Hollow Judgments
…are all that streaming new music online is good for, as far as I can tell. But I’ll at least have let you know the following exist:
Sandrider – Godhead
Our friends at Good To Die Records have another stunner (in a literal and perhaps critical sense) releasing this week, their third for the year. Sandrider are even heavier and more outside my zone (a continuing trend with this label) but just as capable of wearing away my resistance, first with a full minute of anticipatory drum pounding and later with riffs that could have maybe worked in a less aggressive 90s context – I’m thinking Swervedriver or Sebadoh.
Psapp – What Makes Us Glow
Sharing half of an album title with a One Direction song would seem to not trouble Psapp, beautiful and self-aware, in the least. The opening 8-bit synths are a very pleasing absurdity (so lush, no decay) but then What Makes Us Glow settles into an ostensibly more organic space. Along the spectrum of flamboyance and artificiality, the album first brings to mind a subdued Basement Jaxx (dense and hyperkinetic, yet at their best improbably suggesting live ambience), then Stereolab (at their most pleasant, non-revelatory), and finally The Blow (their modest, romantic new LP). In all of this, Galia Durant’s understated vocals are key.
The Chambermaids – Whatever Happened Tomorrow
A short new album that counts as a major release for these long-running yet non-prolific Minneapolis shoegaze champions.
Barbara Manning – “Wishes Don’t Tie You Down,” etc.
Former SF Seal, scissor keeper and gay bar guide (on that best of all 6ths songs, “San Diego Zoo”) has twelve new/old songs available online. They’re all at separate links, to make for maximum interrupted listening and to break the illusion that these demos and detritus are intended for each other in an album sense. But hey, if Archie Moore’s 1999-present compendium Dreamshit Surfer can end up one of the year’s most coherent albums, then it might work to download Manning’s dozen tracks and put them in a compelling order.
The Rosebuds – “Whisper,” “Where The Freaks Hang Out”
Hopefully preparing for a new album and honing separate strengths, The Rosebuds continue to divide their impulses into weird one-off releases: a full-album cover of Sade’s Love Deluxe gives way to their spooky side on this pair of Halloween (yet far from novelty) songs.
Perfect Pussy – I have lost all desire for feeling
Spacehog – As It Is On Earth
Beatle-esque is disappearing from the language, and it rarely applies anymore, but it’s the only word to describe Spacehog’s strange and lonely return.
Paul McCartney – New
Exactly as good as Bowie’s The Next Day, by which I mean very good.
Haim – Days Are Gone
It all gets a bit similar after a while, but only in the way where I might choose any song as my favorite (currently leaning toward “The Wire”). And it’s not as if the uniformity reveals a lack of great emotional depth or width, which wasn’t really there in the first place. Haim need not be profound, only make us feel good.
Cut Copy – Free Your Mind
I hate to say it but this doesn’t fire my imagination, either. Funny that five years after their glorious In Ghost Colours, Cut Copy would be the ones to make me feel that euphoric dance music as a popular force is all played out and that guitars and worse, less forced times are back again. Choose Surfing Strange by Swearin’ as your new party record.
