JANUARY 28, 2014
(WEEK #5)
1.
ACTRESS-“GHETTOVILLE” (1/28)
2.
AUTUMN DEFENSE-“FIFTH” (1/28)
3.
BIBIO-“THE GREEN” [EP] (1/28)
4.
BITCH PREFECT-“BIRD NERDS” (1/28)
5.
MORGAN DELT-“MORGAN DELT” (1/28)
6.
DROWNERS-“DROWNERS” (1/28)
7.
DUM
DUM GIRLS-“TOO TRUE” (1/28)
8.
EXPLOSIONS
IN THE SKY + STEVE JABLONSKY-“LONE SURVIVOR” (ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK
RECORDING) (1/17)
9.
THE FAREWELL DRIFTERS-“TOMORROW FOREVER”
(1/28) (2014
release from the Neo-Folk outfit. Tomorrow Forever was produced by pop-roots
specialist Neilson Hubbard (Matthew Perryman Jones, the Apache Relay, Glen
Philips) and showcases the Drifters' Brian Wilson-esque Pop sensibility,
crystalline harmonies and Folk foundations alongside gutsy electric guitar and
orchestral-style drums. The stomping title track, the anthemic album opener
'Modern Age' and the catchy 'Bring `em Back Around' all support the album's
over-arching theme - a hopeful look at the future and the importance of always
seeking the silver lining. When Zach Bevill, brothers Joshua and Clayton Britt,
and Dean Marold started making music together eight years ago, they aimed for
the sweet spot between Bluegrass and The Beach Boys' artfully crafted, `60s
studio pop. The Farewell Drifters crisp, intricate arrangements and formidable
instrumental prowess have quickly made the band a crowd pleaser at
multi-generational Folk festivals and earned them slots on Americana radio and
Billboard's albums chart.)
10. GEM
CLUB-“IN ROSES” (1/28) (In Roses
is the second album from Massachusetts based Gem Club was recorded at Tiny
Telephone, John Vanderslice's studio, in 2013. For In Roses, Gem Club worked along with arranger and conductor Minna
Choi of the Magik Markers Orchestra to create and reshape the melancholy songs
in fresh and unimaginable ways. The resulting album is more expansive, more
majestic, and yet retains the intimacy of Gem Club's previous works. In Roses combines beauty and sadness
with intimate and graceful songs about the realization that life is no longer
happening the way we want. In Roses
provides solace in song.)
11. ALBERT
HAMMOND JR-“AHJ” [EP] (1/28)
12. HOLY
WAVE-“RELAX” (1/28) ('Deliver us from evil''--yes, but how? ''Relax,'' says Holy Wave.
''Relax'' sees the band expanding both their sound and their membership,
recording for the first time as a five-piece. Holy Wave continues to carefully
combine fluid forms of scared surf sounds, droning riffs and groups vocals that
haunt and harmonize in equal measure. The songs on ''Relax'' are confident and
streamlined, yet expansive as ever. The band creates a fuzz-frenzy as deep as
it is wide, captured with care by producer Erik Wofford (Explosions in The Sky,
My Morning Jacket, The Black Angels) at Cacaphony Studios in Austin, TX. Holy
Wave has developed a following in the US and international psych scenes over
the last few years on a string of EPs (compiled for the ''Evil Hits'' Lp.
''Relax'' will be their true debut, supported by a US and European tour.)
13. HOSPITALITY-“TROUBLE”
(1/28)
14. ELENI
MANDELL-“LET’S FLY A KITE” (1/28)
15. MOON
WIRING CLUB-“A FONDNESS FOR FANCY HATS” (1/8)
16. MORRISSEY-“SATELLITE OF LOVE”
(SINGLE) (1/28)
17. MT.
ROYAL-“MT. ROYAL” (1/28) (Many years ago, there was a great band called Love Life, fronted by
Katrina Ford, that proffered tense, gothy music punctuated by sudden, noisy
freakouts. That band, sadly, was short-lived. Then, a few years after that,
there was a band called Celebration, also fronted by Katrina Ford, that was
even tenser and noisier and more coiled. They were also great, and the music
this time is spookier and moodier and more ethereal, and I am hoping against
all hope that they will not be short
lived, because come on already.)
18. THE
NEW MENDICANTS-“INTO THE LIME” (1/28) (2014 debut full-length album from this indie
supergroup consisting of Joe Pernice (Pernice Brothers), Norman Blake (Teenage
Fanclub) and Mike Belisky (The Sadies). Into The Lime is the follow-up to their
critically successful 2013 EP Australia.)
19. TARA
JANE O’NEIL-“WHERE SHINE NEW LIGHTS” (1/28) TARA JANE O'NEIL's music is integrated and contextual, idiosyncratic
and deeply psychedelic, akin to a lucid dream journal caught on magnetic tape.
She appears to be interested in all sounds equally. In her tireless search for
a music that mirrors and reflects her alchemical, deeply syncretic approach to
sound, color, language, surface and texture, she has found herself in a
somewhat singular category. Her concerns are free from fussing about form. Her
albums posit some free space that owes more to improvisors and painters than
singer-songwriters or new age synthesizer baths. She is still interested in
songs, and she has always been a wordsmith, but her songs don't need to have
words to signify. When words are utilized, she doesn't waste them. They are
beautifully mystical outbursts of visionary poesis, but their narrative power
is located within and informed by, the space, the harmonic color, the context
in which they are sung. Choral voicings spread out across the stereo field like
muted cloud formations split by sudden outbursts of vibrant color, verdant
mosses on ancient stones, opal sized windows of clear blue set against a vast
horizon. Pump organ drones swell and respirate, patient and slow, with softly
resonant gongs from the roof of the world. This is music about healing, about
listening, about surviving and transmuting the strange inheritance of language.
Moving towards a direct perception of apparent reality through collaboration,
breath, sound and song. TJO has always been a shapeshifter. Listen to
this new album with open ears, forgetting any previous incarnation, or
perception of what you believe this mercurial artist to be or to have been.
Using some very basic recording equipment and her vivid musical imagination,
she has achieved a rare essentialism wherein all unnecessary elements have been
stripped away leaving only the most indispensable sounds. Concise, but
expansive, stripped of unnecessary gestures; guitars resonate, amps hum, and an
exquisite, languid melancholia appears out of the haze.)
20. THE
PACK A.D.-“DO NOT ENGAGE” (1/28)
21. PONTIAK-“INNOCENCE”
(1/28)
22. QUILT-“HELD
IN SPLENDOR” (1/28)
23. AMY
RAY-“GOODNIGHT TENDER” (1/28)
24. RINGO
DEATHSTARR-“GODS DREAM” (1/28)
25. SKINNY
PUPPY-“THE GREATER WRONG OF THE RIGHT” (1/28) (REMASTERED EDITION
2004/2014) (Digitally
remastered edition of this album from the Canadian Industrial outfit. 2004 saw
Skinny Puppy release The Greater Wrong Of The Right, their ninth album and
first new full-length LP since 1996's The Process. Rather than a rehashed
revisiting of the band's earlier sound, The Greater Wrong Of The Right showed
the band take a breathtaking continuation forward. The album was an innovative,
urgent statement that showed time and loss had not dulled the urgency of
innovation of the band.)
26. SLEEPY SUN-“MAUI TEARS” (1/28)
27. SNOWBIRD
(SIMON RAYMONDE OF COCTEAU TWINS & STEPHANIE DOSEN)-“MOON” (1/28)
28. STRANGE
TALK-“CAST AWAY” (1/28)
29. UNCLE
TUPELO-“NO DEPRESSION” (LEGACY EDITION) (2-CD) (1/28) (1990/2014)
No comments:
Post a Comment