The Day(s) of Many New Albums, Part 3, Final (8/30/2012 19:00)

The fact that the Baltimore Grand Prix costs more than it brings in, and that politicians are too dumb to know that negative numbers are bad, means traffic was horrible, and I was able to finish the rest of my albums on the way home from work.

Shall we...?

Purity Ring
Shrines
Genre: Witch...house? Is that a...a thing? Listened: 8/30 while at work.

Don't judge a book by it's cover, and don't assume that a band called "Purity Ring" makes either overt Christian rock, or extremely sarcastic screamo. This might be the best new discovery apart from DIIV.  The songs are dark, but have great beats. Imagine if a three-way between Crystal Castles, Sleigh Bells, and Chromatics produced some weird offspring, that would be Shrines. If dubstep was good, it would be Purity Ring.

TNGHT
TNGHT EP
Genre: Umm..some kind of electronica? Listened: 8/30 on I-495

This album was weird, to say the least. The music wasn't particularly bizarre, it was just that it clearly should have had lyrics and didn't. No, I don't think all music should have singing, I'm not a rube. TNGHT has clearly made what should be hip-hop beats, but there's no one rapping.  The lack of lyrics means that songs crescendo for no reason and then just sort of die off. Then there's the last track, "Easy Easy," which uses a sample so annoying Gilbert Gottfried flashed out of existence, because there can be only one.

Jessie Ware
Devotion
Genre: Pop soul, because "soul pop" would mean some other kind of music. Listened: 8/30 on I-95

This is the direction that Massive Attack should have gone on their way to finding success, rather than 10,000 Windows or whatever that was. Ware's voice is amazing, and the trip-hop-style backing is the best pairing of alto R&B singer and massive bass I've heard in a very long time. Doomed to obscurity no more, hopefully.

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
Mature Themes
Genre: Psychedelia is the best thing I can come up with. Listened: 8/30 from the BP on 295 to Route 40...that's right, I got through a whole album in 1.8 miles. Thanks a lot, Grand Prix.

Pink's Before Today, despite being highly acclaimed, was the worst piece-of-crap album I have ever heard in my entire life...IN MY LIFE. That, fortunately is not the case here. To explain Pink's music is difficult. Imagine the weirdest stuff the Beatles ever wrote. No, weirder. Like "Glass Onion" playing backwards over top of "Revolution 9." Now that you're there, look off into the horizon. Far beyond that, where the curvature of the Earth makes it impossible to see, and sea monsters lie in wait for Spanish galleons, there is a land where INLAND EMPIRE is considered the greatest movie ever, cricket is a way to achieve transcendence, and Chuck Palahniuk doesn't seem like a pretentious douchebag. That is where Ariel Pink goes to get inspiration for his music, which even confuses the hell out of the people there. That said, Mature Themes is maybe the most fun I've ever had listening to an album. I mean, come on, he sings an entire song about schnitzel. How can John Maus ever compete with that?

Swans
The Seer
Genre: Experimental...to say the least. Listened: God, I could not finish this leviathan in one sitting.

Swans' The Seer is, by a wide margin, the most boring album on this list. I was going to say, "the worst," but remember, Dirty Projectors were on here two posts ago. Every song is over five minutes. One is 19, another is 23, and the title track is 32 God-forsaken minutes. It is also the most horrible thing put out since Deerhunter made a psychedelic mixtape. The first six minutes, at least, of the 32:14, is ambient...bagpipes. You read that correctly, ambient bagpipes, with, like, this clicking sound in the background the whole time. That's when I gave up. Somehow, this album is getting critical acclaim. Apparently "professional" music critics don't mind hearing the sound of their own brain melt.

Wild Nothing
Nocturne
Genre: Dream pop. Listened: 8/30 for the three tracks it took me to realize I'd heard this before.

See: Passion Pit's Gossamer on Part 2 of this article. I don't feel like expounding anymore, but let me just say that there's only so much MGMT and Beach House knock-off music one can listen too without falling asleep in a bathtub.

Matthew Dear
Beams
Genre: Electropop. Listened: 8/30 on the last stretch of Route 40 and over and over ever since.

I have been waiting all day to get to listen to this. I finished it as I started writing this segment. Matthew Dear's strange version of club music is the most awesome thing in this whole set of articles.  2010's Black City was one of the best of that year, and surely Beams will be one of this year's. It's jumpy, fun, easy to listen to, and yet so complex, it makes you want to keep listening. Thank God I got to this album before I lost all faith in music.

This has been quite the experience. I learned that DIIV, Purity Ring, and Jessie Ware are great new acts, that Matthew Dear hasn't lost his touch, and that listening to that much "experimental" music in one sitting is probably damaging to your mental health.

I suppose I should just keep up with things instead of binging like this, huh?

The Day(s) of Many New Albums, Part 2 (8/30/2012 13:45)

Continuing on the journey of sonic discovery you pass a place, the kind with a monster or some kind of weird mirror. Look into the mirror and find...

Baroness
Yellow & Green
Genre: Hard rock. Listened: Once when it came out, then switched back to Blue Record.

This was one of the albums I looked forward to the most this year. Unfortunately for me, I think Baroness was replaced by the members of Mastodon while on Valium. The music is good on a technical, theoretical level, but it's not quite Baroness-y enough. Red Album had long, guttural, sludge metal songs. Blue Record shortened the songs, but made them pack a bigger punch. Yellow & Green doubled the lengths of the songs from Red, but was apparently written by the guys from Extreme. I think it's safe to assume Baroness crashed their tour bus because they were listening to "Concainium."

Passion Pit
Gossamer
Genre: Electropop...I guess. Listened: 8/30 at lunch, then realized I already had MGMT on my iPod.

You probably already know Passion Pit, even if you don't know you know them. Their song "Take a Walk" is on some commercial, and you would recognized it as soon as you heard it. The music is really catchy, but it's been done before. High-pitched, repetitive synth lines; nasally, male (I think?) voice; simple rhythm guitar and drums in the background. I can only assume Gossamer was written when the band placed their cat on one of those floor keyboards in a room filled with strobe lights, and the cat's name was "Matt & Kim."

So far, not a good set for lunchtime. Perhaps the good stuff will pick back up on my way home from work, though I doubt it; the next band up is called "Purity Ring."

TO BE CONTINUED...

The Day(s) of Many New Albums, Part 1 (8/30/2012 11:30)

It has been a while since I reviewed a new album, and quite a few have come out. The reason...I...haven't listened to any of them. UNTIL YESTERDAY! And today!  And...probably tomorrow.  There's like 12 or something, give me a break.

Going on from when Fiona Apple released [this album title is really, really, really long], there have been a great many albums released and I shall try to review them here as I listen.

Ty Segall Band
Slaughterhouse
Genre: Punk/Noise Rock. Listened: 8/29

If you like punk, hard rock, or Jesus Lizard-ness, Ty Segall has got an album for you. It's called Slaugterhouse and it's pretty awesome.  It's mixed in a lo-fi style, so imagine OFF! or Iceage's music with Neon Indian's recording style. Great, right? You know it is.

DIIV
Oshin
Genre: Shoegaze, maybe? Whatever Sufjan Stevens would be if he only used computers. Listened 8/29

A Krautrock revival, Oshin is one of the best albums I've heard so far this year. DIIV uses driving base lines and moody synths to set up dark lyrics in the weirdest, but best next step along the path from the Johnny-Jewel-produced italo-disco sound.  There may be no real hero, real human being here, but they certainly made my night better.

Dirty Projectors
Swing Lo Magellan
Genre: The same as Pavement, which isn't a good sign. Listened 8/30 on the way to work.

What is this crap? I didn't know all your lyrics could be "oooOOooo," but the Dirty Projectors found a way. This band is more overrated than Sonic Youth, and that's saying something. There's like, one, okay song on here ("Unto Caesar") and that's because the women sing something other than "doo doo da doo doo" for once.  What? Did you think every album that came out since June was a good one?

Twin Shadow
Confess
Genre: New wave. Listened: Every day since it came out.

At first I thought Confess was a weak follow-up to 2010's awesome, Forget, but that's because I fell into the same trap as most critics...I expected the same thing twice.  Twin Shadow's new album has a different sound: more produced, more layers, harder to follow lyrical structure; but that doesn't make it bad. If I had never heard the first album, this one would be just as great. It's a little more work, and a little less "fun," but totally worth it.

Frank Ocean
Channel Orange
Genre: Neo soul. Listened: 8/30 while at work.

Very good album. Definitely one of the best to come out of the R&B school for a long time. I'm not quite sure where all the "album of the year" hype is coming from--Channel Orange is just a more-trippy, male version of Janelle Monae--but it is pretty cool to listen to. The guest appearance by Andre 3000 doesn't hurt either.

Nas
Life Is Good
Genre: Rap of some kind. Listened: Honestly, after the second song, I turned it off, 8/30.

This is the conversation my brain had with itself while attempting to listen to Life Is Good:
     Right Side: "Hey, isn't gangster rap dead?"
     Left Side: "No, Nas is still around, apparently."
     Right Side: "..."
     Left Side: "Good point."

TO BE CONTINUED...