ALTER.NATION #78
Ultraista, Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, Thomas Dybdahl, Baxter Dury, James Righton, Joywave, Arbouretum, The Exbats, Moaning, Dogleg, Ratgrave, Helen Money
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ALTER.NATION #78 on DEEZER
Ultraista - Sister / Water in My Veins
...In fact, Sister may actually scratch the Radiohead itch even more than some of the actual Radiohead member’s side projects. Sister also stands tall on its own, similar enough to Nigel’s collaborations with Thom Yorke to appeal to Thom’s fanbase but different enough to register as an essential project of its own. Laura Bettison is an even more compelling singer on Sister than she was on Ultraísta’s already-great debut, and she drives these songs as much as Nigel does and helps separate them from Nigel’s other work. It may have taken eight years and some major roadblocks, but Ultraísta made it out alive and they’re even more a force of their own than they were the first time around. (Andrew Sacher)
Lorelle Meets the Obsolete - Re-Facto / El Olivo
Mexican psych group Lorelle Meets the Obsolete's fifth album, De Facto, was their noisiest, most risk-taking work to date, and also their most rewarding. Following the triumphant 2019 full-length, the band served up companion EP Re-Facto, containing two examples of how their sound has continued to evolve and mutate, and two remixes of De Facto tracks by trusted friends... The other original, "El Olivo," is a more bummed-out crawler made extra trippy through extensive delay effects on the vocals... (Paul Simpson)
Thomas Dybdahl - Fever / Fever
On Fever, Norway's Thomas Dybdahl returns home to Starvanger from his late-night L.A. studio sojourn with producer Larry Klein on All These Things. Working at his 1micadventure studio with longtime collaborator and hip-hop producer Håvard Rosenberg, the nine tracks here are emphatically D.I.Y.: Dybdahl played virtually all the instruments and tracked almost all vocals. The most jarring thing in the mix is the absence of his trademark acoustic guitar in favor of an electric. The motivating factor was to make a soulful guitar record that didn't sound like one, and that balanced the vintage and the fresh simultaneously. They listened to classic artists ranging from Nina Simone and Aretha Franklin to Sam Cooke and Bill Withers, from Ray Charles and Sly Stone to D'Angelo, Raphael Saadiq, and Michael Kiwanuka in order to kindle the creative spark... (Thom Jurek)
Baxter Dury - The Night Chancers / The Night Chancers
Over his last few albums, especially on 2018's Prince of Tears, Baxter Dury came up with a winning formula that entailed him drawling out tales of decadence and despair in a dry monotone. His prickly persona and caustic wit is surrounded by angelic female vocals on the choruses, swooning string sections, rubbery bass lines, and a slinky, trip-hop-influenced nocturnal mood. The formula is perfected on 2020's The Night Chancers. Dury and his cast of handy helpers imbue the songs with a kind of gutter-y grandeur and smudged beauty that was hinted at in the past but now comes through loud and clear. This is oddly pretty music with sneaky sweet melodies and singalong choruses peeking through the grime that are oft slashed into ribbons by Dury's nasty monologues, snipey asides, and overall Gainsbourg-ian vinegar... (Tim Sendra)
James Righton - The Performer / Devil Is Loose
The debut solo effort from the Klaxons co-founder, The Performer sees James Righton distilling the neon dance-rock of his flagship band into a mostly tasty hybrid of velvety Todd Rundgren-meets Bryan Ferry retro-pop and California-kissed '70s soft rock with neo-psych underpinnings. More in line with Righton's 2017's outing under the Shock Machine moniker, The Performer, despite its affectations, feels like a more authentic rendering of Righton as a songwriter... The sensuous late-night half-banger "Devil Is Loose," with its sinister walking bassline and cascading reverb, definitely shows its Klaxons DNA... (James Christopher Monger)
Joywave - Possession / Blastoffff
Like a rocket shooting into space, New York electro-rock crew Joywave go intergalactic on their shimmering third full-length, Possession. Lighter and more vibrant than their 2017 effort Content, this round of existential musings finds frontman Daniel Armbruster weighing ideas of possession and control in a contemporary existence under constant cultural bombardment by outside forces and influences... The robust burst "Blastoffff" delivers the album's crunchiest rock moment, a wry vignette about returning to a place you've grown beyond. Finding the secret to it all, Joywave concludes that the goal in this life -- beyond the fear, media burnout, and global dread -- might be simply "to be fat and old and happy." (Neil Z. Yeung)
Arbouretum - Let It All In / No Sanctuary Blues
Built around the masterful songwriting and commanding vocals of bandleader Dave Heumann, Arbouretum spent the 2000s and 2010s slowly trickling out excellent albums of slightly cosmic folk-rock. As time went on, the band leaned into a British folk influence, lacing Heumann's narrative songs with haunting traditionally informed melodies. Ninth album Let It All In finds the band at the clearest articulation of their sound ever, blurring the boundary lines between woodsy folk, rural psychedelia, and an experimental take on roots rock. "No Sanctuary Blues" finds Arbouretum at the crossroads of all of their varied impulses. Solid rhythm section playing shifts between bar room rock and sprawling drone while Heumann steps away from delivering spirited vocals only to offer Richard Thompson-grade guitar soloing. The moments of cosmic space-out are highlighted by keyboardist Matthew Pierce's unobtrusive synth textures... (Fred Thomas)
The Exbats - Kicks, Hits and Fits / Immediate Girl
When a band bases a large portion of their appeal on seeming charmingly ramshackle, they take a calculated risk when they decide to make their fans aware that they know what they're doing. The Exbats built their initial reputation with a pair of cassette-only releases that were good rollicking fun (the highlights were collected on the 2019 LP E Is for Exbats) but sounded something less than professional. While 2020's Kicks, Hits and Flips isn't a model of high-gloss studiocraft in the 21st century, it does make them sound like a real band and not a bunch of lovable goofballs, and that makes a difference. Matt Rendon, the Exbats' former bassist, was the engineer for the Kicks, Hits and Flips sessions, and he and the group -- lead singer and drummer Inez McLain, guitarist and vocalist Kenny McLain (who is also Inez's dad), and bassist Bobby Carlson, Jr. -- have made this the cleanest and tightest Exbats album to date, complete with spot-on harmonies, commendable instrumental work, occasional keyboard and percussion overdubs, and audio crisp enough that you can notice all of the above... (Mark Deming)
Moaning - Uneasy Laughter / Running
Moaning's self-titled 2018 debut was an astonishingly focused set of noisy post-punk songs filled with scathingly bitter lyrics that attempted to uncover the problems behind faulty relationships. On the band's second album, they retain the same lyrical concerns, but they completely revamp their sound, replacing the sheets of guitars with synthesizers and electronic loops. Not that guitars have entirely left the picture, as every song contains them in some form or another, but there's a much wider range of tones on display here. Even with the switch from noise-pop to dark new wave, and the increased sonic experimentation, the band still write hook-filled songs with cutting lyrics that attempt to make sense of a constant storm of conflicting feelings... The insistent "Brave One" begins with spaghetti Western-like chords, then gets flooded out with distorted melodies that sound uncannily like guitars... (Paul Simpson)
...In fact, they very rarely reach for the brake pedal on Melee, choosing instead to approach a thrash pace on standout songs like “Fox,” where drummer Parker Grissom and bassist Chase Macinski establish themselves as solid, speedy foundation-layers and a group of 11 people expertly provide backing gang-vocals. “Any moment now, I will disintegrate,” Stoitsiadis barks as the din swirls around him. “You’ll make your move and I will fade out.” Here, Dogleg sounds a lot like another band of Rust Belt scorchers: Cloud Nothings... Melee is a worthy debut for a very promising band. (Ben Salmon)
Ratgrave - Rock / Rock
Julius Conrad and Max Graef seem to use their Ratgrave project as a creative playground, acting on some of their stranger artistic impulses and making a complete mockery of the premise of genre restrictions. Following 2018's Ratgrave, recorded over the course of three years in several different locations and touching on styles ranging from lo-fi funk to rave, the duo concocted Rock, a frankly bonkers set of heavy cosmic fusion. The musicians point to jazz-rock and psychedelic/hard rock monoliths like Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, and Blue Cheer as inspirations, but that's only part of the story here. The pair mix chunky guitars with big '80s drum machines, twisting them into complex patterns, and bending them further through unruly delay and flange effects... (Paul Simpson)
Helen Money - Atomic / Brave On
Alison Chesley's fifth solo full-length as Helen Money is both more expansive and more direct than her previous releases. Progressing from 2016's Become Zero, her first album to utilize multi-track digital recording, she continues to incorporate electronics and adventurous sound design into her work, this time featuring modular synthesizer textures applied by collaborator Will Thomas. The electronic enhancements give her cello playing a dreamy, unearthly glow, making it sound like an orchestra of ghosts are accompanying her performance... (Paul Simpson)
Ultraista, Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, Thomas Dybdahl, Baxter Dury, James Righton, Joywave, Arbouretum, The Exbats, Moaning, Dogleg, Ratgrave, Helen Money
