The Walkmen, Lisbon (Fat Possum Records)
The 6th album from this stubbornly acoustic 5-piece is – how could it be any different – infinitely indebted to singer Hamilton Leithauser’s Thom Yorke-style all-whole-notes delivery, this time over a fresh net-load of disparate but compatible washed-out-guitar experiments. If you’ve heard (and actually enjoyed, for whatever reason) The Strokes’ "Killing Lies" and "15 Minutes," there’s a lot of that edge-of-the-world feeling here, but, again, that’s not all there is to it. "Blue As Your Blood" keys off a cartoonish ride-em-horsie triplet beat as might be interpreted by Roy Orbison (the production is often beyond the Vampire Weekend pale, sounding like one microphone was set in the corner of a high school gym), while the oddly strummy O-Solo-Mio-flavored"Victory" fixates on Portugal itself (they went there, you see, which is why they titled the LP Lisbon, and this is somehow pivotal to, you know, everything). Sock-hop ballad "Torch Song" is the actual delivery of all the Elvis they promised on the record, and speaking of Vampire Weekend, "Woe Is Me" does stupid prog-rock tricks.
Grade: A-
Chromeo, Business Casual (Vice Records)
OK, it’s official: my reviewing a Chromeo album is like Glen Beck trying to be objective about human progress. I can’t stand disco-funkized 80s garbage, and why anyone would want to resurrect it is beyond me, even if Prince was awesome. But this ain’t Prince, it’s Electric Six lampreyed to Giorgio Moroder. Is that really what you want to listen to? Shut up, I know who they are, A-Trak’s older brother and P-Thugg, and they’ve been busy "refining" low-budget 808-powered disco cheese forever now. Doesn’t mean I have to approve or that they have a God-given right to do it in the first place. There’s a reason Billy Ocean was big in the 80s and unknown to this generation: it’s because this is 2010, not the 80s, so what does that make this album’s Billy Ocean-like dance-pop leadoff track "Hot Mess?" Something for Lindsay Lohan-adoring retro-metros to buy Pop Rocks to? I can’t physically stop people from listening to bullcrap like this, but if I could, boy I would, trust me.
Grade: C- 
Salem, King Night (Iamsound Brothers)
It always starts in Michigan, doesn’t it, all that new-level-of-punk deconstruction? Okay, no, this sound didn’t actually start with these 3 honkies, not at all. The basics were yanked out of the Houston cracked-and-screwed Robitussin scene, from guys like Lil Villain, Most Hated and anyone else who raps low and slow, like what a straight kid thinks druggies hear when people talk. There’s enough of a buzz about this album (they took forever and what, 50 EPs before this debut full-length) for me to at least feign hyperbole, so let’s: is this (or some crew just like this) the Sonic Youth of the echo-boomers? Effects and goth-rock white-noise jacked to 11, this is the sound of hiphop crumbling once and for all, falling in slo-mo, like the Towers, the end of everything. In this they’re simpatico with Sunn O))) in a way – aside from digging the Neil Peart complexity of the dubstepping el-cheapo drum machine, I don’t know why someone would crank this, why you’d do that to yourself, but it ain’t my generation that’s been wading through dust and rubble since life began, it’s yours. Maybe it’s soothing in that respect, but whatever, it’s painful (as you like it) and painfully truthful.
Grade: A
Underworld, Barking (Om Records)
What a hilarious mess, oldschool ravers moaning their disappointment over this irresistible slice of wonderfully coherent 80s-inflected futurepop. Ultimately I’d call it latter-day Wire meets Above & Beyond, since I’m not an oldschool raver and can hence be upbeat about the (not at all total) lack of repetitive, go-nowhere loopage – they sound like Simple Minds re-doing "Another Brick In The Wall Part II" on “Always Loved a Film,” for instance, traditional stuffy-but-warm Brit classiness oozing out of it, and yeah, I can live with that, even if its lead-in, a 2-note robotic “the rhythm… the rhythm…” only gets repeated 30-whatever times instead of 10,000. With me yet? This has a lot in common with Pet Shop Boys’ last album – it’s more so that than it is some sort of gauntlet thrown in the general direction of… I dunno, is any crew still thinking it’s 1995? It’s a departure, yes, but if melody-centered (even the one dubstep joint, “Hamburg Hotel”), top-drawer electronic music gets you depressed over the loss of the “good old days,” you need to buy yourself a decent cup of coffee and a sandwich and have a long inner dialog.
Grade: A
Yeahwon Shin, Yeahwon (Artistshare)
More and more there’s a trend toward non-US artists covering non-US music. Scary, isn’t it, with the United States empire crumbling, that a mousy chick from Korea would prefer to cover Brazilian chill standards instead of keeping with the Peggy Lee program? Shin is appropriately understated, reciting Portuguese lyrics in a blatant accent that would make any non-English syllable sound Asian. To Shin, that’s probably the unkindest possible cut; she loves the Portuguese language (I gave up trying to fathom the obscure obsessions of people a long time ago), so this is a labor dually of study and love. She cuts loose with a few holy-crap mid-range peals that probably broke glass in the studio, but mostly it’s “Girl From Ipanema” redux, a tasteful plunge into bossa nova, if often devoid of the usual trappings associated with the genre; it’s chill, not rhythm, this centers upon.
Grade: B-
The Hundred In The Hands, The Hundred In The Hands (Warp Records)
Sometimes I picture each entry in this generation of rock bands getting one shot at a giant dartboard sectioned into names of successful bands, and they get between 2 and 4 darts to hit the band names that will make up their sound. In this New York girl/boy duo’s case, fate guided their missiles to Cardigans and Duran Duran. Eleanore Everdell’s (weirdly spelled first name on an echo-boomer! Drink!) voice makes the same sounds you’ve heard out of every other pop-rock chick since Lisa Loeb, that kittenish, unambitious, half-breathy tone that makes you say “maybe it’s Feist, or Sia, or maybe the Submarines… is [whoever] still making albums?” when you hear it, and speaking of the Cardigans, these two use the funk wacka-wacka guitar from “Lovefool” a lot, including on opener “Young Aren’t Young,” which is kind of un-smart, being that when you spend the first 3 minutes of your album sounding exactly like the Cardigans, 90% of self-respecting reviewers are going to pretend they listened to the rest of the songs and proceed to write ten overstuffed sentences that all mean “Neener, these knobs sure rip off the Cardigans.” As with any buzz band, they get all their hipster business done in one useful tune (“Gold Blood,” a slug of sloppy-loud hiphop drumming and vampire-queen posturing). For the record, the Duran Duran sounds to which I referred earlier are in the form of fake-jazz guitar-wankage (“Lovesick Once Again” and elsewhere – would it really matter if I listed a few titles you’re only going to hear once at TGI Fridays anyway?).
Grade: B-
Brandi Disterheft, Second Side (Justin Time Records)
Apart from tabling the surprise of the year, Canadian jazz-bassist Disterheft shatters the sophomore jinx with this one, and in fact this is a lot more innovative than her first as it turns out, capturing an aural snapshot of Weather Report and Massive Attack chatting at a French café. Instrumental slowbie opener “Sketches of Belief” is a world unto itself, Disterheft plunking a simple couple of tones that seem to be pressing for answers from someone who doesn’t want to be asked, this while sax-player Chris Gale enters some Wayne Shorter-like comments over some seriously innovative, subliminal work from drummer Sly Juhas, the true hero of this record. In solo mode Disterheft conjures a sedate Mingus (“Let Her Shine,” co-written by Front Line Assembly’s Rhys Fulber), but this isn’t some vanity release, it’s an eye-opening crossover. Top-drawer jazz-pop chill-outs, strewn about the place like lost treasures, spotlight female singers Holly Cole and Ranee Lee – it’s albums like this that make you wish the average IQ was 20 points higher so that radio wouldn’t be committing suicide by getting behind it.
Grade: A+
System Divide, Conscious Sedation (Metal Blade Records)
Like Evanescence on meth, this band is controlled sound and fury in search of a potential audience. Chick singer Miri Milman does a good nick of Lacuna Coil that ends up getting hung out to dry in the face of Sven De Caluwe’s enthusiastic variations on the now all-too-familiar familiar screamo-death-black pig-monster singing, the band flailing away at their jacked-up power metal assignments because, you know, why not, and you have to wonder: what kind of zoid would want this? A little Cannibal Corpse here, a Savatage part, some Meshuggah, half-opera chick vocals and frustrated factory-worker I-Am-Totally-Possed-By-Satan pig-inhale nonsense – it’s like hearing a nice obedient Katy Perry chick having one last fight with her Juggalo boyfriend over their collection of Walmart dishes. Not saying that women shouldn’t try to be sexy and pretty over death metal schlock, but you know something, women shouldn’t try to be sexy and pretty over death metal schlock.
Grade: C
New Czars, Doomsday Revolution (Samson Records)
Add this project by producer/multi-instrumentalist Greg Hampton to the arsenal of Black Country Communion’s effort to teach younger bands like The Sword a thing or three about Sabbath-ish retro-metal. Vocally, Hampton has much in common with what Glenn Hughes has done with BCC, and his flashy lead-guitar work here is possessed of the same eerie alien-blues atmosphere preferred by the more progressive guns of the genre’s past (the sound is a lot like what Iommi got for the 1986-album Seventh Sign). He’s not a perfect singer, revealing Bon Scott frailties (if you consider those Marvin Martian-esque tones weaknesses) in every song, but thankfully puts those aside for a nice changeup in the Steely Dan-like "Why Do U Have to Lie" (when was the last time you heard a newer metal band use a ratchet?).
Grade: B+
Maxfield Gast Trio, Side By Side (Militia Hill Records)
If you’ll pardon a bit of puff-chested mawkishness, this reviewing sideline has left me with an astounding, endless supply of great jazz that sometimes I almost think no one will ever hear but me. This scowlingly focused indie release is of that hidden-treasure sort, the debut of sax-man Gast as leader of a traditional trio. I’m certain I reviewed his screwball jazz/hiphop-fusion work Eat Your Beats someplace but can’t find where, but whatever and whatnot, this is loaded with all the modal dinner-patter one could hope for and more, the “more” being terrific driving runs from all 3 players in the careering “Parallel,” a speed-demon reined by Mike Pietrusko’s high-wire drumming. Despite the expected trad trappings, Gast remains subliminally new-jack; his sax’s tweets and squawks have a just-under-the-top, unhinged quality when he’s babbling. But he’s got the good sense – and melodic knack – not to put off the wine-sippers, evidenced in the ethereal, song-oriented passages he invents for “Nine.”
Grade: A
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