Trivium - In Waves: A-

"Capsizing the Sea / In Waves"

The beginning of August saw the release of some pretty polarizing records. Obviously, you had Kanye West and Jay-Z’s titanic collaborative album, Watch the Throne, with which many a self-proclaimed critic had great fun running through an argumentative strainer. And you also had the comparatively silent release of the fourth Gucci Mane product of the year, the collaboration with the equally contentious Waka Flocka Flame, Ferrari Boyz. Listeners tend to either love or hate the music that comes from both of these artists. I happened to mostly enjoy the former. The latter? Well, you can read my review for it farther down the page.

But another polarizing release that came out within that two-day period was the long-awaited fifth album from Orlando metalcore outfit, Trivium. From their first release, the quintet has always found themselves in the company of Dream Theater in terms of how people view them. Either you’ll refuse to listen to a thing they release or you’ll follow them to the ends of the Earth.  Such ire has mostly originated from the negative stereotypes of the genre from which the group spawned, and Trivium have never been able to shake them. Nearly a decade into their career, there are still people who refuse to give their music a chance.

I know this because I was one of those people back in 2006, when The Crusade came out. However, with 2008’s Shogun, I found myself completely switching sides as the group embraced a melodic prog sound that featured as many hair-raising musical turns as the group’s forebears they have often been accused of copying. It was a transformative record, and one of the best metal releases of that year. I’d argue that it moved the group from a hyper-localized kiddie genre to a more assured national stage, raking in additional fans no doubt.

So, three years later, the longest time span between the group’s albums, Trivium are at a pivotal place. What made Shogun so reassuring was that it struck a perfect balance between the ragged metalcore of the group’s first two records and the poppiness introduced with The Crusade. With that already established, Trivium could have leant heavier in either direction with their newest record. I can’t really remember the last time I was this mystified before hearing a new album.

And? Well, it’s fantastic. With In Waves, Trivium keep a solid footing within the fundamental songwriting chops of Shogun and introduce a new, surprisingly aggressive sound that almost circumvents heavy metal and dives into that of the death variety. And the group makes no bones about it. After an extended introduction of distorted piano and militaristic snares, lead singer Matt Heafy bellows the album’s title as the first vocals on the record. It’s a stark contrast from the even crests of Shogun, and Heafy’s harrowing performance rivals the breakdown in “Down From the Sky” as the heaviest moment in the group’s career. In Waves, as a whole, is similarly a darker release, for sure, but one that also retains an air of assurance, as if the depths provide the warmth through which the group can continue to impress.

Fans of the much more streamlined nature of The (still awful in my opinion) Crusade will invariably be put off by In Waves. It is hostile, belligerent and only lets up its tremolo-picked onslaught for a few moments. Whether it be through the enticing blastbeats of “Inception of the End” or the reverbed screams of “Black”, In Waves takes a definite step away from the opaque poppiness of the two albums that preceded it. Instead, an argument can be made that the album takes more influence from the progressive death metal pioneered by groups from Scandinavia than anything else. “Dusk Dismantled”, for example, doesn’t even feature sung vocals. The screams of the chorus are differentiated by a layered bellow in a lower register, a standard technique used by death metal groups to make their rough vocals that much more Hellish.

These injurious moments are, by far, the most interesting parts of In Waves, but, if you want to get technical, the album’s highlights are when the group borrows equally from the already-established balance of Shogun and this additional crudeness within the same song. For the most part, the title track interchanges between that first line that there’s no way the album’s not going to be famous for (“IIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNN WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVES!”) and a sung pseudo-chorus. However, the track’s formula observes such a brilliant contrast, it immediately becomes an album highlight. Similarly, “Watch the World Burn” employs one of the biggest choruses the group’s ever written to make a single-ready pop metal hit without resorting to the disingenuous tropes of The Crusade.

Inversely, it is when this shifting of the aggression spectrum is discarded that In Waves loses its momentum. Trivium can and often have gotten away with more grit than melody, but it has always been in the inverse that they have fumbled the most. It is apt, then, that the balladry that comes at the end of In Waves not only feels awkward within the album’s context, but also disrupts its manic flow. Like “Shogun”, “Caustic Are the Ties That Bind” moves into softer territory in its middle, but its inclusion feels tacked on, especially when Heaffy’s chorus simply interrupts it when, in “Shogun”, it built up to a logical conclusion. “Of All These Yesterdays” is a bona fide ballad, the first Trivium have written since The Crusade. And, while not particularly horrible, the track also does not feel like a necessary stab at commercial appeal, let alone an appropriate album closer. As the track literally recedes into nothingness in the addendum, “Leaving This World Behind”, it ends the album anticlimactically when it would have better suit the group to end with the same lightning in a bottle with which they began.

But, to be honest, I find the message of In Waves to be more compelling than the appeal lost to those qualms. As an introduction to metal with screams, you’re still not going to find anything better than Shogun, but In Waves is just if not more important. With it, Trivium have figured out what about their sound is worth keeping. Like Avenged Sevenfold’s surprise triumph, Nightmare, the album sacrifices flashy guitar work for deeper sonic textures. It’s a sign that the group has established a workable dynamic. For the first time, Trivium are reliable, which cannot be said for literally any of their metalcore colleagues. With In Waves, Trivium start a new chapter as an established metal band. In other words, I can’t wait for what they come out with next.             

Trivium - In Waves: A-

Gang Gang Dance - Eye Contact: A

"Adult Goth"

“I can hear everything. It’s everything time.”

I’m kicking myself right now for opening this review with that line, because I know that so many other publications will quote it to begin their own reviews. Despite this, I have made a concerted effort to have it lead into my review, because there is nothing that I could say about Gang Gang Dance’s newest album, Eye Contact, that isn’t already encapsulated by those seven words that begin the group’s fifth release. At once emotionally cold and uncomfortably intimate, Eye Contact is the most jarringly eclectic dance music you are bound to hear this year.

That line comes to introduce first single, “Glass Jar”, a sprawling, eleven-minute behemoth that, like Destroyer’s recent “Bay of Pigs (Detail)”, begins with a cavernous atmosphere of reverberating synthesizers before getting into a groove that is all the more worth the time waited. The guy who utters those words reappears throughout the song’s six-minute build up. He lets out a passionate “Yes” as a musical palette slowly materializes, comforts with a “Don’t worry” and informs us it’s “Dream time” at various points in the song. The aura in which this guy says these things is so precious, it almost feels as if he’s commenting on your lovemaking while he’s in the same room as you. And while that is a radical way to look at “Glass Jar”, it is representative of the song’s humor and its willingness to drop all pretenses, like only the best modern hippies can.

And this is not even with the mention of Liz Bougatsos, the actual lead singer of Gang Gang Dance, whose inimitable coo appears when the beat to “Glass Jar” finally drops. While I could probably count the number of lines she sings on Eye Contact that I understand on one hand, her voice is so emotive that she is just as rapturous as a foreign ingénue as she is as a comprehensible frontwoman. Her indecipherable squeals on tracks like “Chinese High” and “Sacer” sound like an extra instrument, imbuing each track with a new, valued layer of depth. Her vocal presence tends to ground Eye Contact’s songs firmly in the realm of dance music, tying the gleefully disparate ends of “Mind Killa” with the utterance of the song’s title for example. Despite that clear hurdle of comprehension, you will find yourself singing her notes back to her, adding nonsensical words to reconcile their meaning within each song.

But Eye Contact, as that guy so well explains, is a time for everything, and, if you’re getting the impression the album is just some hipster electroclash, it’s far from it. “Glass Jar” does sound like the work of a high-minded outfit of Brooklynites, but it fades into the subversive refrain of a recording of an Italian singer, an intriguing choice of transition into the slippery Eastern guitar melodies of “Adult Goth”. The entire album flows like a DJ set, three interludes giving listeners context before another glorious dance track erupts through their speakers. This dense style of songwriting is most evident in “Mind Killa”, a veritable microcosm of chaos and creativity. It surges seamlessly through about five musical movements, all unique and all infectious. If the song were remixed to about an hour’s length, you wouldn’t need another song to play for a crowded dance floor. Elsewhere, Eye Contact wonderfully contradicts itself from track to track, experimenting with Caribbean jams on “Chinese High”, a spooky organ that would soundtrack a Nikki Minaj-hosted haunted house on “Thru and Thru” and the voice of Hot Chip’s Alex Taylor on the soft rock of “Romance Layers”.

Eye Contact may sound strange on first listen, but its many talents grow stronger with time. The album may very well be a time for everything, but it’s surprisingly manageable, the group very professional in making sure its innumerable elements are all kept in check. The album is very dense and its styles always fascinate and keep the senses sharp with wonder. It’s not as difficult to digest Eye Contact as you may think from this description, but, even if you find that it is, it’s all the more better. Sometimes the senses need to be overwhelmed. Keeps ’em fresh.

Gang Gang Dance - Eye Contact: A

Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee Pt. 2: A-

"Make Some Noise"

Hot Sauce Committee Pt. 2 is such a return to form for Beastie Boys that it almost works against them. After releasing the middling To the Five Boroughs and the questionable instrumental The Mix-Up, in addition to postponing Hot Sauce Committee for a year due to MCA’s diagnosis of throat cancer, it seemed like the pioneering rap trio was aging in the exact opposite way longtime fans were hoping. But Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 hits so hard with the traditional sounds that made Beastie Boys so unique that it often goes over the nostalgia deep end, making it open game for naysayers who believe the group has long lost its potency. Hot Sauce Committee has a muddy production that can often make the group’s rhymes difficult to hear and the Boys bask in numerous lyrical clichés. As evidenced by “Funky Donkey”, perhaps the most unsurprising Beastie Boys song name of all time, if you were planning on hating Hot Sauce Committee, you’re going to hate it. If you weren’t, then this shit’s gonna be tight.

Despite Hot Sauce Committee’s muddy production, the musical ideas apparent here are positively fantastic and, for me, more of a draw to the album than the lyrical presence of the Beastie Boys, themselves. The skuzzy keyboard riff of “Make Some Noise” is perfect for silly two-steppin’. “OK” combines riffage and wonky synths with ease, consolidating its melodic prowess with a robotic voice that goes “Yeah yeah right right.” “Long Burn the Fire” similarly slays with organ and wah-wah pedal and “Say It” gets its inventive hook from the harmonics of feedbacking guitars. The bass is uncompromising, filling up any available space even when the group opts for full-on punk rock in the “Sabotage”-like “Lee Majors Come Again”.

Admittedly, the Beasties aren’t as memorable lyrically on Hot Sauce Committee. The album has about a dozen total outstanding lines, and they’re more notable for their silliness than their specificity. The album is highly self-referential and revels in throwback hip-hop clichés, so if you’re looking for something to rag on, you won’t have to look very far. The group goes on and on ‘til break of dawn on two tracks and Ad-Rock comes off as a curmudgeon in “OK”’s second verse (“I don’t give a fuck who the Hell you are / Please stop shouting in your cellular/ I never asked to be part of your day / So please stop shouting in your phone, OK?”). The best lyrical work on Hot Sauce Committee doesn’t even come from any member of the group. Nas’s surprisingly skillful verse on “Too Many Rappers” slays from the moment he bursts onto the track with “I have carte blanche.” When he’s finished, you can’t help but wish Beastie Boys were more dynamic on Hot Sauce Committee than just the funny voices they don for “The Larry Routine”.

So, although Hot Sauce Committee is not technically up to par with Beastie Boys’ greatest achievements, it definitely feels like a Beastie Boys album, which is more than enough reason to give it an excellent rating. When the album ends by cutting off the group while they’re yelling over each other, it shows they still have the vigor to be fun and absurd well into their forties. Hot Sauce Committee may lean significantly on spirit, but, man, if you were going to go with one spirit to lean on, you’re not going to find many livelier than the Beasties. The album is an outlier in terms of production and style in the context of where both hip-hop and electronic music are currently going. While we do have a Santigold collaboration here and a Wolf Blitzer reference there, in a way, Hot Sauce Committee brings the old school underground, and I don’t think I’ve ever danced so idiotically to an album so defiant of the mainstream.

Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee Pt. 2: A-

Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Unknown Mortal Orchestra: A-

"Thought Ballune"

Well, at least they’re being honest. There have been a lot of bands come out recently from relative obscurity with only excellent music to speak for them, but it’s not like Unknown Mortal Orchestra ever attempted to deceive people when they first mysteriously appeared with nothing but a Bandcamp page. They’re obscure, they’re of this Earth, and they have the songwriting chops of a philharmonic. On their debut album, Unknown Mortal Orchestra don’t attempt to mask the listener with elaborate stories. Instead, they just play catchy vintage pop, and for that we should be grateful.           

Unknown Mortal Orchestra is cut from the same cloth of many lo-fi garage rock bands that thought 70’s fuzzy pop was just the bee’s knees. At times, some clear luminaries of the revisionist genre come to mind like Ariel Pink on the muffled “Nerve Damage!”. The group’s style is very much pop oriented, but their songs are shrouded in low rent technology. While vocals are almost always present, the only actual word that can be safely deciphered is “alligator” in the chorus of “Thought Ballune”, which probably tells you less about the song’s meaning. However, don’t lump Unknown Mortal Orchestra in with unremarkable groups such as Dum Dum Girls or Hippies. The group’s use of tracks for recording may resemble the visual of only a few pixels on a computer screen, but, if each of those pixels is vivid and electrifying, it shouldn’t really matter. The production may sound amateurish, but the group adds a variety of sounds to their tracks to make them sound complete, such as the emotive backup singing in “FFunny FFriends” and the oddball guitar introduction to “Nerve Damage!”. The drums on the album are so muted, the fills sound like they’re performed on the backs of rubber buckets, but each “thud” is endearing, giving an “aw shucks” quality to the group’s innocent pop.

So it’s a fun experience throughout Unknown Mortal Orchestra to listen to the group transcend their medium. The harmonies in “Thought Ballune” are intricate and well arranged. “How Can U Luv Me” grooves like some of the best pop songs of the 1960’s; I can imagine it being performed by The Jackson 5. “ Little Blue House” even features some clear vocals to place the song in a more modern context, both hinting that the potential of UMO reaches much farther than this record and that perhaps this whole lo-fi act is a put-on. It may sound rudimentary, but there are so many moments on Unknown Mortal Orchestra that signify a long and fruitful career for this group. As far as I’m concerned, they can stay as obscure as they like. I just hope this isn’t the last of them. 

Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Unknown Mortal Orchestra: A-

Brian Eno - Drums Between the Bells: A-

"Sounds Alien"

U2 and Coldplay albums notwithstanding, you got to hand it to Brian Eno for being the OG oddball. The man’s been releasing albums nonstop for the past forty years, and has always maintained an air of strangeness to his tunes that would betray all of the mass acclaim he has received (the best track off MGMT’s newest album name checks him, so at least you know he’s good with the kids). He has often been labeled as the originator of ambient music, one the most confounding musical genres I have ever heard. And, for what its worth, from 1974’s Here Come the Warm Jets to this year’s Drums Between the Bells, you’d think nothing had changed.

Drums Between the Bells bristles with warped bass and mechanical noises, presenting a dystopian soundscape on which various vocalists can recite the poetry of Rick Holland. “Multimedia” undulates with wonky bass, “Cloud” features some spectral keyboards and “The Airman” is off-putting with its heavily reverbed bass drum. Eno makes these arrangements slightly off-kilter in order to keep the listener hinged on the range of topics Holland covers. When the vocalist on "Fierce Aisles of Light” passively mentions, “It’s a train again,” Eno accompanies it with the phased sounds of a moving train, adding literal drama to the otherwise spacious track.

The vocalists on Drums Between the Bells are all virtual unknowns. They range from people who work at the laundromat Eno goes to to his doorman, and the “recognizable” names will only be relevant to those already inclined to this genre of music. Nevertheless, all the performances on the album are well placed despite seemingly being plucked from anonymity. Male and female vocals share equal space and only a few times do they combine. Each seems to own the terrain Eno draws out for them, and they successfully add zest to Holland’s verses. A young, soft British female voice grounds Eno’s bouncy electronics on “Seedpods”. The male monotone on “Breath of Crows” envelops its ambience to create a dramatic if not show stopping album closer and the croak of the old British woman who graces many of the album’s tracks always gives a bookish nod and wink to the high-minded proceedings.

The voices of Drums Between the Bells seem recur in equal measure, so it often feels episodic. Eno spaces out his arrangements well so that when, for example, the old British woman comes back into the mix, she is welcomed by the listener’s familiarity. This is observed best on “A Title”, in which feral electronics swoop around the listener and that woman comes back in to regulate on the arrangement. As a side note, that old lady is a BAMF. She has a regal tone that sounds authoritative on the more ambient tracks and hilariously ironic on the more aggressive ones. Despite Eno being the main draw to Drums, it is clear that she emerges as the MVP, taking control on every track she appears.

The only deterrent from Drums Between the Bells is that it is, in essence, a spoken word album. There have been some great spoken word releases this decade, the late Gil Scott-Heron’s I’m New Here and Laurie Anderson’s Homeland to name a few, but there is something about speaking over music that will always give people the feeling that they are literally being talked down to. If that kind of stuff skives you out, then Drums Between the Bells will not be much help. Holland’s verses are standard poetic rumination. “The Real” talks about the perception of what is real (yep, that kind of poem) and “Glitch” and “A Title” explore the nuance of diction in a few minutes of sweeping generalizations. The minute of silence (entitled “Silence”) that comes at the end of the album would seem to confirm this high-minded disposition, but I would disagree. After all those delicious swarms of electronics and vocals have bombarded the listener for more than an hour, it feels like an appropriate respite. You could even say Eno’s earned it. 

Brian Eno - Drums Between the Bells: A-

Bon Iver - Bon Iver, Bon Iver: A-

"Calgary"

The success of For Emma, Forever Ago has always baffled me. The album was released in mid-2007 to minimal acclaim, but, sometime in early 2008, Justin Vernon, the man behind Bon Iver, was beginning to get namedropped by friends and family that I had never figured knew all that much about music. Perhaps it took the winter of 2008 to be the catalyst for For Emma’s frigid tales of isolation to realize their potential to people, but, by 2008’s end, Bon Iver had become as much of a household name as Vampire Weekend, whose debut was released about six months after Vernon’s.

And then Justin Vernon was on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Yeah, Bon Iver came out with the Blood Bank EP and Vernon released two side projects under the names Volcano Choir and Gayngs in that time, but what really matters is that the man who had created a mythos of holing himself up in a cabin with a crippling physical/mental ailment to release tortured acoustic tales was singing “Pussy and religion is all I need” alongside some of the most recognizable pop figures of all time in all but a few years. The albums that were released between For Emma and Fantasy gave hints of the deeper breadth to which Vernon could perform, but I would still argue that Vernon’s creative shift between 2007 and 2010 was one of the most radical of all time.

And this radical shift has a subtle effect on Bon Iver’s highly awaited, pseudo-self titled follow-up to For Emma. Vernon has mentioned in interviews that the main thing he took away from working with Kanye was that the man was incredibly willing to take strange, seemingly unworkable sounds and tirelessly mold them into affecting showstoppers. This principle is heard throughout Bon Iver, Bon Iver, particularly on the album’s first and last tracks. “Perth” begins with a strategically caustic guitar line and undulates with snare hits and harmonized falsettos. At first, the track sounds like expected Bon Iver, but, at its midpoint, it slumps sonically, only to be revived with concise cymbal hits before gliding into a breakdown of syncopated double bass drum. Taken out of context, this new movement sounds like some downtempo heavy metal, something that wouldn’t sound out of place on Alcest’s most recent record. However, coupled with Vernon’s immaculate guitar tone, this new presence adds serious emotional heft. The sound carries “Perth” to its end, introducing Bon Iver, Bon Iver with a jarring contradiction that proves to be the album’s best.

Where “Perth” borrows from the hipster-reviled reaches of metal, “Beth/Rest” takes its sound from the maligned cheese of ‘80’s analog schmaltz. It’s a ballad, featuring a keyboard line that’s connotation is nearly impossible to ignore. Nevertheless, Vernon achieves the impossible by reversing entire decades of Bonnie Tyler and Foreigner ballads to give the characteristically synthetic sound an undeniable soul. Vernon understands the style very well and almost seems to taunt the listener as he embellishes the track with reverbed guitar high tones, but it’s still an unbridled success. It too proves itself to be one of Bon Iver, Bon Iver’s best songs, because it ruthlessly doubles down on polarizing styles and normalizes them so that you couldn’t imagine them being performed any other way.

The rest of Bon Iver, Bon Iver (Promotions are calling it Bon Iver but Vernon himself calls it Bon Iver, Bon Iver) is less divisive. Vernon has characterized his newest as a spring to For Emma’s winter, but the album gives little indication of weather or even temperature. Instead, the season Vernon evokes on Bon Iver, Bon Iver lies within the mind; constantly, the man recalls cryptic moments in his childhood amidst arrangements that have a blue, polished sheen of nostalgia. A bike bell rings throughout “Michicant” as Vernon recalls when “I was unafraid, I was a boy, I was a tender age.” “Halocene” delves into tender specifics that I’m sure only Vernon truly understands. A line like “3^rd and Lake it burnt away, the hallway / Was where we learned to celebrate,” has little relevance to me, but Vernon’s vulnerable delivery aside the naked acoustic guitar creates a recognizable mood that I can easily ascribe my own meaning to. In this way, it often feels as if Vernon is translating his own memories to yours.

“Calgary” even begins as if from the middle of a thought. Vernon’s verse enters a line late, causing the track to stumble slightly before its familiar vocal progression gets into a groove. As the last track before the controversial tones of “Beth/Rest”, the song feels as if it is wrestling itself from a dream. Its bridge bounces with distorted guitar and distant vocals, as if to signal reality intruding upon Vernon’s fantasies that flew with such abandon up to that point. What is incredible is that you feel intruded upon as well, drawing attention to how effectively Bon Iver, Bon Iver introduces you to the recesses of Vernon’s psyche. With repeated listens, “Beth/Rest” even wears less and less to make the entire album feel like an immense, uninterrupted dream sequence.

But, yeah. Naked. That’s an excellent way to describe the appeal of Bon Iver, Bon Iver. Vernon’s voice is similar to TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, especially in the few times he lowers his voice. It’s delicate and rarely unadorned, ornate harmonies surrounding it constantly as to sound synthetic at times. New instruments such as a horn section and the stylings of bass saxophonist Colin Stetson can be heard throughout the album, but these developments never distract Bon Iver, Bon Iver from that central vision of one guy with an acoustic guitar, except maybe now it’s a guy with an acoustic guitar and a Macbook Pro. Thankfully, Kanye hasn’t spoiled an artist that is proving to be one of the most formative of this decade. His versatility has allowed him to take disparate influences and create a product that still feels wholly his, beautifully marred by the travails that are only garnered from an artist that is honest with both himself and his eager (and appreciative) audience.

Bon Iver - Bon Iver, Bon Iver: A-

E-40 - Revenue Retrivein': Overtime Shift: A / E-40 - Revenue Retrievin': Graveyard Shift: B+

"Beastin" "My Shit Bang"

Much like Robyn’s Body Talk was a perfect encapsulation of every facet of an artist’s personality, Revenue Retrievin: Overtime Shift explores every aspect of Bay Area rapper E-40, the man painting himself as a thoughtful and clever savant, no matter what situation in which he finds himself. Fans of his know that the guy has a slippery flow that bounces between syllables and relishes consonants like the candy centers of words. He has a conversational drawl, but raps quickly, combining rapid lyrical runs with accessible wordplay that’s surprisingly easy to follow. With this voice, E-40 brings a varied sensibility to all the subjects of Overtime Shift, and slapdashes his way to rap superiority on them all.

There are a lot of E-40’s on the twenty tracks of Overtime Shift, so allow me to brief you on the most affecting. Many of the album’s tracks have subjects of typical gun and drug talk, but E-40 has the lyrical acumen to make them all sound fresh. E-40’s been on the drug circuit for so damn long, he says he, “probably sold your family member drugs,” on the amusingly blunt “Drugs”. On Overtime Shift, you’ll find E-40 “punkin’ ‘em out”, “hustlin’ all summer, grindin’ all winter”, “hotter than the left sink handle” and “making records before some of ya’ll was in your daddy’s nutsac.” All lively insults using inventive vernacular, all direct quotes from songs on Overtime Shift.

However, E-40 also observes significant depth on the album. The hilarious “Me and My Bitch” depicts the man’s love/hate relationship with his girl, but ultimately maintains his love for her and even her family in one of the final verses. “But for the most part we cool and I respects they gangsta / I got a baby by they sista we family I ain’t no stranger.” Later, E-40 honors his momma in “Love My Momma”, and the song’s presence doesn’t sound tacked on or superfluous. When he responds to insults about her, he doesn’t rattle off curses, but vindicates his guardian like the sweet momma’s boy that he is. “Talk about my momma / They probably shouldn’t do that / My momma good people / Give you the shirt off her back.” It’s a loving tribute amidst the drug talk and cursing, but it still feels appropriate. In it, E-40’s bouncy cadence sounds endearing where elsewhere it would be menacing.

This results in an intriguing contrast throughout Overtime Shift. On one hand, E-40 makes a great case for himself as the most dangerous man this side of Vallejo. On the other, he’s a caring father, born in the struggle, looking out for himself and others while still keeping his humor and wits about him.

Admittedly, though, Overtime Shift wouldn’t be nearly as fantastic if it weren’t for the inventive beats. “Beastin”, one of the best tracks on the album, begins with a horn fanfare before descending into a trunk-rattling dance number. “I Am Your” features a faint robotic voice singing the title just audible enough to give the track a post-modern crunch. Last track “Click About It” features rousing group vocals reminiscent of “Night Night” off Big Boi’s 2010 classic, Sir Lucious Left Foot: Son of Chico Dusty. The tracks of Overtime Shift may vary in subject and ingenuity, but what is always consistent on the album is the deafening bass. It shakes my chair as I listen to it at home and dismantles my speaker system as I take it on the road. Overtime Shift is fine for academic inspection, but you’ll never appreciate its true power until you’ve rolled up onto something with it blasting from your dashboard.

With all this mentioned, you’d think that Overtime Shift was its own record, but it is actually one of a four-part series of Revenue Retrievin’ albums, two of which were released last year and one of which was released the same day as Overtime Shift. Graveyard Shift has its own twenty tracks of blistering West Coast hip hop, but, listening to it in the context of its companion, the album can’t help but sound like an Overtime Shift redux. There are songs about hard times like “Trapped” and “Tuff Times” and more boasts that feature E-40’s rubbery lines rebounding off samples, synths and blustery bass. “E Forty” uses a frayed vocal line to propel the track and “My Shit Bang”, a similar sampled hook rager, may be the best track of the entire Revenue Retrievin’ series. The album gains momentum as it goes along, but it’s less of a dark contrast to Overtime Shift than the same story told not quite as well.

Graveyard Shift is still very listenable and features some fantastic songs, but its purpose seems to be evidence of how good of an artist E-40 is that he can release forty songs in a single day and have not one of them be duds more than anything else. It’s not so much where Graveyard Shift fails as where Overtime Shift exceeds in almost every way. As a result, these two albums may seem at odds in terms of quality, but they are still great albums. Moreover, their quality shows that, nearly twenty years into the rap game, E-40’s best years may still be upon him.

E-40 - Revenue Retrivein': Overtime Shift: A / E-40 - Revenue Retrievin': Graveyard Shift: B+

Frank Turner - England Keep My Bones: A+

"Glory Hallelujah"

Can an album be a classic if it only references the past? We like to think of the classics – the A+’s, the five stars, the two thumbs ups – as groundbreaking releases that change how we think about music and become highly influential for generations to come. But what if an artist stops trying to be ahead of the curve and instead enjoys the curve wash over them like a sonic wave? If an album takes the influences that have amassed over the past fifty years and turns them into songs that make you laugh and cry as hard those very same influences, does it still deserve to be called a “classic album”?

I wonder this, because the two greatest albums of the decade thus far, Titus Andronicus’s The Monitor and Frank Turner’s England Keep My Bones, do just that. They keep their influences so prominently on their sleeves that they could wear t-shirts and be warm all year round, referring to their heroes explicitly in songs about personal triumph and crippling defeat. In “I Am Disappeared”, Turner wrestles with dreams of “pioneers, pirate ships and Bob Dylan.” He contemplates running away from the responsibilities of his life, and, when he does, none other than Bob himself arrives to whisk him away. The heart wrenching guilt in abandoning a lover in “Redemption” is triggered by a Springsteen song coming on in Turner, the scorner’s, head phones. These influences are fused with the very roots of the stories told on England Keep My Bones. It’s hard to say whether the album would exist, let alone be as affecting, without them.

Many not so explicitly stated influences arise while listening to England Keep My Bones. In a higher register, Turner’s voice sounds like The Decemberists’ Colin Melloy. Coupled with England’s folk influences, valid comparisons can be drawn to the group’s most recent album, The King Is Dead. Turner’s tumbling cadence in “Redemption” immediately brings to mind the stream-of-consciousness poetry of The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn. “Penny Sang the Blues”, at its poppiest moments, even sounds like standard Third Eye Blind. And yet none of these references have made A+ records. What occurs on England Keep My Bones is Turner takes these relatively generic sounds and distills them into the greatest product they can be. Turns out that product approaches perfection.

England Keep My Bones is divided thematically in pairs. You have the sadness of “I Am Disappeared” and “Redemption” and the uplift of “Penny Sang the Blues” and “I Still Believe”. You have loyal hometown pride (“Wessex Boy”, “Rivers”) and middle fingers of defiance (“Eulogy”, “One Foot Before The Other”). The album seems to be at odds with the transition from skuzz punk to respectable adult, and these pairs underscore the radical division within Turner’s current lifestyle. If it sounds like I’m describing a transitionary record, then England Keep My Bones may be the best of its kind, because it perfectly encapsulates the insecurity that can come with entering a new chapter of life, and the shifts in Turner’s lyrics and tone is indicative of this.

Thankfully, England Take My Bones flows despite this. From track to track, Turner assumes different personas, but his wry sense of humor and passion for performance shine through with no exceptions. The cathartic introduction of “Eulogy” (“I haven’t always been a perfect person / I hadn’t done what mom and dad had dreamed / But on the day I die I’ll say ‘At least I fuckin’ tried’/ That’s the only eulogy I need”) is followed by “Peggy Sang the Blues”, an ode to Turner’s late grandmother, whose ghost visits him at night to play poker and impart elderly wisdom. It’s a drastic transition, especially looked at through the lens of familial piety, but Turner’s personality remains a constant throughout, even as the music changes from jagged distortion to pop rock polish. Then come the raucous revivalism of “I Still Believe” (“I still believe/ In the saints / Yeah Jerry Lee and Johnny and all the greats”), the acoustic homeliness of “Rivers”, and so on and so forth. All these songs have vastly different mission statements, but Turner brings his all to each subject, making each track its own fluid dialogue.

“I Am Disappeared” and “Redemption” particularly distinguish England Take My Bones, though. The lyrical resonance of the former has already been noted, but its musical accompaniment is just as devastating. A snare is hit at the word “gone” in “She can get up shower in half an hour she’d be gone,” and more instrumentation comes in as Turner shifts narration from a distressed mother to himself. “I keep having dreams of needing things to do / And then waking up and not following through,” he sings, relaying a self-critique that makes Turner’s escape all the more futile as he finds that he cannot escape himself.

“Redemption” hits even harder, because we observe Turner’s self-loathing for abandoning a lover due to his fear of commitment. Solemnly, Turner admits, “The sad truth is that the grass it will always seem greener / So I left you alone in a restaurant in London in winter / You deserved better.” Later, as that Springsteen song triggers a shame spiral, Turner hollers on the bridge with an emotional intensity unmatched on the rest of the album. The sympathy becomes unbearable when we hear him rummage through his diary to find that the day he crumbled would have been the date of their anniversary. Then the track climaxes and Turner tries to redeem himself with another verse, but ultimately fails as he concludes, “I don’t think I can do this” before the song abruptly ends.

And so begins “Glory Hallelujah”, the last song on the album. The track will probably come to define England Keep My Bones for its lyrical content, of which I’ll let Turner explain: “Hey everybody have you heard the news? / The storm has lifted and there’s nothing to lose / So swap your confirmation for your dancing shoes / Because there never was no God.” The song turns an admission of Godlessness into a celebration of mortality. Even if you disagree with Turner’s message (you’re in the majority if you do), you have to hand it to the guy for pumping so much melody into such a controversial song, saving all his best hooks so he can best drive that point home. It’s the best song on England Take My Bones, so I’m content that it will be the most noticed. Its communal catharsis is brilliantly executed and fits perfectly as you turn the album back to “Eulogy” to listen to the album once again. However, considering England Keep My Bones perfectly encapsulates that daunting midpoint between adult and ruffian, it’s not like you needed another excuse.

Frank Turner - England Keep My Bones: A+

Septic Flesh - The Great Mass: A-

"The Vampire from Nazareth"

It’s times like these I wonder if music ever had the power to scare people. When we listen to music, a whole plethora of emotions like happiness, sadness, anger and depression can come us and override any mood that we were feeling beforehand. We know that, when accompanied with visual images, music often defines the scariest moments in film. But as a singular medium, I have yet to find a piece of music that has disturbed me so much that I had difficulty listening to it.

This has come as a surprise to me over and over because I knew in overtaking this project I was going to have to listen to some terrifying, satanic and, ultimately, critically acclaimed metal albums. But again and again I found these albums all quite listenable, a sentiment typified by my reaction to Deathspell Omega’s newest album released in November of last year. Based on my knowledge of the band (of which there is very little as they are very mysterious), I thought Paracletus was going to scare the living shit out of me. Turns out I found it strangely charming, and liked it so much I put it on my list of best albums of 2010.

I wonder this now, because I thought for sure Septic Flesh’s newest album was going to scare me. Aside from the fact that the group’s name is Septic Flesh for crying out loud, I found the cover of the Greek metal outfit’s newest album, The Great Mass, quite upsetting. It’s a depiction of a pale bald man’s face ripped of his jaw fetal pig style while various miniaturized Greek artifacts lay at his feet, one of which holds up what is presumably his heart, blackened by who knows what kind of sickening darkness overtook his soul. At least Deathspell Omega had the decency to obscure their beast in shadows. Septic Flesh would seem to have put all their horrifying cards on the table.

Even though I have to look away when songs from The Great Mass come up on my iPod, Septic Flesh’s eighth album is not particularly scary. It has many fantastic head bang-worthy moments like first track “The Vampire from Nazareth”, but, more often than not, it’s actually quite beautiful. The group recruited the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra to play on it and it’s a valued addition, the orchestra’s involvement ranging from the decorative to the pivotal. If you wanted to gauge how relatively innocuous The Great Mass is, though, you could equate its use of an orchestra to Owen Pallett’s use of The Czech Republic Philharmonic Orchestra for his 2010 album Heartland and it would be a pretty valid comparison. The only difference is that Pallett’s frail coo is replaced here with blast beats and rancid screams. You know, little things.

The songs of The Great Mass, all of which feature The Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, practice a wide range of styles within the death metal genre, from the anthemic to the downright vaudevillian. The lead guitar line in “Rising” almost resembles power metal in its epic optimism, but “Oceans of Grey” and “Pyramid God” undercut their traditional foundations in favor of odd dalliances that only add more tension to their respective songs. In the case of the former, a standard buildup is interrupted by a plodding shuffle of remote guitar and vocal chants, working in the song’s favor by actually embodying the terror approaching just off in the distance. In the latter, a bouncy rhythm of militaristic snares and throbbing French horns disrupts the track’s similarly conventional arrangement, but is later incorporated into the mix in a way that allows the song to hit even harder.

Songs like “Oceans of Grey” and “Pyramid God” exhibit abrupt injections of gothic influence, but there are many great moments on The Great Mass that are so avant garde, they’d make Igor Stravinsky smirk. If put in the right context, the piano line that begins “The Mad Architect” could soundtrack a Charlie Chaplin film. Its presence is rinky-dink and genuinely surprising, but it’s not just used as a gimmick to grab your attention; with double bass drum and chugging riffs going off at full speed, you can still hear that piano line playing in the background. In fact, the group makes it sound so comfortable, you can almost feel the boundaries of death metal stretching around you as the song plays. Whenever the voice of bassist Seth Siro Anton appears on The Great Mass, the album instantly heightens in melodrama. His tone is nasally and frail and would be quite irritating if put as the centerpiece of The Great Mass. But, as the occasional hook or background accompaniment, Anton’s voice gives the album its own bitter ghost. Some days it’s even more unsettling than Sotiris Anunnaki V.’s snarls.

However, there are certain obstacles that non-mental fans will have trouble overcoming with The Great Mass. Anunnaki V.’s vocals are quite guttural, but, for what it’s worth, they are also often decipherable. His first line in “The Undead Keep Dreaming” sets an excellent tone for the song’s troubling subject matter. “In 1981,” he growls. “When I was but a child / I had the strangest dream / Something that still is haunting me.” The contradiction in the line between the lyrics’ vulnerability and the brash way in which they are performed makes the track all the more off-putting. In this and many cases, Anunaki V.’s vocals serve a structural as well as textural purpose. There are also female voices throughout The Great Mass that add appreciated depth to the album’s arrangements, but, to be honest, if you patently dislike metal, this album won’t convince you otherwise. Nevertheless, I’d suggest listening to it to potentially broaden your horizons. Pentagrams and lack of scariness aside, The Great Mass is another excellent release from one of the best metal bands making music today.

Septic Flesh - The Great Mass: A-

Fucked Up - David Comes to Life: A-

"Queen of Hearts"

Crazy world we live in, ain’t it? When the most ambitious work of the year comes from a hardcore group with an unprintable name fleshing out the components of a concept album through the growls of a 300-pound bald guy named Pink Eyes. A tale of a light bulb factory worker put on trial for the possible killing of his girlfriend, with all the twists and turns of any crime novel sitting on the shelves of the Walgreens stationary section nearest you. And it’s not even a hardcore record, really; Fucked Up have progressed thus far as to have adopted a sound of robust indie rock guitars juxtaposed with harsh scowls, which results in an arguably more unsettling listening experience.

But it slays, through and through. You could take yourself out of the storyline entirely and find every track of David Comes to Life invigorating. You’ll scream back at Pink Eyes as he introduces the main character with a rousing, “Hello my name is David!” in “Queen of Hearts” and marvel at the talk of shoe droppings and trust dilemmas. Your contempt will build with Pink Eyes’s in “Turn of the Season” as he screams, “Dying on the inside!” over the callous monotony of two stubborn guitar chords. You’ll be moved by the finale, “Lights Go Up”. Storyline notwithstanding, the track will feel like an all-encompassing closer to an excellent record. When the instrumentation fades, leaving only Pink Eyes to holler into the abyss, at least something will have felt completed.

If you want to hear music that is intelligent as well as gripping, the concept of David Comes to Life will always be there, and it is as genuinely interesting of an execution as you’re bound to find. You’ve got different characters voiced by different people and a theatrical flow that will engross to the very end. As for me, I’m just astounded at how David Comes to Life just keeps going, pummeling relentlessly and somehow always managing to sound fresh and intuitive. The album is brilliant and great fun. It will keep you guessing, whether you’re following along with a lyrics sheet or not.

Fucked Up - David Comes to Life: A-

Foo Fighters - Wasting Light: A-

"White Limo"

In the last four years, Foo Fighters have become the quintessential band of teens living out their rock and roll dreams. The group frequently tours with and features on their albums members of Queen, they get Grammy’s thrown at them with every album they make and they even got Geddy Lee on stage to play “YYZ” with them for one show. Even though they were formed long before it was made, Foo Fighters now more than ever seem to me like the first band of the Guitar Hero generation, hard to believe considering that the group’s frontman was part of the rhythm section of the band that would arguably kill the careers of the artists they now idolize.

After Foo Fighters burst into the new millennium with the brilliant One By One, however, the group’s accomplishments began to sag like that of their forebears. 2007’s Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace had some fantastic singles like “The Pretender” and “Long Road to Ruin”, but the album was ultimately quite uneven, the group clearly grappling with their quickly distancing poles of “Monkey Wrench”-like aggression and “Next Year”-like softness. Unfortunately, regardless of this, Echoes was an improvement on the album that preceded it, 2005’s In Your Honor, an album that was even more unbalanced in its direct attempt to segregate the group’s disparate styles.

Apparently Dave Grohl and the group sensed this imbalance, making it clear in the promotion for Wasting Light, the group’s seventh album, that they were going to go “back to basics” for their newest release. Apparently, the album was recorded in a garage, the group recruited Nevermind producer Butch Vig, re-enlisted guitarist Pat Smear and even brought in Nirvana bassist Krist Novaselic to play on a couple tracks.

While I don’t necessarily believe that bringing the remaining members of Nirvana back together (or at least the Nevermind version of Nirvana) was needed to bring Foo Fighters back to their roots, any excuse to reinvigorate one of the first groups I had ever fallen in love with was good enough for me. Luckily, Wasting Light delivers on the group’s promises. It is certainly the most aggressive album Foo Fighters have ever released, but it is also filled with the great vocal hooks and melodies that made albums like The Colour and the Shape and There Is Nothing Left to Lose such classics in my mind.

The album continues that aforementioned aesthetic of Foo Fighters living out their rock and roll dreams through the great music they make and the heroes with whom they collaborate. “Sweet Rosemary” features a distinct backing vocal performance from Fugazi’s Bob Mould, an excellent base through which Grohl’s hollering can hit harder. “White Limo” is a thrashy slice of hard rock that features Grohl bellowing through what sounds like a broken intercom. The video is pure nostalgic bliss for late-80’s schmaltz. The group rides around in a white limo filled with booze and cute pale white girls in cut off jean shorts. Did I mention that Motörhead’s own, Lemmy Kilmister, drives said limo? The fidelity is low and the good times proficiently roll. The past gets polished and I couldn’t be happier.

What’s interesting about Wasting Light, though, is that it also continues Foo Fighters’ recent trend of not having an overarching sound to accompany their album. There is no looming gloom like in One by One or a light tenderness as in There Is Nothing Left to Lose. Wasting Light is just a collection of excellent hard rock songs, a fact I had to grapple with for a while before I gave it the grade you’re seeing above. Grohl screams more like he did on The Colour and the Shape and Taylor Hawkins’s drumming is surprisingly tame and unmemorable here, but, other than that, I don’t see a point in explaining the melodics of every track on Wasting Light when you can just get it and explore its excellence for yourself.
 

But I will say this. After Foo Fighters have finally exploded into a world-renown entity that can level Wembley Stadium and Madison Square Garden, I’m glad that people hardly associate Dave Grohl with Nirvana anymore. I find that people who constantly do that will always scoff at the new music the man makes and will always point to Foo Fighters’ self titled debut as their best simply because it was released closest to In Utero. I think with Wasting Light we’re seeing a clean break from Grohl’s past, Novaselic, Vig and Smear gimmicks notwithstanding. There is a generation of music lovers being born that will remember Dave Grohl for “Everlong” as opposed to the drum beat to “Scentless Apprentice” and while, to some, that is a travesty, I’m glad that Foo Fighters are finally not being mislabeled as the one-off they never were.

Foo Fighters - Wasting Light: A-

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - Here We Rest: A-

"Alabama Pines"

Based on how gorgeous Here We Rest is, it’s a wonder why Jason Isbell hasn’t become an enormously popular country star with the likes of Lady Antebellum, Taylor Swift or even The Zac Brown Band. Here We Rest is troubled and incredibly personal, but this isn’t a Jamey Johnson or Hayes Carll deal where you get some guy twisting country into progressive directions; the former Drive-By Truckers member’s newest album is so elegantly polished, you might want to consider recommending it to your grandmother to make it her album purchase of the year. These are unquestionably pop songs, and they’re performed so wonderfully, it will give you renewed faith in the structure of a song, something that seems to have been eluding me these past few weeks.

Instrumentally, Here We Rest does not surprise. You’ll hear acoustic and slide guitar as well as standup bass and banjo. Isbell has a smoky drawl that seems to sound both weathered and youthful. He employs it to make the arrangements of Here We Rest pleasing and often exemplary. “Never Could Believe” pops with tactile percussion to give the track a rich ensemble flavor. The post-chorus of last and best track, “Tour of Duty”, features a heavenly chord progression that shouldn’t fit within the country setting, but is absolutely heart-wrenching, an excellent coda to the track’s bittersweet subject matter of a soldier returning to civilian life.

But the core of Here We Rest is Isbell, himself. With his personable voice, he can revisit memories and play characters so convincingly, your guess is as good as mine as to which songs belong to which category. The album’s many vocal harmonies are precious, but rarely does Isbell come off as optimistic. From Here We Rest’s onset, he longs to go back to his Alabama hometown through the pines that line the roads. In the first track, he sounds separated from the past that shaped him, and we learn what caused such isolation as Here We Rest progresses. Isbell speaks at length about lost love and drug use, but he covers these topics in ways that incorporate a story. Instead of waxing poetic about a lost love, Isbell decides to pay her a visit. Now, instead of grasping at metaphors, you can feel Isbell’s nostalgia in real time as he catches up with his old flame in the beautiful “Stopping By”. “Darling, I’m not one to judge,” he sings in the bridge of “Codeine” to his lover addicted to the titular drug. “But if I was I’d say you don’t look so good.” It’s a clumsy line, but its imperfection makes the track all the more compelling. His dejection is palpable in the song’s final chorus, when he reinforces for the last time that it is one of his friends that’s feeding his lover’s addiction.

The travails of adulthood pervade every note of Here We Rest, and Isbell conveys them with personal stories of Everyman flair. In an especially poignant expression of weakness, Isbell fears for the future in one of the album’s most touching lines. “All my playground fears have faded,” he sings with trepidation on “We’ve Met”. “Replaced with grown-up nightmares / That have come true.” These are tender accounts from a road to maturity fraught with mistakes, but they’re worded so beautifully, they are instantly forgiven. Chord progression notwithstanding, “Tour of Duty” best accomplishes this, ending Here We Rest with a future as unsure as that of any other character on the album. “I’ve done my tour of duty / Now I’ll try to do what a civilian does,” Isbell sings over tightly strummed guitars and light percussion that convey an air of confidence. It’s a line so simple, it’s silly, but it excellently exemplifies the debilitating culture shock that can demoralize someone that’s been away from their home far too long. It’s a familiar but depressing situation that can ruin the commercial potential of Here We Rest. That is until that chord progression kicks in.

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - Here We Rest: A-

The Kills - Blood Pressures: A-

"Satellite"

I’m one of the few people who were introduced to The Kills through Alison Mossheart’s Jack White-helmed side project, The Dead Weather. Their first album, Horehound, was the last fantastic product White put his name on. It was dark, perverted and great fun for its sheer lack of fucks to give and chutzpah density. I fell in love with its harrowed greasiness immediately, and it claimed the top spot of my albums of 2009 list with great help from Mossheart’s lead singing performance. Her work was balls-out and uncompromising. A place in my heart was secured for her when she lost all resolve at the close of “Bone House” and positively screamed her last verse with wild abandon like she had nothing left to lose.

As a part of The Kills, however, Mossheart does not come close to the bellowing behemoth featured so prominently on Horehound. Instead, we have a simmering, slinking singer who has less of a personality than a voice to share. She simply sings Blood Pressure’s melodies well and is more than happy to cede some vocal presence to her bandmate, Jamie Hince. “I swear this is the last goodbye,” she sings at the beginning of “The Last Goodbye”, implying a weakness and frailty toward leave a detrimental lover, a sentiment that would belie the mindset of the femme fatale that had a bullet burning a hole in her pocket on Horehound. On Blood Pressures, Mossheart isn’t the centerpiece of her songs, sharing significant space with other melodies and Hince’s guitar lines.

The good news is that the album does not lose much as a result of Mossheart’s loss in prominence, as Hince’s guitar lines and the group’s melodies are fantastic. Blood Pressures is an excellent record, even if it cruises in comparison to The Dead Weather discography. Every track is good for at least one catchy hook, and most have several. “Nail in My Coffin” floats atop a buoyant bass drum and snare pattern. “Damned If She Do” smolders with skuzzy guitar and drum machine and “Pots and Pans” thumps along with a foreboding acoustic and Mossheart’s playful derision of her lover’s high expectations. “Baby Says” is unique for featuring light verses that ceaselessly dive into an ominously jaded guitar riff. Mossheart raises her voice to excellent effect in “DNA”, as she is backed by group vocals that build around the line, “We will not be moved by it.”

My only criticism of Blood Pressures is that it is just a collection of excellent songs from a group I believe could have a more cohesive theme to their records. Regardless, the album is fantastic pop, however dark that pop may be. It is another great addition to the group’s assembly of tracks destined to slaughter when slathered in darkness and cigarette smoke when played on a stage. While not as crazed as a Mossheart project can be, Blood Pressures will not disappoint for its great riffs and nimble songwriting.

The Kills - Blood Pressures: A-

Tim Cohen - Tim Cohen's Magic Trick: A-

"Don't Give Up"

Here’s an interesting line with which to start off an album: “What’ the matter / You never seen a man on fire?” The first track of San Francisco indie rocker Tim Cohen’s second solo outing bursts out the gate from the moment you press play with that line, getting in a quick laugh that sets the tone for the genial candor the man provides throughout Tim Cohen’s Magic Trick. The track is a standard indie acoustic strummer, but you cannot help but pay the utmost attention to Cohen’s lyrics for that excellent opening line.

Tim Cohen’s Magic Trick is, for the most part, an indie folk album in the vein of first track “I Am Never Going to Die” with splashes of ‘50’s pop ala Roy Orbison thrown in. Cohen’s penchant for the well phrased and humorous is always the album’s main draw, but it is not meant to be a comedic release or even a send-up of folk trends in the vein of The Magnetic Fields’ 2010 album, Realism. Instead, Cohen’s lyrics give the songs of Magic Trick warmth, building upon his character rather well as the album goes on. Whether exuding comfort or comic relief, he’s a personality worth listening to, and he consistently pleases at molding rhetoric to complement his songs.

The album’s instrumentation is standard but well produced. It rarely indulges itself or diverges from its layout of acoustic guitars, lush bass and hand percussion. When it does, those new elements tend to stick out but in a way that aids their respective songs. The electric guitar on “The Spirit’s Inside” makes it sound more like a fun take on Ariel Pink’s take on a 60’s AM radio. The organ in “Top on Tight” adds to the song’s playful nature and the warped synth in “Hey Little One” makes the track more hectic to suit its painfully short length. Because Cohen’s voice does not have a very high range, he often has female voices backing him up, which often steps up the beauty of his songs, as is the case with “Hey Little One” and the heavenly coda of “I Looked Up”.

So bottom line is to come for the personality and stay for the brilliant songwriting. Though his influences are far from revolutionary, Cohen has the ability to take these recognizable elements and infuse them with a dry wit that grants them much uniqueness to spare. Whether he’s dismissing love in a monotone on “Legendemain” or flipping the tunnel of love concept on its head in the song of the same name (“We are two speeding trains / In the tunnel of love”), Cohen sets himself apart from his lo-fi scuzzmuffin colleagues in his predilection for legitimate songwriting. The guy’s rather prolific, working on many side projects such as The Fresh & Onlys to keep fans thoroughly satisfied with his distinct brand of folk. So, if you like Tim Cohen’s Magic Trick, there’ll plenty more where that came from.

Tim Cohen - Tim Cohen's Magic Trick: A-

Low - C'mon: A-

"Especially Me"

Ladies and gentlemen, this is how you do complacent. For nearly twenty years, Minnesota’s Low have been making quietly compelling albums, and their newest, C’mon, is no different. It’s forty five minutes of soft rock with a sinister edge, perfect for easy listening, but also fantastic upon closer inspection. The album features some excellent voices, Alan Sparhawk sounding like a weathered Justin Harris (of Menomena) on songs like “Nothing But Heart” and “Try to Sleep” and Mimi Parker poised but cunning in “You See Everything” and “Especially Me”.

C’mon’s arrangements blend well but are shockingly minimal. The vocal presence of “20$” is just Sparhawk repeating “My love is for free,” and “Nothing But Heart” is the same for the song’s title. The singing in “Majesty/Magic”’s is literally the interchanging of the title’s first word for its second, with only a cry of “Oh” added. It’s plain, but I’m mesmerized by all of it. The group drops some vaguely pessimistic lines like “As it stands we don’t have a clue / Especially me and probably you,” and “All you guys out there gonna wish you were Al Green,” that earn their “slowcore” label, but it’s all in good fun. “Just because you never hear their voices,” Sparhawk and Parker harmonize on C’mon’s final track. “Doesn’t mean they wont kill you in your sleep.” With that, the track floats along a chorus of “la la la”’s. You want to hear something pleasant but complex? You could do far worse.

Low - C'mon: A-

Cunninlynguists - Oneirology: A+

"Enemies with Benefits (feat. Tonedeff)"

Why doesn’t Pitchfork talk about Cunninlynguists? Why does it seem like, in the decade or so that this Kentucky rap group has been releasing fantastic long-players to amorous fans, that not one major publication has cared enough to review any album they’ve released, let alone acknowledge their existence? It seems like, somewhere around 2002, Cunninlynguists dropped off the radar of the mainstream media. And it’s borderline criminal that, as a result, a release as perfect as their newest, Oneirology, will not reach the ears of people that haven’t already been tuned in to the live updates of the southern rap circuit.

I wouldn’t be so frustrated about this travesty if Oneirology had turned out how I had expected it to. Last year, the group’s producer and resident white guy, Kno, released his first solo album, Death Is Silent. The record had a sound that was clearly his, in line with what he had been doing with his main group. However, the album relied too heavily on trite boom-bap percussion and old-timey samples to support the already mediocre rhymes of both Kno and his guests. The result was something that came off as more referential than nostalgic, more notable in my mind for featuring a sample of Kanye West’s “Lost in the World” a week before My Dark Twisted Fantasy dropped than anything ability-related.

In retrospect, Death Is Silent seems to have worked in Kno’s favor. Now, the album sounds like an exaltation of the man’s middling tendencies, cleaning his creative pallet so he can craft an album that looks to the future as much as it does the past. Constantly, Oneirology’s production presents a new package in familiar wrapping. First song “Predormitum” ends its measures with Notorious B.I.G.’s famous first line in “Juicy”, but its presence is made to serve a purpose, a key word omitted in order to introduce the album’s recurring theme (more on that later). The drums of Oneirology have a musty touch that could be considered boom-bap, but they are tactile, crisp and far from repetitive. The album relies on the pre-recorded hooks of many a forgotten ‘60’s rock group and there is even an outright rip of an Outkast song at the end of “Hard As They Come”. However, not once do these borrowings come off as creative theft. Instead, the incorporation of these samples gives them newfound meaning, and Oneirology succeeds at the seemingly impossible task of building a classic from the classic material of others.

If it sounds like I’m trying to justify the album as opposed to praising it, I only intend to briefly rebuke the main argument people have against Cunninlynguists before getting into Oneirology’s original material. A song like “Murder”, whose hook revolves around a frail voice singing “If I could get away with murder / I’d take my gun and I’d commit it,” could have been a predictable dirge on Death Is Silent, but here it makes a complete stylistic turnaround, glamorous synths and lively bass painting a truly enchanting night on the town. Big K.R.I.T. sounds oddly at home in this glitz and glamour, his opening verse more buoyant here than anywhere on his newest mixtape. “Enemies With Benefits” is nearly tear inducing in its saintly beauty, chimes and a choir creating an angelic backdrop for Kno’s own filtered vocals, which sound like that of M83’s Anthony Gonzalez. Oneirology is composed of arrangements all vastly rich and vivid, probably the best beats Kno has ever made.

But back to Kanye for a second. That Death Is Silent sampled a song that had not been released yet is indicative of Cunninlynguists’ obsession with timeliness, a defining quality of the lyrical content of Oneirology that portrays the group as fanatical digesters of pop culture. “Here’s you jacking off to Halle Berry on the shitter / And firin’ a nigga ‘cause he checkin’ on his Twitter / You mad ‘cause ain’t nobody taggin’ you in all them pictures / Well here’s a good one of you taggin’ your wife’s sister,” goes one of Deacon’s particularly grin-inducing lines on the profane “Get Ignorant.” Even if people won’t know what Twitter is in a decade, the cathartic message of a co-worker going intellectually postal on a boss will be well-conveyed, not only because it’s scathing and precise, but because Kno masterfully injects a guy screaming “No!” in the pauses between Deacon’s rants.

Elsewhere, the group strikes gold in finding profundity in profanity. Cunninlynguists have always been filed under “Conscious hip-hop” and Oneiorology has plenty of that, but the group works best when it takes conceited themes and turns them into something strangely arresting. The best example of this is “Enemies With Benefits.” Although it features that gorgeous production mentioned before, it’s a song basically about fucking the woman you hate, a topic I’m sure Gucci Mane could turn into a heaping pile of shit. However, with this prompt, the group comes up with the album’s most memorable lines, the guys trading off verses that masterfully exaggerate just how bad this girl is but just how good she is in bed. “She might literally love me to death,” Natti reflects. “We had a stairway to heaven ‘til I fell down the steps.” “I get the cleanest dome,” Kno retorts. “I mean it holmes. She never be alone ‘cause she be at home.”

Oh yeah, and Oneirology has a theme, which is dreams (Oneirology is the study of dreams if you haven’t looked it up by this point). With the current political climate, one can get some impression of what such a thread might entail (“This shit don’t change like if Obama would’ve lost,” Deacon says at one point), but the truth is the album explores all aspects of the dream. From the mechanical explanations in its interludes to the mythological description in penultimate track “Hypnopomp”, the subject matter is taken very seriously, creating a sly concept album that never displays its intentions so obtusely as to distract from the actual music. Oneirology balances this hodgepodge of motifs and brilliant talents in a way that allows the group to experiment and still sound poised and cohesive. It’s an exceedingly professional album in this sense, one that makes a point to never strive for one overarching statement. The great irony is that, as a result, it’s an accidental magnum opus. It sells an admirable statement by trying as hard as it can not to.

Cunninlynguists - Oneirology: A+