NEW RELEASES 2014 WEEK # 39 SEPTEMBER 23, 2014

SEPTEMBER 23, 2014 (WEEK #39)

1.    ALT-J-“THIS IS ALL YOURS” (9/23) 

2.    ANJOU-“ANJOU” (9/16) (2014 release from the synth-based side project from Labradford's Mark Nelson and Robert Donne, and virtuoso percussionist Steven Hess. All three names should be familiar with anyone who's spent any time leafing through the Kranky back catalogue. Hess and Nelson worked together on the crucial Pan American recordings, and Donne recorded as Aix Em Klemm with Stars of the Lid's Adam Wiltzie, as well as recording crucial work as Cristal. Now the three have joined forces to create a refined record of digital and analog synth processing, accented by Steven Hess's percussive backbone. "The culmination of four years writing and editing, Anjou marks the ?rst collaboration between Labradford's Robert Donne and Mark Nelson since the release of that group's ?xed:context LP. Combining modular synthesis, Max/MSP programming and live instrumentation, Anjou deftly weaves noise with gentle ambience and melody with texture. Guitar, bass and Steven Hess' (Locrian, Fennesz, Pan American) live percussion give the eight pieces an immediacy and create a framework for the more abstract sounds of digital and analog synth programming. The product of twenty plus years of friendship, Anjou is re?ned and challenging. An extension of the Labradford sound-world but no mere victory lap, Anjou represents Donne and Nelson stepping out and forward, their eyes ?rmly focusing on the future.")

3.    APHEX TWIN-“SYRO” (9/23) 

4.    THE ASTEROIDS GALAXY TOUR-“BRING US TOGETHER” (9/23) 

5.    BEAK-“LET TIME BEGIN” (9/23) 

6.    BONNIE PRINCE BILLY-“SINGER’S GRAVE A SEA OF TONGUES” (9/23)

7.    JULIAN CASABLANCAS AND THE VOIDZ-“TYRANNY” (9/23)

8.    GARY CLARK JR-“LIVE” (9/23) 

9.    DAN’L BOONE-“DAN’L BOONE” (9/23) (DAN'L BOONE is CHARLES BALLAS (FORMANT), NEIL HAGERTY (ROYAL TRUX, HOWLING HEX, etc.), NATE YOUNG (WOLF EYES, REGRESSION, etc.), and ALEX MOSKOS (DRAINOLITH).  The crew convened in Denver, CO to work on the forthcoming Drainolith record and decided to make another record at the same time. Everyone involved seemed pretty dedicated to experimentation and pushing the music forward. Neil and Nate really ran things at the sessions at Uneven Studios. There were lots of electronics that Young would set up and Hagerty would give some direction. Hagerty had various lyric sheets and scores that the group worked with but once the record started to take shape Young became very involved in plotting out the flow of the record.)

10. DNTEL-“HUMAN VOICE” (9/23) 

11. THE DRUMS-“ENCYCLOPEDIA” (9/23) 

12. ELEPHANT STONE-“THREE POISONS” (9/23) 

13. THE FUTURE SOUND OF LONDON-“ENVIRONMENT FIVE” (9/23) 

14. GOAT-“COMMUNE” (9/23) 

15. THE GROWLERS-“CHINESE FOUNTAIN” (9/23) 

16. JP HARRIS & THE TOUGH CHOICES-“HOME IS WHERE THE HURT IS” (9/23) 

17. HOLY SONS-“THE FACT FACER” (9/23) ("Holy Sons is Emil Amos, a musician whose chameleonic tendencies and technical versatility has lead to him becoming an in demand multi-instrumentalist as a founding member of Grails and Lilacs & Champagne, as well as a member of Om and a hired gun for Jandek, to name a few. Holy Sons is at the center of his many musical personalities and is his longest standing project, acting as an outlet for some of his most personal and direct songs. In Holy Sons, Amos puts his restless imagination to work using a variety of inventive home recording methods to turn melodic slow-burners into multi-layered, atmospheric missives. While his methods and prolificacy provide a kinship with Sebadoh, Ariel Pink and other musicians who have offered countless transmissions from their bedroom floor, Holy Sons comes from the mind of someone who has internalized the minutia of 70s rock music and eschews the stereotypical lo-fi sound for a much deeper and more varied palate. The Fact Facer, his Thrill Jockey debut, bathes Amos' thoughtful, and even at times philosophical, songs in technicolor darkness, and reinforces Holy Sons as his musical centerpiece. ")

18. MARKETA IRGLOVA-“MUNA” (9/23) 

19. JESSE RUINS-“FRACTURED HOLY SYMMETRY” (9/23) 

20. KING TUFF-“BLACK MOON SPELL” (9/23) 

21. LENNY KRAVITZ-“STRUT” (9/23) 

22. SONDRE LERCHE-“PLEASE” (9/23) 

23. THE LIFE AND TIMES-“LOST BEES” (9/23)

24. LOWELL-“WE LOVED HER DEARLY” (9/16) 

25. LOWER PLENTY-“LIFE/THRILLS” (9/23) 

26. JOHN MELLENCAMP-“PLAIN SPOKEN” (9/23)

27. MELTED TOYS-“MELTED TOYS” (9/16) 

28. NADA SURF-“B-SIDES” (9/23) 

29. PERFUME GENIUS-“TOO BRIGHT” (9/23) 

30. CHUCK PROPHET-“NIGHT SURFER” (9/23) 

31. PURLING HISS-“WEIRDON” (9/23)

32. LAETITIA SADIER-“SOMETHING SHINES” (9/23) (2014 solo album from the former Stereolab vocalist. Alternating between a riveting caress and an invigorating shake, the songs of SOMETHING SHINES start from the Earth and tilt up towards the sky, before coming back down to the planet again. Taking it all in, SOMETHING SHINES is also an exploration through Debord's La Soci‚t‚ du Spectacle, and how it is still up to us to guide and shape our fate, individually and collectively. Laetitia examines several relevant questions. These thoughts are communicated with delicately textured production, twinkling and shifting with the subtlety of nature. Often sounding like the world outside, whooshing and chirping and clicking in time, placing these concerns in the place where we live, SOMETHING SHINES reflects the lives hanging in the balance between issues, lives that are often too small to see yet contribute to the world as a whole. Even in the face of realities that continue to cripple so many in the name of so few, SOMETHING SHINES consistently elevates itself with lyrical confidence, intimacy, and an arcing musicality that allows it to go to the hearts and minds of every listener.)

33. SMASHING PUMPKINS-“ADORE” (SUPER DELUXE EDITION 6CD/1DVD) (9/23)

34. TWEEDY-“SUKIERAE” (9/23) 

35. VATICAN SHADOW & FUNCTION-“GAMES HAVE RULES” (9/22) 

36. WHIRR-“SWAY” (9/23) (Last year, Whirr headlined a tour with the Philadelphia group and fellow admirers of heaviness and harmony, Nothing. Not only did the crews become fast friends, but their respective founders Whirr's Nick Bassett and Nothing's Dominic Palermo decided to start a group of their own, Death of Lovers. When the shared tour was finished, Bassett headed to Philadelphia for a month of writing and recording. He never really left. He calls Philadelphia home now, so Whirr has become a bi-coastal band. In Philadelphia, Bassett worked on Death of Lovers debut for Deathwish Inc., toured as the bassist for Nothing and steadily composed new material for the next Whirr album, their first full-length for Graveface. Back in Oakland, the rest of Whirr had committed to the project full-time, too, so the West Coast contingent wrote and rehearsed new material without Bassett. Joey Bautista took the lead on two songs, Loren Rivera on three. Indeed, against most odds, Bassett's move made for a more democratic Whirr. In their salad days, Bassett had written most of the material and built the bulk of the arrangements, too, using the support only to enrich and enliven them. After a slew of splits and singles and EPs, ''Sway'' is the second Whirr LP, but it is only the first to be rendered by a fully functional rock band, having shaped the songs slowly and over some distance. Before the quintet entered Oakland's Atomic Garden to work with longtime producer and collaborator Jack Shirley, they reworked the contributions of all three writers, massaging the material into a cohesive dynamo. Rivera, for instance, rewrote the words for Bassett's material, folding his songs into the album's presiding sense of dusky melancholy. ''It's not conceptual, entirely, but it's intended to ebb and flow in a certain way--one song being aggressive, then dropping out and being pretty but devastating,'' Bassett says. ''We tried to create an atmosphere, where you listen and get vibed into one tone.'' That rhythm presides over ''Sway,'' tying its distinct parts into a seamless unit. The restless ''Heavy'' churns somewhere between Godflesh and ''Gish,'' its lumbering beat and foreboding guitar buoyed by a melody that feels like a secret hymn for which you've long searched. Gorgeous and sprawling, ''Sway'' floats through luxuriating guitars and pillowed vocals, offering an impressionistic but intoxicating inversion of Whirr's typical propulsion. Even here, during the record's prettiest moment, Whirr maintains a righteous minimalism, emblematic of members who met one another as skateboarding high-school kids. ''The aesthetic of the band is more aimed at mature punk, rather than alternative rock,'' Bassett confirms. ''There are these more aggressive punk elements--noisy feedback, a snare roll roll that just goes into super-punchy, driving songs.'' ''Clear'' brilliantly paints its lyrical quest for lucid communication-- ''I want words/to understand you,'' runs one plaintive, surging bit in music that takes up the same challenge. Whirr pushes past a pastel instrumental haze into a hangdog march, with near-whispered vocals bruised by Devin Nunes drums and Eddie Saldago's orotund bass line. But as the end approaches, the band builds together, the riffs and the rhythm colliding into one triumphant, redemptive crest. And that's the victory of ''Sway,'' too, an album written by five people on two coasts but executed with the force and splendor of, at last, a fully unified Whirr.)