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| Aaron M. Olson / L.A. Takedown |
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L.A. Takedown
Bad Night at Black's Beach 2:50
L.A. Blue 3:40
City of Glass 5:18
from II 2017
Following a cassette on Burger Records and a self-titled LP consisting of a single 41-minute epic, II is the third release by Aaron M. Olson's L.A. Takedown project, and the first recorded with a full band. The group take their name from a 1989 made-for-television crime thriller, and they aim to re-create the soundtracks of that era, but of course it doesn't sound like an exact facsimile. The group twist Krautrock and prog influences into their sound, and the arrangements and rhythmic patterns are complex and a bit suspenseful, but they still have a generally easygoing, beach-friendly feeling. The full-band upgrade means that there's less of an emphasis on synthesizers here than on past L.A. Takedown recordings, and a much more fleshed-out sound...
Roine Stolt's The Flower King
Lost America 9:50
The Alchemist 6:57
Rio Grande 7:49
from Manifesto Of An Alchemist 2018
With Manifesto of an Alchemist, guitarist/ vocalist/composer Roine Stolt looks all the way back to his 1994 solo date, The Flower King (hence the singular band name). His list of collaborators on this ten-song, 70-minute outing includes proper Flower Kings' members bassist Jonas Reingold, guitarist/vocalist Hans "Hasse" Fröberg, and Michael Stolt on bass and vocals, with Marco Minnemann (from Stolt's other collaborative project, the Sea Within) Max Lorentz on Hammond organ, Zach Kamins on assorted keyboards, Rob Townsend on reeds and winds, and Nad Sylvan on lead and backing vocals. Stolt claims that this is both a new and old album; most of these songs were developed from riffs, melodies, and arrangement ideas from more than a quarter-century of demos and notebooks grafted on to newly composed parts, most of which were created in the studio. Perhaps because of the treasure trove of older material he rummaged through, Manifesto of an Alchemist was completed exceptionally fast: it took only a month from first recordings to final mix. That quick turnaround time presents listeners with a clash of impressions. First, it is uncharacteristically "raw" sounding. The artist told an interviewer that, "A lot of the guitar work is actually my spontaneous 'demo' guitars ... I didn’t want to process ideas too much...."
Buke and Gase
Stumbler 3:26
Derby 2:30
Eternity 4:36
from Scholars 2019
If you remember Buke and Gase as that experimental duo who play the instruments they built themselves, you might want to adjust your expectations before listening to 2019's Scholars, their first full-length album after a five-year recording layoff. In their previous work, Aron Sanchez and Arone Dyer constructed their music around two instruments of their own creation, the buke, a large, six-string relative of the ukulele played by Dyer, and the Gass, a fusion of the guitar and the bass used by Sanchez. However, while both instruments are part of the mix on Scholars, this time around the duo have pared back on organic instrumentation and jumped deep into electronics...
Cherry Glazerr
Wasted Nun 3:18
Self Explained 3:36
Stupid Fish 4:13
from Stuffed & Ready 2019
The winding path of Cherry Glazerr's evolution began with bandleader Clementine Creevy writing strange and often juvenile songs as a teenager and just several years later had moved through phases of quirky garage grunge to arrive at the cold, polished sheen of third album Stuffed & Ready. Always centered around Creevy's increasingly dark musings, each album has upped production and more accurately dialed in a re-creation of '90s grunge angst. The muscular power chords and hyperconfident thrust of 2017's Apocalipstick were a far cry from the spooky songs about grilled cheese sandwiches and house pets that the band started out with, and Stuffed & Ready pushes further in the direction of '90s-modelled loud-soft alt-rock. Nowhere near the garage punk outbursts or naïve pondering that earlier versions of Cherry Glazerr reveled in, the ten songs here use gloomy guitar blasts and mid-tempo rhythmic attacks as a steady framework for the distant, angular moods of Creevy's songs...
The Wood Brothers
Alabaster 4:14
A Dream's a Dream 3:36
from Kingdom in My Mind 2020
"Alabaster" kicks off Kingdom in My Mind, the Wood Brothers' eighth studio album, with a slow, thick groove, its swampiness a reflection of how the album originated from a series of studio jams. The band didn't enter the studio with the intent of recording a new album, but they were taken with the results of their recording, so brothers Chris and Oliver Wood shaped the improvisations into songs. Starting with a collection of funky rustic recordings wound up being a boon to the Wood Brothers, letting Kingdom in My Mind establish a vibe that's cozy, homespun, and just slightly slick...
Hurt Valley
Geology Dreamer 4:34
Bothers 3:20
from Glacial Pace 2019
SoCal musician Brian Collins started recording under the moniker Hurt Valley following an encounter on a road trip to Death Valley in the early 2010s. The living-room project gained momentum after he settled in Los Angeles in 2014, though it remained a part-time endeavor, capturing the thoughts and emotions of moments over a period of several years. The resulting debut album, Glacial Pace, is populated by dreamy, melancholy reflections and a gentle twang, a combination that drew the interest of esteemed indie label Woodsist (Woods, Anna St. Louis, Bonny Doon)...
Lake Street Dive
Darryl 3:45
Jameson 4:35
from Freak Yourself Out 2018
While Boston's Lake Street Dive have always had a soulful, R&B-influenced sound, they've boiled it down to a pure, honestly delivered essence on their sixth full-length album, 2018's heartfelt Free Yourself Up. Having honed their skills studying jazz at the New England Conservatory of Music, the members of Lake Street Dive are supremely talented performers who balance their respective strengths throughout the album. In fact, although she's often in the background on-stage, bassist Bridget Kearney (who released her own solo album in 2017) is responsible for writing almost half of the album's songs, and earns co-writes on several more...
Spencer Radcliffe
Land & Sea 5:56
Static Electricity 6:40
from Enjoy the Great Outdoors 2017
Enjoy the Great Outdoors is the second LP by Spencer Radcliffe, at least under his own name. Also known as instrumental act Blithe Field, the Ohioan trades in a particularly impulsive, rugged version of guitar-based lo-fi descended from Pavement. A collaborative effort that involved members of his touring band, which expanded after his debut, the album is credited to Spencer Radcliffe & Everyone Else. Despite having a seven-piece at his disposal, the sound remains low-key, becoming more ramshackle at times without seeming to increase the volume. Individual parts are always decipherable, and include sauntering electric guitars, twinkling keyboards, drums, languid bass, and a miscellany that interject with noise, effects, and transient texture...
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings
Matter of Time 3:22
Just Give Me Your Time 2:29
Girl! (You Got to Forgive Him) 4:09
from Soul of a Woman 2017
Sharon Jones was 45 years old when she cut her first single with the retro-soul combo the Dap-Kings in 2001. She'd been trying to find a way into the music business for years before her partnership with the Dap-Kings unexpectedly made her a star, but it was obvious that once the right people heard her, they knew she one of the great R&B singers of her generation. Once the door opened for her, she didn't look back for a second. While Jones had beat cancer once, she wasn't as lucky when the disease reappeared in 2015, and through 2016 she played shows and recorded session in between rounds of treatment, with cancer finally claiming her life in November of that year. Some artists, knowing they have only so long to live, use their final recordings to sum up their lives and careers, but that was clearly not the case for Jones. Soul of a Woman, recorded during the last months of her life, is not an album about mortality; instead, this is the work of a woman who was determined to make the most of every moment allotted her. Soul of a Woman is a superb exercise in deep soul big-city style, and if Jones was ailing when she recorded her vocals, you would never guess to listen to the finished product...
Bahamas
Alone 3:24
Bad Boys Need Love Too 3:41
from Earthtones 2018
Afie Jurvanen's fourth Bahamas LP, Earthtones finds the guitarist/songwriter joined by the all-star rhythm section of Pino Palladino and James Gadson. With decades of legendary albums to their individual credit, the bassist and drummer happen to have played together on none other than D'Angelo's Black Messiah. It's not a trivial recording note, as Jurvanen sought them out due to that album and wrote much of Earthtones with these particular collaborators in mind. The result dials up the soul and slow-boiling funk while retaining Jurvanen's laid-back demeanor, all to steady, head-bobbing effect...
FIDLAR
Get Off My Rock 3:17
Almost Free 2:15
from Almost Free 2019
---Their spotty sophomore release, 2016's Too, wrestled with frontman Zac Carper's newfound sobriety in the face of the group's chosen lifestyle and typical subject matter; on Almost Free, they further complicate things by introducing some politics and social commentary into the mix. To their credit, FIDLAR have made legitimate attempts to get out of their creative comfort zone and go somewhere new. That said, Almost Free is somewhat of a mess. Recording at Hollywood's legendary Sunset Sound with Ricky Reed (Jessie J, Twenty One Pilots), FIDLAR strike out in a variety of different directions, landing some new tricks but slamming a lot more...
Courteeners
Heart Attack 3:14
More. Again. Forever. 5:25
from More. Again. Forever. 2020
Emerging from a dark and uncertain period following their 2016 effort, Mapping the Rendezvous, Manchester favorites Courteeners returned triumphant with their sleek, boundary-pushing sixth set, More. Again. Forever. Slicker and shinier than its rollicking predecessor, the album reveals another side to the long-running band, one that embraces dancefloor energy and groovy bass lines influenced by LCD Soundsystem. In a move similar to other late-era maturations by contemporaries like Kaiser Chiefs, Editors, and the Kooks, Courteeners -- frontman Liam Fray, guitarist Daniel Moores, drummer Michael Campbell, and bassist/producer Joe Cross -- nail the stylistic shift, injecting fresh ideas and new life without forgetting the jangly alt-indie spirit of the late 2000s when they broke onto the scene with St. Jude...
Cursive
I Am Goddamn 2:51
What’s Gotten Into You? 5:34
from Get Fixed 2020
It turns out that if you don't make an album for six years, you might end up with a lot of ideas for songs. That was certainly the case with Tim Kasher and his bandmates in Cursive. After 2012's I Am Gemini, Cursive didn't deliver any fresh music until Vitriola came out in 2018. By that time, they had written enough songs for a double album. But rather than send out a two-disc set, where they felt some of the material might get lost in the shuffle, they opted to split the bounty into two separate releases, and Get Fixed arrived 12 months after Vitriola. Vitriola and Get Fixed certainly work as separate entities, but it's not hard to tell that they have a shared ancestry, with Get Fixed possessing a sound and attitude that's much like its sibling. That said, Vitriola was a strong and well-crafted effort that reflected the anger and anxiety that's business as usual in America as the 2010s give way to the 2020s, and the same can be said of its follow-up...
Whyte Horses
Hard Times feat. John Grant 3:26
Bang Bang feat. Christa Bell 2:11
from Hard Times 2020
Over the course of two albums, Dom Thomas and his Whyte Horses collective made a name for themselves as master mixers of vintage sounds derived from swinging French ye-ye, swirling psychedelia, strutting big-city soul, snappy garage rock, and hooky kitchen sink pop. It's a little bit of theft, a little bit of borrowing too, but Thomas and his merry gang reassemble the pieces in ways that make clear they are adding great dollops of their own vision to the music... Listening to it back to back with one of their own albums, it's hard to see why Thomas decided he had to make Hard Times at all when their work already sounds like the "fantasy mixtape" they were aiming for here. It's far from a bad record, but it's a bit of a letdown for anyone who fell in love with the group's first two albums and looked forward to hearing them dig deep into their influences and come up with something special.
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