Records

CASS McCOMBS

PTERODACTYL:

WAVVES

BARBRA STREISAND

Simple Success is omnivorous. This guy puts everything on the menu, making a collage of the familiar that can morph into a schizophrenic shit storm, depending on how it’s digested and voided.

Smash and Dash

manages to serve dance, electronica, dancehall, rock, and other blips and beeps, then plops it like a massive BM somewhere between innovative and the toilet. Just missing the mark, but making a big enough mess to give you pause.

PETER LANDAU

NOTAR

Devil’s Playground

Tyrannosaurus

Oh great, more emo-influenced, Auto-Tuned mall rap. Or, to revert to my first draft of this review: Notar? More like No, tard! HEY-O!

BILLY HUNTER

EVIDENCE

Cats & Dogs

Rhymesayers

Evidence stuffs this so full of layered vocal samples, 70s soul instrumentation, and perfectly paired guest spots (Slug, Aesop Rock, Raekwon, DJ Premier) it’s like Christmas morning in East LA. Seeing that he’s a California boy himself, I can only imagine he recorded most of this while peeling an orange with one hand and oiling his gun with the other. And by gun, I mean penis. (No, I meant gun.)

JONATHAN YOST

DRAKE

Take Care

Universal

We asked Drake’s publicist if we could get a copy of this record to review, and she responded, “The record comes out October 24th.” Drake’s publicist is not good at her job.

FARRAH RUNNINGHAM

Better enjoy this while it lasts. In 20 or so years, your ill-adjusted children will be requesting Class Actress songs from the karaoke DJ like porn stars in the Valley fighting over “Black Velvet” in a hungry struggle to prove to Tuesday-night bar patrons that they really really are so sexy!

A. WOLFE

MUNGOLIAN

JET SET

Galactic Melt

Ghostly International

Certain shut-in teenagers who drink a ton of soda, write fan fiction, and think Frank Zappa is funny will enjoy this. You and I though, my friend, are far too refined for jokey Röyskopp.

BING BONG

JUSTICE

Audio, Video, Disco

Ed Banger/

Because/

Elektra/VICE

MODESELEKTOR

Monkeytown

Monkeytown

If it was 2008, we’d all be listening to this, going down on each other and snorting mountains of beige snow, ashing cigarettes into empty cans of Sparks, and chewing the insides of our mouths in between untimed bursts of random compliment giving. This record is going to be perfect inspiration for the winter months, when we’ve got nothing better to do than start 100 new “electronic projects” in our bedrooms.

CHUCK BILLICK

DJ SHADOW

The Less You

Know the Better

Verve

The Less You Know the Better

is the dark, anxious underbelly of a night fueled by amphetamines and sweat. Gritty, grimy, scattered, all salt, no sugar, straight shot, no chaser. “Waaaaaah! He STILL won’t make us another

Endtroducing

!” they will wail. Shadow don’t give a fuck. Try to listen to “I Gotta Rokk” without visualizing huge, bouncing, hairy balls in your face.

WOOKIE WACKHOUSE

Haven’t thought about these guys much recently. Justice is great, but I feel like they already belong to another time. Maybe that’s the problem with making your whole mission statement “We’re going to teach you motherfuckers to DANCE again.” Once everybody’s dancing there’s not much else for you to do but stand there and bob your head and smile. And maybe wave a little wistfully from the inside of Jennifer Connelly’s bedroom mirror with all the rest of the Labyrinth denizens. Oh God, that ending always gets to me.

FRENCHO

MOGWAI

Earth Division EP

Sub Pop

This starts off like the soundtrack to one of the more maudlin Mike Leigh films, then goes into a drunk guy singing along to Spacemen 3 songs, then makes a turn into watching

while doing a bunch of eccys. It’s all the things you love about Mogwai, again, which makes it better than 90 percent of the CDs on this fucking desk.

ANDY CAPPER

NIRVANA

Nevermind 20th Anniversary 2 Disc Edition

Geffen

When I was in high school the people who liked Nirvana were all dumb jocks who’d been tricked into thinking they were punk. My associative disliking might have been a secret gift because as I lose my anger with age, I have totally new things to enjoy. “Hey, Metallica isn’t just for football-playing mongs! Hey, Nirvana isn’t just for dummies who think they’re deep!” I’ve only been enjoying

Nevermind

for maybe five years now, but they’ve been five good years. And now they’ve remastered the record. I can’t tell if the sound is “richer” or they just made the volume louder, but all anyone gets these for is the extras. Which there are.

CHING-CHONG CHANNING

THE STONED AMBASSADORS

Bring You Down

Labor of Love

These dudes are cultural bards for urban denizens who work 25 hours a day, age 15 years an hour, and are lucky to live to see 29. They deliver the bleak reminder of mortal futility, draped in a glorious sonic tapestry woven with clumps of George Harrison’s beard and back issues of

Forced Exposure

. You can play this record for your friend and tell him he’s listening to “the new Beatles” while his head explodes and his girlfriend gets pissed that “that’s it,” and that you are “getting the band back together and booking an East Coast tour.”

ROBERT BOTTOMWATER

COMET GAIN

Howl of the

Lonely Crowd

What’s Your Rupture/

Fortuna Pop

Not sure if this is just me, but Comet Gain is the quintessential binge band. I don’t usually dig through my record collection to put them on, but whenever it pops up in a shuffle or a review pile or whatever it becomes the only thing I want to listen to, to the point where I don’t question why I listen to other music, but rather why other music even exists at all. PS: Fun fact, I’m told this is referred to as “The John Cougar Mellencamp Effect” among normies.

DENNIS BOYD

WAVVES

Life Sux EP

Ghost Ramp

People on the internet talk shit about this guy like he’s on reality TV or something, but Wavves isn’t all that famous. Or is he? Am I just totally out of the loop? This EP contains songs that seem like they might be about the stresses of celebrity—wanting to get away from everyone, feeling ashamed and embarrassed. But those could also be about the stresses of a girl whose tits came in before the rest of her classmates. Catchy stuff either way, I guess, and the guy from Fucked Up is on one of the songs.

WAVVY GRAVVY

DANAVA

Hemisphere of Shadows

Kemado

The production on this makes every song sound like it’s being played through a thin wall and/or like background music from a CSI episode about a teenager who runs away to New York. It also sounds like every member of the band is named Vince, and they’re all making it their life’s work to rip off Black Sabbath as much as possible.

NED HEPBURN

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM

Celestial Lineage

Southern Lord

I have a friend who would hate this record because the guitars aren’t “cold enough” and because he’s harder than them (according to him) because they’ve never emerged from a lake with corpse paint on and because they don’t live in Scandinavia like he does. He hasn’t, however, gotten back to me yet on what he thinks after playing it at medium volume, drunk as hell, naked in the woods, lying by a trash fire behind Smith College at the end of August, which, in my opinion, is the only way to hear it.

RUTABAGA SMALLS

Kitchen’s Floor released one of the best Aussie punk debuts in recent memory, and I’m happy to report that their follow-up for Siltbreeze maintains the dour repetitious riffs and dry Oz wit that hooked me like a helpless carp the first time. According to my iTunes, I’ve listened to “Lander” off their first record 86 times, and I’ve played “116” off the new one 28 times. Bummerpop with deadpan shouting and Bob Pollard’s breakneck melodies. The numbers don’t lie.

CRAIG HODGES

VERONICA FALLS

S/T

Slumberland

If I were put in charge of making an illustration to sum up Veronica Falls’ “Beachy Head” it would be a totally cool-dude Frankenstein eating a Pop-Tart while lounging around in his novelty boxers. This album almost teeters into barfy territory because it kind of sounds like everything else, but the drums and this one song make it worth its shelf space. No, I’m not telling you which one.

NUTS NADDLEBANG

PTERODACTYL

Spills Out

Brah

The 6969th release this month by the planet’s solitary totally normal-sounding, forgettable band is called

Spills Out

and is being released under the name “Pterodactyl.” What a prolific band. What a grueling tour schedule they have. They’re playing in every city on earth tonight, and in a lot of the towns.

CX ZOLA

TOTAL SLACKER

Thrashin’

Marshall Teller

Some folks claim these guys are a Sonic Youth knockoff, but I hate Sonic Youth and this ain’t bad. Their song “No Mo 4Loko” is based on a real-life 4Loko blackout from which the guitarist and bassist awoke cuddling on the sidewalk having lost their wallets, phones, and guitars. Later, they returned to the spot where they’d been cuddling and found all their shit just lying neatly on the sidewalk, untouched. How’d that happen?

BOWLED OVER

LIQUOR STORE

Yeah Buddy

Almost Ready

Liquor Store began as an offshoot of living legends Livefastdie and would appear onstage with as many as eight guitarists in the band in addition to the drummer and bassist. These stage-crowding clusterfucks somehow gave way to one of the tightest bands in proggy hardcore ever. They’re like if Can was stupid. Long awesome hardcore songs with names like “Manchild in Paradise” and “Jerkin’ It” that are like eight-minute symphonies. On top of these guys being one of the best Jersey/Brooklyn crossover bands, this is their first album and they put it out as a double, gatefold LP. Suck it, mediocrity.

NICK GAZIN

CASS McCOMBS

Humor Risk

Domino

If the soul-crushing, slow sadness of

Wit’s End

was too much for you because you’re a pussy then you’ll be glad to know that

Humor Risk

is the most upbeat record Cass has made since

Dropping the Writ

. Wordswise, these are some of his best ones, including my favorite: “Not you again/ I thought you’d died.” By the way, if you haven’t seen the sketch with Cass being interviewed by the fat music journalist by the swimming pool, please go to YouTube and watch it now.

ANITA CRAPPER

KIMYA DAWSON

Thunder Thighs

Burnside Distribution

[Our reviews editor wrote a really harsh review of this record because Kimya once threatened to kill her for badmouthing the city of Olympia, WA, on the internet. We agree that the residents of that shit towne need to borrow Dylan Carson’s shotgun and load it with a pair of get-the-fuck-over-yourself shells, but we can’t bring ourselves to say anything bad about Kimya and these new songs still make us wish she’d been our childhood babysitter. Does that make us fags? Who’s to say anymore.

-Ed.]

FUTURE ISLANDS

On the Water

Thrill Jockey

ZOLA JESUS

Conatus

Sacred Bones

Like a bird with a broken wing, I just want to put Zola Jesus in a little box with a warm water bottle and keep her safe in my room. Each day, I’d gently lift the lid, and when her eyes adjusted to the light, she’d sing some of the most emotionally devastating songs off of

Conatus

for me. As she grew healthy, though, I’d not be able to let her go. Frankly, with music as beautiful as hers is, I don’t want to share it with anyone. Creepy?

BILLY HUNTER

BARBARA STREISAND

What Matters Most

Columbia

Eeesh, Babs is looking a little Jocelyn Wildenstein-y around the edges these days. Why don’t people just get old anymore? I remember watching wrinkled 85-year-olds drive their Buicks half off the road or blow their nose with a handkerchief for five full minutes at the Waffle House counter and thinking, “… Some day.” Now everyone spends their retirement party injecting bee venom into their saggy ass cheeks and the cover of AARP is like some sort of creepy

Maxim

for Twilight Zone pumpkin people. What kind of fucked-up kid is looking forward to that?

SMOKEY LENNOX

If I close my eyes while I listen to this album, I see myself on a beautiful black-sand beach at sunset, and the Cure is playing with the Count from

Sesame Street

as their vocalist. Oh look, there’s David Bowie with a neti pot full of Malbec, and he’s giving the Count vocal cues. Now I’m on my yoga mat, doing sun salutations while the song cycle comes full circle and the nostalgic synths lead me into Savasana.

SOME BROAD

WOODSMAN

Mystic Places

Fire Talk

When you are in the habit of listening to a ton of music, it eventually becomes one big flume of noise, like a chattering stream in the distant background while you pick your toes or eat your sad little baloney sandwich on lunch break at your desk. I threw this on while doing chores around the house expecting it to fade into the woodwork, but the building drum drone of the intro and the lulling, repetitive pings and pangs ended up washing over me like Vicodin chased with cheap merlot. Or maybe it was just the Vicodin chased with cheap merlot.

TUNEY FEESH

BOBBY JOE EBOLA AND THE CHILDREN MACNUGGITS

Carmelita Sings!

Silver Sprocket

Bicycle Club

A friend of mine who grew up in the Bay Area invited me out one night to see a “funny punk band” who were “kind of like the Dickies meets Ween.” What followed was the anti-folk version of the Capitol Steps. An hour-plus (they were the opening act) of smirky fake-hobo songs about evil rich dudes,

craaaaaazy

ex-girlfriends, people who tan, guys at the bar with sideburns (evidently a thing), namedroppers, and people they are apparently friends with who maybe we’re supposed to know, maybe not. Somehow they managed to steer clear of politics, but nonetheless a great reminder of why I think of Californians the same way Germans do about the Jews.

BURGER TIME

MARK McGUIRE

Get Lost

Editions Mego

Sucks that while the John Mauses of this world are getting rich and laid doing improv comedy over Casio demos and spouting off bullshit on Pitchfork, synthesizists capable of making supple, dreamy water-ribbons of sound like Mark still have to toil in the damp, womanless basement of experimental music. Also sucks that this dude is in Emeralds ’cause I fucking hate that band.

TERRY HAND

DEATH IN JUNE

Nada Plus!

Pylon

This originally came out in 1985, and compared with the somber, strummier later stuff DiJ is better known for, it practically sounds like the Pet Shop Boys. Still funny how even when rubbing musical elbows with the likes of Marc Almond they managed to be more legitimately dark and spooky than all the other clowns before and since who’ve tried to take up the goth gauntlet (“She Said Destroy” should be the national anthem of teenage Columbine fantasies). Anyhoodlers, seriously great fucking record, and if you’re a fan of Douglas P.’s music then you are probably in the habit of spending a third of your income on the beautiful things he makes.

SMILE-EGE!

PRINCE RAMA

Trust Now

Paw Tracks

This starts off with some

Mortal Kombat

sounds and then turns into pretty Indian chanting you can dance to. The songs are between four and seven minutes long and are great to put on while you are effing (seven minutes is my max).

TIKA KINSELLA

DOUG BENSON

Potty Mouth

Comedy Central

Stoner comedy is one of the lowliest forms of entertainment, but ston

ed

comedy is and ever shall be very fucking funny. Remember when Mitch Hedburg said, “I’ve got a roll of Life Savers in my pocket and pineapple is next”? In that voice? Shit. Not claiming that Doug is the rightful heir to Mitch’s potlaurels, but he does make sounding astute and charming when you’re baked as hell seem easy, which anyone who’s taken two tiny hits then spent the next 18 minutes staring at a plate of unsauced spaghetti knows is quite the admirable feat. I’m also getting a major contact high from listening to his fuck-ups, and they are

plenteous

.

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