The Microphones – “I’ll Be in the Air”
Don’t Wake Me Up
Early Phil Elvrum is occasionally hard to tell apart form late-era Phil Elvrum. In this case the pensive vocals and roiling guitars could have come from practically any of his projects and albums. It is in fact from 1999’s Don’t Wake Me Up, part of a very fertile period in his songwriting career. I can’t tell if that’s Mirah singing backup, but it’s possible.
Lowcloudcover – “Skeleton Key”
Separation Anxiety
Confident, competent, and well-produced, this Lowcloudcover album sounds great but not particularly original. But reliably good, slightly-extended (all but two of the songs clock in between five and six minutes) psych-rock is surprisingly difficult to find and this is a fertile source. They must also be given extra credit for actually using the bass rather than letting it slog along deep in the low end.
Jonsi & Alex – “Stokkseyri”
Riceboy Sleeps
A rich, contemplative soundscape that manages to faultlessly merge digital and organic tones. Perhaps closest to Sigur Ros’s ( ), but more subdued and blue-grey. (insound)
Olivia Tremor Control – “Holiday Surprise”
Dusk At Cubist Castle
Despite their sound being more ether-soaked psychedelia on this record than the sharp, more abstract Black Foliage, OTC were plenty ambitious with this album. With multiple multiple-part tracks and an entire optional “background” track on a separate CD, this was straight up concept work. But with solid songwriting and an sound that changes so often you can’t help but pay attention, you can take the concept or leave it and it’s still a great record.
Autechre – “krYlon”
Oversteps
At first, I thought claims Autechre had gone melodic on this album were overstated. Then this and the final track cashed that check but good. It’s their most beautiful and accessible work since LP5’s “Rae,” combining some of that album’s glitch-outs with harmonies as much Frost as they are Tri Repetae. And the 10-minute closer, “Yuop,” channels (if you can believe it) Stars of the Lid more than anything, all zen bowls, strings, and eerie majesty. Oversteps does have the usual Autechre weirdness, but parts are powerful and the last two tracks are simply stunning.
Loscil – “Zephyr”
Plume
This hypnotizing album is Loscil’s third, far more rich than the muted Submers or the barely-there Triple Point. It’s full of tracks like this, repetitive but enveloping, and deceptively full of detail at every tone level. Beauty, but hovering on the border of threatening depths. (insound)
Black Forest/Black Sea – “Sevastopol”
Black Forest/Black Sea
An album of freaky chamber folk, before the band went a bit more digital. The cello/guitar combo makes it sound like an Espers backing track, but the off-kilter melody and confidently atonal background noise set it apart. An unpredictable band, for good and ill.
Cults – “You Know What I Mean”
Cults
Halfway between Saturday Looks Good To Me and Connie Stevens, this song hits its tone just right. The album is full of these catchy little nuggets of song-singing, now more synthy, now more grungy. Thoroughly entertaining, even if it won’t live forever. (insound)
Manual – “Confluence”
Confluence
This rather long track (13:10) migrates through a few distinct phases, all of them gauzy and ambient, and all pleasant and multi-layered. The slow-motion wash of distortion and soft noise gives way to a piano-pierced stillness of real craft and poignancy. The rest of this album moves along similar paths, and while it isn’t exciting, it’s beautiful and calming. (insound)
Fennesz – “Glide”
Black Summer
This shimmery, noisy blanket is one of Fennesz’s most understated and beautiful tracks. It takes a while to get going, and the song really only takes up about seven minutes of the nine and a half it runs for. (insound)
Holy Fuck – Lovely Allen
LP
These guys sound a bit like The Boredoms minus their occasionally out-sized insanity. Building semi-improvised songs around themes on guitar, keyboard, or sample, and blowing it up now and then, much of this album is anthemic and thumping, yet never overbearing or hardcore. (insound)
A Weather – “It’s Good To Know”
Cove
Much of this record falls under the softly-sung male-female harmony indie category and is fairly safe and pleasant, if forgettable. But the keyboards and the bittersweet call and response of the final track are simple, beautiful, and instantly memorable. (insound)
Father John Misty – “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings”
Fear Fun
I’ve had this song stuck in my head since I watched the video that some friends of mine were involved in. The guitar has such a great tone and the sibilant, clappy drums are just repetitive enough to be hypnotic. Hopefully the rest of the album (due out on May 1st) will be as good as this track.
Spiritualized – “200 Bars”
Lazer Guided Melodies
Before the noisy majesty of Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space and the overwrought gospel of Let It Come Down, Spiritualized was straight-up psychedelic rock, lapsing into shoegaze (as you do) and generally maintaining a gauzy, spacey feeling for the length of entire albums. Lazer Guided Melodies is a great example of this, and “200 Bars” is impeccable, with its deliberate pacing and soft layers of jangly psych harmony. She does, in fact, count all the way to 100 before the song “starts.” I love it.
The Beatles – “I Feel Fine (Instrumental/Warmup)”
Studio Sessions 1964 (Bootleg)
This is takes 6 and 7 of the 9-take recording of “I Feel Fine”; take 6 is without vocals and is just pure jangly rhythm. Of course, in a way, it’s just “I Feel Fine” without the voice track. But it’s more than that, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun. Beatles ephemera tracks are always fun.
Clams Casino – “What You Doin”
Instrumental
Walking the line between electronic ephemera and lushly produced hip-hop, this record is a great example of hybrid vigor. The deep beats are decidedly bass-heavy and urban, but the ghostly samples and full-spectrum atmospherics are more like Cut Copy crossed with Tim Hecker. The drums are a melange: the last track, “13,” combines a metronomic high hat from the 80s with a thunderous bass from the mid-2000s, with an old school clap that makes you think it’s going to drop into a house spiral at any moment. And then you’ve got this track, like a drugged, gauzy trip to a slow-motion dance floor. Where did this come from? (insound)
Plants And Animals – “Celebration”
La La Land
A slow-grow track from this versatile band, with one of those great sounds that keeps growing when you think they can’t add any more. Shades of Yeasayer. I’m hoping these guys have gotten popular over the last couple years but I have no way to be sure. (insound)
Au Revoir Borealis – “Bella Ballerina”
Dark Enough For Stars
A wispy, melancholy instrumental from this shoegaze-y 2008 album. Would work well as background music for a day-in-the-life montage of a forlorn and lonely grocery bagger. (site)
Do Make Say Think – “In Mind”
You, You’re A History In Rust
The last track from a solid album that demonstrates the musical breadth of which Do Make Say Think are capable. Most of the post-rock motifs have been stripped out, or at least aren’t front and center. There’s more songwriting and less atmospherics — not a change many fans expected, I think (when I saw them live, they admitted they would sing on their next album as if it was a crime), but after three or four excellent albums along their original line of musical thinking, a little variety can’t hurt (and at any rate, their next album was a return to form). This final track is a good distillation of the album, which is well worth a listen and may in fact be the best starting point for new listeners. (insound)
Bibio – “Mr. & Mrs. Compost”
Vignetting The Compost
Despite the fragrant name, this track and to a great degree this album are surprisingly tender and beautiful. Bibio has since diversified, but within his purview at the time, this was expansive, playful, melancholy, and absolutely unique in sound.
The Psychic Paramount – “Intro/SP”
II
While not as mind-shatteringly intense as the near-nuclear Gamelan Into The Mink Supernatural, The Psychic Paramount’s new album is still louder and more powerful than 99% of music. The songs lack some of the traveling I liked on their previous album – the tripartite “Para5,” the ambient freakout of “Ex-Visitations,” the hypno-slow-build of the title track. There isn’t as much of that here, but there are plenty of moments where the noise and the drums and the chaos and the noise seem to transcend themselves and achieve something akin to cosmic glory, and if you were hearing it live, your eardrums approaching the limits of their durability, you would fall on your knees and worship.
Ghosts and Vodka – “Futuristic Genitalia”
Addicts & Drunks
I’m not sure how to categorize this instrumental guitar play-date, but I love it anyway.
Voltron Opening Theme (no narration)
A break from the usual. This one lacks the opening narration (“This… is the story… of the super force… of space explorers”) and lets you focus on the sweet horn breaks.
Whitenessmovesdownward – “Decay / Renewal”
Meditation: Ground Zero
A bit of atmospheric electronic piano I collected around ten years ago, in the supreme madness of the Audiogalaxy years. Obscure to the point of near non-existence.
Porcupine Tree – “Feel So Low”
Lightbulb Sun
A few of my friends in college were hugely into Porcupine Tree, and while I didn’t catch the fever, this song and a few others have been in regular rotation for ten years now. “Feel So Low” is a just a melancholy melody with no pretensions.
