Short Attention Span Record Reviews, Last Batch Before The List

THE BATHERS – Sirenesque
This is fucking gorgeous, best orchestral pop album of the year, why have I never heard of these guys before. (8)

DANNY BROWN – Quaranta
One of the best rappers out there hits 40, slows down the beats and the flow, and doubles up on the intensity. (8)

LILA DOWNS – La Sanchez
Another fantastic vocal performance from Downs on the most personal album of her career, written during a turbulent time in her personal life and with her partner/producer/manager/saxophonist dying midway through the recording process. If you want a quick taste of Regional Mexican, the most popular music genre you probably never even heard of, you might as well start here. (8)

DUSK – Glass Pastures
Like CCR for indie rock kids. (8)

THE DWARVES – Concept Album
Juvenile humor combined with stoopid punk rock riffs and catchy choruses? Bring it on! Nick Oliveri’s on bass and this is better than QOTSA’s 2023 album, so he wins. (8)

PETER GABRIEL – I/O
Literally two decades in the making, I/O rewards the listener with a texturally rich aural experience (including two different mixes) and some of Gabriel’s best songwriting – and for a guy who wrote “Solsbury Hill”, “Games Without Frontiers”, and “In Your Eyes”, this says quite a lot. (8)

GHOST WOMAN - Hindsight is 50/50
What if The White Stripes were actually The Cramps but played psychedelic goth? (8)

HARP – Albion
Former Midlake frontman Tim Smith in Robert Smith (no relation) worship mode. (7)

DOLLY PARTON – Rockstar
After being indicted into the Rock Hall Of Fame despite her protests that she’s not a rock musician, she releases a rock album as a response and invites what feels like the entire Rock Hall of Fame to be on it – the guest list is more stacked that Dolly herself, with everyone from McCartney to Miley Cyrus to Stevie Nicks to Rob Halford showing up. As for the songs? Her own compositions are fine, the covers are essentially so close to the originals that they can be considered karaoke (with a couple of notable exceptions, e.g. a fantastic gospel-flavoured version of CCR’s “Long As I Can See The Light” featuring John Fogerty), but it’s all good, clean, stupid fun. (7)

VARIOUS ARTISTS – The Faithful: A Tribute to Marianne Faithfull
A great team of mainly female artists on a benefit album for Marianne, who’s been struggling with health issues and unable to perform. Excellent job covering Faithfull (or covering Faithfull covers) by the likes of Tanya Donelly, Josie Cotton, Shirley Manson with Peaches, Bush Tetras, Lydia Lunch, and, ummm, Iggy Pop? (8) 

2023: The Metal List

While the Music Geek is putting the final touches on his annual genre-agnostic and quite Epic "Best Albums Of the Year" List, here's a quick one: 2023's 20 favorite metal and metal-friendly releases. The order is alphabetical, to keep the suspense going on which ones will end up on the other List as well.

Feel free to share suggestions in the "Comments" area on what I might have missed out on. No, Baroness are not in my top-20 this time, Metallica barely cracked the top-40, and Sleep Token can go fuck themselves.

THE ABBEY – Word Of Sin
BEARTOOTH – The Surface
BLOOD CEREMONY – The Old Ways Remain
BUGGIN – Concrete Cowboys
CODE ORANGE – The Above
DANAVA – Nothing But Nothing
DODHEIMSGARD – Black Medium Current
THE DWARVES – Concept Album
FUCKED UP – One Day
GREEN LUNG – This Heathen Land
GRIDLINK – Coronet Juniper
KATATONIA – Sky Void Of Stars
KVELERTAK – Endling
MUTOID MAN – Mutants
MYRKUR – Spine
NETHERLANDS – Severance
POISON RUIN – Harvest
PRIMORDIAL – How It Ends
VENOMOUS CONCEPT – The Good Ship Lollipop
WITCH RIPPER – The Flight After The Fall

Short Attention Span Record Reviews, Nov 23

 

BEIRUT – Hadsel
Classic Beirut, you know, Casiotone beats – multitracked vox – unusual brass – other assorted unrock instruments – nice tunes. (7)

NIECY BLUES – Exit Simulation
One of those albums that get a “Best New Music” tag and an 8.7 from Pitchfork but I’m too thick to understand, like FKA Twigs or Bjork, where whatever fragments of actual songs exist are hidden as much as possible by all the “experimental” stuff going on around them. Just give me the fucking songs. (-)

JESSI COLTER – The Edge Of Forever
The “First Lady of Outlaw Country”, widow of Waylon Jennings and an acclaimed singer/songwriter in her own right, celebrates her 80th birthday with a new album produced by the “new Jessi Colter”, Margo Price. But neither her singing nor her songwriting are what they used to be. (6)

JOHN FRANCIS FLYNN – Look Over The Wall, See The Sky
This is music from another universe, an otherworldy transformation of 100-year old traditional Irish songs into a distorted lament about a Dublin long lost to gentrification. (8)

GREEN LUNG – This Heathen Land
Queen (first three albums) meets Uriah Heep meets Ghost for infinite awesomeness. (8)

LENHART TAPES – Dens
This guy’s from Belgrade and labels his music “ethno noise”. In essence this means he’s taking traditional Balkan sounds and giving them the sort of treatment 80’s industrial groups from ex-Yugoslavia, like Laibach and SCH, might have come up with. (8)

JEFFREY MARTIN – Thank God We Left The Garden
This album is a not-so-distant cousin of Joe Henry’s “All The Eye Can See” from earlier this year, in both sound and vibe. If you like really bleak, dark records you should definitely check this out and also remind me to never invite you to a party because you’re a miserable bastard. (8)

MELLOW CANDLE – Swaddling Songs (reissue)
A holy grail f0r 70’s prog-rock vinyl junkies, the sole album/lost masterpiece of this Irish progressive folk band was recently reissued by Decca at 1% the US$3,000 price tag people are paying for the original version on Discogs. (9)

TODD SNIDER – Crank It, We’re Doomed
World-class stoner and Nashville’s favorite underachiever finally got around to releasing a great album he recorded 16 years ago, I guess he couldn’t remember where he put it. Funny and sharp as always, and featuring guest spots by legends Kris Kristofferson and Loretta Lynn. (8)

CHRIS STAPLETON – Higher
Often grouped together with Jason Isbell but a very different animal, Stapleton is much more “traditional” in his approach to Southern-rock infused country music. Also, Isbell goes much deeper lyrically, but Stapleton’s got a voice for the ages! (8)

LOL TOLHURST X BUDGIE X JACKNIFE LEE – Los Angeles
Post-punk royalty with vocals provided by fans of their original bands like Bobby Gillespie and LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy. It sounds more like their guests’ bands than like The Cure or The Banshees. (7)

Short Attention Span Record Reviews, Oct 23 Vol. II

CIRITH UNGOL – Dark Parade
I love Cirith Ungol, always did, despite Baker’s voice being more of an acquired taste than Marmite, and “Dark Parade” is the best REAL heavy metal album from a bunch of 70-year- olds you’ll hear in 2023. (8)

ORA COGAN – Formless
A fascinating “under the radar” release, Cogan’s compositions often have a gothic cinematic vibe that brings to mind Cocteau Twins whilst her voice has a Sharon Van Etten-y quality. And she covers a Lhasa De Sela song, which is a big plus in my book. (8)

ROBERT FINLEY – Black Bayou
Septuagenarian Black Keys protégé is having a blast belting highly entertaining stories over some great funky blues tunes. (8)

THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM – History Books
The Springsteen influence was always there for these New Jersey punks, and on their comeback album they got the Boss himself to sing with them on the title track. Not an all-time classic like “The ’59 Sound”, but a very welcome return.  (8)

MYRKUR – Spine
Amalie Bruun’s Magnum Opus, she finally nailed that perfect marriage between Nordic folk and black metal she’s been aiming for since 2015. (8)

ISRAEL NASH – Ozarker
I described his previous album as “Chris Stapleton meets My Morning Jacket, music-wise and hair & beard-wise”. On the new album both the sound and the hair & beard can be more accurately described as Bob Seger. (8)

ØXN – Cyrm
Featuring members of Lankum and Percolator, this experimental dark folk/post-rock/with-shades-of-drone-and black-metal supergroup of sorts releases an excellent, startling debut. (8)

MARGO PRICE – Strays II
Her psilocybin-fueled and very good country rock album from earlier this year, now expanded with 9 unreleased tracks from the same sessions that are bit more traditional country-ish. (8)

REVEREND KRISTIN MICHAEL HAYTER – Saved!
Kristin Hayter kills off her Lingua Ignota persona, gets ordained, and releases something that sounds like Diamanda Galas doing a Nick Cave impression inside a Pentecostal church. (7)

THE ROLLING STONES – Hackney Diamonds
They’ve been a legacy act for 40 years already and everyone still goes to their gigs only to hear “Satisfaction” and “Paint It Black”, but they are Artists so they have an intrinsic need for new music. And there’s some really good stuff on this, too. Truly the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band on Earth. (8)

VARIOUS ARTISTS – If There’s Hell Below
A compilation of 13 tracks by totally unknown/forgotten black rock groups from the 70’s, drenched in fuzz and wah-wah like the illegitimate offspring of Funkadelic and Hendrix. You can give it anything between 10 and 6 depending on how much you value history and effort Vs. quality and talent. (-)

Short Attention Span Record Reviews, Oct 23

THE LOUDER STUFF

BEARTOOTH – The Surface
A couple of years ago they made The List with their previous album, probably the biggest surprise on that list: I loved the catchy choruses, and the brutal breakdowns, and the darkness. This time around, the darkness is missing. I assume this means the guy’s in a happier place now and more power to him, but it does make him sound like a metalcore Taylor Swift sometimes. (8)

BETTER LOVERS – God Made Me An Animal
This is essentially Every Time I Die with Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato on vocals, and this 4-track EP fucking rules, like a ETID/DEP hybrid should. (8)

CODE ORANGE – The Above
Their mixture of brutal hardcore and industrial/electronics is becoming better and better. This one also features catchier melodies than the last one, a new drummer (Portnoy’s kid), Steve Albini on the console, and… Billy Corgan??? (8)

CREEPER – Sanguivore
The Misfits produced by Jim Steinman. (7)

GRAVEYARD – 6
Mellower than previous efforts. Less exciting too. Bring back the Rock please. (7)

GRIDLINK – Coronet Juniper
Nine years after “Longhena” which had made The List and after making us think we’d never hear from them again, they’re back with another grindcore masterpiece, like Iron Maiden’s “Powerslave” played at three times the original speed. (9)

THE MENZINGERS – Some Of It Was True
2012’s “On The Impossible Past” is one of those albums that mean a LOT to some people, and this fact alone puts The Menzingers on a different level than most of their pop-punk peers. Their new album is a bit mellower than usual, drenched in purely American heartland imagery like cousins of the Gaslight Anthem. (8)

PRIMORDIAL – How It Ends
If Bathory had tried to make a U2 record in 1989, it might have sounded something like this. (8)

TWIN TEMPLE – God Is Dead
I have to admit that when the first track started playing and it sounded like a Phil Spector production from 1963 and then I realized that the chorus goes “Burn your Bible with me tonight” in a Ronettes voice I LOL’ed. Musically it’s a surprisingly accurate recreation of the feel of pre-Beatles pop, but lyrically at some point in the near future they’ll have to come up with a new joke because the cartoon satanism will only carry you so far. (7)


THE OTHER STUFF

BOYGENIUS – The Rest
Self-mythologizing companion EP to their album from earlier this year, it’s just as good and confirms their status as indie rock royalty. (8)

MIKE DOUGHTY’S GHOST OF VROOM – 3
As a former resident of New York in the mid-90’s I, of course, have a special place in my heart for Soul Coughing, and this is the closest Doughty has come in his post-SC career to recapturing that weird white-boy art-funk magic. (8)

GOAT – Medicine
The Swedes are back, darker and more psychedelic than ever, with their most stoner-friendly album to date. (8)

JOLIE HOLLAND – Haunted Mountain
A collaboration with Big Thief’s guitarist Buck Meek, who also rather confusingly released an album in collaboration with Holland titled “Haunted Mountain” earlier this year, this is a dark, experimental folk album that becomes quite uncomfortable once you’re aware of Holland’s biography (a religious cult survivor who lived homeless for years). Other reviewers say she sounds like a cross between Norah Jones and Lucinda Williams, but the Geek believes she has a closer kinship with Nina Nastasia. (7)

JASON ISBELL – Southeastern (10-Year Anniversary Edition)
The album that introduced the new, sober Isbell to a wider audience and launched a thousand Americana copycats has aged really well. This excellent edition includes a crisp remaster of the original, the demos, and the whole album performed live. (10)  

STEVEN WILSON – The Harmony Codex
I love the guy but at this point he’s at serious risk of getting a restraining order from David Gilmour’s lawyer. (8)

Short Attention Span Record Reviews, Sep 23 Vol. II

BARONESS – Stone
A slightly weaker album than previous ones, especially the last one which was a masterpiece. A 7.5, really, but I round upwards because they’re Baroness. (8)

CARDIACS – A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Window (reissue)
Equal parts prog and punk rock and with fans ranging from Radiohead to Hammers Of Misfortune (plus Blur, Faith No More, Steven Wilson…), the Cardiacs’ no-fucks-given debut album from 1988 gets the deluxe reissue treatment – 4 discs including demos, radio performances, and live shows, plus a book. Dig! (9)

MARGO CILKER – Valley Of Heart’s Delight
Cilker’s sophomore album is an excellent example of what makes good country music so effective: Romanticizing the road, diners, the great outdoors, and all the Americana we love, a prevailing sense of loss, and world-class musicianship. (8)

GRAILS – Anches En Maat
Cinematic and downtempo like Morricone soundtracking a 70’s blacksploitation flick. (8)

WILL JOHNSON – No Ordinary Clown
Texan polymath, and a touring member of Jason Isbell’s band, releases weird and glorious Americana record. (8)

LYDIA LOVELESS – Nothing’s Gonna Stand in My Way Again
Her gradual transformation from alt-country hellraiser to 90’s-influenced alt-rock powerhouse is now complete – where she once sung about Steve Earle, now she might as well sing about Alanis Morrisette and Liz Phair. (8)

MITSKI – The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We
I’ve exited social media several years ago so I’m probably missing out on a lot of artists who become pretty famous because they’re TikTok-worthy, whatever the fuck that means. So I don’t know a lot about Mitski but I know this is a good album, somewhere between chamber pop, country rock, and bedroom something or other. (8)

BUFFALO NICHOLS – The Fatalist
On his previous album he stayed close to the Blues tradition and made The List. This time around he messes with the formula by adding trip-hoppy beats and atmospherics, and the results are just as excellent. (8)

PARCHMAN PRISON PRAYER – Some Mississippi Sunday Morning
Murderers, rapists, and other inmates at the infamous Mississippi State Penitentiary sing gospels and spirituals. A stunning listen. (8)

THE RECORD COMPANY – The 4th Album
Like a more muscular Black Keys, almost in Bad Company territory, here’s some pretty decent blues rock for you. (7)

BARRENCE WHITFIELD & THE SAVAGES – Glory
No frills, dirty garage-y rock ‘n’ roll from the master of the genre, a rock 'n' soul screamer in the Little Richard tradition who’s been doing it better than anyone else for decades. (8)

Short Attention Span Record Reviews, Sep 23

ZACH BRYAN – Zach Bryan
It’s like this guy was designed in a lab to cater specifically to my tastes – country music that sounds more like heartland rock, not light years away from what Jason Isbell has been doing for the past decade or what Ryan Adams was doing in the early 00’s. Great tunes, strong lyrics. (9)

EMPIRE STATE BASTARD – Rivers Of Heresy
Biffy Clyro guys recruit Dave Lombardo and make some noise that’s probably more fun for the players than for the listeners, somewhere between Napalm Death and Fantomas. (7)

KVELERTAK – Endling
Started out 15 years ago as Immortal meets Hellacopters, now they’re like Mastodon meets Turbonegro, never losing their kickassness along the way. (8)

JEFF ROSENSTOCK – Hellmode
DYI punk rocker enters a proper studio and ends up sounding more “Dookie” than “Repeater”. (8)

ALLISON RUSSELL – The Returner
We got to know Russell as a member of Our Native Daughters who almost made the top of The List in 2019, and on her second album she goes way beyond folk/Americana reaching as far as soul and disco to address some very serious stuff that’s on her mind. (8)

SLOWDIVE – Everything Is Alive
Beautiful shoegaze that’s less noisy than My Bloody Valentine and less classic rock than Ride, actually much closer to dream pop. Bring on the reverb! (8)

SOEN – Memorial
Moving further away from Opeth/Tool time signatures and progmetal pyrotechnics towards a more “mainstream”, 4/4 template. (7)

MORGAN WADE – Psychopath
Rooted in country but pop-rock smart and glossy, Wade’s new album is a Venn Diagram where Miranda Lambert, Stevie Nicks, and Alanis Morrisette meet. Excellently produced by Sadler Vaden (from Jason Isbell’s band). (8)

TOM WAITS – Swordfishtrombones / Rain Dogs / Frank’s Wild Years / Bone Machine / The Black Rider (2023 Remasters)
One of the wildest left turns in modern music was the one Waits took in the early 80’s when Island Records took him in, moving away from his well-established beatnik/boho persona and coming up with 1983’s “Swordfishtrombones” (10) – giving up the beloved “jazz trio with strings added on the tearjerkers” shtick for a cacophonous yet addictive blend of demented Beefheart blues, Kurt Weill cabaret and Harry Partch microtonality. He perfected that formula on 1985’s “Rain Dogs” (10), his finest album and quite possibly anybody’s finest album, ever, a perfect Ten record if there ever was one. 1987’s “Frank’s Wild Years” (9) revisits the template successfully, completing an unsurpassable trilogy.
1992’s “Bone Machine” (8) is a different kind of animal, lyrically much darker and disturbing and sonically placing a greater emphasis on percussion, his voice achieving the unimaginable and becoming even gruffier in the five years that passed. 1993’s “The Black Rider” (8) is a collection of songs Waits wrote for a theatrical play and they sound like it.
All of Waits’ Island Records catalog is now re-released, and even though these remasters don’t make the records sound significantly different than before, I envy the younger generation that will now discover Waits for the first time through them.

WARREN ZEVON – Excitable Boy (Remastered)
A masterpiece of 70’s American rock, now’s the time to discover it if you never got into Zevon before. Big fans like Billy Joel and Jackson Browne can’t be wrong. (10)