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Archive for the ‘Sounds’ Category

THE YOUNG
Dub Egg
Matador
Rating: 3 out of 3 stars

The Young are a practically un-Googleable fourpiece from Austin, and Dub Egg, their second fulllength, is sweet, heavy, and sticky—like barbecue sauce under a hot Texas sun. They mix front dude Hans Zimmerman’s insouciant punk-rock snarl with the chunky guitars of long-haired, seventies-style rock. The crunchy “Plunging Rollers” wouldn’t sound out of place at a particularly smoky planetarium show, and the noodly “Numb” meanders toward a truly trippy bridge. Occasionally, moments of heart-racing beauty soar above the purple haze (“Don’t Hustle for Love”), providing peaks for this addictive, psychotropic disc.

JACK WHITE
Blunderbuss
Third Man/Columbia
Rating: 3 out of 3 stars

Jack White is nothing if not considerate. On this, the former White Stripes frontman’s first solo album since dissolving his dynamic duo, he acclimates listeners slowly, trackby- track, to his more stately status quo. On the opener, “Missing Pieces,” White wakes up with a nosebleed in the shower while a Hammond organ toots and grooves. “Sixteen Saltines” is a familiar icky thump, spiked with some sexy Stratocaster onsense about Magic Markers and licking fingers. But eventually White’s piano slides toward center stage. The ballroom bliss of the title track and the ivory-tickling “Trash Tongue Talker” make it plain that the 36-year-old has changed his bright stripes for more age-appropriate, understated tones.

LISSY TRULLIE
Lissy Trullie
Downtown
Rating: 2 out of 2 stars

Everything about Lissy Trullie screams rock ’n’ roll chic: She’s a former model and Manhattan party fixture whose foxy androgyny is tailor-made for the cover of an album. The only thing that doesn’t live up to Trullie’s alluring image, unfortunately … is her album. The self-titled disc, produced by a downtown-hipster dream team of John Hill (Santigold) and Dave Sitek (TV on the Radio), aims for the detached swagger of Chrissie Hynde, but winds up a wan pretender. Opener “Rules We Obey” stumbles when it should swagger, and the somber single “Madeleine” would put Nico to sleep. The fizzy “X Red” livens things up a bit, but the rest is simply too chilly to be cool.

M. WARD
A Wasteland Companion
Merge
Rating: 2 out of 2 stars

If Zooey Deschanel is the New Girl, then M. Ward, her partner in the retro-pop duo She & Him, is the Old Guy. Not necessarily in years (he’s 38), but because Ward’s solo music is built for a more analog age. His eighth album, like those that preceded it, is a well-considered collection of well-worn sounds, echo-y folk better suited for crackly transistor radios than iPod earbuds. “I love my friends,” Ward sings on the title track—and with good reason. Wasteland calls in favors from a decade in the indie trenches, and features members of Bright Eyes and Sonic Youth, and Deschanel herself. The whole thing passes like a dream—just one you might not remember in the morning.

MIIKE SNOW
Happy to You
Columbia
Rating: 4 out of 4 stars

The trio Miike Snow makes a strong case for the glories of internationalism. Two thirds of the group are Swedes: Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg, who for a time went by the professional nom-de-Pro-Tools Bloodshy & Avant, and produced immaculately shiny disco baubles like Brit ney Spears’s “Toxic.” Scuffing up Karlsson and Winnberg’s stainless-steel sonics is New Yorker Andrew Wyatt, a charismatic, beardy weirdo with a high, hushed tenor. Jammed up in a Stockholm studio, the three make hypnotically dance-y dirges too weird to be pop and too pop to ignore. Happy ups the ante of the group’s 2009 eponymous debut.

THE BIG PINK
Future This
4AD
Rating: 3 out of 3 stars

The swaggering Brit-pop bands of the late twentieth century were never as good as they said they were. How could they be? With all their talk of the Beatles and Second Comings, Oasis and the Stone Roses had egos that flew higher than the Union Jack. Yet in rock ’n’ roll, unlike in customer service, a little attitude can go a long way. That’s a lesson English duo the Big Pink takes to heart on Future This: “I don’t want to hit the ground … like Superman!” Rob bie Furze yelps on “Hit the Ground.” Even better is the buzzy bluster of “Stay Gold,” which sounds marginally like a shoe-gaze band being fed through a jetliner en gine. In Ibiza. Sometimes arrogance trumps ability.

GUIDED BY VOICES
Let’s Go Eat the Factory
Rockathon
Rating: 4 out of 4 stars

Guided By Voices were old when they began. They were even older when they became the toast of the indie scene, and older still when they broke up in 2004 after a dozen or so albums, hundreds of indelible melodies, and un told thousands of beers. Now they’re back, with a set of 21 songs stronger than their redoubtable livers. Factory is the first album recorded by the nineties “classic” lineup since frontman Robert Pollard dismissed them a decade ago, and it’s a punchy, digressive delight. Discordant oddities like “Either Nelson” bump up against shimmer ing pop gems (“Choc olate Boy”) and glam-rock revelations (“The Unsinkable Fats Domino”). Pollard retains his uncanny knack for melody; rare ly have an artist’s golden years sounded this golden.

KATE BUSH
50 Words for Snow
Anti-
Rating: 3 out of 3 stars

You’d be forgiven if you didn’t realize this was the first time Kate Bush sang a ten-minute song from the perspective of a snowflake. Bush has been a witchy, spectral presence haunting the fringes of pop music for more than three decades now, her proggy piano ballads giving voice to nineteenth century heroines and natural phenomena alike. Even so, these seven wintry warbles spread out over an hour are notable for their sheer Kate Bush–iness. On the faerie fable “Wild Man,” she woos an ursine lover (“You’re a big brown bear!”), while on the title track, an unknown warlock recites all 50 words for the white fluffy stuff while Bush eggs him on (“Come on, man, 44 to go!”).

CHILDISH GAMBINO
Camp
Glassnote
Rating: 2 out of 2 stars

“Is there room in the game for a lame who rhymes?/Who wears short shorts and tells jokes sometimes?” Valid questions in the insular world of hip-hop, and it’s admirable that Community star Donald Glover asks them on his debut full-length as a rapper. Unfortunately, Glover mostly comes up shorter than his pants: Camp is an uncomfortable mashup of big-timing braggadocio and emo self-laceration. On “Bonfire,” Glover Hulks-out his reedy voice like Lil Wayne, but his subject matter is strictly Bruce Banner, all shout-outs to UCLA coeds and NPR. He’s best when he swaps dick talk for real talk, as on the racially charged “Hold You Down.”

NOEL GALLAGHER’S HIGH FLYING BIRDS
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds
Sour Mash
Rating: 3 out of 3 stars

The combustion engine that fueled Oasis from their mid-nineties heyday through their muted, midaughts denouement was the enmity between brothers Noel (the songs) and Liam (the voice) Gallagher. If one of them decelerated into a solo career, some wondered, would it stall out before getting into gear? Noel’s solo project suggests otherwise, and if it doesn’t soar as its title promises, it certainly rolls along—particularly on the jaunty “Dream On” and the pastoral “The Death of You and Me.” The record is relaxed, the sound of Abel chasing his Beatles-esque muse without looking over his shoulder for Cain.