature a moment in which a song’s essence snaps into focus. In many other spots, however, the music simply lacks urgency. There’s no tension simmering beneath the placid surface, no friction to make the compositions stick. The vocals are invariably heavy-lidded and stick to a narrow range, with no harmonies in sight; closing passages meander without introducing new ideas or cutting loose; the lyrics strike a yearning, inquisitive note but mostly settle into existential word salad. Female companions are mentioned every once in a while, formless as ghosts: “You’re standing in the mirror, I’m watching you get dressed,” murmurs Henderson on “A Mirror for Two Voices.” “Your voice is soft and certain as you fumble with the buttons on your chest.”
The result is never less than amiable, but it also tends to slide past, like a pleasant daydream or an afternoon shadow. No one is demanding that Parry and the Henderson brothers demonstrate more ambition than that, but there’s enough here to justify digging deeper. If this album represents their first attempt to move beyond demos, then Loving’s next challenge is to add some substance.


Pavement's Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe-- packed with top-quality extras at a low price-- was a near-perfect example of how to reissue an already beloved record. Matador now gives the same treatment to that album's equally classic 1994 follow-up. The result, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins, is a two-disc remastered reissue, featuring 49 total tracks collecting B-sides, comp tracks and outtakes, including 25 unreleased recordings and 11 unheard tracks.

Pavement: Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins

In a 1994 interview with Option magazine, Steve Malkmus recalled his pre-Pavement band Straw Dog opening for Black Flag in Stockton, California. "I was backstage before the show and all those guys, they looked so scary, I was afraid of them," Malkmus told writer Jason Fine. "Like, Greg Ginn was mixing up this stuff in a glass. It was probably just protein powder or some healthy drink, but I thought it was heroin or something." Observing Henry Rollins squeezing a cue ball to pump himself up, Malkmus compared the Sisyphean ritual to smashing your head against a brick wall. "That's what I thought punk was, you know. That's when I knew that maybe I'm just not punk enough."
No maybes about it. The late-1993 press photos that accompany the lavish 62-page booklet included with this heavily augmented 2xCD reissue of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain tell the story. After original drummer Gary Young split earlier in the year and Steve West, Bob Nastanovich and Mark Ibold joined Malkmus and Scott Kannberg, Pavement looked like a scrubbed-up gang of packaging majors in search of a good tailgate party (jolly Nastanovich in U-Mass windbreaker, clean-cut S.M. in puffy red ski jacket; only West's Harry Carey-style specs suggest that these guys might be hanging with New York hipsters).
The dorkily collegiate look was of no concern to Pavement, because to them, appearances never mattered. That's what all the indie bands said back then, of course, even the ones who threw away the twin-blade, let their jeans wear through the knees, flew the flannel, and became world famous. But from the first Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain single ("Cut Your Hair") forward, Pavement, on the verge of the big time, opted out. Who knew why, really? Kannberg would do some soapboxing when pressed in interviews (he wouldn't deal with Rolling Stone because he didn't like how they covered the 80s), but Pavement was never about principles-- at least not ones you could easily name. An anti-fashion statement is still a fashion statement, but Pavement was on another trip. They liked to make fun of rock iconography, but they were smart enough to avoid offering an alternative. You never really knew where Pavement stood on anything, which kept an air of mystery and made their music malleable.
Pavement's sophomore outing does not contain 12 perfect songs but it is close to a perfect album. Each of the best half-dozen-- "Silence Kit", "Elevate Me Later", "Cut Your Hair", "Unfair", "Gold Soundz", and "Range Life"-- contain Malkmus' catchy and highly unusual melodies ("Silence Kit" cribs from Buddy Holly, but even that's an odd gesture) and would be career highlights for most rock bands. But even the songs that aren't necessarily brilliant work well in the context of the album, moving things along in their own way. The Dave Brubeck send-up "5-4=Unity", for example, is a perfect placeholder between two unbelievably great songs. And the closing "Fillmore Jive" ends an album at least partly about the music industry on an appropriately classic rock note, with an extended group-jam coda on par with "Hey Jude". Not many records are this easy to put on in the car and let play start to finish.
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain has been called one of the great California albums, but unlike most records slapped with that label, it avoids dreams and nightmares and focuses on the banal. This is a suburban California album, and since suburbs are exactly the same from Sacto to Levittown, it's an album to which all suburban kids can relate. To us, the imagery of "Elevate Me Later" ("underneath the fake oil burning lamps in the city we forgot to name") and "Range Life" (the kid on the skateboard is coasting through a winding subdivision, not Brooklyn) is instantly familiar.
But really, though Crooked Rain references the burbs and the music biz, with Pavement it's the sound and feel that matter, not the words or themes. Quoting lyrics to get to the heart of Pavement is misguided. Go online and print some out and you'll see that, taken on their own, they're generally meaningless. Read the track-by-track notes S.M. prepared for Melody Maker at the time of the record's release (reprinted in the booklet here) and it's clear just how unknowable these songs are. "Stop Breathin" is about tennis and the Civil War, of course; "Elevate Me Later" is about political correctness; "Heaven Is a Truck" is "loosely based on the singer from Royal Trux." Whatever.
Judging from the several alternate takes of Crooked Rain songs included on Disc Two, it seems that Malkmus tinkered with words constantly, and that the final versions are those sung on the take that wound up in the can. The "I/they don't have no function" bit in "Range Life", which most people take to be a self-deprecating line to let Malkmus off the hook for ragging on the Smashing Pumpkins fans, was probably just a glitch that he didn't want to go back and fix. The early version of "Range Life" recorded with Gary Young (one of eight such unreleased tracks on the 25-track bonus disc) had no such sentiment, and lyrics-wise, it's a completely different song. "Ell Ess Two", an early version of "Elevate Me Later" from the Young sessions, is also completely different and yet unintelligible in the same way. It's the way words sound and the way Malkmus sings them that gives his songs meaning.
The remainder of the first disc is given over to the B-sides and compilation songs released during the period. I've always thought Pavement's celebrated B-side prowess to be a tad overrated, but certainly the gorgeous and quiet "Strings of Nashville" is one of the best songs in the band's catalog (love that synthesized traffic whoosh), and "Stare", "Raft", and "Nail Clinic" all rate alongside other original Crooked Rain tracks. The two R.E.M. knocks, on the other hand-- the half-cover of "Camera" and the "Tweeter & the Monkey Man"-style goof "Unseen Power of the Picket Fence"-- are in league with "Haunt You Down" as weeded-out experiments for only the most hardcore fans.
The second disc, containing period unreleased material, is an equally mixed bag that turns up a few true gems. The most anticipated tracks are the first eight, recorded in 1993 with Gary Young and never officially released in any form. "All My Friends" is by far the best of these, and could fairly be called a Pavement classic (it would have fit quite nicely on the Watery, Domestic EP), and "Soiled Little Filly" is almost as good. The three alternate versions of Crooked Rain songs from these sessions ("Ell Ess Two", "Range Life", and "Stop Breathin"), and one later re-recorded for Wowee Zowee ("Flux=Rad") are interesting but ultimately show how Pavement had outgrown Young's primitive studio set-up (speaking of Wowee Zowee, early versions of "Grounded", "Kennel District", and two takes on "Pueblo" were recorded at the New York Crooked Rain sessions as well. Since these are three of Wowee's best songs, this was a fertile period indeed.) Jokey experiments, a few strong songs, a couple instrumentals-- including a welcome no-vox version of "Strings of Nashville"-- and four Peel Sessions tracks round out the generous bonus disc. The perfect dusty trunk hauled down from the attic.
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain was my introduction to Pavement and I loved it instantly. I was traveling a lot in '92 and '93 and was rarely close to a stereo, so somehow Slanted & Enchanted never made it on my radar. When I finally bought S&E;, my first thought was, all right, sweet, some of these songs are as good as the ones on Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. There's no question that S&E; is a fantastic record, but to me, parts of it sound like Pavement wearing a costume. Listen to the brilliant "Summer Babe" and know that Malkmus loves Lou Reed, but East Coast cool ultimately isn't his style. On Crooked Rain, Pavement became a band, opened up (as much as they ever could, anyway), and sounded like themselves: smart, funny, confident, West Coast, suburban. The confidence was key. Malkmus and Kannberg grew up loving bands loved by critics, and in their short history, the critics couldn't stop talking about them. In 1994, they were ready to take on the world, but chose to do so in their own quiet and unforgettable way.


On their second album, the UK post-punks embrace a more playful, dynamic sound, while acerbic frontman James Smith trades caricature for self-reflection.

Where’s My Utopia?

A cast of lager-swilling characters populates UK post-punk revivalists Yard Act’s songs. On their Mercury-nominated 2022 debut album, The Overload, frontman James Smith took on the perspective of a small-time estate agent who had given up on his dreams of being an international footballer, a greedy landlord named Graeme, and even Yard Act’s own critics, while casting Harry Potter actor David Thewlis to replace him in the “100% Endurance” video. But on the band’s second album, Where’s My Utopia?, Smith turns the focus of his spoken-word lyrics on himself.
His lens has been shifting for a while: In the interim between albums, the band released “The Trench Coat Museum,” an eight-minute caper in which Smith mused on the history of the military-inspired outerwear—a post-punk trope he had in fact recently given up, having come to see something cartoonish in the image it projected. “That’s the thing about pop culture,” he said: “Oversized characters get more attention. I was ready to step away from that because I didn’t want to be trapped by it.” Although Where’s My Utopia? ostensibly began as a concept album about one of U2’s roadies, Smith eventually abandoned that framework—as well as the arch satire of the first album—in favor of vulnerability and candor.
Smith’s self-reflection is bolstered by a more confident, free-roaming sound. Recruiting another oversized cartoon character in the form of Gorillaz’s Remi Kabaka Jr., who handles production, the record fizzes and grooves with fresh energy, borrowing strokes from hip-hop, Afrobeat, and funk. Where Yard Act were previously best known for snarling post-punk minimalism, here they lean into a bass-driven strut on “Dream Job,” are buoyed by waves of bubbling synths and children’s voices on “Grifter’s Grief,” and bask in the sunset glow of powerful backing singers on the rapturous “A Vineyard for the North.” At every turn, they’re more ambitiously lavish, sounding less like their fellow British post-post-punks than genre-spanning contortionists like Beck, LCD Soundsystem, and Gorillaz. But Smith’s lyrics retain their gritty realism in casually evocative storytelling that lands somewhere between Jarvis Cocker, Mike Skinner, and your mate in the pub. Smith’s vivid observations often seem designed to undercut the record’s luxurious production: In one vignette, over a beachy flourish of guitar, he relays dropping a saliva-coated candy on the floor as a child, and the disappointment of finding it inedible, covered in old crumbs and dead skin.
Even when they take themselves more seriously, Yard Act are never self-serious. Despite the fact that it primarily focuses on the pitfalls of living your “dream job”—hardly new territory for a breakout band’s second album, whether self-aware or not—Where’s My Utopia? manages enough genuine pop finesse and laugh-out-loud punchlines to keep the cliché from grating. On the boisterous “We Make Hits,” Smith traces the band’s origin story, poking fun at their willingness to sell out with an anthemic, hand-clapping chorus that joyfully appropriates the maximalism of indie sleaze. (And if it isn’t an actual hit, Smith hedges, “We were being ironic.”) The more downbeat, grunge-y “Petroleum” addresses an infamous 2023 incident in which Smith turned on his unreceptive crowd during a show at the UK seaside town of Bognor Regis. It may not be the most sympathetic premise—successful rock frontman belatedly feels bad for slagging off his audience—but the song’s relentless groove and layers of Auto-Tuned vocals tell a bodily tale of the anxiety of maintaining a public image.
Where Smith is most compelling, though, is where he turns his attention to knottier subjects that resist simple resolution. On “Down by the Stream” he looks scathingly at his own history as a childhood bully over a clattering hip-hop beat. Halfway through, the song breaks open into a cavernous, beatless reflection on the cycle of abuse, bristling with confusion, anger, and regret. The record’s apex is “Blackpool Illuminations,” Smith’s spoken-word tale of a childhood injury sustained at the northern English seaside town’s annual seafront light show. At over seven minutes long, winding through jazz flute, taut funk bass, and cinematic strings, Smith’s existential magnum opus takes a whistlestop journey from his own childhood to his new role as a parent to his son.
“Are you making this up?” asks an incredulous therapist, also played by Smith, toward the end of the song. “Er, some of it, yeah, why?” he responds. Smith may have abandoned his trench-coat persona in favor of a more honest self-portrait, but the line between the authentic self and the larger-than-life character remains provocatively fuzzy.


Marnie Stern's fourth album is an extension of the transition that began on her 2010 self-titled record toward a more controlled, subdued sound. Marnia is still aggressive, busy, and bright, but new drummer Kid Millions gives it a welcome sway, and the relative calm lets Stern's vulnerability shine through.

The Chronicles of Marnia

Halfway through "Proof of Life", from Marnie Stern's fourth album, The Chronicles of Marnia, she makes an admission she's never made on record before: "I am running out of energy." Her voice is uncharacteristically low, her explosive finger-tapping guitar conspicuously absent. Instead, a piano blocks out melancholy chords over a drum fill that sounds like boulders cascading down a hillside. "Give me a sign," she pleads, exhausted. "Give me a sign."
Two minutes later, she has moved on to a song called "Hell Yes". If Marnie Stern has a cycle, it's this: Fall down, then pick yourself back up-- and up! And up! And UP! Her music-- a frantic, precise sound that can resemble excerpts of Van Halen looped at high speeds-- combats bottomless self-doubt with limitless hope. Nearly every song in her catalog is some reiteration of the idea that even you can do it, probably with an exclamation point. Talking to The N**ew Yorker about her guitar technique in 2011, she said, "Tapping is actually a way of cheating, since you're using both of your hands." Then, like a guru trying to explain the simplicity of her secret to a talk-show audience, she added, "It makes things a lot easier!"
The Chronicles of Marnia is an extension of the transition she started on 2010's Marnie Stern toward a more controlled, more subdued sound. Not that any of her music is a good reference point for "controlled" or "subdued." Marnia still sounds like Marnie Stern: aggressive, busy, bright, with death-defying highs and perilous lows. But where she often used to shriek, now she sometimes sighs, and the frantic, start-stop quality of her early songs has given way to something more like a swoon.
Part of the relative calm on Marnia has to do with personnel change. Until now, she's worked with drummer Zach Hill, first of Hella and most recently of Death Grips; on Marnia, she's backed by Kid Millions, who mostly plays with Brooklyn drone and psych-rock fixture Oneida. Millions plays like a firework display: Big, dazzling and dangerous, but very well coordinated. Hill's approach-- intoxicating as it is-- is more like a nailbomb in a concrete-block basement. Compared to the sway of Marnia, the sputtering sound of 2007's In Advance of the Broken Arm has as much groove as a three-legged race.
For all her positive mental attitudes, Marnie Stern's music is intensely vulnerable, a quality that has always been hinted at in her music but that Marnia makes much clearer. Even in the midst of its most festive moments, like the conga-line rhythms of "Noonan", she's drawn to piercing, almost childlike questions: "Don't you want to be somebody?" Just as she and Millions start to build the vicious "You Don't Turn Down", the drums flare out and the curtain drops. "'What took you so long?' they said out loud," she sings alone. "'Got to get obsessed and stay there now'"-- an image of an artist embarrassed that they aren't capable of kicking as much ass as someone else would like. But the root of Stern's weakness is also the root of her power: The impression that she could fall apart at any second wouldn't be nearly as dramatic if she wasn't moving so dangerously fast.
Under all the noise on Marnie Stern’s albums there has always been a need for some kind of quiet: For the thoughts to stop cycling, for the silence to take over, for the danger, real or imagined, to be replaced by a sense of safety. Though her inspirations tend mostly toward mid-1980s triumph rock and the more agitated end of indie (Sleater-Kinney, Helium, Hella), her most original music sounds like snack-sized versions of Indian raga or Philip Glass: by building intensity until it reaches a peak so humming and hypnotic that the busyness of it turns into some kind of mystical autopilot. It makes sense that her lyrics have been strewn with the kind of inspirational talk that usually applies to athletes: Her music is the runner's high, the moment when physical intensity turns into an almost meditative state.
Until now, Stern has lived an artistic double life, treated like a sensitive singer-songwriter for her persona and some posthuman techno-wizard for the way she plays a guitar. On every album since her debut, these two parts of her have come closer together. On Marnia, they’re one. "Close your eyes," she sings over the grand, noisy waltz of "Still Moving". "Nobody knows when it's gonna be. Nobody knows when it's gonna be. Close your eyes," she repeats, consoling, for the first time in song, someone other than herself.
"Maturity" is a hackneyed trope in songwriting, not to mention a word that doesn't quite suit a grown woman who periodically blogs under the name Marnie's fagina. But Marnia isn't the single touch that shatters, it's the long, steady stare that gives way to embrace. Not obsession, as she puts it on "You Don't Turn Down", but something deeper, solemn, and more lasting.


The West Virginia band Rozwell Kid play power pop with a potentially divisive sense of humor, but their latest album is full of pleasingly straightforward hooks.

Precious Art

The West Virginia quartet Rozwell Kid play power pop that recalls Weezer—their most frequently cited influence by far—as much as the sitcom humor of early Fountains of Wayne or Teenage Fanclub’s fuzzed-out jangle. But as with any band who has earned a Weezer comparison, its persistence owes to a collective desire to see someone fill a dwindling role: lovable and nerdy, melodic but not pop, fluent in hair metal tropes without coming off as ironic. Based on those specs, Rozwell Kid fit the profile more than just about any other band in existence. After identifying their strengths over three albums, Precious Art is Rozwell Kid’s first high-profile release—the kind of album that could make prospective new fans wonder just where this band has been all their lives.
Up until now, it took seeing Rozwell Kid live to truly get them. Over the past three years, they’ve opened for just about every single critically-acclaimed pop-punk or emo band in existence, and the simplicity of their hooks has offered a contrast. When playing with the Hotelier or the World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, Rozwell Kid songs like “Kangaroo Pocket” and “Magic Eye” spoke for uncomplicated singalongs. And even among similarly straightforward bands, Rozwell Kid came off as significantly less aggro—their second LP was named Unmacho, after all. In 2016, they were the middle act in a run with Charly Bliss and PUP and strangely enough, Precious Art opener “Wendy’s Trash Can” is the exact midpoint between the respective leadoff tracks on those bands’ most recent albums. On it, Rozwell Kid frontman Jordan Hudkins hops in a getaway car but can’t escape the tyrannical boredom of touring, and yet, there isn’t a shred of angst or aggression among the Brit-pop harmonies and double-guitar leads. There is, however, at least three hooks sticky enough to last 10 hours, with or without the actual 10-hour version of the song.
Tensions and emotions run high throughout Precious Art, but the stakes do not. Hudkins recently translated the entire album through GIFs; a dramatic piano ballad presumably soundtracks their fruitless search for a parking space at SXSW. Not a single thing on the album qualifies as unequivocally happy, though every shiftless, aimless, or hopeless moment is deflected by food metaphors, semi-ephemera of the 1990s, and blinding melodies that never strive to become ego-driven anthems. Anyone who demands that rock bands act, look, or sound cool even in the slightest probably won’t make it five seconds through “Booger”—a very graphic account of Hudkins’ songs-for-the-dumped emotional bottom. Those that do are treated to a minute-long interlude that exists solely for a punchline that allows Hudkins to bark like a dog.
Rozwell Kid’s humor could be divisive, even when it’s less slapstick. Maybe Hudkins’ life—as depicted in these songs—really is an endless battle of countering depression with “SeaQuest” reruns, MadTV, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Wendy’s, omelets, and velvet blacklight posters. But Rozwell Kid’s attempts to replicate the quintessence of their most frequently quoted lyric—“‘Simpsons’ season three and a thing of hummus/This is all I need/I’m, like, super low-maintenance”—can feel like pandering by the time Hudkins sings, “all I want is to be at home with you/eatin’ tacos and watching UHF on DVD” on what’s otherwise a triumphant lead single. It could very well be his truth, but it can’t help but sound like an attempt at a “quirky” Tinder bio.
The gifts of Precious Art are more apparent when comedy shades the melody instead of overshadowing it. That isn’t to say that Rozwell Kid need to get serious—Hudkins’ self-deprecation adds grit to the bubblegum of “Blow It,” “Total Mess,” and “Boomerang.” And yet, the most serious song on Precious Art results in the only one that really does sound like Weezer. Rozwell Kid close out the festivities with a nearly six-minute power ballad that touches on familial discord like “Say It Ain’t So” (“your parents never seem to care”) and the dynamic indulgences of “Only in Dreams.” Yet, it’s still very much a Rozwell Kid song. For one, its title is “Michael Keaton” and the last few minutes are filled with harmonized guitar solos and multiple false endings designed for the sustained guitar poses that have won over drunken crowds for the past decade. It’s their version of art, but they’re not going to get precious about it.


When hip-hop was split between being an industry force or a niche subculture, the New Jersey trio’s second album proved they could bridge the gap between commercial success and artistic credibility.

Naughty by Nature: 19 Naughty III (30th Anniversary)

19 Naughty III (30th Anniversary)

With four albums neatly spanning the 1990s, Naughty By Nature is bound in the sonic and cultural fabric of that decade. The group’s original lineup supplied grim portraits of urban decay, visions pithy enough to be packaged and sold to the masses. But for a few years, the New Jersey trio saw into the future. Even if “O.P.P.” now feels like a lab-tested novelty hit—the headlong enunciation, the call-and-response chorus, the verse for the fellas, the verse for the ladies—it was a revelation in 1991. The song’s Jackson 5 sample is offset by winking innuendo; rather than leaning into the buttery groove or courting controversy outright, frontman Treach pursues a sly middle path. A leering toast to infidelity, it’s the sort of artifact the older kids on the school bus had to explain.
At a juncture where hip-hop might have become a commercial force or a niche subculture, Naughty By Nature visualized a global movement and an inclusive community. They also sensed a need for gatekeeping. “Hip Hop Hooray,” the lead single from 19 Naughty III, name-checks critical darlings Nice and Smooth, A Tribe Called Quest, and Leaders of the New School, lauding them over household names like MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice. Ensuring hip-hop’s health would mean celebrating its triumphs while defending it from interlopers, and 19 Naughty III put a stake in the ground. It supposes a seemingly irreconcilable gulf between credibility and record sales—a gap that, time and again, the trio managed to bridge. NBN perceived rap’s cultural and political ascendance, but they couldn’t have anticipated its looming decentralization.
Grousing about sellouts is the fifth pillar of hip-hop; take EPMD’s finger-wagging “Crossover,” which scaled the Billboard charts six months before “Hip Hop Hooray.” On 19 Naughty III ’s second single “It’s On,” Vinnie denounces Sir Mix-a-Lot, whose “Baby Got Back” spent five weeks atop the Hot 100 in 1992. But the difference between 19 Naughty III and, say, De La Soul’s Stakes Is High is that 19 Naughty III was itself a platinum-selling juggernaut. Buried amidst 19 Naughty III’s nihilistic street anthems is a curious, if contradictory, meditation on art and commerce: How did a hardcore rap group become a staple of middle-school dances?
Hailing from the inland city of East Orange, Naughty By Nature didn’t put on for their hometown so much as for hip-hop in general. “The Only Ones” and “The Hood Comes First” extol authenticity in broad strokes, pledging adherence to the group’s humble roots and artistic standards. That’s not to say they were traditionalists—if anything, 19 Naughty III is defined by irreverence. One of the most advanced technicians of his generation, Treach raps about sex like a teenager who just filched a porno mag. On “Ready for Dem,” he’s a shock jock where guest Heavy D is a smooth operator: “You ain’t ready, remarkable, or regal/You’re the fucking reason that abortion shit is legal.” On multiple occasions across the record, Treach reiterates his wish to paint the White House black. It’s not quite a political statement, but it does suggest a certain Afrocentric retribution.
Even the trio’s signature hits eschewed a steady formula. “Hip Hop Hooray” is a tight mesh of Motown instrumentals and inescapable choruses, the rhyme schemes showcasing Treach and Vinnie’s idiosyncrasies. On it, Treach stretches crude ideas into loquacious patterns: “You put your heart in a part of a part that spreads apart/And forgot that I forgave when you had a spark” is his version of you caught feelings. In the third verse, he’s a Tom and Jerry character inching upon unsuspecting prey: “Tippy tippy pause, tippy tippy pause/Sometimes creepin’ up, I eat ‘em up/Your styles are older than Lou Rawls.” If it’s a space-filler, it’s one of the more evocative couplets of the early ‘90s.
19 Naughty III never approaches the poignancy of “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright,” the emotional climax of the group’s 1991 self-titled album. “Take It to Your Face” and “Knock Em Out Da Box” are lyrical street fights, but Vinnie and Treach shy away from gory violence. (In promo shoots from the 19 Naughty III run, they wield scythes, chainsaws, and baseball bats, but never firearms.) Where NBN’s immediate successors—M.O.P., Smif N’ Wessun, Mobb Deep—offered distinctive portrayals of people and their neighborhoods, the cityscapes of 19 Naughty III lack that degree of local specificity. Still, glimpses of crumbling projects and militarized police speak to broader injustices. On “Daddy Was a Street Corner,” Treach ascribes gang warfare to institutional collapse: “Some kids come home to cartoons on cable/To new clothes with labels/I came home to corners, did homework when able.” These songs could have been set in Brooklyn or Compton as easily as East Orange, making them almost universal.
Even if 19 Naughty III is a big-tent record, NBN’s credibility allowed them to chase pop hits without compromising their ideals. Some of the appeal can be attributed to their refusal to romanticize struggle in spite of their backgrounds. A friend and confidant of 2Pac’s, Treach is a similarly mercurial presence across NBN’s early catalog, his vindictive chest-puffing interspersed with remorseful confessions. (Both artists were accused of domestic abuse during their recording careers, allegations to which the industry turned eager blind eyes.) 19 Naughty III features visceral first-person verses as opposed to sweeping autobiographical accounts; Treach is an in-the-moment narrator, which makes his work feel frozen in time. His double-time delivery, knotty rhyme patterns, and rhythmic precision are as instinctual as his ornate wordplay.
East Orange lies about 15 miles west of the New York subway terminus; producer Kay Gee’s beats feel tailor-made for the Cherokees and Monteros that throttled the Garden State Parkway. Although he’d soon become an R&B kingmaker, striking gold with Next and Jaheim, his production on 19 Naughty III is tense and fidgety. “Cruddy Clique” and “Daddy Was a Street Corner” are layered, full-bodied arrangements, their rough edges assuming a brawniness compared to the wistful keys and smoky breaks of regional contemporaries like DJ Premier and Pete Rock. Nothing resembles a party track outside of “Hip Hop Hooray,” but the exaggerated snares and winding basslines mirror Treach’s nervy energy.
Rap was moving extremely fast in 1993; those who didn’t adapt were left behind with stylistic relics like Kwamé and K-Solo. Arriving in February of that year, 19 Naughty III served as a blueprint for upstarts and established acts alike. Onyx and Lords of the Underground debuted that spring with bolder takes on NBN’s pugilism. Run-D.M.C.’s comeback effort Down With the King is virtually a frame-for-frame remake of 19 Naughty III—right down to the cover art—as is LL Cool J’s groaningly put-on 14 Shots to the Dome. (Kris Kross’s tongue-twisting flows compelled listeners to wonder: What if Vinnie and Treach were 6th graders?) Where Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and Midnight Marauders yanked the genre in new and weird directions, 19 Naughty III straddled audiences in such a way that would’ve been impossible months later. By 1995, the movement captured on “Hip Hop Hooray” had splintered into self-contained scenes, and Naughty By Nature’s moment had largely passed. It’s tempting to say 19 Naughty III reflects the sounds of 1993, when the inverse is closer to the truth.


The Santa Barbara, Calif., quartet Gardens & Villa create synthesizer-heavy naturalistic pop that still gets called “indie rock.” Their second album, Dunes, boasts production from DFA’s Tim Goldsworthy, who ensures they keep things varied and in motion.

Dunes

If you’re of the opinion that chaotic, bustling, urban melting pots are necessary to facilitate groundbreaking art, Santa Barbara, California will be of great service to your argument. The bucolic, oceanside city of nearly 100,000 is slow-paced, homogenous, and affluent—and since it’s near wine country rather than Orange County, it lacks the stifling suburbia that can generate great punk music as a response. It’s a college town as well, but UC-Santa Barbara ain’t exactly Berkeley in terms of fostering counterculture and political awareness; it’s known as one of America’s premiere party schools. As such, here’s the complete list of notable bands emerging from Santa Barbara since 1990: Toad the Wet Sprocket, Dishwalla, Sugarcult, and now, Gardens & Villa, all acts that tread a similar path. (I’m not necessarily using that as an insult.)
Gardens & Villa sound nothing like the aforementioned, they just happen to run parallel to them, orbiting a very centrist “left-of-center” sound predominantly defining a post-collegiate demographic. What the first three were to their year’s version of khaki-clad alt-rock, Gardens & Villa are to widely available, synthesizer-heavy, kinda naturalistic pop that still gets called “indie rock.” Meaning if the popularity of Beach House or Washed Out was gauged by appearances on MTV and rock radio rather than their font on festival banners, Gardens & Villa would likely get some spins as well.
But how many? The quintet's second album Dunes found them recording in rural Michigan rather than their hometown as a means of avoiding complaceny and sounds more pointedly “pop” than their 2011 self-titled debut. And yet, you can’t take the Santa Barbara out of the band, as Dunes once again shows Gardens & Villa orbiting around the center of discussion at a safe distance, suffering from what befalls the countless populist indie bands running the same route: the affliction of “good enough.”
If you’re pressed to do so, you can describe Chris Lynch‘s vocals and lyrics in a number of kind ways: the former lilting, purified, androgynous, the latter vaguely spiritual, slightly poetic. The one thing you wouldn’t describe either of them as is “distinctive.” Similarly, while Dunes has melodies and choruses, you wouldn’t call it “melodic” or “hooky.” Opener “Domino” is the standout on account of Lynch avoiding the orderly fall of its titular object, the chorus melody going from note to note in the motion of swinging on a set of monkey bars. Otherwise, Dunes prefers to let the listener latch onto unusual words and ones with cool phonetics (“Minnesota”, “Thunder Glove”, “Chrysanthemums”).
Dunes boasts production from DFA’s Tim Goldsworthy, and while his imprimatur isn’t what it used to be, give him credit for ensuring Gardens & Villa keep things varied and in motion. I wouldn’t say it has “grooves” or anything you’d call danceable, though “Bullet Train” is more slinky than your average indie band making it a point to let you know they, like damn near everyone, like Prince. On the other hand, their access to Goldsworthy’s trove of vintage gear can result in puffy slow-jams like “Purple Mesas” that stop Dunes dead in its tracks.
And so this tidy, 10-song collection ends up inspiring the kind of light criticism that calls for the phrase so often accompanying the affliction of “good enough”—none of this means it’s a bad album. Of course it’s not—it’s good enough. But even if the current state of “indie rock” means more visibility for a band like Gardens & Villa than they ever would’ve received in the 1990s, as the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all ships. Think about how you might have encountered a minute-long sample of “Domino” two decades ago—if you randomly heard it at a Sam Goody’s, knowing nothing about who made it, would you ask one of the clerks? Possibly, even if you might forget it the moment you step outside towards the Structure or Babbage's. If a trusted friend lent you Dunes and it was certain to be one of the maybe 30 albums you listened to all year, could it eventually win you over? Perhaps.
But Dunes lives in 2014 and its main concern isn’t competing with the incapacitating amount of music that has nothing to do with it. It’s that they’re one of many bands following this particular path and Dunes’ best hope is that you haven’t heard any of them yet. Judging from the tone of Lynch’s vocals, affable songwriting and studied arrangements, it’s not hard to imagine them starting out back in 2008 as a folkier indie-pop contemporary of early Ra Ra Riot, the Ruby Suns, or the Morning Benders, who also made their synth-y pop records recently with middling-to-god awful results. The good news is that if you shuffled those four albums together in a blind listening test, the songs on Dunes would be best of the lot. The bad news is that most of them sound like the work of the same exact band, so is that kind of “good enough” really enough?


The El Paso, Texas-based performance artist and musician stages an exploration of popular romance with an album that’s as gauzy and enveloping as a fragrance ad.

True Romantic

While writing his gorgeous defense of gay marriage in the 2012 the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy might have gotten too lost in rhapsodic praise. Without marriage, he proclaimed, same-sex pairs would be “condemned to live in loneliness”; the age-old institution wards off a “universal fear” that you might cry out for company and find no one there. Despite the radical intimacies of spinsters and communal families, those who opt out of legally recognized coupledom are presumed incomplete. Century after century, the ideal of the monogamous pair looms over our cultural imagination: The ancient Greeks believed that Zeus split humans into two, dooming them to roam eternally in search of their other half. The feeling of love may be transcendent, yet our concept of it seems conservative and timid under scrutiny.
Still, there’s something shamefully seductive about the illusion of a singular love—the soft-focus pining and windblown mystery, the bliss of collapsing yourself into someone else. Even its most syrupy manifestations lodge themselves in our memory. In Céline Dion’s breathless “The Power of Love” video, love looks like lounging in bed or smizing in a ridiculously comfy sweater—and who doesn’t want that? On True Romantic, the performance artist, musician, and perfumer René Kladzyk, aka Ziemba, considers how stale archetypes of romance have seeped into her psyche. But the pleasure of big feelings proves irresistible. “I must be a true romantic (or a fool!),” she exclaims on the title track, a song so buoyant and rejuvenated that she might’ve recorded it upon exiting the spa.
True Romantic is as gauzy and enveloping as a fragrance ad. “Feelings Are Real” conjures the chiming, soporific dreamscapes of Enya, like what you’d hear after drinking a potion in an enchanted forest. Ziemba intones the song’s three lines like a spell. From there, she leaps into the sunset heaven of “You Feel Like Paradise,” a moony, glam-rock-inspired song about taking flight into someone else. “Just take a step out of time,” she urges her paramour, advice that doubles as a meta-commentary on her retro sound and grand declarations. In the digital era, we are all semioticians, scrupulously aware of how minor shifts in punctuation can tip speech towards new meanings. Ziemba bypasses all this interpretation, intent on plastering her feelings on billboards. “I will love you until the end of time,” she belts on “Power of Love,” an obvious homage to Dion.
True Romantic is simultaneously a reminder of the allure and the ridiculousness of popular romance. Watch enough power-ballad music videos, and at some point, you’ll hit your capacity for candlelight, linen sheets, and fan-blown hair. Ziemba leans into the absurdity. “Mama” flirts with an archetype one might call “Woman Somberly Playing Solo Piano,” in which musical theatre types like Sara Bareilles confide their most tender feelings while gliding through simple chord progressions. Gaudy wind chimes flutter in the opening, then a pan flute beams in. Oh, come on, you groan delightedly. “Bad Love” poaches twee metaphors from Christmas classics: “A fish can love a turtledove,” Ziemba croons as strings swell in the background. The twirling, 1950s-style pop song could slot into the closing credits of a Meg Ryan comedy. Midway through her version of Ary Barroso’s “Brazil” comes a saxophone passage so cheesy that it could soundtrack a Tommy Wiseau sex scene.
“I regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi,” the actress and comedy writer Mindy Kaling once wrote—a world where the governing principles are as foreign as any alien planet’s. Despite Ziemba’s stated intention to process this romantic conditioning, True Romantic is more inclined to frolic in Disney tropes than to prod at their underlying ideology. The most apparent attempt to deflate love’s mythology is found at the outset: “If I’m Being Honest” nods to the destructiveness of constantly chasing beginnings, as well as the irrationality of projecting your hopes onto someone you’ve barely met. Elsewhere, the lyrics devolve into sensory mumbo jumbo: “The word chrysanthemum so warm inside/Suffering sounds divorce voluptuous delight,” Ziemba sings on “Casket and Cradle,” which recalls the sunny pop of the Carpenters. Without more trenchant, sarcastic observations to undercut its dreamy vintage sound, True Romantic can’t offer a truly contemporary spin on romance. The album’s nostalgia and tenderness are enchanting. But floaty, heternormative ideas of love have consequences beyond personal disappointment.

Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here.


Flip through your calendars and count the days: It's been nearly fifteen years since Chicago's Eleventh Dream Day ...

Eleventh Dream Day: Prairie School Freakout

Prairie School Freakout

Flip through your calendars and count the days: It's been nearly fifteen years since Chicago's Eleventh Dream Day released the Wayne EP and its accompanying full-length, Prairie School Freakout. And although the manic-panicked smoke of the late 80s/early 90s alt-rock boom has long since cleared, a handful of acts have yet to see their legacy become the namedrop-du-jour for wristbanded up-and-comers or bespectacled college radio purists (see the somehow-still-ubiquitous Sonic Youth, the beloved Pixies, or the soon-to-be-reissued Dinosaur Jr). For whatever reason, Eleventh Dream Day are still waiting to be slapped with a golden sticker of canonical approval, despite the necessary elements already sitting firmly in place (a disastrous major label tenure at Atlantic, distant boy/girl interplay, tons of distorted guitar, and general commercial unresponsiveness). Until now, Eleventh Dream Day have been strangely excluded from the 120 Minutes nostalgia club, which is stupid, considering the band's palpable influence and impressive fury.
Unsurprisingly, Prairie School Freakout eventually fell out of print, prompting Chicago-based indie Thrill Jockey to reissue the record, along with the Wayne EP, as a double package. Recorded in six sweaty hours in a polluted Louisville swelter, Prairie School Freakout is a frantic, occasionally hysterical burst of irrepressible guitar rock that the band admits is "pretty much live," save a dubbed bass note and some extra guitar squeal. Picking up and moving past where the band's eponymous debut left off, Prairie School ultimately solidified EDD's mission as super-distorted Crazy Horse disciples with an overabundance of post-adolescent fervor. And some insanely loud amps.
As sticky and pure as the transplanted living room on its cover, Prairie School opens with boiler "Watching the Candles Burn", a fiery guitar assault in possession of the greatest bad insult ever ("If looks could kill/ Here's looking at you"), and follows up with "Sweet Smell", another prickly guitar throwdown. Nearly everything about Prairie School Freakout is unapologetic, but frontman Rick Rizzo and guitarist Baird Figi's ridiculous guitar solos are just so audaciously wanky that it's almost impossible not to stick your tongue out and air along with them. Janet Beveridge Bean's drums (check her in Freakwater) and Douglas McComb's bass (check him in Tortoise, Aluminum Group and Brokeback) are both driven and perfectly able, although the throbbing rhythm occasionally seems like just an excuse to slather on more guitar. Still, the hyper, overwhelming kinetics at work here are clearly the product of four reeling heads, and while Prairie School Freakout may not be EDD's most accomplished or comprehensive effort, it's certainly their most explosive.
The very best reissues create tiny glitches in our cultural timelines-- conceptually, they challenge music to supercede its original context, and to translate itself into an entirely new (and sometimes drastically different) artistic lexicon. Obviously, nothing is ever realized within a cultural vacuum, but that doesn't necessarily deny records a capacity for timelessness-- the best albums can be appreciated both inside and outside of their founding circumstances. Prairie School Freakout may be instantly recognizable as a holdover from the pre-grunge alt-rock rise, but it's still got plenty of ass-kicking glory left inside. Which, as far as legacies go, really isn't too bad.


Drawing inspiration from symphonic black metal, the enigmatic band’s new mini-album is a gothic dreamworld where virtuosic shredding rules above all.

Bluenothing

Phantom Slaughter, the architect behind Worm, wants to make it very clear that his band is here to represent Florida. “The places I dwell in for inspiration are mostly deserted swamplands and heavily forested nature trails,” he told No Clean Singing in 2020, rhapsodizing about his state’s history as a former death metal mecca. The band’s breakthrough record, last year’s enveloping Foreverglade, took its name from the state’s most famous national park, channeling the region’s dank bogs and lurking fauna with its murky, noxious approach to death-doom. Chorus-soaked guitar melodies and ghastly synthesizers weaved through pillars of chugging, funereal sludge, as Phantom Slaughter’s vocals veered between guttural death metal growls and piercing black metal shrieks, swapping styles like a python veering its way through the mud.
This affinity for switching between genres might be Worm’s biggest strength, and their new mini-album, Bluenothing, charts yet another new direction, pulling from the hallowed halls of symphonic black metal. It’s a tricky thing to pull off: Without finely textured production, the style can easily sound cheap in a way that betrays its supposed epicness (perhaps the reason why the subgenre has remained largely untapped even as black metal has surged in popularity over the last decade). But the sound makes a natural fit for Worm’s gloomy, multicolored approach to metal. Bringing their lush, crystalline synthesizers in tow, Phantom Slaughter and his fellow anonymous bandmates adorn their winding headbangers with haunted artificial choirs straight out of Emperor’s 1994 landmark In the Nightside Eclipse, descending into a gothic dreamworld where virtuosic guitar shredding rules above all.
Bluenothing’s first two tracks were recorded during the Foreverglade sessions and carry that album’s looming sense of build. The title track is the standout of the two, clocking in at 11 minutes and trudging like a grim march into a thick fog. After commencing with a wickedly sleek guitar solo (members Wroth Septentrion and Nihilistic Manifesto take turns on lead guitar duty throughout the album), the track slowly sharpens its gaseous atmosphere piece by piece. Lumbering guitars give way to charging blastbeats as the band’s riffs reach a pummeling climax by the halfway point, before a sickly church organ disperses the track into the air, shrouding everything in an unholy light. Worm’s keen sense of dynamics keeps the track breathing as it winds its way through one movement after another, demonstrating all the paths their sound can take in a sweeping reverie.
Worm’s unpredictability is key to their music, which is why the doomy “Centuries of Ooze II” loses a bit of steam as it wades through its seven minutes without evolving much (despite opening with a gloriously chilling wall of cathedral organs). But on the two freshly recorded tracks, Worm push themselves to new extremes. After the misty interlude of “Invoking the Dragonmoon” sets the scene with its bewitching synthesizers, “Shadowside Kingdom” unveils Worm’s more blackened, symphonic sound. Where the music on Foreverglade took us into a world as viscous and overgrown as the marshes that inspired it, “Shadowside Kingdom” is ornate, its shimmering acoustic guitars providing a melodic anchor until three minutes in when the entire track is torn asunder. As craven guitar licks spiral around rapid-fire blast beats, the band builds to a crushing breakdown, suddenly morphing into a thrash metal group for a few bars before reaching a grand, mystifying finale, their guitars soloing as if howling at the moon. Even when they’re pulling from styles outside their wheelhouse, Worm adorn each one in glimmering color until it becomes their own.


The Sonic Youth frontman gets production assistance from Beck on a rich and satisfying acoustic-oriented LP.

Demolished Thoughts

The first words you're likely to hear in relation to Thurston Moore's Demolished Thoughts are "acoustic" and "folk." Indeed, the Beck Hansen-helmed album was made mostly with six- and 12-string acoustic guitars, harps, violins, bass (sometimes upright), and drums. But to call this record "folk" or "acoustic" is to mistakenly suggest that it's relaxed comfort music from an aging dude who still sings about teenage riots with his hoary rock band. Rather, Demolished Thoughts is as immediate and form-warping as Moore's work with Sonic Youth, comprising nine anxious, charged songs about fleeting time and failing happiness, played with veteran resilience. Jokes about old men and their Martins need not apply.
The essentials of this project might recall Trees Outside the Academy, Moore's song-oriented solo album from 2007. (The "song-oriented" distinction is necessary if reductive, as Moore seems to release between one and, oh, 47 experimental discs every year.) Violinist Samara Lubelski is the only Trees alumna on Demolished Thoughts. Moore returns with a consistent, cohesive band-- Lubelski, harpist Mary Lattimore, guitarist Bill Nace, Hansen and his regular collaborators, drummer Joey Waronker and bassist Bram Inscore. As such, this is a much more rigorous and singular album, constructed with a definite, deliberate sonic approach that his previous solo work has foregone. Trees had its moments, but, as a whole, it was uneasy and unsettled, as though Moore finally made it into a studio to record ideas he'd tucked away in notebooks during Sonic Youth tours. Demolished Thoughts feels less like a side-project of afterthoughts, more like a careful album cut with a smartly assembled band.
Instruments aside, Demolished Thoughts isn't built like typical folk music, or even the chiseled chamber folk of the last decade or so. The hazy, nearly seven-minute "Orchard Street", for instance, gets through its lyrics in nearly half its running time; the second, instrumental half sounds like an acoustic reinvention of the glorious codas from Sonic Youth's Murray Street, the role of the pounding drums taken by battered guitar strings, the squall of the electric guitars replicated with harp runs and violin trills. The album's other longer stretch, the appropriately titled "Space", moves in perfectly expanding and contracting waves. Moore enters with the tone of someone who's given up on patience: "I used to have all the time in the world/ Cruising galaxies in search of gold," he sings, the unease in his voice dismissing any back-porch associations. Even at their prettiest, like the slow-rolling and sad-eyed "Benediction" or the gently exhaling closer, "January", these songs move in unexpected ways, whether it's the players pushing into unlikely patterns or the production embellishing some unseen aspect. As with his other band, Moore succeeds by folding great ideas into otherwise good songs.
Beck's production is actually as essential and interesting as these tunes. He stretches Moore's songs without polishing them, giving them a pop number's scope and ambition without seeming obvious or pedantic. "Circulation" is a nervous collage of busy images-- needles hitting records, friends on the move, speakers, lights, cries, shots. Hansen pushes the core pieces of the song close together, so that Inscore's bass lashes violently against Moore's layers of heavy-handed strums. And on "In Silver Rain With a Paper Key", Hansen adds a trail of echo to Moore's plaintive tone, allowing the words to float like dust among guitars and string parts. Not lo-fi per se but purposefully damaged, the recording mimics Moore's loneliness and disorientation if only by way of atmosphere.
Moore, who will turn 53 this summer, is several years older than many of the bandleaders to emerge as indie rock luminaries with his success and staying power-- J Mascis, Henry Rollins, Frank Black, for obvious examples. That's reason enough to be sidetracked by the talk of mellow folk vibes. While Moore's been putting out records for three decades now, Demolished Thoughts feels vital and purposed, more like a debut than an encore. It's the work of a restless artist fighting successfully through his own skin to not only outstrip our expectations of how he sounds but also of the sort of music acoustic guitars and harps can make. With Demolished Thoughts, Thurston Moore solo albums have become more than fields of noise throwaways spiked with the occasional gem, more than Sonic Youth stopgaps. A lot of people retire after 30 years, but Moore has added another great line to an overwhelming résumé.


Sarah Tudzin’s boundless enthusiasm and bottomless bag of studio tricks dispel the tension of a DIY “mixtape” self-released in part to fulfill the obligations of a label breakup.

Illuminati Hotties: FREE I.H.: This Is Not the One You’ve Been Waiting For

Already the dominant mode for boundary-pushing rap and electronic music, mixtapes offer artists a way to release new work quickly and with fewer legal hurdles—and they’re increasingly embraced by pop musicians. Charli XCX’s Pop 2 codified her future-pop with an eclectic network of collaborators, freely assembled away from the gaze of Atlantic Records. Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz wasn’t explicitly a mixtape, but by releasing it independently, Cyrus ensured that her fried psychedelia wouldn’t have to pass muster with RCA. For musicians looking to make the best of a strict contract, off-label releases offer an opportunity to evade the pressures of commercialism. Their rawness, real or perceived, acts as a bridge between an artist’s behind-the-scenes creative process and their official output.
But the mixtape format wasn’t how Los Angeles studio vet Sarah Tudzin pictured her second release as Illuminati Hotties. She spent 2019 carefully piecing together a follow-up to her exuberant 2018 debut, Kill Yr Frenemies. Her plans deteriorated when her label, Tiny Engines, began drawing public criticism from its artists, who complained of delayed payments and silence from executives. Like several other musicians embroiled in the alleged mismanagement, Tudzin decided to buy out her contract. When she secured an exit deal stipulating that she give Tiny Engines the royalties payments on a future release, she paused the second record and instead poured her energy into FREE I.H.: This Is Not the One You’ve Been Waiting For, a “mixtape” self-released in part to fulfill the obligations of her exit agreement. Clocking in at 12 songs in just over 20 minutes, FREE I.H. collapses the hurried conditions of its creation and the engineering and production acumen of its creator, overflowing with intricate flourishes that hint at the potential of Tudzin’s eventual second full-length.
As with Kiss Yr Frenemies, FREE I.H. spans an impressive range of styles, each self-contained within the internal logic of their own genres and anchored by Tudzin’s sharp, nasally timbre. Tudzin has frequently described Illuminati Hotties as a sort of résumé for her prolific work as a studio engineer and producer, and her bottomless bag of tricks is on full display here. Skits and instrumental tracks pay homage to the mixtape format while reinforcing her range: She churns out Container-esque digital noise on “free4all” and layers sound effects for radio skit “K-HOT AM 818.” There’s the tinny garage rock of “free ppls,” the upbeat jangle pop of “b yr own b,” the pummeling punk of “WATTBL.” But Tudzin also reaches further beyond the boundaries of what she’s dubbed “tenderpunk.” With a motorik bassline that crashes into a cheerleader call-and-response chorus, “content//bedtime” blends disparate styles with exuberance and ease. Even further left field is “melatonezone,” which uses polyrhythms and chirps to recontextualize the sounds of Afropop within her base framework of pop punk and indie pop. FREE I.H. is a lot shorter than Kiss Yr Frenemies, but it arguably packs in more stylistic variation and studio maneuvers.
Online, Tudzin has kept relatively mum about her frustrations with Tiny Engines, but on FREE I.H., she delivers venom on nearly every track. “WATTBL” features thinly veiled references to “crooked finance,” and “K-HOT AM 818” delivers a word of warning with an audible shit-eating grin: “Hold on to your masters, folks!” The vehemence of her accusations suits the exaggerated swagger of the record as a whole. “Let’s smash to a podcast!” she yells with a gleeful sneer on “will i get canceled if i write a song called ‘if you were a man you’d be so canceled,’” a gnarled ode to machismo. Her spirited delivery eases the tension of an album released under inauspicious circumstances—what could have been a morose or awkward subject instead becomes a playful enemy. Tudzin’s boundless enthusiasm evokes a cartoonish protagonist in a series of imagined environments both real and digital, with passing references to “w w dot illuminati hotties” and “Illuminati HotQuarters.” You root for her not only because of the inherent redemption arc, but because of the obvious joy she takes in channeling her fury into pop.
In interview after interview, Tudzin is quick to declare her love for her chosen profession, describing the process of recording and performing as “making art.” Her respect for her craft shines throughout the record, a surprisingly joyful release ostensibly about a bad business deal. FREE I.H. skews louder and gnarlier than its predecessor, for obvious reasons. But Tudzin has a knack for making even quiet moments feel huge. On the smoldering slow-burn “free dumb,” a twee male-female duet escalates into a mountain of overdriven guitars and jangling percussion; just as the errant synth enters the mix, the song abruptly fades away, a spectre of a climactic anthem. It leaves the impression, like much of the mixtape, that these brief recordings are icebergs, concealing entire universes in their shadow.

Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here.


On Mark Lanegan’s 10th solo album, his leather voice and slow-burning songwriting play up the pulp and noir that’s been with him his entire career.

Gargoyle

The passage of time has been kind to Mark Lanegan. Since before the demise of his first band Screaming Trees in 2000, Lanegan has kept up a breakneck pace, juggling between solo albums and a string of high-profile collaborations. Back in ’92, when Screaming Trees scored hits with “Dollar Bill” and “Nearly Lost You,” you’d never have imagined that same singer making himself at home one day beside Martina Topley-Bird and Warpaint on a cover of the xx’s “Crystalised.” Lanegan’s voice doesn’t sound remotely out of place on the dance-remix versions either, which suggests that it wasn’t just moxie and elbow grease that prevented him from becoming a grunge/alternative fossil.
Against the electronic thump of his own 2012 solo effort Blues Funeral, for example, Lanegan sounded vital and renewed. Strangely, programmed beats alienate him somewhat on Gargoyle, his 10th solo album and the latest example of how Lanegan sometimes undersells his own natural abilities. As leathery as his voice is, it’s actually a rather pliable instrument. So it’s puzzling that he so often sticks to his lower register as if stuck in an eternal Leonard Cohen afterworld. Ironically, Lanegan sounded more like a musician just being himself in Screaming Trees. Regardless of how well his work with them has aged, there’s no questioning its identity.
By contrast, Gargoyle makes you wish Lanegan had studied Glenn Danzig’s way of emulating Roy Orbison without losing his own personality in the process. Of course, the lyrics don’t help. Lanegan continues to insist on using buzzwords straight out of the film-noir/pulp fiction/goth canon. He might have been able to breathe new life into those forms—as he did on Blues Funeral and elsewhere—but he resorts instead to textbook pictures of darkness. “And though my soul is not worth saving,” he sings on “Old Swan,” “my mistress and my queen/Your spirit is larger than my sin.”
Before you even get to the verses themselves, song titles like “Death’s Head Tattoo,” “Nocturne,” and “Drunk on Destruction” make you wonder whether Lanegan’s just playing a character the whole time. That alone wouldn’t be a bad thing—given the actual range of his vocal inflection, Lanegan is capable of playing the role of compelling anti-hero. Instead, his stylized lexicon of midnights and devils and mamas lands him closer to the singer-songwriter equivalent of Sam Spade. Meanwhile, returning Blues Funeral producer/multi-instrumentalist Alain Johannes and guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Rob Marshall opt for programming that miscasts Lanegan as a late-’90s alterna-rocker who’s just discovered techno. We already know that’s not the case.
At times, Gargoyle casts off its own shackles. On “Beehive,” Marshall’s exuberant guitars lift Lanegan out of his doldrums. The change in temperament is so welcome (imagine taking Dostoyevsky to a summer barbecue) it’s easy to overlook the fact that the song is basically a U2 tribute. On “Blue Blue Sea,” a billowing keyboard loop gives Lanegan room to remind us of why he outlasted the likes of Gavin Rossdale. But then, Lanegan reminds us of this album’s main issue when he sings of a “gargoyle, perched on gothic spire.”
The analogy couldn’t be any more fitting, but in case you didn’t get the point there’s a wrought-iron gate on the album cover. Perhaps Lanegan wasn’t conscious of the message he was sending, but like a gargoyle making faces to fend off intrusion, Lanegan all too often prevents the audience from seeing the artist that lives behind his dour exterior. Gargoyle is most engaging when it invites glimpses, however fleeting.


The new album from Cough could have arrived anytime during, say, the last three decades and placed the Richmond doom metal quartet alongside the ranks of Candlemass or Cathedral, Sleep or Saint Vitus.

Still They Pray

Despite the torpid, brooding doom metal they make, Cough began in something of a hurry. During its first five years, the Richmond quartet issued an auspicious debut EP, a split LP, and two very strong full-lengths, which colored the bleak grays of doom and the lurid greens of stoner metal with rainbow swirls of psychedelic rock. They jumped to Relapse Records, the giant of their field, for 2010’s menacing Ritual Abuse and, suddenly, went silent. One reason for the pause is the success of Windhand, Cough’s slightly-more-sophisticated and cryptic kin. Cough singer and bassist Parker Chandler handles the low-end rumble of that hard-touring and highly productive unit, limiting his time to return to his older band’s harder core. Indeed, a split between the two is all that Cough has released since 2010—at least until now, thanks to the band’s first album in six years.
Never mind the gap, actually: Still They Pray could have arrived anytime during, say, the last three decades and placed Cough alongside the ranks of Candlemass or Cathedral, Sleep or Saint Vitus. It's not looking to dovetail with or participate in any modern scene or moment so much as gather and glorify the tropes of aged genres. They are scary and mean like Eyehategod, hook-driven and magnetic like Electric Wizard. During these seventy minutes, Cough incorporates samples of Lovecraft text, spins into knotty solos, grinds riffs into dust, rages through a splendidly lysergic instrumental, and closes with benighted acoustic blues. When Chandler sings, he seems to inhale and exhale some cocktail of weed and hellfire smoke, as interested in sweet leaf as he is black masses. Still They Pray is a righteous echo of its classic forebears, turned way up and delivered with gospel-like belief.
For their first two albums, Cough handed production duties over to Sanford Parker, the hyper-productive Chicago musician and session overlord who’s worked with many of the most vital American metal acts of the last two decades. For their return, though, Cough went with Jus Oborn, the Electric Wizard leader and a bona fide titan in the form. He helmed these sessions alongside Windhand guitarist Garrett Morris.
The move to Osborn opens up the band’s sound, revealing layers and depths that Parker often pushed toward the middle. During “Possession,” for instance, Oborn meticulously layers the dual guitars of David Cisco and Brandon Marcey, a pair that’s perfected its balance of mantra-like repetition and howling solos. And he brilliantly divides the nine-and-a-half-minutes “Let It Bleed” into two distinct phases, so that the first half suggests some salvaged grunge obscurity, with mumbled vocals about nihilism and low-key, highly muffled guitars. But after an instrumental interlude, Cough charges back twice as loud, the guitars and Chandler now screaming in delirious, demented tandem. It ties together two ends of Cough’s inspirations and ideas.
For the eight minutes of mid-album highlight “Masters of Torture,” Cough pivots between low-tempo, high-distortion terror, rippling blues solos, and mutated-and-drugged thrash. It’s a clear composite of antecedents, a distillation of heroes that’s obvious but no less compelling for being so blatant. Cough slows down one last time in the final minute, and Chandler—voice warped by a web of effects, as if singing from inside a tomb—begins to chant a koan: “Live to hate/Hate to live,” he yells, repeating it until the riff dissolves into feedback. This grim perspective on reality represents a time-honored, timeless thesis for bands like Cough, whose central obsession with demons, death, and the romance of the underworld is, ironically, bound to outlive them.


After a run of conceptually focused projects, the Italian musician gives free rein to his atmospheric instincts on an album of immersive ambient techno.

Magda

Dance music is an outdoor thing for Donato Dozzy. You never get the sense that his music is taking place inside the club: This is a music of rivers, swamps, open ocean. The Italian producer’s 2012 masterpiece Voices From the Lake, with Neel, was conceived for a set at Japan’s mountainside Labyrinth festival, and the music seemed designed to burble from the very environment, as if created by the chirping of crickets and the rustling of birds in the underbrush. Everything has a rhythm, it seemed to say. Dozzy’s solo albums tend toward focused explorations of a single style, sound, or instrument. Hearing him coax the ghost of the club from a traditional Mediterranean mouth harp or the voice of collaborator Anna Caragnano, one suspects he’d be perfectly happy as a hunter-gatherer, bashing out a rhythm on a skin drum and calling it techno.
Dozzy’s new album Magda is less constrained than most of his work, and if these six long tracks stick to a fairly consistent palette of sequencer patterns surrounded by suggestive whispers and peaty squishings, there is tremendous variation within those core elements. Behemoths like “Le Chaser” and “Santa Cunegonda” coexist naturally with more ambient cuts like “Franca,” each one teasing the other. On “Le Chaser,” which sprawls over the entirety of Side B, his machines seem to have been left in the sun too long; Dozzy subtly detunes the signal so it sounds worn and faded, an ancient artifact from a time long before the invention of techno or even synthesizers. Basslines are a luxury, he’s as coy with his kick drums as ever, and when we hear a consistent 4/4 pulse it’s often startling to realize we haven’t heard a bass drum for a long time.
Dozzy has a DJ’s knack for sequencing, always creating subtle setups and payoffs that proceed almost imperceptibly. Because the sequenced synths are mixed so loudly compared to everything else, it’s easy to miss what’s happening in the margins, and you may not notice the addition of a new element until it’s been going strong for two or three minutes. Things that feel almost like hooks emerge imperceptibly from the primordial soup, like the drone on opener “Velluto” that eventually yields to a graceful melody that arcs up and up, or the frantic synth pattern on “Le Chaser” that suggests Carl Craig’s hair-raising remix of Junior Boys’ “Like a Child.” The album requires a few listens to really sink in: first to take it all in, and then to blot out what’s happening in the foreground and pay attention to the details.
Magda is Dozzy’s richest and most complete full-length statement in some time, eschewing the narrow focus of much of his solo work in order to highlight his strengths as a producer. Yet I wonder what Magda would have sounded like had he allowed even more sprawl, indulging runtimes that stretched past the polite nine-minute mark and into the dreaded double digits. “Santa Cunegonda” gains a lot from its extended ambient coda, in which the album’s meanest beat dissolves into a moonlit clearing of distant shakers and ghostly choirs; a few more moments like those might have helped the record feel a bit vaster and more immersive. There is a bit at the end of the title track where everything drops away except an incredible hollow chiming sound, which splinters into a million pieces of delay and becomes a beautiful drone—then suddenly fades out. I wanted to live in that fleeting moment for another 10 minutes.


This slow-burning collaborative album from Jesca Hoop and Iron & Wine's Sam Beam recalls healing summer storms more than destructive blazes.

Sam Beam / Jesca Hoop: Love Letter for Fire

Love Letter for Fire

For almost as long as humans have had fire, they've been writing songs about it. Billy Joel didn't start it, Hendrix wanted to stand next to it, and Jerry Lee Lewis had great balls of it. For Johnny Cash, it burned, burned, burned in an unholy ring. You might expect, then, that a record titled Love Letter for Fire would pay direct homage to the power of those crackling flames.  But instead, Sam Beam and Jesca Hoop deliver a gently rolling record that recalls healing summer storms more than destructive blazes.
You'll know Sam Beam as the bearded fellow behind Iron & Wine, while Hoop is an American singer-songwriter who now calls Manchester, England home. The two co-wrote the thirteen duets that comprise the record, and they're all seamless amalgamations of each writer's poetic songwriting style.
Some of these tunes are a little dark at times, like the lonely and hopeful "Soft Place to Land,” but these songs never feel beholden to any particular sadness—or for that matter, joy. Even with its moment-to-moment ups and downs, the album keeps an even keel that refrains from ebullient delight or languishing sorrow. It's a surprisingly fertile middle ground that's only effective thanks to the pair's beguiling lyrics.
Love Letter for Fire sounds lush and gorgeous from its outset, with arrangements that do the songs justice without being overwrought. They're rich and earthy, with Glenn Kotche's gentle percussion grounding airy string parts. Beam's voice sounds far more at home among low-end strings and piano than it did on Ghost On Ghost, his jazz-inclined Iron & Wine LP from 2013. And though the instrumentation is more or less the same across the record, subtle shifts in tempo keep it from becoming a gray lump of indistinguishable, uninteresting songs. "One Way to Pray” sways like an old porch swing, while "Bright Lights and Goodbyes” steps lightly as it ambles along.
The duo's exquisite vocal harmonies are the crown jewel of Love Letter for Fire, with the centerpiece and single "Every Songbird Says” maximizing each singer's strengths. Her voice is high and taut against his lower, billowing warmth. They circle each other from line to line and soar upward together gracefully on the song's high notes. The tune is a patient ode to a partner, finding satisfaction in the small stuff: "We know when it's enough to be walking with you,” they sing. Their voices fit together so uncannily that it's like each was made to sing with the other.
Only one of Love Letter for Fire's songs stumbles: the plunking, pointed "Chalk It Up to Chi.” Compared to the elegance of its counterparts, "Chalk It Up to Chi” feels clunky and cartoonish, especially with Hoop's exaggerated English affectation. The rest of the record is so pretty that it teeters on the edge of precious, but fortunately, this is the only one of thirteen tracks that falls over the edge. Instead of a love letter to consuming blazes, Hoop's and Beam's collection appeals to our individual internal pilot lights: those softly smoldering flames that illuminate moments of beauty in ourselves, in each other, and beyond.


One half of the brother act Inc. makes his solo debut with a satisfying collection of ambient-funk instrumentals that sound easy without being facile and chill without ever becoming soporific.

Daniel Aged

Inc. arrived whispering. Billed as veteran session players, brothers Daniel and Andrew Aged approached their own duo as though reluctant to finally assume the spotlight. Their arrangements drew from the softest, silkiest aspects of quiet-storm R&B—muted drums, muffled bass, languid curlicues of clean-toned guitar—and their voices never rose above a murmur. Even their self-presentation felt like a publicity strategy devised by wallflowers: In photos, they looked past each other or gazed at the ground, and between 2010 and 2016 they changed the name of their act from Teen Inc. to the blandly corporate Inc., and ultimately to the inscrutable inc. no world.
They were not the only artists pursuing this aesthetic in those years. The xx, who formed as actual teenagers, banked on their underdog charm and shy innocence. Even more press-averse than the Ageds, Rhye dialed up the lust. But the brothers have not enjoyed the same success as their peers. You might think their mood-heavy, slightly anonymous brand of R&B would thrive in the era of streaming playlists. But on Spotify, where the xx’s most popular tracks have generated over 100 million plays, the majority of the songs on Inc.’s 2013 album no world have racked up streams in the low-to-mid six digits, and 2016’s As Light as Light has fared far worse. Daniel Aged’s solo debut is also unlikely to be a commercial smash: It is a collection of ambient-funk instrumentals—a niche proposition if ever there were one. But it’s also remarkably satisfying—easy without being facile, chill without being soporific. The stakes may be low, but the payoff is generous.
It takes a while to figure out what exactly you’re listening to here: The swirled synths, rough-hewn drums, and submerged melodies don’t immediately suggest obvious comparison points. If pressed, you might look to Wally Badarou’s 1984 album Echoes, a Balearic touchstone by way of the Bahamas’ Compass Point Studios; the dreamy, slowly unfurling synth pads and pneumatic funk grooves also bring to mind the more tranquil pockets of Seal’s debut album. But those similarities have more to do with mood than form. Above all, Daniel Aged’s ruminative loops and mercurial drift give the impression of a lone musician working late into the night, torn between melodic flights of fancy and analog rabbit holes.
If there is a center of gravity to this album, it is Aged’s electric bass. Lithe, lyrical, and playful, it’s muscular but never disruptive. In the opening track, “UNTLD1,” it bumbles like a fat, fuzzy bee that’s trapped in one of Konono No. 1’s amplifiers. On “BASS.INT,” it vacillates between quicksilver riffs and bright, declarative chords played high on the neck, clear as a bell. But there’s nothing showoffy about these performances; this is not an album likely to form the basis for any routines at this year’s Air Guitar World Championships (four-string category). Sometimes the bass goes into stealth mode: You can detect it worming its way through the back half of “KAWAI SQ,” but it’s an unobtrusive presence there, sneaking along under cover of jazzy keyboard noodling and springy drum programming. The beat nods toward hip-hop, but the time signature feels volatile, and in the background, a bright, blippy sample drips unsteadily, fast then slow then fast again, steadily eroding the groove.
It’s a short album, just eight tracks that wrap up in under 24 minutes, but Aged makes the most of that brief running time. Themes develop, then abruptly shift to become something else. In “BH,” wispy guitar ambience gives way to a trim bass-and-drums groove from which high-pitched synth riffs spring like soft-focus fireworks; by the closing coda, you feel like you’ve crossed two or three state lines in just four-and-a-half minutes. Aged’s pedal steel comes to the fore in “STEEL.INT” and “BREATH2,” giving these interludes the taste of glistening, liquid palate cleansers. (They also hark back to Daniel Lanois’ work on Brian Eno’s Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks; held up alongside recent albums from Lanois and Chuck Johnson, Daniel Aged suggests that pedal-steel ambient is becoming a surprisingly fruitful subgenre.)
The final track, “12.21,” is the most songlike of the bunch: A swirling, atmospheric introduction morphs into spongy, minimalist soul in the tradition of D’Angelo’s Voodoo, electric bass and wah-wah guitar warily circling each other over a crisp, skeletal drumbeat. It’s a departure from the preceding tracks, but it’s also a continuation; “12.21” suggests that Aged is working his way back to the more emphatically soulful style of inc. no world—except that it doesn’t sound much like any other music being made right now. This time around, he’s not whispering. He’s flexing his muscles and showing his teeth.


Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker and R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck team up for a crisp, allusive record that taps into their gnarled indie rock and punk roots.

Invitation

Joined by Fastbacks guitarist Kurt Bloch, King Crimson drummer Bill Rieflin and multi-instrumentalist Scott McCaughey of the Minus 5, Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker and R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck have recorded as Filthy Friends—imagine a shaggier, angrier Traveling Wilburys with several decades’ worth of gnarled rock and punk roots among them. Their debut album sounds good. The playing is crisp. Nevertheless, like some latter-day R.E.M. albums after the departure of Bill Berry in 1997, Invitation depends on its lack of surprise. In its clean, straightforward grooves, the album betrays no cynicism or enervation. It is a good time, and not much more.
The exceptions are pungent and allusive enough to wonder what the hell it takes to chart on what’s left of rock radio. “The Arrival” isn’t the first song but should be: a serpentine riff kicked around, with Tucker’s habit of pricking syllables for blood. “Got something to prove, got something to say,” she sings as if she needed convincing. She and the guys aren’t defensive, though. A jangle variant on that riff provides the backdrop for more Tucker testifyin’. There’s even a bass solo.
”Come Back Shelley,” Filthy Friends’ take on T. Rex’s “Bang a Gong” is even better: an ode to a slinky little woman with a “new wave” haircut who loves wearing her boyfriend’s clothes. With crucial help from McCaughey’s boogie-woogie piano, Tucker delivers her most lascivious vocal since Sleater-Kinney’s “Milkshake and Honey”; she knew a Shelley and wanted a Shelley, or she was Shelley, giving her admirers one more chance to figure her out.
A similar calling-all-stations approach, however, lets down the single “Despierta.” A callback to Sleater-Kinney’s Dubya-era One Beat, “Despierta” has it both ways: an expression of disbelief laced with terror inspired by what our fellow citizens had wrought on November 2016 that sounds neither terrifying nor unbelievable. It offers platitudes that dissolve in the air and it’s about as vital as a protest sign left on a lawn. If “The Arrival” represents a thrilling showcase for Tucker, “Any Kind of Crowd” ventures too comfortably into the winsome for my taste, despite the efforts of the guys’ enthusiastic background vocals—imagine Tucker singing R.E.M.’s “Sitting Still” off a karaoke monitor.
The tour for this record will be a trip, and I hope Tucker, restrained and almost decorous throughout, blasts audiences to cinders with her voice. Similarly, I have faith that Filthy Friends, having made a good album, return to the studio to make a wonderful one. Appreciate the snap of Rieflin’s drumming. Savor the interplay between Bloch and Buck. They’ll be back.


Last year, Tim Kasher turned 40 and toured behind a reissue of Cursive's 2003 collection, The Ugly Organ, a record that played up the distasteful, compelling tics of its lead to provide gripping conflict and perverse pleasure. On his fifth album fronting the Good Life, he softens his takes on modern life with gentle, PG-13 humor and a tremendous lessening of stakes.

Everybody’s Coming Down

Taking the long view, Cursive frontman Tim Kasher’s trajectory appears more like that of a Hollywood journeyman than a musician. His most renowned work could be described as "reality programming"—Domestica, The Ugly Organ, and Black Out played up the distasteful and compelling tics of their narcissistic leads to provide gripping conflict and perverse pleasure. His brief residency in Los Angeles coincided with his "screenwriting" period, Happy Hollow and Help Wanted Nights creating self-contained, fictional cities filled with multi-dimensional characters and their questionable motivations (the libretto-assisted *I Am Gemini *was a one-off in musical theater). Since releasing music under his own name in 2010, Kasher has shifted to "sitcoms"—as with The Game of Monogamy and Adult Film, the Good Life’s Everybody’s Coming Down softens his takes on modern life with gentle, PG-13 humor and a tremendous lessening of stakes.
Last year, Kasher turned 40 and toured behind a reissue of 2003's The Ugly Organ—a means of celebrating his most beloved record and reckoning with a "perspective shift" that made it difficult for him to relate to the guy who sang "The Recluse". And yet, present-day Kasher doesn’t achieve much distance from his brash, idealistic, and self-destructive former self, as the entirety of Everybody’s Coming Down puts the two in direct, unflattering comparison. While Kasher’s platitudes are presented as hard truths forged from experience, most of the time, it just sounds secondhand, scripts written by someone whose worldview has been shaped mostly by Cursive records.
There’s the inevitable talk of the futility of artistic expression—maybe Burst and Bloom's "Sink to the Beat" and The Ugly Organ's "Art Is Hard" were cynical, but there was convincing conflict between Kasher’s ego and his soul. The self-evisceration has given way to bellyaching on Everybody’s Coming Down. Rather than busting down the fourth wall and providing insider intel as to what happens in "The Troubadour’s Green Room", Kasher diffidently states what was always implied—he’s singing for any kind of attention and the only original thought results from two cliches soldered together as non sequitur—"I was chasing the big fish/ And all the wine and roses that come with it."
There’s the inevitable talk of the futility of human coupling. As with Happy Hollow's "Big Bang" and Mama, I'm Swollen's "Caveman", "How Small We Are" sees procreation as a zero sum game with lyrics not punched-up enough for laughs nor plain enough to be anything anyone might actually say ("propagating teensy human beings is a must"). And there’s the inevitable talk of the futility of human existence itself (most notably "Holy Shit"), with nearly every song finding some way to rehash the album title: "With the proper dosage I can feed my ego/ Once the buzz wears off I feel so hollow"; "Each ticker tape parade/ Is followed by a broom brigade"; "Every candle lit for every god or cancer kid/ Has flickered out and no one ever heard the prayer"; "If my body's a temple, it’s crumbling/ It can’t be renovated"; "Another carousel through the nothingsphere"; "Everybody’s riding the Ferris wheel/ And the pinnacle’s gorgeous...once the ride is done, they’re back in line again."
The increasing generality of Kasher’s lyrics is matched by the Good Life’s evolution into a tuneful, spirited, but extremely conventional indie rock outfit. The plodding, bashed-out alt of "Everybody" or the friskier pop-punk of "Holy Shit" and "Ad Nauseum" are hooky enough and they’re the kind of songs you could hear every hour, on the hour just walking through Philadelphia or Boston these days. Kasher’s sardonic tone at least prevents them from anonymity, though the true highlights happen when he takes a supporting role—bassist Stefanie Drootin-Senseney’s aqueous vocals lend "Diving Bell" an eerie psychedelia and when its lyrics fail, a worldless, harmonized moan on "The Troubadour’s Green Room" properly evokes the weariness of a veteran half-assing it on stage while looking over a half-filled venue.
Cursive had been increasingly shearing off the nettlesome vocal tics and jagged edges of their prickly post-hardcore, while the Good Life had developed from Kasher’s nocturnal synth-pop project to a hearty Midwestern rock act—the distinction between the two has been all but eliminated at this point. And that’s what makes Everybody’s Coming Down disappointing in a way that 2012's seventh Cursive album I Am Gemini or the 2013 solo album Adult Film never managed. The Good Life had once felt like Tim Kasher’s necessary relief from Being Tim Kasher. Not that 2002's Black Out or 2004's Album of the Year were lighthearted—but they could be cloaked in gothic hues or the assumption of fiction. But whether it’s Cursive or Good Life or Tim Kasher, it’s all sitcom at this point, his version of "Mulaney" or "Mr. Robinson"—a barely fictionalized, deadened version of his own life starring him. Or, "Shit Tim Says".