January 20, 2017 — Stinkweeds
This Week’s New Releases & Staff Picks – 1/20/17
STAFF PICKS
kimber – tycho
lindsay – a winged victory for the sullen, michael chapman
dario – phillip glass
jeff – joan of arc
dominic – phillip glass
THIS WEEK’S NEW RELEASES
AFI – AFI (The Blood Album) CD/LP (Concord)
“Eclectic punk godfathers AFI are the kings of keeping going, progressing over more than twenty-five years from outsiders to insiders to chart-topping legends. At this point, they have little to prove – but AFI are not yet ready to settle back on their laurels and fossilize into a nostalgia act. They still have plenty left to give – and more than a few fans hungry for more music. AFI – also known as “The Blood Album” – is precision-engineered to satisfy AFI fans old and new. As a whole, it feels like a relay race started off by AFI’s slicker, more commercially oriented side (the pace set by ‘Dark Snow,’ ‘Still A Stranger,’ ‘Aurelia,’ ‘Hidden Knives,’ ‘Get Hurt,’ and ‘Above The Bridge’) and continued with raw, aggressive style that proves AFI haven’t forgotten their roots (‘Dumb Kids,’ ‘Pink Eyes,’ ‘Feed From The Floor,’ ‘White Offerings,’ and ‘She Speaks The Language’) before finally finishing with a self-stretching, end-of-the-line blues dirge (‘The Wind That Carries Me Away’). In the middle, there’s also an anticipation-building changeover as ‘So Beneath You’ bursts out as AFI’s old-school punky herald, gives way to accessible sing-along ‘Snow Cats,’ and the aforementioned aggression really gets going from ‘Dumb Kids’ onwards” – TheMusicalMeltingPot. [Limited color vinyl pressing also available.]
Austra – Future Politics CD/LP+MP3 (Domino)
“The notion of Utopia doesn’t have a lot of currency these days, but that hasn’t stopped Katie Stelmanis. The creative force behind the Canadian electronic outfit Austra, she’s used the project’s new album, Future Politics, to foment a kind of radicalism in an age of doom and gloom: making music that questions, confronts and uplifts without scaremongering or sugarcoating. She’s also not being shy. ‘Utopia,’ the album’s lead single, telegraphs her intent with unabashed optimism. Amid sculpted beats and soaring melodies, Stelmanis sings of urban life and alienation in an era of social division and injustice. But she’s militant about lining those dark clouds with silver — or, as she puts it, ‘I can picture a place where everybody feels it, too / It might be fiction, but I see it ahead.’ Whether cloaking itself in code, dipping into metaphor or flying proclamations up the flagpole, these 11 songs offer a bracing, coolly tuneful vision of tomorrow that refuses to submit to inertia. In an era when simply resisting dystopia can seem idealistic, Future Politics dares to hope big.” – NPR
Avec le Soleil Sortant de sa Bouche – Pas Pire Pop, I Love You So Much CD/LP (Constellation)
Psychedelic rock, krautrock, desert rock, punk rock, noise rock, Afrobeat, experimental pop, post-rock, electronic; all are touchstones for Avec le Soleil Sortant de sa Bouche. Their multi-movement durational music arguably combines trance rock and audio collage above all — a diced and spliced approach to longform multi-movement groove music played by a stripped down quartet of two guitars, bass and drums, synched to pre-recorded electronics and musique concrète.
Bash & Pop – Anything Could Happen CD/LP (Fat Possum)
“Tommy Stinson formed Bash & Pop after the Replacements broke up in the early 1990s, then abandoned the project after one album. Now, B&P is back with the ragged but right rocked-out Anything Could Happen, which captures a measure of the ‘Mats’ offhand grace.” – Philly.com
William Basinski – A Shadow In Time CD/LP+MP3 (Temporary Residence)
World-renowned as one of experimental music’s most vital and impressionistic composers of the past few decades, William Basinski’s tape loop works have been especially influential, particularly on the historic series, The Disintegration Loops, where distorted, orchestral tape samples burrow deep into the listener’s psyche through meditative repetition. On his new album, A Shadow In Time, Basinski plunges deeper than ever for the plaintive, solitary eulogy to David Bowie, aptly titled “For David Robert Jones.” Conversely, the title track, “A Shadow In Time,” is a subtle, celestial escalation of melody and drone.
Erasmo Carlos – Erasmo Carlos [Reissue/1971] CD/LP+MP3 (Light In The Attic)
Digitally remastered edition of this album from the veteran Brazilian singer/songwriter. Erasmo Carlos finds this maturing teeny-bopper delivering a mix of world class psychedelic rock, traditional rock ‘n’ roll, soul, funk, folk, bossa nova, and samba-rock to an unsuspecting Brazilian audience.
Michael Chapman – 50 CD/LP+MP3 (Paradise Of Bachelors)
After five decades of recording and touring, veteran British songwriter and guitar sage Michael Chapman has finally made what he calls his “American record,” and the aptly titled 50 now stands as his late career masterwork, a moving legacy statement by a legend. Backed by a collaborative group of friends and acolytes—Steve Gunn (who also produced), Nathan Bowles (Pelt), James Elkington (Jeff Tweedy), Jason Meagher (No-Neck Blues Band), Jimi SeiTang (Rhyton), and fellow UK songwriting luminary Bridget St John—Chapman tears into both bold renderings of new songs and radical reinterpretations of material from his revered catalog, the crack band adeptly scaling the same rarefied sonic heights of classic Harvest albums like Fully Qualified Survivor, guided by a true survivor’s instinct, wit, and wisdom.
Cherry Glazerr – Apocalipstick CD/LP+MP3 (Secretly Canadian)
Society would deem a prodigious girl can’t be in a progressive rock band while also being in complete control of its creative vision, business plan and social messaging. Society is wrong. Clem, a 19 year old teen Queen dreamed up Cherry Glazerr in her L.A. bedroom alone and is perhaps more capable of figuring a music career out than anyone who attempts this treacherous life path. Back in 2014, much-loved Cali imprint Burger Records released their intoxicating debut Haxel Princess and Suicide Squeeze released the Had Ten Dollaz 7”. On Apocalipstick the band worked with “rock ‘n’ roll wizard” Joe Chicarelli (White Stripes, The Shins, The Strokes) and Carlos de la Garza (Bleached, M83, Tegan and Sara). With their help and the band’s newfound self-discipline and motivation, Cherry Glazerr has evolved into a wildly complex, hugely guitar heavy, and unapologetically loud machine. [Limited pink vinyl pressings also available.]
Tim Cohen – Luck Man CD/LP (Sinderlyn/Captured Tracks)
On Luck Man, The Fresh & Only’s and Magic Trick frontman’s first solo record for Sinderlyn, Cohen has created a lush, insular world that deals with the uneasiness of accepting life’s inherent flaws. Recorded in his attic and at El Studio in San Francisco after recently moving back to a city he longed called home, Luck Man is a personal statement distilled from Cohen’s own experiences.
Dot Hacker – N°3 CD/LP (ORG Music)
Dot Hacker is the project of California-based musicians Josh Klinghoffer, Clint Walsh, Eric Gardner, and Jonathan Hischke. Collectively, the members have played with a seemingly never-ending list of artists, including Gnarls Barkley, Broken Bells, PJ Harvey, Morrissey, The Shins, Beck, Hella, Tom Morello, and so many more. Most notably, guitarist and lead singer Josh Klinghoffer plays guitar in the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Foxygen – Hang CD/LP+MP3/Cassette (Jagjaguwar)
Foxygen is the Big Bang of two combusting minds. It’s the splayed Galaxy of polar geniuses Sam France and Jonathan Rado. It’s a handshake with a knife behind your back. A sleepless night in a five star hotel. You listen to Hang properly. You take in each moment. Each new melody that threads forward from the fingertips of one of this generation’s finest piano men in Jonathan Rado. And you fall in line behind Sam France’s sprawling and reckless lyric. Witness his mastery. Feel them struggle against the walls of their own creations. Follow them there. To the perimeter. To the exit sign. Notice that the two young guys aren’t there anymore. They’re outside looking for another joint to haunt. They’re already out of sight. [Limited green color vinyl pressing also available.]
Philip Glass and Miranda Cuckson – Glass: Music For The Crucible CD (Orange Mountain)
Glass composed about 40 minutes of new music for violin and cello as the main body of his score The Crucible. Only half of that music was used in the 2016 production on Broadway and it was
supplemented with Glass arranging several traditional hymns. What is presented on this album is the complete original music for violin and cello that Glass wrote for the play omitting the hymn songs as well as one short piece for violin cello and organ that was something of a last-minute addition.
The Grateful Dead – The Grateful Dead [Reissue/1967] 2xCD/LP (Grateful Dead Production)
50th Anniversary Deluxe double-CD set includes the original album remastered as well as the unreleased show from P.N.E. Garden Auditorium, Vancouver, BC, Canada on July 29th, 1966. Also includes four additional tracks from the subsequent night at same venue. [A limited edition picture disc vinyl pressing of the original album is also available.]
Mick Harvey – Intoxicated Women CD/LP (Mute)
Fourth volume of Serge Gainsbourg covers from Mick Harvey (The Bad Seeds, The Birthday Party).
Joan Of Arc – He’s Got The Whole This Land Is Your Land In His Hands CD/LP+MP3 (Joyful Noise)
“Twenty years now there’s been this thing, our band, Joan Of Arc. Sometimes we forget about it and let it fizzle out for a year while we tend to our lives. Sometimes we cling to it for a year and wake up surprised and exhausted every day for months on end, given walking tours of old Italian towns, browsing dreary British pedestrian malls or barefooted organic grocers on the Pacific coast. We know how lucky we are. The less we feel like a band — the more we can continue to be a band, but escape that feeling of doing all those shitty, corny things expected of bands — the truer to ourselves we feel. And you all know it, everyone knows it even if everyone has to bury it to get on with their day-to-day: the truer to ourselves we feel, the better everything gets. This time, finally, we trusted each other enough to throw all the songs away, to even throw away every preconceived idea about which one of us should take position at which instrument. We hit Record and played, and our collective tastes emerged. And they, our tastes in the moment, were the only standards in all the expanse of the stupefying and beautiful unknown universe, that we regarded as relevant in the least.”
Kid Koala featuring Emilíana Torrini – Music To Draw To: Satellite CD/2xLP (Arts & Crafts)
An uncharted journey for the legendary scratch DJ, producer, and composer, Kid Koala’s fifth studio album is an emotional work of expansive instrumental soundscapes and chilling vocal ballads. A record of many firsts for Eric San, the inaugural volume in the Music To Draw To series finds Kid Koala collaborating with a singer, writing lyrics, and producing and performing all instruments. Satellite is the renowned audio-collagist’s first non-sample-based record, using an array of synthesizers, keys, guitars, basses, strings, turntables, noisemakers, and inventive recording techniques to create its celestial atmosphere. Written during the gelid Montreal winter, Music To Draw To: Satellite tells a heartrending tale of discovery and loss through the lens of lovers separated by a one-way space mission to Mars. The album’s eighteen spacious movements are threaded with eight lyrical songs written by Kid Koala in collaboration with Icelandic singer Emilíana Torrini.
Awa Poulo – Poulo Warali CD/LP (Awesome Tapes From Africa)
Awa Poulo is a singer of Peulh origin from Dilly commune, Mali, near the border with Mauritania. Largely pastoral and often nomadic, Peulh- (or Fula-) speaking peoples are found from Senegal to Ethiopia but predominate in the Sahel region of West Africa. Poulo Warali is her newest recording of highly virtuosic folk-pop, fresh from the studio, broadcasting her vision of Peulh music beyond the grazing grounds and central markets of her remote home region in southwestern Mali.
SOHN – Rennen CD/LP (4AD)
Rennen is a German verb that translates in English to “run,” and as soon as SOHN begins to describe his journey over the last two years, it becomes obvious why it’s also the title of his stunning new album for 4AD. Musically, SOHN exercised restraint in the productions, limiting each song to three main elements. His goal was to hone in on the essence of the tracks, and to ensure that he recorded only the strongest material that could stand on its own without studio magic. It’s an ambitious exhibition of both his personal and artistic growth, a confident display of the evolution he’s undergone in just two short years.
The Stray Trolleys – Barricades And Angels CD/LP (Captured Tracks)
Before there was The Cleaners From Venus, prolific singer/songwriter and national treasure of Wivenhoe, England, Martin Newell was in a band called The Stray Trolleys. In 1980, he and a few youngish unknowns got together in a little home-built country studio and recorded a handful of songs for an album that eventually emerged on a DIY cassette, Barricades And Angels. They weren’t perfect, but there is something very special about this collection. The music captures a time.
Tycho – Epoch CD/LP+MP3 (Ghostly International)
An epoch is defined as an extended period of time typically characterized by a distinctive development or by a memorable series of events, and Scott Hansen, leader of the band Tycho, has named their new album Epoch with that in mind. The last installment in a trilogy, Epoch is the culmination of more than a decade’s work that has seen the band evolving and maturing through two sublime releases Dive (2011) and Awake (2014), and developing from featuring Hansen as a delicate solo performer into the iconic frontman of a powerful multi-layered live band performing on the world’s largest stages. “Divewas where the whole thing crystallized,” said Hansen. “I found that crossover space between what I was doing before, which was more IDM electronic stuff, and the rock music that reflected more of what I was listening to and not necessarily what I was making. Awake was a prototype of pushing it as far into the rock realm as I was comfortable with. Epoch is basically coming full circle. All the lessons of Dive and Awake were applied and then expanded upon. Epoch leverages the sonic aesthetic of Dive’s down-tempo vintage-style synthesizers and beautiful melodies while drawing on the kinetic energy ofAwake’s progressive composition and organic instrumentation. [A limited red vinyl edition with bundled slipmat is also available, while supplies last.]
Uniform – Wake In Fright CD/LP (Sacred Bones)
Wake In Fright, the second full-length by the New York City duo Uniform, is a harrowing exploration of self-medication, painted in the colors of war. Following the Ghosthouse 12”, whose A-side Pitchfork called “their most relentless track yet,” vocalist Michael Berdan and guitarist/producer Ben Greenberg return with a new batch of even more punishing tracks that incorporate elements of industrial music, thrash metal, harsh noise, and power electronics.
A Winged Victory For The Sullen – Iris [Musique Originale] CD/LP (Erased Tapes)
Recent. “A Winged Victory for the Sullen’s third studio album, Iris, wilts in the winter and blossoms once again in the ripening of spring. With surprising additions and slightly harsher elements, Iris is a sub-zero score, and while it may be cold outside, the breaking of the sun can still lead to a beautifully crisp, bright day. Musically, the record is less a natural development and more a slight departure. While 2014’s sophomore Atomos inflated their modern classical-slash-ambient sound, their score for Jalil Lespert’s film expands it even more.” – A Closer Listen
Bohren & Der Club Of Gore – Geisterfaust [2005] 2xLP (PIAS America)
Geisterfaust, by one of the slowest bands on Earth, is presented in an even more reduced and slow motion style — back in full glory, with 58 minutes of playtime over five astonishing tracks for the first time on vinyl. Geisterfaust might be translated as “the fist of a ghost” and the individual tracks are “trigger finger”, “ring finger”, “middle finger”, “thumb” and “little finger”. The doom jazz group, who are much loved by musicians like Mike Patton (of Faith No More and who releases their albums on the Ipecac label) or Stephen O’Malley (sunn O)))), deliver outstanding music. For fans of sunn O))), OM, Max Richter, Fennesz and David Lynch/Angelo Badalamenti. Instrumental music of the highest caliber.
Mono – Under The Pipal Tree 2001] 2xLP (Temporary Residence)
First time on vinyl with alternate artwork. Under The Pipal Tree is the debut album by Japanese experimental rock band, Mono. Released in 2001 on avant-garde icon John Zorn’s Tzadik label, the album showcased a young Japanese quartet whose wide range of influences — most notably Sonic Youth, Mogwai, The Velvet Underground, and Neil Young’s Crazy Horse — were on ferocious and ambitious display.
Run-D.M.C. – Run-D.M.C. [Reissue/1984] LP (Get On Down)
Future archaeologists will discuss two periods in 1980s: before Run-DMC and after Run-DMC. It’s no exaggeration to say that the group changed the course of music in the ‘80s, bringing the old-school of rap into the new with one simple piece of flat, black plastic. Run-D.M.C. was the first rap full-length to achieve Gold status. A classic that still sounds fresh today as it did more than 30 years ago.
NEXT WEEK’S NEW RELEASES
FRANK TURNER – Sleep Is For The Week CD/LP (10th Anniv Edition) CD/LP
P.O.S. – Chill Dummy CD
CHRIS THILE + BRAD MEHLDAU – Self-Titled CD/LP
CLOUD NOTHINGS – Life Without Sound CD/LP
ALLISON CRUTCHFIELD – Tourist In This Town CD/LP
DELICATE STEVE – This Is Steve CD/LP
MARK EITZEL – My Mr Ferryman CD/LP
HALF JAPANESE – Hear The Lion’s Roar CD/LP
JAPANDROIDS – Near To The Wild Heart Of Life CD/LP
TIFT MERRITT – Stitch Of The World CD/LP
TY SEGALL – Self-Titled CD/LP
SLEATER KINNEY – Live in Paris CD/LP/CASS
TOBIN SPROUT – Universe + Me CD/LP
TSOL – Trigger Complex CD/LP
MATTHEW DEAR – DJ Kicks CD/LP
ULRICH SCHNAUSS + JONAS MUNK – Passage CD/LP
BBQ – MARK SULTAN CD/LP
ISIS – Wavering Radiant LP
PROJECT PITCHFORK – Look Up, I’m Down There CD
HOWE GELB – Future Standards CD/LP
ALKALINE TRIO – LP reissues
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE – Here Comes The Indian LP reissue
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE – Hollindagain LP reissue
VIC CHESNUTT – Little LP
PANDA BEAR – Young Prayer LP
FRED THOMAS – Changer LP
MINOR VICTORIES – Orchestral Variations LP
LUNA – Romantica LP
LUNA – Rendezvous LP