Faux Ferocious Pretty Groovy (Burger) When this Tennessee quartet played a C’ville house party back in 2012, they absolutely tore it up—apologies if you were there and I yowled in your face about the spirit of rock and roll. Faux Ferocious kicks out punky jams and bluesy boogie grooves and is supernaturally tight, like a […]
Cass McCombs Tip of the Sphere (ANTI-) The opener of Tip of the Sphere is an interesting mongrel—half Irish folk mantra, half space rock, and ending with three minutes of Jerry-Garcia-circa-1972 wah guitar. All of which sort of sets the tone for Cass McCombs’ latest. There’s easy loping folk on “Absentee” and tabla and David […]
DAWN New Breed (Young Action) Danity Kane veteran Dawn Richard has forged a reputation as an R&B iconoclast, collaborating with Dirty Projectors and working on Adult Swim. Here she puts forth her NOLA roots with wizened old- people’s voices at the start of several songs—though New Breed doesn’t sound particularly rooted in New Orleans, or […]
Tallies S/T (Kanine) Tallies kicks off with a frosty amalgam of ‘80s and ‘90s atmospheric alt rock—the Bunnymen and The Cran- berries come to mind—and when “Mother” follows up somewhere halfway between The Smiths and The Go-Go’s, it becomes clear that the past is where Tallies live. Sarah [...]
Before 2018 completely disappears in our rear-view mirrors, here’s a recap of some box sets released last year that weren’t The Beatles’ White Album or Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks box. Tom Petty An American Treasure (Reprise) In 1995 Tom Petty released the 6-CD Playback box, and, especially [...]
As always, there are too many albums I didn’t hear in 2018, but here are 10 favorites in roughly chronological order. Khruangbin Con Todo El Mundo (Dead Oceans) This was the runaway crowd pleaser of the winter, spring, and summer. Though they’re from Texas, Khruangbin’s hybridized funk invokes [...]
Ella Mai Ella Mai (10 Summers) Ella Mai declares emotion “a roller coaster” in a brief introductory snippet, spoken in a fetching British accent. And if her full-length debut feels kinda samey on the slow-to- midtempo tip, her lyrics do, as implied, dwell on romantic turmoil— mindfucks swirl [...]
Kurt Vile Bottle It In (Matador) Caveat: I was a big fan of Kurt Vile’s 2013 album Wakin on a Pretty Daze until I went to his show and watched him basically perform the album note for note. What was entrancing became plain boring, and it’s been hard to hear his subsequent stuff without [...]
Prince Piano & a Microphone 1983 (Warner Bros.) In case you somehow missed it, the first posthumous release from Prince’s storied vault is out—the mere fact of which gives a shiver, because what could be next, and then after that, ad infinitum in gloria? Meanwhile, there’s this album of [...]
Anna St. Louis If Only There Was a River (Woodsist) Woodsist calls this the “debut” of Kansas City native Anna St. Louis— odd, since they also released her First Songs full-length last year. Maybe they want us to grade her on the “beginner” scale, but the truth is that If Only There Was a River [...]
White Denim Performance (City Slang) The new record by Austin’s scraggle rock standard bearers opens with the tumble of a spinning radio dial. It sounds ironic but it could also be a statement of purpose; on Performance, White Denim skillfully updates various ’70s rock styles from the jump, the [...]
Jim James Uniform Distortion (ATO) Jim James takes enough chances that I gotta pull for the guy— usually from a distance, but hey. Uniform Distortion’s 11 squalling tracks walk the line between garage rock and classic rock demos before landing in the latter camp—the tip off coming on “You Get [...]
Vince Guaraldi The Complete Warner Bros. -Seven Arts Recordings (Omnivore) In “Linus and Lucy,” Vince Guaraldi created one of the most universally beloved recordings of all time, but it’s hard to find his stuff besides A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. Omnivore helps with this nifty two- [...]
The Orb No Sounds Are Out of Bounds (Cooking Vinyl) The English ambient house legends have had an uneven if steady output since their landmark debut in 1991, but they seem to have settled into a reliable if redundant groove after their 2012 collaboration with Lee “Scratch” Perry. No Sounds Are [...]
Golden Dawn Arkestra Children of the Sun (Nine Mile) While borrowing Sun Ra’s band name and giving songs titles like “Ra Horahkty” and “Wings of Ra,” Golden Dawn Arkestra comes from a planet that’s as much spy rock as cosmic jazz. Despite some vintage keyboards and occasional attempts at [...]
Melody’s Echo Chamber Bon Voyage (Fat Possum) Melody Prochet’s 2012 debut was produced by Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker and shared many stylistic markers with Impala’s Innerspeaker, which was just peachy. Bon Voyage was co-produced by Dungen’s Reine Fiske, but while Fiske’s guitar and Dungen main [...]
Chip Wickham Shamal Wind (Lovemonk) Wickham, a flute-and-reeds player who has worked with artists from Badly Drawn Boy to Roy Ayers, relocated from Manchester to Qatar and emerged as a bandleader on 2017’s La Sombra—a fruitful hybrid of ’60s modal jazz and funk with Latin shadings. This [...]
Domenico Lancellotti The Good is a Big God (Luaka Bop) One of the most creative interpreters of traditional Brazilian pop, Lancellotti puts an odd foot forward on The Good is a Big God with the plodding incantation “Voltar Se” before correcting course and finding a groove on the title track, a [...]
The Voidz Virtue (RCA) Albert Hammond Jr. Francis Trouble (Red Bull) It seemed the Strokes had already endured the breathless-hype-into-vicious-backlash cycle even before its debut full-length, Is This It, dropped in 2001. The band’s momentum, attitude and simply perfectly simple songwriting [...]
Van Hunt Popular (Blue Note) The “great lost” album by the vastly undersung Van Hunt is no longer lost, but it’s pretty great. The Ohio savant caught notice in 2004 with his self-titled debut and Grammy-nominated single “Dust,” then took a leap forward with On the Jungle Floor, and its agile [...]
First Aid Kit Ruins (Sony) Stockholm’s Klara and Johanna Söderberg have lived a charmed life. In 2007, Swedish state radio turned one of their demos into a summer hit. In 2008, their video of Fleet Foxes’ “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” went viral, and their 2010 debut won rave reviews—all while [...]
Xylouris White Mother (Bella Union) “Goats are mothers, Zeus was raised on Amaltheia’s milk, Black Peak is Mother Earth. …Mother Earth is the mother of everything.” Giorgos Xylouris thus explains his duo’s third album, the first two being Goat and Black Peak. It’s inscrutable and [...]
Camila Cabello Camila (Sony) I don’t exactly follow Fifth Harmony, and I missed the controversy surrounding Camila Cabello’s split with the group. Hope I’m not supposed to hate her because this is just great pop—glossy but not oversaturated—“All These Years” and “Real Friends” are even [...]