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)
