WOMEN: Blocked Out

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MEN: In the Fold

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• 11/10/08

  Deerhunter—Microcastle/Weird Era Cont. File this one under bands with an unfair amount of brilliance. Deerhunter's yet-to-be-released new album "Microcastle" leaked last year. Rather than fall into despair, the band just made all new material and released the results as an odd double album. The original album has dreamy, catchy pop songs that sound absolutely effortless. The second disc sounds like sketches of songs not yet fully formed—just enough to let you hear the idea but not enough to be considered "finished." Sometimes a sketch can say more than the completed portrait but here you get both and can decide for yourself which suits you best.
  
  Moggs—Amulat EP This limited edition record and digital download is the second release from Petaluma, CA's Moggs. Moggs are a husband/wife, guitar/drums duo that make dark rock songs that can either be aggressive or restrained, but always meticulous. You'll notice right away that each element of each song seems absolutely necessary and perfectly constructed. For this release they collaborate with different musicians on each track (including members of great little known bands such as Slug and the For Carnation) yet the outside input only enhances the sound without sounding like a detour from Moggs personal vision.
  
  DJ /Rupture—Uproot DJ/Rupture is the type of DJ that can change your perception of music with each of his mixtapes. With his latest release, /rupture creates a post-everything polyglot sound that jumps continents and genres continuously without disrupting his own idiosyncratic narrative. Great DJs take records that are available to everyone else and make them their own merely by putting them next to another record. /rupture draws lines across the globe by pointing out that there are weirdos and experimentalists everywhere. This latest album makes the world seem much smaller, yet completely filled with promising artistic expression.
  

• 10/27/09

  Gang Gang Dance—Saint Dymphna When Gang Gang Dance locked into one of their characteristic future-ethnic grooves at their recent CMJ show, we started to understand why they would name their latest album after the patron saint of mental illnesses—almost everyone in the crowd looked like they were losing their minds. The band's unique chemistry can sound like the Bollywood version of Miami Vice or a pastiche of cut and pasted field recordings of indigenous music. Saint Dymphna is the album where this strange combination, evident on earlier albums, finally coalesces into a coherent whole that completely works as popular music and not just an interesting experiment. Everyone at the show seemed to get it and once you listen to this record, you will too.
  
  TV on the Radio—Dear Science At this point it's hard to deny that TV on the Radio is one of this decade's unquestionably great bands.  When their first EP surfaced only a few years ago, they arrived as a band fully formed, with a sound entirely their own. That sound has remained remarkably consistent, augmented only by increasing ambition but never extending itself so far that the formula comes completely unravelled. The marriage of doo-wop vocals, electronic beats, and dreamy, droning guitar is back on this latest album. This time the songs are probably as catchy a batch as they have ever written but the music still sounds as fresh and exciting as the first time you heard them.
  
  Morgan Geist—Double Night Time Double Night Time is a solo album from one half of the dance music powerhouse Metro Area. Instead of the future primitive disco workouts on which he has made his name, his newest album focuses on dancey electro-pop that utilizes Junior Boys' Jeremy Greenspan's soft vocals. The result is something that works just as well on the dancefloor as it does a pure pop album. There a couple songs that don't quite work but the strongest songs more than make this album worth buying. If anything, it's always interesting to listen to a great musician trying out something completely new.
  

• 10/15/08

  Of Montreal—Skeletal Lamping Anyone wondering what glam rock sounds like in 2008 should look no further than Of Montreal's latest gem. Combining elements of disco dance music with baroque classic pop songs, the group hits on a sound that is entirely their own. Onstage, their over-the-top cross-dressing persona lends itself to the post-millenial, post-gender dance party vibe. Most importantly, this album conveys a neverending sense of fun, which is sorely missing in so much music these days.
  
  Arthur Russell—Love Is Overtaking Me Arthur Russell was a major figure in New York's 70's musical avant-garde, from new composition to weirdo disco played at the Paradise Garage. Before succumbing to AIDS in 1992, Russell released one of the most flooringly beautiful albums ever created, "World of Echo." Over the past few years, his entire oeuvre has been reissued, reanalyzed, and finally appreciated by a larger audience. This album is only the latest reissue of his work, focusing on his folk and pop songs. The fact that it sounds nothing like his other work but is still wonderfully brilliant is a testament to how great an artist Arthur Russell is.
  
  Benoit Pioulard—Temper Don't let the French pseudonym fool you—Benoit Pioulard is actually Portland-based singer Thomas Meluch. He sings soft-voiced songs accompanying himself on fingerpicked acoustic guitar. In this respect he is similar to many artists. However, the sound of Temper is defined by the way that found sounds, field recordings, and the voice and guitar themselves are manipulated to make a dreamy and shapeshifting haze of sound. By softening the edges of his songs this way, the most beatific and basic noises come to the fore, as atmosphere is emphasized and specifics become less important.
  

• 10/01/08

  Flying Lotus—Los Angeles Flying Lotus is the pseudonym of Steven Ellison, Alice Coltrane's great nephew and a young producer who first came to prominence making beats for the Cartoon Network. Despite being born into a family that's spiritual jazz royalty, his music is exploratory in a far less ethereal way than you might expect. In many ways, his music sounds like the electronic music response to other eccentric hip hop producers such as J Dilla or Madlib. But where those guys always had a sound with one foot in the past, Flying Lotus makes enough lazer noises and expensive synth sounds to let you know that he is always looking forward.
  
  Shugo Tokumaru—Exit We've always wondered where J-pop and tuneful indie rock would meet. Apparently it's on this album, the third for 28-year-old Japanese singer-songwriter Shugo Tokumaru and his first album widely available in the U.S. Exit incorporates all the odd little noises that bedroom studio wizards are so fond of these days—xylophones, cheap keyboards, and layered vocals. There's a little bit of a John Lennon thing going on here that we're really digging.
  
  Calexico—Carried to Dust Another great release from Calexico, a band that sounds exactly like the Southwest while entirely unique. This album finds them relying on their trademark country/rock/spaghetti Western sound, with the result being a strong album rather than a tired rehash. The songwriting is great, the musicianship is stellar, and the band sounds as tight as any band would after touring constantly since the 90's. Bonus: Don't miss their appearance with Jim James from My Morning Jacket on the "I'm Not There" soundtrack.
  

• 09/15/08

  Leila—Blood, Looms, and Blooms Making a name for herself originally as a keyboardist in Bjork's touring band, Leila previously released two well-received albums right around the turn of the millennium. Well, ever since the triumphant return of Portishead, it doesn't seem quite as unlikely that certain late 90's dorm room favorites will also reappear. So here we have a new release by Leila, sounding better than anything she's ever put out. Who's the next forgotten moody artist from Britain to make a comeback? Stay tuned.
  
  Vashti Bunyan—Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind Back when everybody got into folk music a few years ago, one of the albums that people seemed to be revisiting was Vashti Bunyan, whose 1970 debut album Just Another Diamond Day was made with the assistance of Nick Drake's producer Joe Boyd. Prior to recording that album, she was discovered by Andrew Loog Oldham and released a few singles, including "Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind," penned by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. The songs on this compilation of Bunyan's early material ranges from her trademark pastoral folk to more pop-oriented fare, including the Velvet Underground and Nico-sounding "I Want to Be Alone."
  
  Raphael Saadiq—The Way I See It It's a badly kept secret that one of the members of Tony! Toni! Tone! has quietly built a modest career as one of the last guardians of the classic soul music tradition. Whereas his late 80's/early 90's output was rooted in the sound of its era (revisit one of our favorite jams "Feels Good" for sonic proof), his past few efforts and this latest album build on the lush orchestral sound of a bygone era. We subscribe to the theory that you can never get tired of rehashing a good thing and on this album there is enough innovation to satisfy even the most retrophobic listeners.
  

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