Japanese Breakfast – Psychopomp

★★★★☆

Released April 1st, 2016 on Yellow K Records

The dream of the Nineties is alive in more places than just Portland these days. With every second kid out there wearing a flannel overshirt and a fitted cap, and every second band trading in post-Dinosaur Jr. guitar crunch, one can be forgiven for thinking that they were reliving their memories of 1992. Unlike their fuzz-pedal worshipping contemporaries – Bully, Speedy Ortiz, Joanna Gruesome, the Crutchfield sisters – Japanese Breakfast takes their cues from a more esoteric place. Psychopomp is a little bit Isn’t Anything-era My Bloody Valentine, with the airy charm of vintage Asobi Seksu and a bit of the more out-there moments of Guided By Voices. “In Heaven” is a shoegaze paradise; “Everybody Wants To Love You” is a chug-along lo-fi anthem. “Jane Cum” and “Triple 7” are the highlights, soaring numbers that focus their attention on the impassioned vocals of Michelle Zauner.

Zauner is the real show here. The songs on Psychopomp are reworks of some lo-fi stuff she worked on when her old band, Little Big Leagues, was still active. She and collaborator Ned Eisenberg rebuilt them into something both strongly reminiscent of the shoegaze/dream-pop days of the late Eighties and early Nineties while retaining a vibrant mysteriousness that sets the music apart from the merely derivative. The fact that it breezes by in a scant 25 minutes only adds to it; unlike a lot of her contemporaries, Zauner knows when to call it a day. The quick runtime means that each of the songs on Pyschopomp stands out on its own as a strong contender, and lets the strengths of each song shine through, something that might have been lost in a much longer work. It’s wistful and heavy, pure indie pop at its finest.

And The Rest…

RJD2

Dame Fortune

★★☆

03/25/2016 on R.J.’s Electrical Connections Records

Self-produced hip hop albums can get quite self-indulgent, and Dame Fortune is no exception. The producer’s long-standing talent is there, but only in fits and doses.

The Thermals

We Disappear

★★★

03/25/2016 on Saddle Creek Records

The Portland supergroup’s strongest album in quite some time. It’s not The Body, The Blood, The Machine, but then again what is? Solid, fist-in-the-air power-pop that often edges into punk.

The Range

Potential

★★★☆

03/25/2016 on Domino Records

A deeply human record, all the more so for its electronic starting point. Brooklyn producer James Hinton used samples gleaned from YouTube for the vocals on this record, which is something I do that I didn’t realize was actually legitimate. Off to the DAW I go.

Open Mike Eagle

Hella Personal Film Festival

★★★☆

03/25/2016 on Mello Music Group Records

Like his fellow Milo on the (now-defunct) Hellfyre Club label, Open Mike Eagle twists words, scratches out lyrics, courts controversy, and lives in the interstitial zone of the black middle class in America. Like Milo, he lets his desire for alt-hip hop vibes and out-there production overshadow the songs at times.

Bob Mould

Patch The Sky

★★★☆

03/25/2016 on Merge Records

Another record from a man who seemingly just can’t stop recording them, former Husker Du and Sugar frontman Bob Mould may not be Robert Pollard but he’s close. Patch The Sky is one of the best albums he’s ever released, a stripped-down collection of power-guitar songs that bring to mind what his legendary punk band might have sounded like had they allowed it to age gracefully.

White Denim

Stiff

★★★☆

03/25/2016 on Downtown Records

Solid white-boy funk and soul, Stiff is a breezy, poppy album that sounds like it’s the 1970s that have come around again, and not the 1990s. It’s the sort of album that invites you to have a great ol’ time, and then helps you get there.

Plague Vendor

Bloodsweat

★★★★

03/25/2016 on Epitaph Records

An abrasive, jittery album that is secretly formed of big hooks and a lot of punk rock swagger. Like a serrated switchblade, it’ll stab right into your gut and then stay there.

Cobalt – Slow Forever

★★★★☆

Released March 25th, 2016 on Profound Lore Records

It has to be hard for a band when an integral member – an icon of the band itself – melts down in public and turns out to be a massive asshole. Scott Stapp falling asleep in the middle of a show, Wes Scantlin accusing an audience member of stealing his house, Phil Anselmo drunkenly bellowing “white power” and give the Hitler salute: embarrassing moments that neatly divide a band in decline from a defunct band. Cobalt knows that pain all too well.

The band made a name for themselves with their own take on the scaffolding of black metal, and singer Phil McSorley’s rugged military-inspired lyrics. Then McSorley decided to go on a misogynist, homophobic rant on the Facebook page of another band, and band lynchpin Eric Wunder tossed him by the wayside. Seven years after their last album, the genre classic Gin, the band announced a return with Charlie Fell of Chicago’s Lord Mantis on the mic. The result is utterly galvanizing, one of the finest metal releases I’ve heard in years. Listening to it for me was akin to the first time I heard “Blood & Thunder” kick off Leviathan – a burning need to bang my head, and a sense that this was something altogether more special than another collection of burly riffs. “Hunt The Buffalo” is as effective an opener as “Blood & Thunder”, but “Elephant Graveyard” is heavier than anything Mastodon ever came out with, and “Ruiner” might just be cleverer. Charlie Fell brings a range that even his time in Lord Mantis didn’t prepare anyone for; his work on “Cold Breaker” seems to constantly shift, sharply yowling and then bellowing like a mammoth.

It was F. Scott Fitzgerald who once opined that there were no second acts in American life. Wunder and Cobalt, though, have managed exactly that, rising from the toxic ashes of their past and making a new name for themselves as a solid, well-rounded All-American Metal Band. This new second act Cobalt is better than McSorley’s military black metal Cobalt ever was: grimy, bluesy, and crushingly heavy in all the right places. Even better: no soaring sing-along choruses. See, Killswitch? This is how you make metal.

And The Rest…

Underworld

Barbara Barbara We Face A Shining Future

★★★☆

03/18/2016 on Astralwerks Records

As far as latter-day albums from Nineties electronic heroes go, it’s not Random Access Memories, but neither is it The Day Is My Enemy. Drum n bass superstar High Contrast adds just the right touch of modernity to Underworld’s familiarity.

Damien Jurado

Visions Of Us On The Land

★★★★

03/18/2016 on Secretly Canadian

Visions is a journey record, both inward and outward, and it’s arid psychedelic vistas will bring you into the mystic and keep you there, contemplating your own inner desire.

Richmond Fontaine

You Can’t Go Back If There’s Nothing To Go Back To

★★★☆

03/18/2016 on Fluff & Gravy Records

While it’s not Fontaine’s finest alt-country moment (you have to go back seven years to find that), it does make for an enjoyable, wistful, somewhat overlong record. Solid Americana that doesn’t overstep it’s own ambitions.

Young Thug

I’m Up

★★★☆

02/05/2016 on 300 Entertainment Records

In between all the off-the-wall, smoked-out singalongs there’s a strange sadness lurking, as though being the most prolific nutjob in hip hop that isn’t a Based God isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Young Thug

Slime Season 3

★★★★

03/25/2016 on 300 Entertainment Records

For someone who hasn’t even put out a proper debut yet, there sure is a lot of Young Thug on the market, and it keeps getting better, too. Slime Season 3 is a perfect example of the progression of an artist who is learning to take their gift for crafting bangers with oddly affecting choruses and turn them to a more wide-screen audience.

The Body

One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache

★★★★

03/25/2016 on Neurot Records

A collaboration with Full Of Hell that will leave you shuddering, weeping, and likely deaf. This is what dancefloors sound like in the Abyss.

Amon Amarth

Jomsviking

★★★★

03/25/2016 on Metal Blade Records

You’d think that after ten albums of muscular Viking metal that the luster would fade, but here we are. The titan’s latest album is a concept about a warrior looking to get the girl, after he gutted the girl’s fiance. Just bang your head.

Kendrick Lamar – untitled unmastered

★★★★☆

Released March 4th, 2016 on Top Dawg Records

It is inevitable that an album that set a benchmark as fiercely as To Pimp A Butterfly did would have a collection of b-sides and outtakes left over from its recording sessions.

It is not inevitable that such a collection will stand on its own as a great album in its own right.

Odds n sods collections rarely have the same cache that an artist’s studio work does; they lack in coherence, vary wildly in quality, and you can often tell that there’s a reason that the songs were relegated to one-offs or left on the editing room floor. untitled unmastered does not have that feeling. While it lacks the thematic coherence that K Dot’s opus of corruption and empowerment brought, it continues in the same stylistic pursuits that set that album apart. The jazz influence on untitled unmastered is even more pronounced, leading one to wonder what a fully jazzed-out (and likely Flying Lotus-backed) Kendrick Lamar would sound like. The funk isn’t ignored either, although the primal stomp that fueled magic like “King Kunta” isn’t as prevalent here. Regardless of style and coherence, the quality is top notch on each of the eight tracks. Any one of them could have fit comfortably on To Pimp A Butterfly; in the case of both 7 and 8, it’s almost criminal that they weren’t included. Given that the album was already very long, however, it’s likely that they were cut due to time considerations. Kendrick himself remarks in the liner notes that most of the tracks included here were left out because they weren’t quite finished to his standards, or because there just wasn’t space for them. While that’s a shame, the fact that they’ve achieved release at all is a testament both to Kendrick’s powers as an artist and to the ease of distribution that the internet age has wrought.

It’s telling, I feel, that Kendrick Lamar’s tossed-off album of outtakes feels far more vital and alive than a good half of Kanye’s The Life Of Pablo. The torch of hip hop tastemaker is being passed, and if Dre and The Game’s 2015 output – as well as the success of artists like Anderson .Paak – is any indication, that changeover is occurring sooner rather than later.

AND THE REST…

Wussy

Forever Sounds

★★★☆

03/04/2016 on Shake It Records

The dream of gnarled, dense indie rock is still alive in Cincinnati, and Wussy keeps it going with punch and verve.

Heron Oblivion

★★★★☆

03/04/2016 on Sub Pop Records

Do you fondly remember such mid-00s head-nodder bands like Comets On Fire and Dead Meadow? Excellent, there are members of Comets On Fire in this project. Do you like wispy ambient folk vocals that are reminiscent of a more modern Renaissance? Perfect, Meg Baird is right up your alley. Do you like searing guitar work that marries Boris-level noise to the psychedelic flamboyance of old-school Billy Corgan? You’ve arrived. Seriously, just listen to this album, it’ll haunt you for the rest of your days.

Aurora

All My Demons Greeting Me As A Friend

★★☆

03/11/2016 on Glassnote Entertainment Group

An eclectic collection of the darker parts of pop music that largely fails to connect emotionally. Remember the Anchoress album from January? Pretty much my exact same thoughts.

Mmoths

Luneworks

★★★

03/11/2016 on Because Music

Luneworks is a lot like having fitful dreams while sleeping. You can’t quite call them nightmares because they’re only vaguely remembered and you’re left uneasy rather than horrified.

Into It. Over It.

Standards

★★☆

03/11/2016 on Triple Crown Records

Is this Death Cab For Cutie or Taking Back Sunday? Disturbingly, it sounds like equal measures.

Killswitch Engage

Incarnate

★★★

03/11/2016 on Roadrunner Records

For a band I’ve come to increasingly dislike over the past ten years (maybe because I associate them with the regrettable rise of metalcore) their seventh album is surprisingly solid. If only we could convince them to ditch the godawful soaring melodic choruses. This is metal. Stop singing.

Iggy Pop

Post Pop Depression

★★★

03/18/2016 on Loma Vista Records

Largely inessential although still rather interesting for Iggy Pop’s vocal and songwriting debt to his late friend David Bowie. There’s more than a whiff of Berlin-era Iggy-and-Bowie here, minus the Bowie of course.

Latest Reviews

School Of Seven Bells – SVIIB

★★★★

Released February 26th, 2016 on Vagrant Records

School Of Seven Bells were never one of the bands pushed by indie radio that really ever appealed to me. They came off as the nadir of the cross-pollination of shoegaze and dream pop, an amalgamation of the worst parts of both that hung around like the miasma of a bad dream for just long enough to get obnoxious. I didn’t expect much when I sat down with SVIIB, their fourth (and now final) album.

As it turns out, it’s leaps and bounds beyond their earlier material, a record that takes in the best moments of Eighties alt-pop while still remaining aloof and individual. It’s slick, but dreamy; the drums hit hard but the melodies remain slippery. It seems like a celebration and in a way it is. During the process of recording (in 2013), one half of the duo, Benjamin Curtis, passed away from lymphoma. Alejandra Dehaza took what they had, polished it up with some help, and released this one last School Of Seven Bells album. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she had just walked away from the project after her creative partner died, but the fact that she stuck to it and released such a stellar final album is a bit inspiring in its own way. It’s a hell of a way to go out, and at the very least it leaves me with fond memories of a group that I previously had no such memories of.

And the rest…

Cavern of Anti-Matter

Void Beats/Invocation Trex

★★★

02/19/2016 on Duophonic Records

Electronic music may be a big festival draw now but it’s origins lie in open synth work layered over Krautrock-inspired motorik beats. Cavern of Anti-Matter take their chosen genre back to its retro moment, conjuring up images of later Kraftwerk or E2-E4.

Wild Nothing

Life Of Pause

★★★☆

02/19/2016 on Bella Union Records

As usual, Wild Nothing’s latest record conjures up a daydream of the Eighties, a snatch of John Hughes remembered at the moment of death. Like most Wild Nothings records, the single is the best part, but there are some real moments of strength and revelation found throughout.

Africaine 808

Basar

★★★★

02/19/2016 on Golf Channel Records

A seamless blend of West African heart, German efficiency, and the classic thump of the Roland TR-808 drum machine. Harder to pin down than your average hip hop record, and a good sight more freeing.

Steve Mason

Meet The Humans

★★★☆

02/26/2016 on Domino Records

Overly sensitive without being eye-rollingly weepy, Meet The Humans dances all over the pop-rock map in search of Mason’s heart, and hits far more often than it misses.

Emma Pollock

In Search Of Harperfield

★★★

02/26/2016 on Chemikal Underground Records

Country-folkie with a nice enough turn of phrase and a decent sense of navigation around a plaintive melody, still not much to really write home about. A record you can take home to mama, but not a record you can really take out and party with.

Animal Collective – Painting With

★★☆

Released February 19th, 2016 on Domino Records

In the 2000s Animal Collective were the experimental pop band, combining lysergic child-like visions with a wide sonic pallete that drew as much from hip hop and electronic music as it did from their sunny 1960s pop forbears. In the beginning they were inaccessible, the sort of thing that only underground freaks would listen to. Starting with Feels in 2005 they got onto the radar of the booming internet-driven indie-blog world; 2007’s Strawberry Jam upped the ante but it was 2009’s pop-laden Merriweather Post Pavilion that introduced them to a much wider audience. Merriweather Post Pavilion ditched the bizarre noise-cycles that were present even two years previous in favour of big pop, sing-along moments made for indie radio, a concept that would only become a concrete thing in the years that followed. They followed this up with a messy, jittery, hyperkinetic album (Centipede Hz) that divided their fanbase and was nowhere near as well-received as their previous albums.

Painting With, then, becomes the indicator for the direction that the band is going in. That direction is clearly mainstream pop acceptance at the expense of everything that made the group so vital and alive just ten years ago. What’s presented on this album is a muted Animal Collective, reliant on using big burbling synth notes, as though they were making either straightforward hip hop or EDM within their existing milieu. Much of it feels as though they sat down and decided to make an even more accessible Merriweather Post Pavilion, something that would sound great in dorm rooms or stadiums and less so in the bedrooms of the freaks of the nation. It feels deliberate and mercenary, two things you could never previously accuse the band of being. Part of it is likely the wider success of Noah Lennox’s Panda Bear project; part of it is likely the sharply divided response to Centipede Hz. The group took a risk on that album and it didn’t pay off, and so it feels on Painting With that the band has decided never to take such a risk again. Painting With, then, is the sound of Animal Collective playing it safe, and as such it’s a real downer.

Savages – Adore Life

★★★★

Released January 22nd, 2016 on Matador Records

London’s Savages came roaring out of the underground in 2013 with Silence Yourself, a stunning debut rife with jagged edges and bearing the tattered, smoke-stained marks of a life of listening to Siouxsie & The Banshees, Joy Division, and Public Image Ltd. On the strength of singles like “Husbands” and “She Will”, the band staked their claim to being the most exciting post-punk band in years. Their follow-up sophomore album smooths out some of the jagged early-Eighties spikes but turns up the volume even louder, bringing us closer to the days of Seattle grunge more than the brutal recession of England during Thatcher’s first term. The guitar riffs are brought to the forefront, cutting through the noise on tracks like “The Answer”, “Evil”, and the late cavalry charge of “T.I.W.Y.G.”. Jenny Beth’s songwriting takes a different tactic as well. Silence Yourself was a duality, a balance between pain and love; often it was difficult to decide whether the basis for her churning lyrics were domestic abuse or rough consensual sex. Adore Life delves into her thoughts on love itself. The answer of “The Answer” is love; she knows that if she and her unnamed object of affection were to sleep together they would remain friends, but she has to confess her love for him regardless. “Sad Person” is her descriptor for herself, describing herself as “never satisfied” and wondering why she hesitates to give in and just love (while simultaneously describing love as “a disease” and comparing it to the rush and subsequent addiction of cocaine). “Adore” brings about the central conceit of the record: Is it human to adore life? Just in case she dies tomorrow, she has to say that she does, but is it normal? Is it right? As “Sad Person” alludes, she can’t stop her overactive brain from chasing this question around and around her head when she’s just trying to get some rest. I know the feeling, all too well.

Adore Life is a fine follow-up to Silence Yourself, although the middle of the record tends to fuse itself together into a morass of mid-tempo throbbing guitar lines peppered with Beth’s obsessive yelp. There are as many utterly urgent cuts here as there were there, however, and they’ll have you questioning your own assumptions on the nature of relationships for the rest of the year.

Eleanor Friedberger – New View

★★

Released January 22nd, 2016 on Frenchkiss Records

Eleanor Friedberger is best known as being half of indie also-rans The Fiery Furnaces, who once did an entire album with their grandmother. She is also the muse behind “Eleanor Put Your Boots On” by Franz Ferdinand, and “Anything You Want” by Spoon. She’s never been one of the more enticing songwriters on my radar, which is why 2013’s Personal Record was such a surprise. That album showed that Friedberger had a finely tuned sense of pop urgency, a bouncy sense of melody tied into tight arrangements that were undercut with a sort of jittery nervousness, like the songs had all been up too late drinking large amounts of coffee. Some of the tracks bordered on the anthemic, and despite my lack of enthusiasm for The Fiery Furnaces Personal Record ended up on my year-end list for 2013.

Most of what made Personal Record so great is missing on New View. The airtight arrangements have been replaced with drawn-out jams that border on early Neil Young a lot of the time (including the spacey, one-note guitar leads). It’s a rambing, homespun album that keeps Ms. Friedberger’s interesting sense of phrasing and lyrical bent and ditches everything else. In an interview with The Guardian, she said “I hope that this album just sounds like an adult woman who’s okay, as boring as that sounds!” Eleanor, the concept does sound boring, and the execution does it no favours. Surely there must be something that’s bothering you. Art is about communication, in its essence; if you don’t have anything to say, why bother saying anything? Furthermore, if you don’t have anything to say, why draw it out as much as you do on New View? Another pop record in the vein of Personal Record might have made the lack of theme in the songs more palatable; as it stands, it makes New View completely forgettable.

Mystery Jets – Curve Of The Earth

★★★

Released January 15th, 2016 on Caroline International Records

The English indie band’s sixth album is a distillation of every hat they’ve tried on over the years. What this actually means is that Curve Of The Earth is the mushy middle of English neo-pysch indie rock: a little bit deadpan Pink Floyd, a little bit Bends-era Radiohead, a bit of the Flaming Lips at their least experimental. The guitar tone is definitely in debt to the first in that list; “Blood Red Balloon” feels a lot like an outtake from Wish You Were Here, while “Telomere” sounds like the moment Britpop turned into arena rock. A lot of it tends to blur together; there’s no overarching vision at work here, no particular style that you can point to and say “This is what being Mystery Jets means”. Curve Of The Earth is a collection of songs, mostly derivative, decent enough without being anything special. Great for that person who grumps that no one sounds like their parent’s music anymore, something to put on while you’re cleaning for the rest of us.

DIIV – Is the Is Are

★★☆

Released February 5th, 2016 on Captured Tracks

Is the Is Are, the second album from Brooklyn indie darlings DIIV, had a hard birth. The difficulty boils down to the failings of the various band members, all of whom have issues with drugs. A Bushwick denizen I know once told me that you could spot the members of DIIV all over the neighbourhood, and they were always strung out; certainly enough incidents have occurred that there is some truth to this bit of gossip. The most high profile of course was the arrest of frontman Zachary Cole Smith along with his girlfriend Sky Ferreira, both of whom were nabbed for controlled substances (heroin and MDMA, respectively). In addition to this, drummer Colby Hewitt left the band due to his own addiction to multiple drugs, and bassist Devin Reuben Perez made a series of over-the-top offensive posts on 4chan’s /mu/ board. The band attempted a recording session in San Fransisco with former Girls frontman Chet White, but it was aborted before it was even fairly begun.

Things have quieted down for the band, to an extent. The second album was finally recorded. Smith went to rehab. New drummer Ben Newman stepped in to fill Hewitt’s role and you’d never notice the difference. Perez has learned, I suppose, the value of the anonymity granted by 4chan and learned to make his bizarre and disgusting statements under the Anonymous handle, or at the very least under some other tripcode. Having come through the other side, the band should have put out a second album that transcends where they’d come from and amalgamated all of their experience into something truly great.

Is the Is Are is not that album.

My problem with Oshin, their debut album, was that it was basic indie rock with a ton of reverb thrown on top. Critics and audiences responded well to it because it was familiar and a little haunting, just enough to make it feel like there was some edge to it. Despite the big names Smith was throwing around during the lead-up to the release – Elliot Smith, Royal Trux, Can, Neu! – this record feels like a longer and more doubled-down take on the sound of Oshin. It appropriates Joy Division’s ghostly atmosphere without retaining any of the heart; it strives for the milieu of the Stone Roses without having any of the stately psychedelic confidence. The Krautrock references contain themselves mostly to a vague sense of motorik rhythms in the drumming; the experimentation of those late Seventies German bands is nowhere in sight. In the end it’s a DIIV record, no more and no less, just one that’s a little longer than their debut.

If you like haunted-sounding, reverb-laden indie rock guitar lines, DIIV will be your thing. With all of the controversy and struggle surrounding the band, though, you can be forgiven for asking for something more.

Tindersticks – The Waiting Room

★★★

Released January 22nd, 2016 on City Slang Records

Tightly wound, evocative, spring-loaded songs with lush instrumentation and funky little grooves: it’s a Tindersticks album, and a particularly good one. Not as good as one of their big epics from the 1990s like Tindersticks, or Curtains, but a worthy addition to a pretty solid discography. Then again, that’s also the biggest problem with The Waiting Room. It’s a good Tindersticks album, and that’s it. There’s no dynamic reach here, no sense of urgency or intensity. It’s an album by a band that’s already proven that they can do this sort of in-the-pocket white funk by the barrel-load, so one might be tempted to ask what the hell the point is in 2016. Sure, it makes a great background album; it’s both interesting and inoffensive, so it makes for a perfect cocktail record, but there’s nothing much of worth beyond that. If you want perfection of form there are earlier Tindersticks albums; if you’re looking to reach out of the comfort zone and find something new, The Waiting Room is not that album.