Bill Callahan - "The Holy Grail: Bill Callahan's "Smog" Dec. 10, 2001 Peel Session" | Album Review
The Holy Grail: Bill Callahan’s “Smog” Dec. 10, 2001 Peel Session is a modest effort that nonetheless has much to say about both Callahan’s evolution and his consistency. This EP doesn’t rewrite history exactly, but it is revelatory about the contingent steps taken by him as an artist, more apparent in retrospect, thus amounting to a kind of rosebud explaining the move from one chapter to the next.
ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Kim Deal - "Nobody Loves You More"
Horse Jumper of Love - "Disaster Trick" | Album Review
Horse Jumper of Love continue to push boundaries, both musical and emotional. This release veers more fully into earnestness, and it’s their best album as a result. As noted, the LP marks a new period of sobriety for Dimitri Giannopoulos, who quit drinking prior to the recording, and the album bears clear traces of this turn.
The Hard Quartet - "The Hard Quartet" | Album Review
Dirty Three - "Love Changes Everything" | Album Review
Love Changes Everything, constructs a mood and, by extension, an entire world. The usual signature features are still here: Turner’s expressive guitar that likes to play roughhouse or walk around amiably in the background depending on the song’s demands; White’s personifying percussion that paces like a detective with snare-drum anxiety at some moments, soothes with brushwork at others; and Ellis’s violin or piano that frequently serves as the lead,
Pavement - "Cautionary Tales: Jukebox Classiques" | Album Review
Pavement ultimately had an amazing run. Their new limited-edition box set, Cautionary Tales: Jukebox Classiques, is a testament to this fact, consisting of their complete catalog of 7” singles from 1989 to 1999 plus various B-sides, covers, demos, and live material. In total, there are 56 songs running to almost three hours.
Mister Goblin - "Frog Poems" | Album Review
Frog Poems tracks the incomplete negotiations between childhood and adulthood that linger over time. Sam Goblin seems to be asking are there ways of revisiting the former without becoming entrapped by nostalgia? Neither life stage entirely subsumes the other with recollections of acquaintances, ambition, and crushes complicating any straightforward progression of life or time.
Tara Jane O'Neil - "The Cool Cloud of Okayness" | Album Review
The Cool Cloud of Okayness was written and recorded during a period when Tara Jane O’Neil suffered the devastation of her home being destroyed by a wildfire in California and the long process of subsequently building a new one. She also describes the LP as being defined by her recording ensemble’s shared queer identity.
Jim White - "All Hits: Memories" | Album Review
His first solo album, wryly titled All Hits: Memories, is an extremely intelligent work by a musician who has long paid his dues playing with PJ Harvey, Cat Power, Bill Callahan, and his own long-term project, Dirty Three. Like many percussionists, White has often situated himself comfortably in the background. On this release, he shines.
ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Kim Gordon - "The Collective"
Characteristically, The Collective is full of distortion albeit in a manner different from Gordon’s solo debut. The album is fully alive to our present moment. The hip-hop elements – the trap percussion, the heavy bass lines, the thick production quality – establish this fixation, proving once more that Gordon remains as forward thinking as ever.
ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Mary Timony - "Untame The Tiger"
Timony epitomizes the rock-and-roll lifer, a journey-person musician who has integrated different genres through a steady output. This new solo album feels different, however. Though she has never been absent, Untame the Tiger sounds like both a culmination of these prolific decades and a re-introduction.
Hum - “Electra 2000” + “You’d Prefer an Astronaut” + “Downward is Heavenward” + “Inlet” (Reissues) | Album Review
Hailing from Champaign, IL, Hum always provided more substance to their recordings than any hit single might suggest. For this reason, the re-release of their catalog on vinyl – Electra 2000, You’d Prefer an Astronaut, Downward is Heavenward, and Inlet – is deserved and will hopefully give them renewed attention.
Guided By Voices - "Nowhere To Go But Up" | Album Review
The Guided By Voices archive resembles a murmuration by now with thousands of melodies and ideas flocking together to create a singular movement, in which individual elements matter less than the beauty created by the entire whole. Nowhere To Go But Up is a minor, but essential, part of this greater entity.
Cherubs - "Icing (2023 Remaster)" + "Heroin Man" | Album Review
These reissues demonstrate an implacable sound by a trio deserving of more attention. Icing and Heroin Man have aged well. Though more serious as their erstwhile benefactors, Butthole Surfers, Cherubs point to how the Texas post-hardcore/noise rock scene cannot be reduced to one band, as famous and indispensable as they might be.
The Jesus and Mary Chain - "Sunset 666 (Live at Hollywood Palladium)" | Album Review
Bueno - "I Was A Thing Of Beauty" | Album Review
Given that it has taken a number of years for this new album to appear, one could read I Was a Thing of Beauty as a make-or-break moment for the band. Clearly, they possess enough patience to wait for songs to come together. Like their esteemed influences, they seem content for the time being to revise their sound as it suits them.
Slay Tracks, 1977-2021: Recent Archival Releases from Wire, Stereolab, and Iceage
It is perhaps most interesting to think about the release of archival recordings as a self-conscious act of disruption and messing with the legacies of the band at hand – a moment of unsettlement, even self-immolation, rather than artistic affirmation. Shining a light on neglected cul-de-sacs and past desire, they can project competing, even opposing, interests and expectations. These latter thoughts apply to the albums under review by Wire, Stereolab, and Iceage, though they are not alone.