Everyone’s worried and wondering about rock ‘n’ roll, again; here’s instant relief from unanswerable questions. Call it wounded or triumphant, or wounded yet triumphant, depending on how much of a crisis you hear in New Moon’s reckless assembly, but really this might be the first album whose rendering of a crisis is just the result of the band’s mastery of style and tone. Probably The Men’s best album. Who are The Men? The ideal band, it seems, an eccentric entity that asks no questions about the individual members.

Even better than anyone has said, which is no fault of its listeners, who’ve said a lot, only the difficulty of communicating incomprehensible love. When was this made? Very likely a long time ago, so that it shatters the myth of the long-awaited album (it’s not a test of the band or one’s relationship with the band, but indifferent to time blasts new life away) while also being the best example of one maybe ever. It seems like everyone instinctively gets the paradox. The only expectations mbv fulfills are private ones.

“Some churlish humps have suggested that good kid could be more fun (like, more escapist and carefree, I suppose) […]”
–Charles Aaron, 12/11/12

“For most people, hip-hop in 2012 was primarily a matter of Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city, and this is just. But you will have 50,000 times more fun with Pluto, Future’s own major-label debut […]”
–Rob Harvilla, 1/16/13

Harvilla is no churlish hump (that was the only bad call in his excellent, celebrated piece), but he sets the scene: I’m already waiting for some intrepid critic to point out that Shaking the Habitual isn’t very fun, then suggest some fun alternative, as if he has a more sophisticated sense of fun than everyone else and anyone who pretends to care more about art is only denying their real interests. Shaking is the perfect antidote to good vibes (the habitual) and the uplift blues, and thus a better kind of optimism (or am I talking about The Terror?); whether it’s fun troubles me not in the least.

II. In the midst of the world’s increasing mania for LPs with an increasingly random number of discs, here’s a reminder that the CD gave us some notable forms, too, like the double CD, of which this is a great example. It’s an amazing, dense object (half the effect is the way it sits waiting in a room, glowing pink), and too innately weird to suffer some bore trying to cull its more straightforward tracks onto a single “normal” disc.

This is also, by law, a double CD, but I’ve been listening to it on a computer so I guess I can’t insist on the definition. I used to treat this kind of music, music that hides all trace of its human agents, as sacred and unimpeachable, but after so many albums, and with two new hours of music arriving so soon after the last batch, it’s obvious that the important feature of Exai, or any Autechre album, is work.

Cassie makes music “to numb your brain,” which is sort of true, but only to the point that the rest of the world dims and your mind is sharpened for the music. RockaByeBaby is an astonishing sound-world, with astonishing out-of-nowhere moments, but the mysterious Cassie remains steady at a distance. Even when her guests go off the record and ask, “Cassie what’s up baby?” she doesn’t respond in her speaking voice. She waits until the next song demands her to sing again.

Every time this guy sends out another inspiring, life-gathering transmission, someone says he’s not doing enough to build on early promise. Oh well. Forget, if you will, Ty Segall, Lil B, Robert Pollard, etc. KRIT is the only musician whose prolific output you need worry about right now. Theme: Persistence of vision. Art is life and maybe but not necessarily the other way around.

It starts with “Heavenmetal,” and that’d be a good name for this kind of music: Heavy, with pauses. Thurston Moore still sings about his enduring city heroes, who he hasn’t yet, in his own mind, replaced with himself. It’s a little weird listening to all of this in light of Kim Gordon calling Moore “lost”; he really does sound like a guy with too many options, and Chelsea Light Moving is only one of an infinite number of cool rock albums he could’ve made this year, but still a good one.

It’s ubiquitous, and I’ve alluded to it plenty. Is a verdict possible, or necessary? Well, I totally buy this as what it’s been called, a vision of marital bliss from a guy who’s content loving in no unusual ways, so I forgive almost every otherwise embarrassing and obvious line and gesture. “Mirrors” is the perfect (super)human finale to a boy band origin story. There’s nothing very eccentric or audacious here, unless track length counts, and people who insist there is are misjudging the considerable sophistication of either Timberlake or his audience, or both. It’s not a huge stretch, that’s why we feel so damn full.

Even now I can usually only understand songs in the context of an album, it’s my eternal curse, but sometimes one will come along with so much internal momentum that it doesn’t lead me immediately to the next. I still haven’t made up my mind about the final five minutes of “Mute”: Has Trevor Powers misidentified his suite’s emotional center (which is, of course, in the first minute), or does he intend to overpower it and make its memory that much sweeter and sadder? Either way, a strong incentive to put this song on repeat.

Bass music. It’s always more apparent live, that this kind of classic shoegaze sound is totally formless without bass as its gliding, melodic undertow. The Great Depression are an excellent local trio who I’d been meaning to catch for most of the past couple years, and who can be seen again next weekend opening for Sad Baby Wolf. The third song of their Blackbird set was perfect, furiously content, the kind that instantly seems to have happened twenty years ago when you were sitting across the room from this infinite, erasable band.