Album Reviews
HOT ROCKS = stl release
Guest List Each month we ask a specialist to pick some new release musts. This month’s Guest List is assembled by NICK ACQUISTO, host of THE SPACE PARLOR on KDHX 88.1 Scott Walker Bish Bosch 4AD | Dec 4
His first album since The Drift was released in 2006.
Beck Song Reader [hardcover] McSweeney’s | Dec 11
Beck is now pro-folk and anti-recording. Song Reader is a hardback book of sheet music. To hear Beck’s twenty new songs, you’re going to have to learn to read music and play them yourself. Or wait for the hundreds of YouTube videos to start pouring out renditions. Readers and select musicians’ versions of the songs will also soon be featured on McSweeney’s website.
My Bloody Valentine TBD TBD / Dec ?
They’ve had 21 years. If it actually comes out, this had better be good.
Villagers {awayland} Domino | Jan 14
The follow-up to his dark and thoughtful indie-folk debut album Becoming a Jackal.
Toro y Moi Anything In Return Carpark | Jan 22
Chaz Bundick’s groovy take on a dance-pop release.
Ra Ra Riot Beta Love Barsuk | Jan 22
More hook-driven pop, now with more dance and synth fuzz.
Big Harp Chain Letters Saddle Creek | Jan 22
Their loud, confident, angular, rockin’, hooky sophomore release.
Gliss Langsom Dans Modern Outsider | Jan 22
Fuzzy, airy, spacial shoegaze. Now with electronics.
Bleeding Rainbow Yeah Right Kanine | Jan 29
Moody, dark, My Bloody Valentine-inspired female-fronted foursome from Philly.
Mice Parade Candela Fat Cat | Jan 29
Still noisy; this is expected to be their most melodic and poppy album to date, too.
Pere Ubu Lady from Shanghai Fire | Jan 2013
An album, of course, of spastic sci-fi art rock. This album is meant to induce “fixed” dancing.
Black James im A mirAcle Farfetched
KNOWN ABOUT TOWN as the dark-sided, banjo-strumming siren Black James, Jennifer McDaniel has returned from the electric abyss with her latest effort, im A mirAcle. Released in cassette/digital format and clocking in at around 70 minutes, mirAcle is a departure from the freakways folk of 2010’s Waterhead. Trading in the gritty pickings of Appalachian forefather Doc Boggs for blackened reverb and programmed drum patterns, the album is a seamless amalgam of sample-heavy incantations, cryptic
Clinic
Free Reign Domino Records
Liverpool’s Clinic has been at it now for fifteen years and despite critical touting and nabbing opening slots for Arcade Fire and Radiohead, many still wonder, “Who are those masked men?” They remain as enigmatic as ever. Their proclivity for psychedelic album covers and outfitting themselves in surgeon masks and scrubs has allowed them to retain an aura of mystery and evolve. Sonically it’s all experimenting and being off kilter. They march to a different beat with their reliance on retro analog instrumentation, psych rock grooves, out of sync chord shifts and shaky percussion. While not as clangy or raucous as previous efforts, their seventh album, Free Reign, builds on the pop direction of 2010’s Bubblegum and saturates it with their trademark surrealist vocals awash in basslines, layers of organs and saxophones, and then sprinkles it with a spastic sense of urgency. Coddled in a blanket of selfconfidence, singer Ade Blackburn and his henchmen add some tenderness to their
mantras, and an overarching love of trance and hip-hop. Intended for listeners to experience as singular pieces (two sides of a tape), mirAcle jumps across a breadth of genres, often within the same song. Wrought with haunting samples, raw field recordings, and a healthy dose of delay, McDaniel shows no aversion to noise, but rather a full embrace of all sonic spectres. At her most accessible (“Mourning Dove,” “Stirrin Her Brew”), she hints at the warped pop of acts like Grimes, allowing the more esoteric moments (“Dust”) to breathe in the ethnic electronica of Muslimgauze and the dejected rhythm of Suicide. With brief appearances of banjo and layers of digital bewilderment, McDaniel’s strongest weapon may well be her inimitable voice. From ghoulish croak to seductive coo, her voice cuts through midnight air, driving each song like Stevie Nicks on better drugs. Though the mood of the record is buoyant, Black James manages to tether themes of melancholy throughout, be it her cover of Xeno and Oaklanders’ “4th Wall” or the overtly solemn “Adagio Slime”—a treatment of Samuel Barber’s “Adagio For Strings.” By bringing a little darkness into the light, Black James remains the answer to the age-old question: what happens when the teen witch grows up? JOSH LEVI visceral atmospherics enabling them to fill the spaciousness of their territory. Free Reign comes out strong with “Misty,” a skittish beat melded to a forlorn ambiance. The energetic “See Saw” is the standout track with its steady mix of overwrought vocals, nervous guitars and driving percussion. “King Kong” and “You” feature an eardrum buzz of kinetic energy. The lead single, “Miss You” they are still shuffling their feet to a pop sound which gives way to more textured experimentation with “Cosmic Radiation” and “Sun and the Moon.” On Free Reign, Clinic channels their affinity for post-punk, psychedelic rock, garage and indie pop into a disorientingly dizzy record, which finds them, climbing out of the muck to explore the spaciousness of their sound. The result is a visceral and valiant effort tinged with gentleness and energy. ROB LEVY
Spelling Bee Caterwaul
Pancake Productions
Spelling Bee is here to conquer your eardrums. The dynamic duo of Joseph Hess and Mabel Suen unleash every bit of bite-sized hell with their appropriately titled second full-length
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