Short Attention Span Record Reviews, Jan 2021

DALE CROVER – Rat-A-Tat-Tat!
Melvins drummer’s solo album is a fun combination of poppy desert rock hooks and percussive weirdness. (7)

THE DIRTY NIL – Fuck Art
Canadian pop-punk trolls with a juvenile sense of humor, just the way it should be. (7)

DREAD SOVEREIGN – Alchemical Warfare
The guy from Primordial and his pet doom-meets-Venom metal project kick some ass. (8)

STEVE EARLE & THE DUKES – J.T.
Steve’s touching farewell to his estranged son Justin Townes Earle who died of a drug overdose a few months ago. Great songs, great versions. (8)

EMINEM – Music To Be Murdered By - Side B
2020’s surprise-drop album surprise-rereleased with 16 extra tracks just to prove that, from a technical perspective, this rapper still got no competition. And I love the fact that he stays politically incorrect. (7)

BARRY GIBB – Greenfields: The Gibb Brothers Songbook, Vol 1
The only Bee Gee still standing countryfies hits and deep cuts from the band’s catalog with the help of Nashville royalty (Keith Urban, Jason Isbell, Alison Krauss, Little Big Town, Dolly Parton, Miranda Lambert, Sheryl Crow etc.). An excellent album. (8)

HERE LIES MAN – Ritual Divination
Band that describes itself as “Afrobeat meets Black Sabbath” goes full-on Black Sabbath this time around, and it’s a blast! (8)

KRUDER & DORFMEISTER – 1995
People used to get REALLY stoned to K&D’s chillout, trip-hoppy mixes/remixes back in the 90’s. It’s good to have them back, even if we’re too old for bongs and Rizlas nowadays. (8)

DANIEL O’SULLIVAN & RICHARD YOUNGS – Twelve Of Hearts
I consider myself an O’Sullivan fan and this collab album with Youngs is quite interesting, especially for obsessive compulsives like myself: Each song has exactly four chords that cycle without variation, never changing key. These self-imposed limitations force the musicians to focus on texture and dynamics, and the result is almost meditative in its deceptive simplicity. (7)

SLEAFORD MODS – Spare Ribs
Why is this guy yelling in my face all the time? And why am I starting to like it? (8)

JAZMINE SULLIVAN – Heaux Tales
A very good hip-hop infused R&B record. RYIL Lauryn Hill, Beyonce, Anderson .Paak. (8)

VARIOUS ARTISTS - Sumer Is Icumen In: The Pagan Sound Of British And Irish Folk 1966-75
There’s nothing I enjoy more than a compilation with an intriguing concept, and this 3-CD set focuses on folk music with a strong pagan flavor. You get the hits of the era of course (e.g. Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, Incredible String Band, Traffic’s “John Barleycorn”…), but you’ll also discover a bunch of underground stuff that would make Mikael Åkerfeldt cream his pants. A real treasure cove (the compilation, not Åkerfeldt's pants). (9)