TAME IMPALA - Lonerism

Have you ever walked around with a song in your head? What a stupid question, right? Of course you have—a nagging earworm that (for better or worse) simply refuses to vacate your brain until, like those billboard monsters in that one Simpsons episode, you manage to stop fixating on its presence. Have I ever got songs in my head, you say.

OK, that's not quite what I mean, so let me rephrase. Have you ever had a complete song stuck in your head? We're talking intro, verse, chorus, bridge, solos: the whole thing in order. It's possible, but that tends to not be how we remember songs. Instead, we carry with us sequences—frames pulled from the larger entity that range from the obviously memorable (such as a chorus or a big riff) to the oddly compelling (perhaps a funny turn of phrase or a peculiarly isolated bar of music). Songs are made whole by their musicians and writers, but they exist within us as distortions of their 'real' selves; they are subconsciously edited into portions for ease of mental transport and even enjoyment.

Who cares? Well, Tame Impala leader Kevin Parker seems to, for one. Whether intentionally so or not, his band's newest LP, the very excellent Lonerism, sounds like a preedited mental representation of a collection of songs. This is not to be confused with a comment on how the record sounds (although as a sublime execution of psychedelic pop/rock music, it certainly does sound dreamy, trippy, and so forth). Rather, it's about how it's been written. Time and again, the group avoids standard structures by rotating a series of tricks: perhaps omitting choruses, hanging on verses, forgetting to sing all together, obsessing over a particular riff or drum pattern for several bars in a row to see where it goes... All of it sounds much like how 'proper' songs themselves are repositioned by our head. We all know that this is the best part of the song, so I'm just gonna keep playing it.

It doesn't hurt that Parker's Lennonesque voice and the band's fixation on '60s and '70s sonics means that much of Lonerism sounds very familiar already. But where so many other acts treat their retro fetishes too reverently (and interpret them too literally—fellow Aussies Jet would be a good example), Tame Impala feel entirely modern and in-the-now in this particular realm. In addition, the melodies themselves are very strong. When Parker slips into the opening chorus of "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards," it seems like a song you've known all your life.

Really, that's all that Tame Impala are doing here: taking moments that you've lived with all your life and presenting them in new contexts and configurations. Where their debut, Innerspeaker, announced them as a pretty damn good new psych-rock band, Lonerism expresses confidently and playfully that these guys are interested in a lot more than just aping their predecessors. Because if tracking the sources material is fairly easy, the act of actually building a record this lovely and listenable is an entirely different task. It's a challenge, but one that Tame Impala pull off brilliantly. Now it's up to us and our subconscious to pull it back apart again.

METZ - S/T

Jesus, noise rock...is that you? You do something to your hair? Working out now? I mean, damn, you look amazing!

Sorry, where was I?

There was a time when every second band I listened to sounded something like local trio METZ. From Jawbox to Helmet to The Jesus Lizard to Hammerhead to Quicksand to June of 44 to Shallow ND to...

It was a seemingly neverending armada of young musicians seeking to bend the sounds of aggression pioneered by punk and metal into something new. Some were dizzyingly technical; others pushed their rage into oddly neat staccato spaces that marched with lock-step precision. But for me, the best records were those that utilized a nervous, feral simplicity. Records like Kittens' Bazooka and the Hustler, or Drive Like Jehu's Yank Crime worked because they managed to make the most chaos out of the least parts. Even at the latter album's most labyrinthine points—when each player's contribution twisted around its counterparts like a nest of (hot?) snakes—the pieces themselves were quite direct. It was the way that they danced with (and against) each other that set off a unhinged and brutal ballet of power as real and primal as a glob of glottal spit.

The thing is, aside from actual participants in those halcyon days (such as John Reis and Rick Froberg's various bands), that scene had sort of played itself out. (Or I just grew away from it, unable to be compelled back by what I was hearing.) So it's unexpected and thrilling how successfully METZ have delivered a half-hour worthy of mention in the same breath as some of my favourite records, albums whose worth endures far past any awkwardly-named underground rock movement. It's hectic, heady, and absolutely heavy, but at all times remains plainspoken and, well, relatable. You get it instantly. There's real magic in the way that these three guys push and pull at simple shapes to form such compelling energy. METZ is the bottled-up sound of frustration, and that emotion does not take kindly to being contained. So track after track—"Get Off," "Knife in the Water," "Wasted," "Negative Space" all brilliant examples of this trio's stunning way with aural bile—songs rip at their surroundings as the musicians struggle to control them. Often, their instruments do punch in vicious, kinetic unison, but they're always threatening to slip off into minute bursts of feedback, drumroll-laden instability. That tension is played on masterfully throughout the record, making their 29-minute debut worth playing over and over.

Of course, in addition to the bands already mentioned, one other comparison from a couple of decades ago hangs imposingly over this album: Sub Pop alums Nirvana. Whether these guys have the pop instincts in them to grow in such a manner is not really suggested here, and is also kind of inconsequential. In fact, at first I was kind of getting annoyed with how much Cobain and company had been brought up in relation to METZ. It felt unfair and too easy. But in the end, I can think of no greater compliment than to say that moments on this album are as exciting as what Nirvana conjured at their most antagonistic and howling. And seeing as those were often my favourite moments of that band anyway, I'd say METZ have got a home in my heart for a while to come.

So I guess what I'm saying is: noise rock, I'm totally free this weekend. Or whenever. Weeknights are wide open, too. So hawt...

FLYING LOTUS - Until The Quiet Comes

Steven Ellison's last full-length, 2010's Cosmogramma, was an unanticipated favourite of that year—and would go on to be one of my most-played records of the following year as well. (I was uninitiated to his earlier works, although I've since come to revere 2008's Los Angeles with nearly equal fervour.) But despite catching me by surprise, Cosmogramma announced itself to me anything but loudly. It was a good four or five months of owning the record before I truly began to understand the complexity, craft, and sheer joy that lay within it. That's no accident, and, as its title suggests, Until The Quiet Comes is no different.

As Flying Lotus, Ellison builds his music—a simultaneously limping and striding brand of post-hip hop instrumental psychedelia that's peppered tenderly with guest vocals—with incredible care and subtlety. It's not that it isn't loud, vibrant, or throbbing. It manages its share of trunk-rattling boom and colour-inducing sheets of sound. But FlyLo isn't nearly as interested in direct statements as he is in fragments, half-thoughts, open propositions, and the space between the notes (whether that be notes on a scale or, as is often the case in his rhythms, notes between the meter).

That last phrase, of course, is oft used (both seriously and derisively) about jazz, and its inclusion here isn't accidental. Not only is Ellison the great-nephew of the legendary Alice Coltrane (a jazz artist notable for much more than just her marriage to saxophonist John Coltrane), but he is really a musician who represents one of the best ways forward for jazz in the new millennium. More so than many of his contemporaries, Ellison innately understands how to take the central tenets of jazz—the improvisational building in spontaneous directions upon a musical theme—and to then translate it to, for lack of a better phrase, modern music.

(I realize that this is a statement that would no doubt make purists wince. Perhaps it is better applied to the role of Flying Lotus as a listener/beatmaker/producer than his actual playing...but anyway, do with that suggestion what you will.) 

It's not that there aren't great current jazz players (far too many to name here, but Rob Mazurek, Jason Moran, Arve Henriksen to start, maybe...), or that those artists are not doing progressive contemporary things with their music. Nor am I sure that Ellison would like what he does to be called 'jazz.' But I would suggest that there's no better way to approach his music than how one ideally embraces jazz: open to all possible structures and interpretations. Open to endless growth of a performance, even a permanently recorded and captured one.

True to this idea, as great as Until The Quiet Comes sounded at first listen, that's just a hint of how great it has sounded on the tenth. And so I expect it to continue, almost exponentially so.

As with any year, there have been a number of highly anticipated albums in 2012. Some have fallen short, others have ably met the challenge, still more have done adequately. Unlike two years ago, however, I had Flying Lotus on my radar as one of those albums for which I could not wait. Maybe THE album for which I could not wait. But no matter how high the bar was that I set, this record has easily fulfilled its expected promise.

I can't wait to hear how wonderful it sounds to me come the new year. And if there's anyone left who still doesn't believe in the beauty of what computers can bring to music, sit with this album, please. It's magnificent.

THE SEA AND CAKE - Runner

Who likes insurance salesman, am I right? Sticklers. Wet blankets. Grey-suited dullards. Premium hiking nogoodniks. Aside from that last one there, I have no doubt this is kind of how a lot of people see The Sea and Cake. Even though they've tasted the good (bad?) favour of being a 'band of the moment,' that was a long, long time ago. Since that time, the band have soldiered onward reliably, producing a ten-song album's worth of tastefully crafted music about once every two or three years (you can throw an EP or two in there as well). And minus the addition of electronics to their DNA on 1997's high point The Fawn, they've changed as little as possible in their approach. If other bands exist to stir up trouble, break conventions, or incite you to hedonistic flights of sexual and drunken abandon, this pleasant Chicago quartet merely show up with the dry, clockwork regularity of a census bureau: "Good day. Just checking to make sure that the dimensions of your home that we have on file remain up-to-date. Any new additions to the family? Is that a new car?"

But if the sheer grid-like consistency with which The Sea and Cake make music is an easy target for ridicule, it's also, like a census, an inaccurate representation of its actual value. I'm somewhat half-seriously reminded of Ed Helms' character Ted Lippy's speech in the film Cedar Rapids, wherein he naively but passionately describes his childhood admiration for local insurance agents working to help his family after his father's death. In his mind, the insurance salesman is a guardian of the people, fighting an unglamourous and lovingly unrequited battle on behalf of the general public to make certain that their stability and wealth is well-protected. Which, in a perverse (but entirely heartfelt) way is how I see The Sea and Cake in my life.

At times, the dogged determination with which this band refuses to change one iota of their music is frustrating and even confusing. But then, I stop and think about how many times their music has provided a safe harbour for my ears—a haven wherein their impeccable tastes for jazz/soul/pop amalgams, gorgeously realized musicianship, and subtle invocations of the heart and mind have never put a single foot wrong. Ever.

How, when other bands have foolishly pursued flights of greedy ambition and self-indulgence, these gentlemen have understood their duty to the public and delivered on their initial promise to them, over and over again.

And how, despite it sounding an awful lot like all of their other albums, I sure am playing the hell out of Runner. Again and again.

Simply put, I am now, as I have ever been since 1995, in good hands with The Sea and Cake. I dare say that few other bands could be so predictable and so wonderful all at once.

SNOWBLINK - Inner Classics

With their previous album Long Live, Toronto's Snowblink caught the attention of all of us here at the shop with its soaring peaks and majestic valleys propelled by singer Daniela Gesundheit. They also caught the ear of Arts & Crafts, who have just released their beautiful follow-up record Inner Classics.

"Originally from California, Snowblink’s Daniela Gesundheit has integrated herself  deeply into the music scene of her adopted Toronto. Her 2010 debut album as Snowblink, Long Live, was recorded before she moved here, but the glistening space folk fit in perfectly with Toronto’s sound and caught the ear of critics as well as fellow musicians. On her follow-up full-length, she develops her voice further while maintaining the delicate beauty that made her debut so enchanting." - NOW Magazine

"...Snowblink’s real ability to expand on the singer/songwriter genre stems from Gesundheit’s confidence. In “Goodbye Eyes,” she shows no fear as she sings nothing but music scales except for the last line of the song. “Inner Mini-Mississippi” proves the best music in this genre is led by vocals, and Gesundheit boldly leads the track through a progression of gentle guitar to intense chords to a confident a capella section. Snowblink’s understanding of the potential of the singer/songwriter music style is what ultimately makes Inner Classics a complete success." - The Gateway

"Long Live was an overlooked collection of art/folk songs, but with Inner Classics the band announces itself into the Canadian scene with class and grace." - Herohill

(Snowblink and Alex Lukashevsky release their respective new releases Inner Classics and Too Late Blues at the Music Gallery on Thu. Sep 27.)

DAVID BYRNE & ST. VINCENT - Love This Giant / DIVINE FITS - A Thing Called Divine Fits

Why do we still get excited about collaborations? Honestly, how many times have these things let us down: two or three artists that you like get together, and you're so psyched you create all manner of postulations to back why this record will be a career watermark for all parties involved. Then you press 'play' and...well, that wasn't as great as you expected.

Perhaps the biggest issue lies in that expectation. An assumption that, whether we're conscious of it or not, if the separate values of each artist are 4 and 5, then the collaboration should yield a value of 9? And our disappointment then stops us from seeing the value of a very respectable 6.

Art ain't mathematics, but collaborations' sort of rock'n'roll equation does require some form of addition and subtraction in order to work well. These two recent outings provide examples of records that, if not career highs, are certainly very strong justifications for coming together in the first place. One seeks to parse their songwriting styles down into their most basic shapes; the other exponentially builds on the collective daring of those involved to create something that is anything but basic. And it's not surprising which is which.

Divine Fits combines Spoon mainman Britt Daniel and Handsome Furs/Wolf Parade belter Dan Boeckner. Both gentlemen specialize in a brand of pop/rock that is heavy on wiry grit, sexual tension, and rock'n'roll tropes that have existed since the days of Berry and Lewis. Neither of these gentlemen have ever been especially afraid of saying less when they could say more—the collected works of Spoon and Handsome Furs are bursting with songs built on a single riff, a skeletal drum pattern, a lone sample.

Even so, Divine Fits finds the pair refining their voices even further, as though the newly established presence of another in the room (something Daniel is far less used to than Boeckner) has led them to choose their words and moments with the greatest of care and confidence. The result is an album that sounds like an exact 50/50 mix of both personalities, each man politely waiting their turn to take the lead with a respectfulness that's a touch polite, even. But it also happens to yield a really solid (if not great) rock'n'roll record—an immediate, assured debut for which most new groups would kill.

The vibe surrounding the new project by David Byrne and St. Vincent (a.k.a. Annie Clark) is, not surprisingly, a very different affair. Though Clark's résumé is much shorter than that of Byrne, she's displayed cunning skill and restless ambition over her three albums that go beyond her relatively tender years (not unlike the massive leaps and bounds made by Byrne with Talking Heads' first few albums). She's also a vet of a few one-off song collaborations, making her the perfect candidate to be paired with the iconoclastic Byrne; you know she's going to be able to hold her own in a room with him and not shrink. (Of course, given Byrne's history of enthusiastic support of other artists via his excellent Luaka Bop label, you except him to be nothing but nurturing.)

Indeed, Love This Giant is an album that is at times overgrown with the fertile ideas of the pair. If Divine Fits seek to trim and groom their ultra-cool façade to the point of absolute purity, Byrne and Clark carry on like a pair of gleefully eager greenthumbs, watering every idea in sight until their songs are an overgrown thatch of vibrant shades and textures. If their sheer potency is impressive, it's also something that provides no obvious throughway—no clear path to walk into their wild forest. So you kind of stand back a few paces and take it in.

It's well worth the view, though. If the bouncing, ever-present horns feel like too many vines clogging your aural canal at first, they become increasingly enticing over time—joyous and silly, never too proud to invite you along for the ride. So too does the vocal trading of the two singers (the very opposite of the even division of the Fits) go from impulsive and unsettled to natural and instinctual after increased exposure.

Love This Giant is still, after many listens, a tough album to figure. There's certainly more depth in the lyrics to be plundered and the arrangements will likely also bear further fruit somewhere around listen number 30. But whether it's a one-off or not, these two are meant to be together in ways just as vital as Daniel and Boeckner’s. Neither records are necessarily that '9' for which one might hope when they first hear news of the pairings. But the respectable scores they both do attain on these albums is more than enough reason for any of us already interested to enthusiastically buy in.

ARIZONA DRANES - He Is My Story: The Sanctified Soul Of Arizona Dranes

Following on from the staggering surveys This May Be My Last Time Singing and Fire In My Bones, Tompkins Square's newest gospel reissue shines a light on pianist Arizona Dranes, a woman whose blending of the Pentecostal and the secular in the mid-'20s on a series of test-pressing 78s would have been fit for inclusion on Harry Smith's Anthology Of American Folk Music alongside any of its hallowed "Social Music" sanctified singing sides, were Smith to have been hipped to it in the '50s.

"The story of Arizona Dranes is that of too many artists in American history—a passionate and skilled performer, driven in her case by her deep and abiding faith, only sporadically recorded and eventually passing in obscurity. He Is My Story is a familiar story of reissue and reappreciation well after the fact, down to the extensive liner notes—in this case, a full book—and expert remastering; there's no question that the sheer joy and power she exhibits is worth the listening. Essentially the question is simply this: why wouldn't anyone want to sound like this, if given the chance or the calling?" - Allmusic

"The Chicago studio where Dranes recorded her music in 1926 no longer exists, but when she played her music at Roberts Temple, she influenced people like 11-year-old Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who sat in the congregation and would go on to become a gospel superstar. "I mean, it was probably like hearing Jimi Hendrix for the first time," says music writer Michael Corcoran, who has uncovered as much of Dranes' lost history as anyone ever has for this CD. "There was nothing like it before. She really was the first person to take secular styles and put words of praise on top of them to make gospel music."- NPR

CAT POWER - Sun

Chan Marshall—the enigmatic musician who presents herself as Cat Power to the world—had for a long time built a career out of the hushed and dour. The fact that she did both with such radiant humanity and magnetic frailty turned her into one of the most beloved and (ironically, given her famously erratic performances) dependable singers of her generation.

Her body of work has shown her to be a master interpreter (on two terrific covers albums, especially the austere 2000 album The Covers Record), a very capable blue-eyed soul singer, and, above all, a peerless chronicler of despair. It's that last trait which, so grand an asset for so many years, began to feel like a weight under which Marshall was going to be crushed, both in her career and even her own life. Indeed, the one thing that this talented artist seemed to lack entirely (and need desperately) was a sense of fun.

2006's The Greatest began to turn the tide slightly, as did the follow-up, Jukebox—albums wherein a certain levity and casual grace started to mix with her already well-crafted foreboding nature and heavy heart. A positively exuberant cover of Dylan's "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again" on the soundtrack for the film I'm Not There pushed her even further into the realm of gleeful. As horns raced and Marshall teasingly slurred through the Bard's brilliant couplets, I doubt I was the  only one thinking that this was the kind of song that would've turned The Greatest into a record truly befitting its name.

And now we've got Sun, an album that—in its own sly way—really does live up to its title. There may not be a horn jam to rival her take on "Stuck...," but I take no small pleasure in saying this is easily the funnest Cat Power album to date. If that sounds like a bit of a joke in itself, fair enough, but this is neither damning with faint praise, nor is it a suggestion that she's suddenly become Lesley Gore. Throughout, Sun remains a Cat Power album, concerned with self-examination, fate, love, rights, and all things messed up in the world. But there's simply no mistaking the joy and abandon with which she throws herself into the material.

Behind real hooks and full-blooded dance grooves, tracks like "Ruin," "3,6,9" and "Manhattan" are sung with the kind of peace that Marshall has never really shown before. It's not extroverted joy so much as an inner contentedness—the album projects this so consistently that one can even excuse the occasional use of auto-tune or kitschy eagle screech sample.

And when the record arrives at its penultimate statement, the 11-minute "Nothin But Time," we find Marshall (alongside the undying Iggy Pop, no less) wrapped in a series of mantras that best reflect where she seems to be right now: "You wanna live! You ain't got nothin but time. Your world is just beginning..."

Is it a ruse? Perhaps, but while it's none of our business, I'm guessing no. Because as warm as Sun makes one feel upon listening to it, none of it feels forced or insincere. In this way, it's still a classic Cat Power album—still a window into the soul of a person who's never been especially good at faking anything. And whether or not this is just a phase or truly a new life that's "just beginning", it's a moment you'll want to share with her.

VA: Buttons: From Champaign To Chicago

Vintage power-pop from the Midwest is the name of the game for this brand spankin' new Numero Group anthology. Expect more hooks than a tackle box on each and every track herein!

"In the 1970s and early '80s, the Land of Lincoln was home to hundreds of bands that were serving up soaring melodies, guitar-powered hooks, earnest vocal harmonies, dancefloor-filling rhythms, and as much Beatles-like personality as they could muster. Cheap Trick were the Illinois band who were able to sell updated pop to the masses that filled the arenas, and Shoes proved a band could rise from a basement studio and score a major-label deal and international attention, but the vast majority of Illinois power pop bands played the clubs for a few years, left behind some demo tapes or self-released singles, and then vanished without a trace. The archivists at the Numero Group pay loving homage to the glory days of Illinois power pop with Buttons: From Champaign to Chicago, a compilation that features 19 lost classics of Midwest pop, most of which are as hopelessly obscure as any record collector could wish." - Allmusic

"Buttons feels a bit like a powerpop answer to Lenny Kaye's Nuggets. It’s very much—by specific design—intended to pick up where Jordan Oakes left off in his Yellow Pills series. And like those pair of projects, Buttons is both historical document and damn-good-listen...Typical of the genre, many of these tracks have that haven’t-I-heard-this-before vibe, which isn’t to say that these songs rip off other songs—mostly, they don’t: there’s just that friendly familiarity that’s part and parcel of powerpop." - Musoscribe

REDD KROSS - Researching The Blues

For their first album in fifteen years, L.A.'s Redd Kross pick up where they left off: stomping out tough glitter-punk leavened by instantly memorable bubblegum melodies.

"The members of Redd Kross, of course, know that they’re a legacy band now; they’re well into middle age, after all. But that status hasn’t altered their sound one iota. They named the album—and its riotous first song—Resarching The Blues to make fun of the idea that every old-guy band has to go roots-rock, to tap into some hard-won wisdom. There’s no wisdom to be heard on the album, but there’s craft for days. Researching The Blues gets in and gets out, 10 songs in half an hour, no fat anywhere. They’ve got two speeds: Laser-precise Camaro-rock overdrive and sha-la-la jangle. And every song lands on one side of the divide or the other, more or less. But the amped-up rockers have moments of overwhelming melodic sweetness, and the starry-eyed jams never translate as ballads; they still have pogo tempos and slashing chorus guitars. This is power-pop where the power never, ever gets lost, and where fiery guitar solos are pure necessity." - Stereogum

"This isn’t your every-month, crappy reunion record. Yes, Redd Kross' latest release, Researching The Blues, is their first album in 15 years (and their first on Merge Records), and yes, the band has about three decades of history behind them. But after the super-lean album spins to a close, you’re left with the realization that Researching The Blues possesses something that fans could only dream about from a band that hasn’t released new material since 1997. " - Paste

KING TUFF - S/T

The multi-talented Kyle Thomas has played everything from stoner metal to freak-folk. He's equally adept at garage rock, as his second album under the King Tuff name shows. With a hint of glam-slam thrown into the mix, the results are royally infectious!

"What sets Thomas apart from artists like San Francisco's Ty Segall or Mikael Cronin—two other rockers currently rehashing the '60s and '70s for 21st-century underground consumption—is that Thomas seems like a wimp. Yes, he knows how to play snotty, insistent songs. Yes, his voice is high and needling, and when he wants it to be, very forceful. Force, though, is a secondary concern. He'd rather be, like, carving your initials into a tree or getting a burger." - SPIN

"If 'Keep On Movin'' is to be believed, King Tuff's guitar doesn't shred, it 'drools.' That's an appropriate visual: the greasy, catchy garage-pop on the Vermont-bred singer's second record sneers like convenience store parking lot stoners. Black-and-blue bruisers 'Anthem' and 'Bad Thing' benefit from some chicken-fried riffing, but Tuff is just as good in the slower moments. The dewy-eyed, piano-bar gospel of 'Swamp of Love' suggests that, under the leather jacket and taco-stained Ramones T-Shirt, beats a genuine human heart." - Rolling Stone

EVENING HYMNS - Spectral Dusk

OK, full disclosure: we know these people. Heck, if you shop at our store, you might, too. Bassist/singer Sylvie Smith has worked here for years, and songwriter/singer/guitarist Jonas Bonnetta has broken bread with some of us at parties, camping trips, and dinners. Often when you know a band, warm feelings encourage you to wallpaper over their faults with hyperbole and colourful metaphor because you just can't bear being blunt with people so lovely. A few other times, their talents are actually so otherworldly, that you struggle to appear impartial as you bubble forth with dumbfounded praise that, while genuine, simply reads as scenester nepotism.

Evening Hymns are neither case. This not only makes them a little easier to write about honestly; it's also one of the greatest strengths of their music.

Everything on Spectral Dusk unfolds in a manner that is entirely devoid of trend, fashion, or artifice. It's ambiently-paced folk music whose construction is never convoluted. Instead, you can envision each piece being put together as you hear it—this chord here, that tom hit there, this slide guitar call underneath—until there it is. (In a way, their music stands as naked as the band members themselves were in their video for "Dead Deer," a standout track off 2009's Spirit Guides.)

Like Mark Kozelek's various projects (Red House Painters, Sun Kil Moon, solo) you really can't tell if it's 1972 or 1992 or 2012 as you hear these songs. They simply are as they should be at any moment in time. This timelessness is fitting given that the album is a meditation by Bonnetta on the passing of his father, an inevitable moment in all of our lives.

It’s a difficult business eulogizing a loved one in a public forum. Though we all experience loss, so much of what brings meaning to our emotions is rooted in private context. Bonnetta appears to sense this. Rather than overwhelm the record in sentiments either maudlin or saccharine, he smartly grounds his songs in imagery, instrumentation, and even actual field recordings that evoke nature—the one common constant through all of the change we face. His private feelings are indeed there, but they reside amongst the trees and tall grasses of Hymns’ aural landscape.

The resulting work is something that, while steeped with potent feeling, is quite balanced and composed; austere, even, at a glance. Things rarely get too loud or complicated—voices are rarely raised. Evening Hymns take a bit of risk here—by resisting submitting their music to much grand expression or crescendo, they can seem a bit too reverent and careful with their subject to really stir up the blood of the listener. But in truth, the entirety of Spectral Dusk is a bit like someone purposefully whispering to get your closer attention. It doesn't work on everyone's ears maybe, but when it does hook you, the record's gently measured rhythms and relaxed phrasings can be hypnotic, as those things that hide in the foliage are enticed cautiously into full view.

By the time the album finally reaches its penultimate climax on "Moon River"—likely Bonnetta's most emotive vocal on the album—it is a moment of well sown catharsis that has not only been earned, but that does not get oversold. No epic post-rock clanging, no Buckley-esque invocation of spirits. Twenty seconds and it's done. And it hits you right there.

With that humble summit reached, Bonnetta saves maybe his most affecting couplet for some of his last words on the record. "Oh, please come back to me/I need you if I'm to be a man/Oh, I'm not doing that well/That's just what I tell my friends," he offers on closer "Spectral Dusk." It's a perfectly oblique way to end such a record. Instead of feigned strength and tidy conclusion, we end with both vulnerability and ambiguity. For all that Bonnetta reveals of himself and his loss over the course of Spectral Dusk’s eleven tracks, he never self-aggrandizes or seeks to inflate its significance. His tribute is humanly and humanely open: to the paralysis of uncertainty; to unknown coming joys; to relapses of sorrow; and, most of all, to the interpretation of others.

And you certainly don’t need to have met the band to see the value in that.

BEAK> - >>

Having already self-released 2012 full-lengths from his Quakers and DROKK collaborations, Geoff Barrow has had an especially fruitful past year in the studio; this follow-up (if you don't count their crucial role as Anika's backup band) from Barrow's live-off-the-floor trio with Matt Williams and Billy Fuller, though, is an especially striking, darkly menacing effort, full of off-kilter oscillator wobbles, pristinely recorded Silver Apples-style drum primitivism, and vocals muffled to the point of indiscernibility.

"The groggy post-punk fidget of Bristol's Beak> is erected on antiquated, simplistic, intentionally demanding limits. The trio write in the studio, record in one room at the same time, don't do overdubs, and use outdated digital recording rigs that have as much capability as a 24-track tape machine...The result of their labors is masterful second album >>..., a perfect mix of robotic human rhythms intertwining with humanized electronic textures: krautrock grooves melt into This Heat avant-punk minimalism, and Devo performs through a mouth full of cottonballs and a stomach full of Codeine." - SPIN

"[This] trio’s Neu!-like pulsations are boosted by droning synths ('The Gaul'), crunchy guitar ('Wulfstan II'), suffocating bass ('Kidney') and disquietingly distant vocals ('Deserters'). Menacing and paranoid, this second album makes satisfying sense in 2012, and even leaves you grateful to live in a chaotic world." - NME

VA - All Kinds Of Highs: A Mainstream Pop-Psych Compendium 1966-70

In retrospect, the relentless outpouring of records in the mid-to-late 1960s is nothing short of astounding by today's standards. Groups were forming at lightning speed and constantly cutting singles and albums released by major record companies, as well as small independent labels. The music biz attitude of the time can very well be summed up as such: "Hey, let's throw this tune against the wall, and if it sticks, if it's a hit, then perfect! If it flops, so what? There's plenty more where this came from." Both Top 40 AM radio and the emerging underground FM stations were only too happy to play the records, and the rapid turnover of 'product' was downright exhilarating for the listener.

With the explosion of folk-rock, garage and psychedelia that followed the British invasion, one American indie label that attempted to capitalize on the many new bands appearing on the scene was the New York City-based Mainstream Records, previously responsible for putting out jazz albums. Mainstream signed groups ignored by major labels like Columbia, Capitol and RCA, or other independent outfits such as Elektra.

Future hard-rock guitarist Ted Nugent and his band, the Yardbirds-influenced Amboy Dukes, found themselves on Mainstream, and were rewarded with the hit single "Journey to the Center of the Mind," which kicks off this new 2CD compilation. It's the best-known number on here, since the other groups on the label (The Fever Tree, The Fun + Games Commission, The Jelly Bean Bandits and The Superfine Dandelion among them) never achieved a similar level of commercial success. The competition during this period was intense, and talented Mainstream bands like these basically slipped through the cracks, only to be re-discovered by collectors years later. The variety and top-notch quality of the psychedelic pop, garage-raunch, and all-around fuzz-filled freakiness on this collection is, to use the era's lingo, a total trip!

As is par for the course with Ace/Big Beat reissues, the fifty-two tracks on these two discs are superbly annotated with a thick booklet of fascinating info and great photos. If in the past you've, ahem, blown your mind to the Nuggets box sets, then this companion-piece of sorts should indeed provide you with All Kinds Of Highs.

DONNIE & JOE EMERSON - Dreamin' Wild

Originally self-released in 1979, Dreamin' Wild is about as obscure as records get. After a chance discovery in a rural antique store more than 25 years after its release, a network of excited music bloggers finally helped bring this lost masterpiece to a wider audience. Now Light in the Attic has treated us to a deluxe CD and vinyl reissue, bringing everything full circle. Even without the back-story this is one hot album!

"In between logging, fence-post digging, and other farm chores, the boys practiced nonstop and put Dreamin' Wild to tape with little idea of what was happening in popular music (they barely even knew how to load a reel of tape in their studio) other than what emanated from the radio. Listening through, you catch glints of Smokey Robinson, Hall and Oates, the Commodores, Bread, Pablo Cruise, Boz Scaggs and Chuck Mangione amid the AM bullion. Blue-eyed soul, meandering funk (see "Feels Like the Sun" which encourages you to "sing or play a musical instrument along with the boys"), and landlocked yacht rock are evident. Yet the wide-eyed and utterly sincere vision of a 17-year old Donnie stuns." - Pitchfork

"Opening with a luscious groove of "Good Time," before the inexplicably good slow-funk-fuelled of "Give Me The Chance" – replete with psychedelic-space effects. "Feels Like The Sun" is what it says on the packet; gloriously so. While the sparseness of "Love Is" is wonderfully haunting. "Don’t Go Lovin’ Nobody Else" stands up next to "Baby" as another album highlight – guitar lines snake like psychedelic smoke around a grooving bassline." - Cheese on Toast

FRANK OCEAN - channel ORANGE

There's a lot of heavy, heavy talk about this record (with many going so far as to already deem it a 'classic'), and it's quite understandable why. Certainly, channel ORANGE is the kind of debut (Er, second record? Do mixtapes count? I'm so old...) whose oozing confidence and broad vision demands attention and respect. And not only is its creator, Frank Ocean, a member of one of the most acclaimed and notorious hip hop crews out there (L.A.'s Odd Future), but he's also just coming off the heels of releasing 'the Text Edit document heard round the world'—the document, also included in the notes to channel ORANGE, is about as eloquent a coming out of a gay public figure as you're likely to see these days. Anyway, cynical or not, when you add up the factors involved, there's a lot of precedent for this type of blogger and press salivation. We are all possessed of an innate need for performers like Ocean to not only be good, but great. And not just great, but a revelation.

It should come as no surprise that channel ORANGE isn't perfect. Even the most ardent backer is going to come down from cloud nine eventually and realize that tracks like "Pilot Jones," "Crack Rock," and "Monks"—while full of sonic variation—add little more than running time to an hour-long record. Or that, while impressive in scope, "Pyramids" isn't nearly as riveting as its lengthy ambition sets it up to be. But in the end, that's all just fine. Because what the album is is something far more interesting than perfect: it's flawed, but flawed in a way that reveals true daring. It is the work of an artist with talent to burn and the guts to make choices that would bury lesser singers and songwriters.

And make no mistake, Ocean is great at both. His falsetto performance on "Thinkin Bout You" is a stunner; a devastating opening salvo of romantic ache that threatens to leave the rest of the album in its shadow. And how does the writer in him follow it up? Not with a barrage of hits, but by instead offering a teasing 40-second ice cream taster-spoon of vintage Stevie Wonder called "Fertilizer" and the understated introspection of "Sierra Leone." Neither track seems in any way eager to back up the promise of "Thinkin Bout You," rather keeping the listener at a savvy distance. Even when he does break out the big guns again on "Sweet Life," it takes until well over a minute of that song's casually strutting verse before you run into one of the bigger choruses of the summer. After such a cool setup, you never see Ocean's brilliance coming.

Of course, by the time he drops massively fun "Super Rich Kids" on you two tracks later, the effect becomes love at first sight. This, I think, is the moment when many reviewers' "It's a classic!" alarm bells begin to ring. Fair enough: Ocean's sharply assured observations of the rich and shameless are both hilariously voyeuristic and emotionally compelling. Rarely does an artist walk that line as well as he does in the first third of this record. That he can't quite sustain this standard throughout, then, isn't all that shocking—but neither is the fact that so many want to convince themselves that he does.

To be sure, there are some incredible moments yet to come. "Bad Religion" puts more beauty, grief, and power into under three minutes than you'd think possible. "Pink Matter" manages to be a quite resonant meditation on genders despite its occasionally awkward metaphors, and features a gloriously messed-up funk/psych breakdown at its conclusion. But above all, it's the ways that moments of such genius mingle with the not-quite-there-yet on channel ORANGE that make it special. Like the rather tired channel-surfing trope that loosely connects the transitions between songs, there's bound to be some filler in there. But Ocean's mental receiver is locked into some inspired transmissions nonetheless. He's restless, gifted, and brave. He aspires. And if he continues to make records with this sort of an eye for variety and risk-taking, one day he WILL indeed make us a classic.

ANNETTE PEACOCK - I'm The One

Annette Peacock's 1972 solo debut was only previously reissued in 2010 as a limited edition self-released CD, so hats off to Future Days for following up their release of Bo Diddley's The Black Gladiator with this funk-rock oddity, one that's often akin to Betty Davis belting through an array of Moog filters!

"The album’s wide range of vocal emotions and diverse sonic palette (featuring Robert Moog’s early modular synthesizers, which the singer actually transmitted her voice through to wild effect) places it firmly at the forefront of the pop avant-garde. Originally released by RCA Victor in 1972 to widespread critical acclaim, I'm The One found itself amongst good company. Both Lou Reed and David Bowie had recently signed to the label—Bowie in particular was enamored with Annette—and artists ranging from ex-husband and jazz great Paul Bley, along with notable Brazilian percussionists Airto Moreira and Dom Um Romao, guested on the album itself. Writing and arranging I'm The One’s nine passionate tracks—bar a unique cover of Elvis Presley’s 'Love Me Tender'—the disc grooves easily from free jazz freak-outs and rough and rugged blues-funk to gently pulsing synthesized bliss." - Light In The Attic

VA - LateNightTales Presents Music For Pleasure

Just as Belle and Sebastian were recently handed the DJ reins once again by LateNightTales for a second spin, so too has Groove Armada member Tom Findlay (whose group had already curated a 2008 mix for the label), here opting for a set of the sort of '70s/'80s soft rock/blue-eyed soul hits (and album cuts) that were recently reappraised during the 'Yacht Rock' craze of the mid '00s—as lovers of pretty much every featured act here (Hall & Oates, Bobby Caldwell, Ned Doheny, 10cc, ELO, Boz Scaggs, Gerry Rafferty, Robert Palmer...), we're not complaining in the least!

"The mix is subtitled Music For Pleasure, which for Findlay apparently means rock ballads from the '70s and '80s. 'It's very much a 'concept' record: blue-eyed soul, yacht rock,' he says. 'The vibe was very much tunes that I used to blast on the tour bus. I love that music in a very wrong way; it's music to hug to!" Findlay made slight edits to many of the tracks to better suit the mix's continuous flow. As with every edition of LateNightTales, the mix features an exclusive cover from the curator—in this case, Findlay teams up with producer Tim Hutton as Sugardaddy to reinterpret Ace's '74 single "How Long." - Resident Advisor

DIRTY PROJECTORS - Swing Lo Magellan

In a case of impecccable timing where theirs happens to be the first of three just-left-of-centre American indie acts (along with Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective) whose '09 breakouts are just now getting followed up in somewhat quick succession, Dirty Projectors' newest finds Dave Longstreth and co. retaining Bitte Orca's sudden synth bends, R&B proclivities, inhumanly heavenly harmonizing and guitar wizardry while slightly paring back/stripping down (with handclaps and programmed rhythmic hiccups often replacing a drum kit, and more space generally left in the mix) and getting bucolic and folky with the early-'70s production and earnest lyrics of the title track, "Impregnable Question" and "Impossible Tune."

"There’s always been something referential and self-aware about the music in Dirty Projectors’ catalog, but the process seems exceptionally open on Swing Lo Magellan...Maybe it has to do with the fact that the material was written in upstate New York, Longstreth isolating himself and, according to press releases, writing approximately 70 songs in the process (pared down to 40 demos by the time the rest of the band joined him). This is Longstreth distilled, an emotional clarity and depth that surpasses the rest of his material." - Consequence of Sound/TIME

"For some, the stripped-back approach will come as a disappointment. Aside from the acid guitar blasts in opener 'Offspring Are Blank' and the stuttering rockist wig-out 'Maybe That Was It,' the sort of assertive confidence that made  Bitte Orca such an irrefutable pop statement is largely missing...If it diverges in small ways from its predecessor,  SLM is on the whole a worthy sequel , a continuation of an art-rock trajectory that we can't really afford not to follow along its recalcitrant, wayward path." - The Quietus

SONNY AND THE SUNSETS - Longtime Companion

For his third full-length leading the Sunsets, Sonny Smith (mostly) tries his hand at writing heartbreaking country songs, and succeeds wildly, resulting in maybe his best album yet, with occasional touches of flute and pedal steel that add an ornate yet unshowy elegance to these recordings, offset by Smith's endearingly yelped lines relating both deep woes ("My one and only love/My babe, the divorcée") and shallow wonders ("I want something dumb/That I can understand/Let me be a dog in the sun rollin' in the sand," a line he finds so nice he uses it twice, Lindsey Buckingham-style).

"Longtime Companion is ostensibly a country album, but it’s a testament to Smith’s singularity that it mostly just sounds like a Sonny Smith album. Sure, it shuffles along a two-step pulse and comes glazed with plenty of steel-guitar weeping. Recorded after Smith and his girlfriend separated, the record does have a noticeably more wearied sound, and the twangy accoutrements add just the right amount of heartbroken creak and moan to suit the album’s circumstances. The difference is most clear on "Pretend You Love Me," which appeared on Hit After Hit as a jangly (spiked) soda-shop ballad; here, it’s a staggered, melancholy country-rocker." - Paste

"Breakups can do unpredictable things to a guy. For singer-songwriter Sonny Smith, separating from his girlfriend of 10 years led him in a musical direction he’d never gone before. The first time his singing voice appears on Longtime Companion, a second or two into opening track "I Was Born," it’s striking how different it is from his earlier work. It’s twangy and crystal-clear, the perfect aural realization of the album cover’s hapless sincerity, but also the sort of affect and presentation that might scan as Hee-Haw in the wrong hands. Fortunately for Smith, it fits him like a snug Stetson, and only becomes more endearing the longer it plays on." - A.V. Club