The Best

Melbourne psych-rock is an established thing now, and it’s easy enough to dismiss bands like Beans, who don’t get played on the radio constantly or shouted about on the internet. It would be a real shame to do so, though. While a lot of their contemporaries soak their work in LSD, a lot of them forget that the Sixties were more than just acid parties and paisley designs. There was a whole world going alongside the acid rock movement: funk, soul, R&B. Beans remembers this. Kevin Parker does too, but Tame Impala’s forays into R&B have been decidedly too modern, full of big production moments and rounded corners. Beans get’s dirty with their funk, mixing in James Brown moves and moments of complexity nicked from jazz.

Dreamy, slow, surreal darkwave with shoegaze tendencies. Do you ever notice we tend to describe musical styles like we do Marxist splinter groups? At any rate, this is a great wired-in-the-middle-of-the-night record, perfect for dressing in black and slipping back into your hole in the wall before the sun peeks out over the horizon. Also the cover of “The End Of The World” is glacial brilliance. The band sums it up perfectly in one song title: We should listen to goth music every day.

Musgraves returns to the, er, well of inspiration that brought us Golden Hour with some more country-tinged folk explorations that go lightly psych and visit the Canyon. Even if it doesn’t reach the heights of 2019’s Grammy AOTY, it makes a solid addition to her canon and a great invitation to reflect on love, life, and classic melodies.

The Rest

Four Tet – Three ★★★☆ (Text Records) A textbook example of strength through restraint, Kieren Hebden crafts complicated arrangements but keeps it strictly within the safety zone of his other work as Four Tet.

Flo Milli – Fine Ho, Stay ★★★☆ (RCA/Sony) About as fun and bouncy as pop rap ever gets.

Dancer – Ten Songs I Hate About You ★★★☆ (Meritorio) Weird and endearing little mix of post-punk and dream pop anchored in a particularly Scottish sensibility.

The Fourth Wall – Return Forever ★★★☆ (DevilDuck) The Portland band carefully balances noise and melody in a way that sets them apart from the bulk of their shoegaze-chasing contemporaries.

Sweat – Love Child ★★★☆ (Vitriol) It’s a punk record. But WHAT a punk record!

Ancient Teeth – Humanizer ★★★☆ (Debt Offensive) Swirling, noisy shoegaze guitar workouts that run the gamut of emotions and keeps things varied.

Chet Porter – Everything You’ve Ever Seen ★★★ (Ultra) Solid enough EDM but it’s not much of a whole-album listen, aside from once. Couple of good tracks to add to your upcoming summer playlists.

Yung Lean & Bladee – Psykos ★★★ (Year0001/World Affairs) Interesting collaboration on the surface, but everything tends to blend together after a while.

White Ring – Angel 13 Volume 1 ★★★ Witch house? In my 2024? It’s likelier than you think.

Tierra Whack – World Wide Whack ★★★ (Interscope) Tierra Whack needs a better producer because there’s no reason such a deep and at time hilarious exploration of an anxious psyche should be married to such a ho hum set of music.

Gouge Away – Deep Sage ★★★ (Deathwish) Right when they surge they hold back instead. It’s fine if you like a little restraint in your post-hardcore.

Grieving – Everything Goes Right All At Once ★★☆ (By The Time It Gets Dark) It’s all been done before, mostly better.

Marla Hansen – Salt ★★☆ (Karaoke Kalk) Folk and electronic are always a difficult couple of genres to blend well, and Salt doesn’t add much to convince me it’s a useful blend, either.

Devon Welsh – Come With Me If You Want To Live ★★☆ Majical Cloudz were never better than C-tier and their singer doesn’t reach that level either.

Justin Timberlake – Everything I Thought I Was ★★☆ (RCA/Sony) Look, this album has been trashed enough so I’m going to say something nice. This album is too long. If it were half as long, it would still be too long. If it were 1/3 as long, and the songs were carefully curated, it might actually be a great pop record. So there’s that.

COMA – Fuzzy Fantasy ★★☆ (City Slang) There’s some good energy at the beginning and the end but the middle sags worse than the roof of an abandoned house after a month of rain.

The Dandy Warhols – Rockmaker ★★ (Sunset Blvd) There have rarely been more continually disappointing bands than the Dandy Warhols – maybe the Brian Jonestown Massacre, I suppose. It’s intensely frustrating because you know goddamn well they’re capable of great songwriting but then they keeping turning out…this.