Records

TURING MACHINE

ROCKET JUICE & THE MOON

BASTARDS OF FATE

RINGO STARR

There comes a point in every night when all my work is done, all restrictive trappings of the day such as pants and undergarments are put away, and all I wanna do is drink cold beers and listen to rap songs about bouncing butts and BJs. Ninjasonik is always good for that. I hate the word “ninja,” though. It reminds me of the movie

Hackers

, even though that movie had nothing to do with ninjas.

IRISH KAFFEE

V-NASTY

Doin’ Number$

Self-released

BIG K.R.I.T.

4Eva N a Day

Self-released

K.R.I.T. is the shit to me because his laborious lyrical detail and laid-back production create a mood that sucks me in, until I feel like I’m the one cruising through Meridian, Mississippi, in an ol’ school with lean in my cup and a bad redbone bitch in the passenger seat.

4Eva N a Day

  plays more like an album than your typical mixtape, and each song covers a different part of the day, from eating breakfast to snagging a late-night booty call. Although he doesn’t get so deep as to rap about taking poops or picking his nose (that’s what I do all day), this is still one of the realest glimpses you’ll ever get into life in the Dirty South.

WILBERT L. COOPER

Saying you want to “69” someone—even just thinking it in your head—is so corny. Adults call this particular sexual practice “Doin’ Number$.”

HEY SALLY

I feel like I am going to get shit for liking this gay girl-guy duo because they look like extras from

The Crow

 and their music is all that-sort-of music. But I love this full-length debut for its combination of Shannon’s bellowing, gospel-sounding contralto and synth guy Bruno Coviello’s dark electronics that sometimes border on schmaltz, but only

jusssst

slightly. She could be reading a newspaper and still sound like the Metatron (the angel that speaks for God, because God’s voice will explode your brain).

WILBERT L. COOPER

GOTH TRAD

New Epoch

Deep Medi Musik

This sounds like one of those the-English-meaning-of-“hardcore” DJs made a glitchy drum and bass version of old Dario Argento soundtracks, which I like because I take drugs, but, man, does it bum me out how these guys go from breakneck VNV Nation beats into rap tempo

every

song. Does that make me racist? Also, why’s my hand doing this thing?

BEZUB

KINDNESS

World, You Need a Change of Mind

Casablanca/Terrible

This is supposed to be something called disco-funk, but it’s really just super-precious bleating through multiple filters and effects by a guy named Adam Bainbridge. By the sounds of this album, and the looks of Bainbridge, more feeling went into selecting which cream rinse he used in the shower each morning during the recording process than can be found in the music itself.

LADY MAN

LORDS OF ACID

Deep Chills

Metropolis

I blame the lack of older siblings for my owning seven Lords of Acid CDs when I was 15. How was I listening to so much industrial rave music with a lady groaning over it? I haven’t been aware of what they’ve been up to since I was about 17. They’re still making

Mortal Kombat

soundtrack music with lyrics about boning written by people who don’t really speak English very well. There’s a song on here called “Pop That Tushie” that makes me wanna barf, and the cover art is like a black-light poster.

NAZTY CUPZ

ROCKET JUICE & THE MOON

S/T

Honest Jon’s

I cannot find the words to describe how irritating this album is. Wait a second, just found them. They were in the liner notes. Here you go: Damon Albarn, Tony Allen, Flea, Erykah Badu, Fatou Diawara, the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, M.anifest, M3nsa, Cheick Tidiane Seck, Thundercat.

A MORCHEEBA FAN

ZAMBRI

House of Baasa

Kanine

Is it OK that anytime I hear two hot sisters fronting a band, I imagine them hooking up with each other? I hope so because that’s exactly what happened when I found out that the Zambri girls come from the same vagina. Whoa, that’s some entendre there. Anyways, back to reviewing records: Culled from demos, field recordings, and studio overdubs, Zambri’s songs have a goth-pop quality that makes this album different and enjoyable while maintaining an oh-shit-the-glasses-girl’s-tongue-up-the-other-one’s-ass gottago.

WILBERT L. COOPER

KING TUFF

Wild Desire 7"

Suicide Squeeze

Listening to the music of King Tuff is like being transported to Vermont in springtime where you’re all happy and your bitterness slips away. I am there now. King Tuff is caressing me with his dirty hands as I lean against him and I am so elated. This is where I want to send my brain as I die freezing and alone on the streets of New York of a rat-bite overdose.

KIND TOUCH

SCREAMING FEMALES

Ugly

Don Giovanni

I’ve been on a 90s kick since the 90s, wading through the sludge in my purple, sparkly Dr. Martens and that “Zero” t-shirt (where is that thing?) on my Odyssean journey. I’ve encountered sirens in the form of Kim Gordon, Kim Deal, D’arcy Wretzky, and even Meredith Brooks sorta; I don’t think you’re worth your weight in VHS copies of

Reality Bites

if you don’t appreciate the BBC Sessions version of “Quiet” by the Pumpkins a little more than the original. That guitar tone is sick, Ricky! Screaming Females have a lot of this good shit going.

AMETHYST ROCK

OBERHOFER

Time Capsules II

Glassnote

It’s pretty brave calling your record

Time Capsules

. I instinctively wanted to make a joke about how people should bury this in their yards and dig it up in 20 years or something, except I like it. It’s kind of like MGMT or Vampire Weekend. You know. Girl-blog stuff.

HOFFERBOFFER

BASTARDS OF FATE

Who’s a Fuzzy Buddy?

This Will Be Our Summer

This album is great, until it dives headlong into some kind of fucked-up midway ride with clowns and shit. Sirens, pitched-down robot voices, a song called “Harlequin Fetus” (don’t google that!), some kind of weird cotton-picking work song, creepy alien lullabies… this whole thing is going to give me nightmares. Thanks.

ALEX HOLMES

BEAR IN HEAVEN

I Love You, It’s Cool

Dead Oceans/

Hometapes

Listening to Bear in Heaven reminds me of a really boring guy I used to date who was pretty cute but had a weak handshake (not a euphemism). The guy was so bland I always filled the awkward silences with music and makeout sessions. If, God forbid, I was ever forced to spend time with him again, I’d just put this album on and pretend he was Joseph Gordon-Levitt or something.

FATTI SMITH

BLACK  MOUNTAIN

Year Zero

Secretly Canadian

America has finally entered the Golden Age! We have Saudis getting our oil for us, Brazilians getting our wood, Chinese making our clothes, and Russians getting us shitfaced. Not until recently, though, have we realized one of life’s greatest luxuries… We now have Canadians taking our drugs for us! Instead of spending days recovering from wild nights under the stars with our eyeballs dripping out, Black Mountain do all the heavy lifting and we can just sit back, listen to their pagan debauchery through headphones, and check our Twitter feed for the latest burrito coupons.

BILLY HUNTER

K-HOLES

Dismania

Hardly Art

There should be more punk bands with sax. I’m not talking about rockabilly or ska. Like punk-punk. Or goth. Oh, man, goth bands with sax. These guys kind of have a heavier No Trend thing going with the gothness and the squealing banshee sax. I saw them play a Daylight Saving show back whenever that was, and the lead singer was kicking people in the front row like Nick Cave with his pointy boots (also like Nick Cave). It’s a pointy-boot-in-the-face kind of a gothsperience.

OOKUM SPOOKUM

WHITE FENCE

Family Perfume Vol. 1

Woodsist

UV POP

No Songs Tomorrow

Flowmotion

Shit, I thought this was going to be that old punk band UV Race. I have now learned the hard way that UV Pop are not UV Race. They aren’t UV Race at all. Still good, though, if you want a minimal synth re-release from 1983 that will spook you right in the ears.

NO UV RACE TOMORROW

The girlfriend of a guy in a band that I really like is in THIS band and she sent me this seven-inch directly to my home and included a sweet note. Everyone in this band is adorable and they even have business cards (I know, because they included one with the album). Unfortunately, these songs remind me of yeast infections. Hope we’re still friends!

KAYLE MAQLUE

TORCHE

Harmonicraft

Volcom

I’ve got no clue how to write about metal. Something about pummeling? Or ferocious, right? Ferocity’s definitely a thing, I got that down. Beards? Are they still doing that, with the beards and all? They are? OK, not sure exactly where it’s going to fit but I’ll put it down too. Hmmmmm. Think here.

Metaaallllll

. Think think think think think think think think THINK.

Metttttttttallllll

. Fuck, you know what? Going to level with you, I’m striking out on this. Just put up that thing about pummeling beards.

ALAN FREED

UNISON

S/T

Lentonia

I really liked this album until I read the press release. It’s like that thing where you LOOOOVE a band until you do a Google image search for them and find out that everyone in it is a mongoloid. (Sorry, publicists. Sorry, mongoloids.) Really, though, describing something as “death-gaze” and “death-trance” and then tossing in “crunk” and “shoegaze” for good measure is only going to give people IBS.

HEY SALLY

MEAN JEANS

Mean Jeans on Mars

Dirtnap

Oh, the Mean Jeans, I love you so. You got the Meanest Jeans and I want to let the world know. You’re my favorite Ramones-core band around. Your first seven-inches were raging party anthems, and your first full length had a few slightly sad tracks on it. This one’s still fun, pop-music magic but it definitely feels that these are like requiems for parties past and most of these songs are tinged with sadness over not being young anymore. The Mean Jeans are about to blow up if they haven’t already, and I just wasn’t paying attention.

MEAN JEAN GEANNIE JEANS

MOSS ICON

Complete Discography

Temporary

Residence, Ltd.

Textbook example of a band people love to namedrop “reverently” without ever having heard a single note of their embarrassing, proto-cutter, semi-spoken-word, sadsack jam music. Of which I too am supremely guilty. Partial blame can be assigned to that B&W picture of the lead singer screaming his veins out at the top of that “What is real Emo?” website from 2002ish, but the truth of the matter is that these guys have floated by for more than two decades solely on the fact that none of us was able to listen to them and call each other on our bullshit (ditto the Hated). Still, you should give this a whirl and see what you’ve been repping all these years. At the very least it’ll be good practice for revisiting the early Bright Eyes canon without wanting to take a time machine to your high school and strangle teenage-you with that skinny little scarf he’s wearing. God, that fucking scarf.

MARSHALL CRENSHAW

TURING MACHINE

What Is the

Meaning of What

Temporary

Residence, Ltd.

This is one of the last things Jerry Fuchs recorded before his death three years ago. I don’t drum and can’t tell you the first thing about what is going on here or why he was as good as he was, but oh God, me rikey. Not to be Mr. 3 AM sincerity here and tell you to buy this, start a band with your best friends, and spend all summer listening to it in your van, blazed and speeding through the rural night, but maybe you should consider doing something fairly similar fairly soon.

TERRY MANN

For me, you’re a band that’s struck gold when you’ve written a record that reminds me of my all-time favorite superpower: the ability to explode into a cloud of bats on command. Such a good superpower. But it’s not really a superpower, is it? It’s really more like what happens to the tragically rad when their soul has an orgasm.

BIG PIG

MEDECINE

Shot Forth Self Living, The Buried Life,

Sounds of

Captured Tracks

And here is the reverse-case scenario: A totally buried SoCal band of the Swervedriver school of pilled-up, overdriven shoegaze, lovingly disinterred by a couple of diehard nerds who aren’t just looking to get laid. Any one of these songs is a sufficient full-summer bliss-out soundtrack, which assuming you start now, should take you clearly to 2059. Just kidding, we’ll all be dead in December.

ONE OF THOSE DANIEL PINCHBECK FAGS

M. WARD

A Wasteland Companion

Merge

Echoes of the She & Him Christmas album are still resonating in my head, clunking around like an old soot-covered leather boot. I lie recumbent in the desert, moaning the melody to “I Get Ideas.” My mouth is dry as hell; I should be drinking what’s left of my saliva and being more conservative with my breath; the buzzards are circling around my wounded body, and anxiety is the last emotion I know before I finally lose consciousness.

LLEWELYN MOSS

RINGO STARR

Ringo 2012

Hip-O

What’s your fucking problem with Ringo? He didn’t do crazy drum fills? His songs weren’t as good as the rest of the Beatles’? Yeah, no shit, he was up against the rest of the BEATLES. Let’s see you riff with those guys. And I mean that in the hanging-out, cracking-jokes sense, not the making-guitary-sounds one, ’cause that’s what Ringo was good at. Being a funny bud and keeping good time (both senses there). “It Don’t Come Easy” would also make a decent-enough Frampton song.

RINGO IV

OOOOO

Our Loving Is

Hurting Us

Tri Angle

Oog. This is some boring stuff. It reminds me of Portishead, which probably is a good thing if you are a lady but not if you are a Me. oOoOoOoOg.

BOOOO

MIRRORING

Foreign Body

Kranky

My former roommate used to get prescription muscle relaxers for his back when he would fly to India to photograph nude people for his job, so I would always steal a few of his pills because I was mad that he made a better career choice than I did. This album is an approximation of said jealousy and pill-popping: lots of sleepy longing.

BILL CARTWRIGHT

EMILY WELLS

Mama

Partisan

There is a category of music/albums that I refer to as “name music.” Any time I see an album by a name, just some person’s name, like Jennifer’s Fish Stick Songs or whatever, I automatically assume that it’s gonna be a whole mess of shit. But not this Emily Wells. Not THIS name. Emily sounds like she just got back from the dentist and is slow and sing-songy without making a person want to vom. She got it right.

HOT GYNO

S/S/S

Beak & Claw

Anticon

I am almost embarrassed by how excited I was to get the press release about this. A collaboration between Sufjan Stevens, Serengeti, and Son Lux… whaaaat? After ripping through the four songs on this EP, I then fell into a K-hole of Google image searches, then I looked for any upcoming show dates, and then I looked for merch, even though this band has only existed for like 30 seconds. It’s gross to be happy about things. But really, Sufjan could sing the list of ingredients on the back of a bag of dog food and I’d probably cry about it, I JUST LOVE HIM SO MUCH! [

rips at hair, passes out

]

KELLY KELLY

KISHI BASHI

151a

Joyful Noise

This album was primarily written on the violin, and that knowledge lends a lot to a person’s urge to shoot arrows rapid-fire, effortlessly from a handcrafted bow into a bale of fresh, dewy hay. Oh, shit, here comes a lion, no, he’s not coming to eat you, he’s coming to help you save this fucking world. Ride that beast into the glittery snow globe of your imagination. Have some snacks. Do whatever the fuck you want.

HOT GYNO

REGIONAL GARLAND

Mixed Sugar, the Complete Works, 1970-1987

Now-Again

This collection of soul and funk hits by Regional Garland is old as hell, but after listening to endless horseshit for hours putting this section together, this was like a squirt of cold aloe vera gel right out of the fridge, onto the sunburn of my jaded soul. These mellow, super-tight, and professionally orchestrated songs from the late 70s to mid-80s make everything else sound like fucking nonsense.

BLUES HAMMER

MAC DEMARCO

Rock and Roll

Night Club

Captured Tracks

I once had a Canadian yogi lover who practiced orgasm denial in an effort to preserve spiritual energy. I’m reminded of my friend while listening to this album. There’s likability in DeMarco’s effeminacy and husky Chris Isaak-esque voice, but it’s as if he’s holding back a load for a time that may never come.

PASHA PREY

MARCIA BASSETT & SAMARA LUBELSKI

Sunday Night,

Sunday Afternoon

KYE

Remember when you bought that gnarly noise-dude-approved delay/looper pedal? Remember how happy you were? Remember how easy it was to make something weird and trippy? Remember how hard you actually sucked because you cared more about fashion than achieving another plane of “there”? Guess who didn’t? These girls right here. Damn these gals are so right on. Right up there with

Catch Wave

and

Celestial Power

as one of the all-time string/hover greats. I actually feel guilty that I haven’t listened to drone like this for some time. Talk about sticking with it and stepping over a tired-ass fool at the finish line.

BAREFOOT JERRY