Julian Lynch - Terra: B+

"Fort Collins"

Oh, Julian Lynch, you are just a treasure. You make music that is so pleasant and nice with that lush bass and that modest everything else. You make me think of mornings, you know. Stretching out on the grass and smelling the air, the sky, the clouds, the flowers, the bugs and the ground. Is that why you called your new album Terra? It’s a pretty name. And the music on it is so very nice! I can put it on and do other things and those other things will feel better as a result! You should be proud of that. Yeah, Terra’s good stuff. You should make more of it before I start to miss you again.

Julian Lynch - Terra: B+

Grouper - A I A: B+

"Vapor Trails"

When you’ve been listening to and evaluating music nonstop for a full month -- your ears are constantly ringing, massive headaches are starting to set in and you’re seriously considering your life choices -- an album like A I A can make you want to throw your laptop out a window. It’s two. whole. discs. worth of ambient music. Throughout those two discs you will find:

1. 1. 1. Tracks that get close to and often exceed the eight minute mark

2. 2. 2. Grouper frontwoman Liz Harris strumming a guitar and singing just far enough away that her words cannot be comprehended

3. 3. 3. The standard bleep-bloop instrumentation from the ambient/drone tool kit

4. 4.4. Lots and lots of S P A C E

But damnit if it doesn’t sound beautiful most of the time. Despite A I A's length and lack of activity for long periods of time, many of its anonymous songs will strangely touch your heart. The album does this best on “Vapor Trails”, a nine-minute track that’s melancholic organ could make a Tyler Perry movie sound like an emotional masterstroke. You could make the argument that A I A is just a collection of “Vapor Trails”, but I would say that Harris does what she does so well that, in her case, I can accept a lack of deviation in favor of consistency. Luckily, she hardly disappoints.

Grouper - A I A: B+

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-

Eddie Vedder - Ukulele Songs: B+

"Sleepless Nights"

It feels strange reviewing Ukulele Songs, because it is so clearly a one-off that its presence almost defies critical inspection. The album is full of flubs and curses and flaws and impurities that one would expect from an album that is essentially a collection of songs performed exclusively on that titular instrument. A track is spent hearing Vedder mess up a ukulele line and yelling, “fuck” in frustration. His phone goes off at the end of “Satellite” and he answers it as the recording fades out. Vedder even lights something up at the beginning of “Goodbye”, Lil Wayne style. If Ukulele Songs isn’t a compliment to Pearl Jam or Eddie Vedder as musician, it certainly is a compliment to Vedder as an engaging personality.

But this is why people love Pearl Jam. They have a rare connection with their fanbase that allows the group to release albums like Ukulele Songs that may never have seen the light of day in other hands, and these songs are all valued additions to the Vedder/PJ catalogue. Between fuck-ups and jokes, there are some brilliant products on Ukulele Songs. Vedder conveys longing brilliantly on album highlight, “Sleepless Nights” and, with Cat Power singer Chan Marshall in tow, the vocal frills of “Tonight You Belong to Me” are intimate and precious. Tracks like “You’re True” and “Can’t Keep” could be worthy additions to the tracklists of Backspacer and Vitalogy, respectively, if they were fleshed out. The album’s short and quaint, but it accomplishes all the goals it sets out for itself and often exceeds them.

So if you’re a fan of Pearl Jam and/or Eddie Vedder, Ukulele Songs is a must, because it is good enough to be comparable with Pearl Jam’s 2005 self-titled LP. And if “Just Breathe” was your favorite track off Backspacer, then you may want to listen to the album sitting down, because it is so delicate and authentic you may need to change your pants afterwards. As Ukulele Songs enters its second half, though, the songs start to sound more formulaic than Vedder’s more official work, but, as a side project of one of the greatest bands still making music today, it’s pretty hard to talk about expectations.

Eddie Vedder - Ukulele Songs: B+

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-

Ford and Lopatin - Channel Pressure: B+

"World of Regret"

Anyone who’s listened to music for the past decade knows that it is common for artists to take the sounds characteristic of tacky eighties electronica and put them in a context in which they can be enjoyed for nostalgic value, which can result in legitimately good music. In this process, it is one thing for a group to craft its identity through the influences of an era. However, it is another thing entirely when a group cuts and pastes all the signifiers of an era and makes music based off of them. The artists who do the latter are not automatically bad as a result of this, but they walk a very fine line. They have to be extremely careful that their imitation comes off as flattery as opposed to… just imitation.

There is a Demetri Martin joke in which he shows the audience a graph. The graph shows a direct positive relationship between the x and y axes but with an abrupt dropoff at the end. “This is the cuteness of a girl versus how interested I am in hearing about how intuitive her cat is,” he says, but then points out, “At a certain point, I don't care how cute you are. I don't wanna hear about your fucking cat anymore.”

A similar situation can be equated to my tolerance of artists that fall in the latter category I mentioned before, and the work on Ford and Lopatin’s debut album, Channel Pressure, would be placed just at the precipice of the point where I just stop giving a fuck. If an artist came along with one more synth or one more Max Headroom impersonator in tow than what Tigercity member Joel Ford and Oneohtrix Point Never leader Daniel Lopatin already bring to the table, then I would probably go ballistic and start doling out F’s.

But, like the Demetri Martin graph shows, Channel Pressures does not reach that point, so I actually enjoy much of Ford and Lopatin’s proper debut. I wasn’t too keen on Lopatin’s most recent Oneohtrix Point Never album, and Channel Pressures is a great improvement, because it has clear activity, and the results of said activity are often quite pleasing. The hooks are saccharine and the vocal performances of Ford and singer Jeff Gitelman are catchy and sanguine. Songs like “World of Regret” and lead single “Emergency Room” are sumptuous synth-pop songs and the rest of the album ranges from the intriguing to the danceable.

But, again, it should be noted that Channel Pressure teeters just over that edge. While I do believe that the album is well-executed homage to a distinctive musical era, Ford and Lopatin are reviving an era that was never particularly good to begin with. So Channel Pressure is most effective when taken within its own context, and enjoyment is incumbent upon listener tolerance and little else. The moment when you stop suspending your disbelief, the album will begin to collapse. For that reason, Channel Pressure is rather hollow, but it still has the potential to be genuinely enjoyable if you’re in just the right mood to listen to it.

Ford and Lopatin - Channel Pressure: B+

JEFF the Brotherhood - We Are the Champions: B-

"Diamond Way"

If Time New Viking were the teenagers that genuinely tried to flesh out the big productions of their idols with limited proficiency and production value, JEFF the Brotherhood were the snotty assholes who recorded songs about farts and poop just so they could laugh at the playbacks. Nothing about JEFF the Brotherhood’s fourth album is serious. From the Raaaaaaaandy-style horn blast that kicks it off to the lazy Skynyrd and Ramones parodies that make up its second half, We Are the Champions comes off as a massive lark. At the end of “Cool Out”, the group switches from their style of boring slacker rock to a blast beat with guttural screams, as if lead singer Jake Orrall had just heard “Raining Blood” and thought it was the funniest thing of all time. There’s a feeling throughout We Are the Champions that what you’re walking into wasn’t really made for public consumption; I have no real objection to these types of joke songs, but they hold up terribly when shown to anyone but the musicians’ immediate friends and family. If you ask me, JEFF the Brotherhood are not even close to being ready for primetime. They’re close to the bottom of the lo-fi barrel, and they’ll probably always stay that way.

JEFF the Brotherhood - We Are the Champions: B-

Arctic Monkeys - Suck It and See: B+

"Don't Sit Down 'Cause I've Moved Your Chair"

I’ve been giving too many B+’s lately. Maybe it’s cynicism, boredom or both, but it seems like there have been less than five albums in the past month that have tickled my fancy enough to warrant any excitement for new music coming out. So I listen to an album, find nothing objectionable with it, slap a B+ on it and move on with my life. This month particularly, I’m finding this blog as more of a job than a hobby.

So obviously I’m feeling a little burnt out, but I don’t think you could have presented me with an album to top off this feeling of mediocrity better than the newest Arctic Monkeys album. The group that produced what I believe to be one of the most obnoxious first singles of all time comes back with their fourth album of UK derp rock. It’s marginally interesting in the nicest sense of the word. Some cool riffs here and there and some faux-erudite lyrics sung in a rich English brood to go over them. The group sounds best when they’re playing loud bass-heavy British rock like in “Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair” and “Library Pictures”. You’ve got a decent Heartbreak Hotel metaphor in “Piledriver Waltz” that should keep you engaged for about half a second. Overall, it’s a pretty good listen. Sure, I’d recommend it.

But if you were to call this thing Hade’s ejaculation through the shaft of the River Styx, I wouldn’t blame you. If you chalked Suck It and See up to the boring competency of a group long past its prime and decided to shelve it in favor of playing outside, making love to the opposite sex and learning Arabic, I would probably approve. I mean, I haven’t even talked about the album’s fucking title, which is such an obvious gimmick, you can practically smell the cheap cologne through your speakers as it plays. But alas, is Suck It and See a good album? Sure. Is Suck It and See a bad album? Sure. Is the Chupacabra real? Sure. Is Bismarck the capital of North Dakota? Sure.

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Arctic Monkeys - Suck It and See: B+

Battles - Gloss Drop: B+

"Ice Cream (feat. Matias Aguayo)"

Want to hear one of greatest bass performances of year? Listen to Gloss Drop. Want to hear one of the greatest drum performances of the year? Listen to Gloss Drop. Want to listen to some hilariously skonky keyboard performances? Listen to Gloss Drop. And if you want to get some mind-blowing visual accompaniment to a fantastic single, I would suggest you click on that link above and sit back as your eyeballs get thoroughly reamed.

But if you want to hear an album that’s distinct from track to track, I would still recommend Gloss Drop, but would not promise that you would be reeling once the album comes to a close. While Battles maintain their high level of instrumental proficiency throughout their newest record, hearing them play off of each other for nearly an hour can get a little tiring when there are few shifts in texture or style. Most of Gloss Drop is instrumental, but this principal is also applicable when vocals are present. Matias Aguayo (of “Rollerskate” fame) puts in a fun performance for “Ice Cream”, the album’s clear highlight, but Kazu Makino of Blonde Redhead and Yamantaka Eye of Boredoms don’t really add much to their respective songs and those tracks and others begin to slump and blend towards the album’s end.

But I’m being negative. Gloss Drop is still great for its musicianship and at the very least is perfect background music for a particularly rousing game of Twister. The album’s not as outlandish as the group’s watershed moment, Mirrored, and Battles may have diluted their math rock leanings to an extent, but it’s still great fun to hear these guys mull over melodies, even if it should be in smaller doses. Gloss Drop’s definitely worth your time. You might even learn something.

Battles - Gloss Drop: B+

Bill Callahan - Apocalypse: B

"Drover"

There’s that age old question every person hears in their English class from high school through college: “Do we really think that the meaning we find in these books was actually meant by the writers that wrote them or are we just scrambling to make them seem relevant?” You’ll hear a lot of variations on that statement, but that’s basically it. We stake so much in literature, lifestyle and music that the norm has become hyperbole in how we assume meaning down to the very arrangement of words in sentences in service of a greater, elusive whole. It’s a sentiment that will always have backlash, but that romanticism for hidden genius stems from the desperate hope in all of us that everything in our lives happens for a reason.

The problem I have with Bill Callahan’s fourth album, Apocalypse, is the same I had with R.E.M.’s latest release, Collapse Into Now. As I inspect Callahan’s words and the pastiche that surrounds them, I wonder if the things he’s saying actually mean anything to anyone besides Bill Callahan. He speaks of the world coming to an end and derides America before bringing it back into his good graces with really no clear structure or purpose. Apocalypse is very flimsy as a result of this, and, the more I look into it, the more I see it as a record of hollow rhetoric as opposed to anything remotely substantive.

Take “America!” for example. In it, Callahan repeats his country’s name in a mocking tone, never changing the three notes he sings in each verse as he describes an apparent longing for his country while he’s traveling overseas. “I watched David Letterman / In Australia,” he sings, maintaining that mocking tone. In the song, he rattles off American artists, presumptively his idols in the context of giving them military names like Captain Kristofferson and Sergeant Cash. “What an army!” he rejoices in that unwaveringly derisive tone. But then the song stops and Callahan switches to his grave deep voice. “Never served my country,” he intones. Then the song picks up again as if the deviation never happened.

Pretty funny joke of a song, right? But… is it a joke? At one point Callahan has clear respect for his idols by assembling them in an army, but then ridicules them by making it clear that he’s not concerned with the military. The drop-off that occurs in the song could actually be effective in conveying a serious mood to counteract his belief in the silliness of militarism but doing so produces a paradox in which he inevitably dismisses his idols. Does Bill Callahan not actually like Johnny Cash or Kris Kristofferson? Does he not like that you can watch David Letterman in Australia? Because based on that fucking annoying tone he takes throughout most of “America!”, you’d think he hated America, but actually liked it in the most incongruous and parabolic way possible.

So clearly it’s a song fraught with contradiction, which would be fine if it were organized. As I’ve just shown, there is no real message in “America!” More likely Bill Callahan had a couple contradicting ideas that touched upon similar subjects and put them all together on one track. So as a piece of music to be analyzed, it’s useless, because it has no mission statement despite sounding like it has the confidence of several. So, though I appreciate the ambition, the song is ultimately a total failure. It’s meaningless and sung like a Jim Gaffigan joke, and I hardly think that was Bill Callahan’s intention.

But man does the song sound like it means something. Honestly, if you didn’t feel like being a grumpy music skeptic, you could listen to all of Apocalypse and be sated by its hushed arrangements and Callahan’s honest to God gift for just saying words. You could sit back and assume that you were listening to an album with meaning, and that’s mostly why I didn’t give it such a low rating. For however empty the album’s lyrics prove to be, Callahan gives one Hell of a performance. His voice is deep and conversational and can tell a very engaging story, even if it turns out to be a mind numbing dead end. When he makes the sound of a flare gun in “Universal Acclaim” at the point of its use in the story, you couldn’t ask for a better musical accompaniment, and Callahan comes off as redoubtably endearing as a result. He’s so good at storytelling it’s a shame so much of Apocalypse is so deceptive.

However, the pointlessness of the album becomes too overwhelming. Its “mission statement” comes barreling through on second to last track, “Free’s”. “Is this what it means to be free?” Callahan asks in his amiable tenor. “Or is this what it means to be owned by the free?” Well, Bill, I’d say it would be pretty tough to confuse those two, so I’d chalk it up to words that sound profound because they’re opposites. “And the free / They belong to me,” he later sings, in a last attempt to breach some kind of coherency. He fails, but you wouldn’t know it based on the song’s beautiful aural accompaniment.

This speaks nothing of the nine-minute closing track and the other moot commentaries of America, an apocalypse and endless piles of bullshit. In “Riding for the Feeling”, Callahan even replaces the first and last words of the song’s title indiscriminately, as if acknowledging that his words are nothing more than placeholders. And yet, if you’re not careful, Apocalypse can be the most poignant turd you ever heard. It’s undoubtedly pleasant, but any scrutiny will indicate that it’s a gilded record, buoyed by the nebulous words of a convincing vocalist. There are some great moments on Apocalypse, but, shaken of its pretenses, it’s little more than a boring spoken word album. And I want to parse meaning from it about as much as I want to read The Catcher in the Rye for the seventy-fifth time.

Bill Callahan - Apocalypse: B