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)

Short Attention Span Record Reviews, Aug 23

THE ARMED – Perfect Saviors
(Ex- ?) Hardcore provocateurs go full-on arena rock, probably mocking arena rock at the same time, and it rules. (8)

ANDREW BIRD – Outside Problems
A companion album to last year’s “Inside Problems”, this one’s mainly instrumental, improvised, and quite joyful. Nobody sounds quite like Bird and his music is impossible to describe, but if you’re not familiar with his music try it, you’re in for a treat. (8)

BRAD – In The Moment That You’re Born
Side project of Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard brings on the grunge nostalgia with a solid album that sounds extremely Seattle. (8)

THE CLIENTELE – I'm Not There Anymore
I never really got into this whole soft indie pop British thing (Felt, Belle & Sebastian…) and I’ve always been a Who guy not a Kinks guy, so The Clientele shouldn’t really be my cup of tea, especially now that they throw a bit of latter-day Radiohead electronica weirdness into the mix. But this is good! (8)

CUT WORMS – Cut Worms
Young New Yorker sounds like he’s raiding his grandad’s record collection in wondrous amazement and discovering “Please Please Me”, Frankie Valli, and the Beach Boys for the first time. (7)

RHIANNON GIDDENS – You’re The One
Americana star and folk polyglot delivers her most diverse album yet, further incorporating gospel, R&B, jazz, and Cajun into her palette. (8)

HISS GOLDEN  MESSENGER – Jump For Joy
One of his more uptempo efforts, this is a very good and very American soft rock album with a sound somewhere between Don Henley and Little Feat. (8)

MUTOID MAN – Mutants
Cave In/Converge/High On Fire side-project/supergroup has tons of fun in the studio just being dumb metalheads. (8)

OLD CROW MEDICINE SHOW – Jubilee
Bluegrass can be really fun. (8)

OXBOW – Love’s Holiday
A bipolar album wildly oscillating between Jesus Lizard noise and melodic art rock tunes, some of which wouldn’t sound out of place on a Nick Cave album. (8)

MOLLY TUTTLE & THE GOLDEN HIGHWAY - City Of Gold
Bluegrass star releases another excellent album with top-notch songwriting and astounding virtuosity from a band that can’t hide behind distortion and volume – get a load of this!!! (8)

Short Attention Span Record Reviews, July 23

ANOHNI AND THE JOHNSONS – My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross
Antony or Anohni, I still find her voice an acquired taste that doesn’t really work for me. (7)

JULIE BYRNE – The Greater Wings
Like Phoebe Bridgers without all the high-profile guest slots on other people’s albums. (8)

DIVIDE AND DISSOLVE – Systemic
Australia-based (mainly) instrumental doom metal duo featuring one member who’s black/Cherokee and one who’s Maori, and the cultural background informs their work to some extent – but mostly you’ll get crushing sludge/doom in the SunnO))) vein. (7)

MILITARIE GUN – Life Under The Gun
Back in the 90’s bands like Quicksand and Jawbox split the distance between hardcore and alternative rock, and Militarie Gun seem determined to revisit that era and mindset. (8)

PJ HARVEY – I Inside The Old Year Dying
While Polly Harvey’s stubborn insistence on sounding as unlike PJ Harvey as possible is an admirable demonstration of her uncompromising creative spirit, the most PJ Harvey moments of the album (e.g. “Seem An I”) are actually the best. Not one of her masterpieces, still better than 99% of what gets released out there. (8)

SETH LAKEMAN – The Somerset Sessions
British folk-rock star on a great album recorded over 10 days in late 2020, including some unreleased compositions plus alternate versions of 4 songs from 2021’s “Make Your Mark”. (8)

LUKAS NELSON & PROMISE OF THE REAL – Sticks And Stones
Willie’s son & Co. on a decent set of mostly good-time country rock tunes about drinking, fornicating, and drinking before fornicating. (7)

MARC RIBOT’S CERAMIC DOG – Connection
Former Lounge Lizard and all-around genius guitarist (with Tom Waits, John Zorn, Robert Plant, Elvis Costello and about a thousand others) and his band create an explosive amalgam of no wave, free jazz, hard rock, Cuban music and everything in between. (8)

SLEEP TOKEN – Take Me Back To Eden
I should’ve known better than to finally give in to the hype and listen to this, because it’s as bad as I feared it was going to be – like a djent version of fucking Imagine Dragons or something. Death to false metal. (5)

LUCINDA WILLIAMS – Stories From A Rock’N’Roll Heart
With the best bar band in the universe behind her (including members of Tom Petty’s and Stevie Ray Vaughn’s bands) and guests like Tommy Stinson, Patti Scialfa, and The Boss himself, Williams and her pure rock ‘n’ roll heart make a very strong comeback. (8)

VARIOUS ARTISTS – Young Limbs Rise Again: The Story Of The Batcave Nightclub, 1982-85
Finally got my hands on this fantastic box set – 5 CDs that act as a soundtrack history of the historic London goth club. Everyone’s on it, plus an 80-page book. (10)

Short Attention Span Record Reviews, June 23 Vol. II

BENEFITS – Nails
A noise-punk/trip-hop hybrid that ends up sounding like Sleaford Mods on steroids. (7)

CREEP SHOW – Yawning Abyss
Electro-pop supergroup of sorts, mainly known as side-project for John Grant and Cabaret Voltaire’s Stephen Mallinder, sounds like the more annoying aspects of Yello. (6)

DJANGO DJANGO – Off Planet
This double album, or rather quadruple EP, doesn’t sound much like the art rock Django Django we know, I can only describe it as prog disco and it’s probably 6-7 songs too long.  (7)

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS – The Complete Dirty South
The band’s fifth studio album from 2004 was meant to be a double one but was trimmed down back then. So here is the Director’s Cut, with three extra tracks and slightly different sequencing. Patterson Hood usually writes most of the material but on this one songwriting credits are more or less evenly distributed between Hood, Cooley, and Isbell, the latter providing a glimpse into his future greatness. A southern rock masterpiece just got even better. (9)

CORY HANSON – Western Cum
2021’s “Pale Horse Rider” was like Radiohead doing a Gram Parsons tribute and it was so good it made the Geek’s List, the regrettably titled “Western Cum” is a very different deal with Hanson rocking out in almost-metal fashion, but it’s just as great! (8)

BETTYE LAVETTE – LaVette!
Legendary septuagenarian gravelly-voiced soul singer backed by a killer band dedicates a whole album to songs by Randall Bramblett, a guy better known as a session musician but apparently a great songwriter too. None of these funky jams have been hits before, and I can’t understand why. (8)

DONNY McCASLIN – I Want More
You know this tenor saxophonist as Bowie’s right-hand man on the latter’s swansong “Blackstar”, and on this solo album he’s pushing the boundaries of jazz towards electronica with a band that’s tighter than Kim Kardashian’s yoga pants. (8)

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE – In Times New Roman…
Josh Homme had a tougher time than most of us these past few years, and this is reflected in the darkest and heaviest QOTSA album since 2007’s “Era Vulgaris”. (8)

ROYAL THUNDER – Rebuilding The Mountain
Back from the dead with a strong grungy hard rock album. Mlny Parsonz often gets compared to Janis Joplin, but really, she sounds more like Gerard Way’s sister. (8)

AMANDA SHIRES & BOBBIE NELSON – Loving You
Bobbie was not just Willie Nelson’s sister, but a great pianist in her own right. On this posthumous release, recorded when she was already 90, she collaborates with Shires who provides her fragile, sensitive vocals and the occasional fiddle to interpretations of a bunch of classics (“Always On My Mind”, “Summertime”, “Dream A Little Dream”, that sort of thing). A delightful little record and a proper send-off. (8)

SIGUR ROS – Atta
Drummerless this time but with a full orchestra on board, they successfully bridge the gap between post rock and classical music. (8)

SWANS – The Beggar
Can something be simultaneously spacey and claustrophobic? Apparently so, this Swans album does that, taking their choking experimental drones and expanding, expanding, expanding them to infinity and beyond. (8)

VINTAGE TROUBLE – Heavy Hymnal
Catchy soul/blues/rock from this LA-based band. Go see them live this summer if you can, they’re a blast. (8)

Short Attention Span Record Reviews, June 23

THE LOUDER STUFF

RAY ALDER – II
Slightly mellower than 2019’s “What The Water Wants” but not straying far from that template, i.e. essentially what used to be called AOR but with slightly proggy overtones. I do miss Fates Warning very much though, and I hope Jim has another FW album inside him. (7)

AVENGED SEVENFOLD - Life Is But A Dream
I’ve deliberately avoided these guys since 2001, and I honestly don’t think I’ve heard a single note from them prior to “Life Is But A Dream” so I have no clue what a “normal” A7X album is supposed to sound like. All I know is that this one is interesting but tries a bit too hard to sound like Muse doing Faith No More cosplay. (7)

BUGGIN – Concrete Cowboys
If you want great punk singalongs played tight and with no macho bullshit posturing, these young Chicagoans just released a fantastic and really fun record. (8)

EXTREME – Six
Nuno’s got a day job nowadays playing with Rihanna but his hard rock shredding muscles are still in great shape – “Rise”, for example, has the best guitar solo I’ve heard in 30 years. Songwriting’s not too shabby either. (8)

FOO FIGHTERS – But Here We Are
Grieving the death of Taylor Hawkins, Grohl himself fills in on drums and this is actually a very good album, probably even their best – they’re still likeable and immensely popular, but now they’ll also get critical respect even if they don’t need it or care for it. (9)

GOZU – Remedy
Most people will compare this album to Kyuss or Clutch, but that’s because they’ve never heard of Goatsnake. (8)


THE OTHER STUFF

LAURA CANTRELL – Just Like A Rose: The Anniversary Sessions
Alt-country/Americana singer displays solid songwriting skills, but any such album released on the same day as Jason Isbell’s “Weathervanes” doesn’t stand much of a chance of getting heard. (7)

COWBOY JUNKIES – Such Ferocious Beauty
A very personal piece of work with lyrics revolving around the dementia of the father of three band members, sonically staying close to the unique Cowboy Junkies template – these guys were “Americana” before the term existed as a music genre signifier. (7)

BEN FOLDS – What Matters Most
Ben Folds Five (a trio, actually) were pretty hip among, well, hipsters in the second half of the 90’s, and the guy is back with a piano/strings/irony-heavy chamber pop record that will delight those of us who are still around. (8)

JASON ISBELL & THE 400 UNIT – Weathervanes
In a recent interview Isbell said something along the lines of, in order to stay sane, he will just aim at writing good songs rather than consciously try to make a better record than “Southeastern”, but you know what? I think he just made a better record than “Southeastern”. BTW is that weathervane on the cover actually pointing southestern? (9)

UTE LEMPER – Time Traveller
Better known as a top-notch interpreter of the Weill/Brecht songbook and for 2000’s marvellous “Punishing Kiss” which featured songs by The Divine Comedy, Nick Cave, Elvis Costello, Tom Waits etc., Lemper nevertheless occasionally decides to release albums based on her own compositions and this is one of those cases, but she never strays too far from a safe, predictable pop-jazz framework. (6)

JANELLE MONAE – The Age Of Pleasure
I tried to watch the video for “Lipstick Lover” but couldn’t because it made my glasses fog up. In any case this is a very hedonistic album with Monae officially entering her T&A era. (8)

KEVIN MORBY – More Photographs (A Continuum)
Last year’s “This Is A Photograph” made the Geek’s List at #3, but apparently Morby wasn’t done with it – “More Photographs” is basically the same photograph subject from different angles, with three songs from the former album re-imagined plus six new songs revisiting the same lyrical themes. (8)

SQUID – O Monolith
On their debut album they sounded like part of the whole Black Country New Road/Dry Cleaning/Black Midi talk-sing London thing, albeit with a krautrock twist. On this second one, some of the keyboards plus the pastorally proggier elements make me think they spent the COVID lockdown listening to Cardiacs and Soft Machine. (8)

THIS IS THE KIT – Careful of Your Keepers
A pleasant little indie-folk record. (7)

JESS WILLIAMSON – Time Ain’t Accidental
Alt-country/Americana singer displays solid songwriting skills, but any such album released on the same day as Jason Isbell’s “Weathervanes” doesn’t stand much of a chance of getting heard. (7)

Short Attention Span Record Reviews, May 23 Vol. II

CLARK – Sus Dog
A glitchy EDM album that’s more Radiohead than David Guetta, and not only because Thom Yorke is on it. (7)

BRANDY CLARK – Brandy Clark
Fourth solo album by country songwriter to the stars, includes a couple of real gems like “Ain’t Enough Rocks”. (8)

ELEGANT WEAPONS – Horns For A Halo
Superb metal supergroup put together by Richie Faulkner (Judas Priest) and featuring Scott Travis, Rex Brown, and Ronnie Romero tips the hat to 80’s non-Priest classic hard rock/metal – songs like “Do Or Die” might as well be retitled to “Do Or Dio”. (8)

ROBERT ELLIS – Yesterday’s News
This is so weird, back in 2016 this guy had again released an album on the same day as Paul Simon with the two albums blending seamlessly when played back-to-back, and the same thing happens now – “Yesterday’s News” is like a younger Paul Simon rooted more in country than in folk, and it’s sparsely orchestrated like “Seven Psalms”. (7)

GHOST – Phantomime
The between-albums EP is becoming a tradition for Tobias and this one is just cover songs, featuring a provocative mix of tracks originally by Television, Genesis, Stranglers, Iron Maiden, and Tina Turner (good timing). Great, as expected. (8)

ARLO PARKS – My Soft Machine
More textured than her wonderful bedroom pop debut a couple of years ago, adding a few “rock” bits into the mix (the grungy climax of “Devotion”, Phoebe Bridgers guesting on “Pegasus”), and again quite poetic, this sophomore effort will establish her as one of the most interesting voices of her generation. (8)

PAUL SIMON – Seven Psalms
A suite consisting of seven beautiful, chilling, sparsely orchestrated songs evoking spiritual imagery. A worthy addition to the catalog on one of the world’s greatest songwriters. (8)

COLIN STETSON – When We Were That What Wept For The Sea
If you thought you had a general idea of what one saxophone can do, well, think again. Another haunting, beautiful, scary masterpiece from Stetson and his amazing circular breathing technique. (8)

SBT – Joan Of All
Laura Marling does Lou Reed, or vice versa. And it’s a grower, you really start getting it on the 4th or 5th listen. (8)

MARTY STUART AND HIS FABULOUS SUPERLATIVES – Altitude
Wow. A revelation. Who would’ve thought that a 65-year-old country veteran who used to be in Johnny Cash’s band would come up with such a fantastic Byrds-influenced country rock album in 2023? (8)

TINARIWEN – Amatssou
By now they’re like Iron Maiden – they’ve been around since the late 70’s, they’re the biggest act in their genre (the Tuareg peoples’ assouf, known in the West as “desert blues”), they've released quite a few masterpieces, they're now dependable but predictable. (7)