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Bob Mould – Silver Age (Merge)
Its sheer velocity, momentum, and wicked ecstasies are so enormous that nothing matters past the pleasure of headbanging yourself into satori.
Small Faces – Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake (triple-CD) (Immediate)
A great triple-CD reissue of their masterpiece. Though the songs aren’t as individually great as Small Faces, they’re heavier, the command is wider still, Marriott’s white soul singing is astounding, psychedelic influences reach fruition, a pop art sleeve is incredible, and the whole thing fits together. There’s even a side two concept story, with gobbledygook comedian Stanley Unwin narrating in baffling Unwinese.
DIIV – Oshin (Captured Tracks)
With rack-mount effects boxes on full time, the echo-y trill of guitars gleefully glisten, unfurling over 40 heart-seizing minutes like a forest of flowers spraying pedals, while enclosing, interring, and subsuming *Z. Cole Smith*’s faraway voice like he’s coming from a cocoon.
Violens – True (Slumberland)
It’s a dreamy-pop romance that starts on swoon… and gets better.
The Jigsaw Seen – Gifted (Vibro-phonic))
The whole album’s so beautiful… with bite! *Dennis Davison*’s writing and singing is just impeccable, *Jonathan Lea*’s guitar work is an array of sensuous spices, and the production is so spiritually immaculate, it reminds of deep early ‘70s analog.
Royal Headache – Royal Headache (What’s Your Rupture?)
This Sydney foursome are racking up Buzzcocks and Undertones comparisons for this debut, released down under last year, and here now. And any time that’s accurate, that drives my excitement meter in the red.
Ken Stringfellow – Danzig in the Moonlight (Spark and Shine)
Despite a stylistic schizophrenia that should make it collapse, Danzig coheres with a loose thematic aesthetic à la Todd Rundgren’s equally gamut-running, 1972 classic, Something/Anything?. The reason it’s a striking achievement rather than a banal bummer remains Stringfellow’s reliable gifts as an outstanding songwriter with a honeyed voice many of us would do time for.
Sloan – Twice Removed (Deluxe Edition Vinyl Box Set) (Murderrecords CAN)
Blowout vinyl box reissue of this 1994 classic! 1992’s previous Peppermint EP and Smeared had buried clues of melodic guitar rock expertise in prevailing, au courant grunge/noise, as if labelmates Teenage Fanclub gorged on My Bloody Valentine and (other labelmates) Sonic Youth records, then hired (yet more labelmates) Nirvana’s engineer. Twice, then, was where they dispensed with fuzzier wails and let the songs come cleaner/clearer in guitar parts/interplay. The expensive vinyl box adds two bonus LPs, including every song’s original demo, demos of tunes that went unrecorded(!), two more demos on a 7”, and an album-sized 32-page booklet—overkill for an average band, but a bonanza for a remarkable one!
Honeychurch – Will You be There With Me (Siren Electric)
Gentle melancholy turned breathtaking,with elongated, elegiac, rural church stillness added to the Bucks County, PA group’s alt.country-folk.
Nada Surf – The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy (Barsuk)
The latest album comes out firing, bears no letup/letdown, and blasts with its gleeful refusal to go gentle into any good night. 2012’s finest?
