Slipped Discs May 2017
Discs You May Have Missed
by John Noyd
Hoop
Initial Thoughts
What’s in a name? Whether elevating or denigrating, praising or hazing, May album titles look at name-calling, both good and bad. Consider soft, lofty ghost-whisperers HOOP’s precious messages and hesitant sentences in the super-fine, “Super Genuine,” tireless yarn-spinning archivist and stoic old-time revivalist BONNIE ‘PRINCE’ BILLY’s country-blues revue, “Best Troubadour,” or wild-eyed metaphysical jam-wizards HELIOCENTRICS’ organic trances and mytho-poetic mantras, “World of Masks,” and discover hyped stereotypes surrounding disabled labels.
Disc Reviews
Fake Shark - Faux Real
Fake Shark
Album title: Faux Real
Record Label: Light Organ Records
Non-stop power-pop frolics in hyperbolic gimmick-rich shtick, uncorking Fake Shark’s ultra-catchy packages of spring-loaded ear-worms and hook-riddled rock-outs. From crunchy funk shot out of a cannon to auto-tuned struts flushed with cheeky pleads keen on creamy harmonies and glitch-inflicted party-rock, “Real,” squeals in wicked wit, indulging endless remedies for an audacious mental vacation booked with smarmy charm and kinetic cool.
(10168) Page Views
Fake Shark online:
• Website • Facebook • Wiki
Deb Talan - Lucky Girl
Deb Talan
Album title: Lucky Girl
Record Label: Nettwerk
Gentle ballads dabbling in sad absences alongside boppy folk-pop cocktails anchored in hidden wisdom; Talan’s talent for enriching simple instances and reaping deep emotions makes her songs stellar testaments to perceptive, independent spirits. Very much a solo endeavor, “Lucky,” assigns lyrical reminders inside restless blessings, lighting life’s common longings and unmanageable challenges with glowing social revolt and warm, cozy counsel.
(10326) Page Views
Deb Talan online:
• Website • Facebook • Wiki
• Download Lucky Girl from Amazon
• Purchase Lucky Girl on Amazon
The Mountain Goats - Goths
The Mountain Goats
Album title: Goths
Record Label: Merge
Opening momentary microcosms littered in descriptive images, semi-fictitious reminisces and surprising rhymes, “Goths,” criss-cross dreamy sax, casual lounge-jazz accents and earthly pearls plucked from teeming streams of a novelist’s consciousness. Rich, suggestive hearsay plants information-packed narratives inside episodic tunes to sow knowing poetry; The Mountain Goats coast over draughtsman characterizations in ruby-slippered elocution, undressing life’s undercover essence with semi-urgent mercy.
(12525) Page Views
The Mountain Goats online:
• Website • Wiki
• Download Goths from Amazon
• Purchase Goths on Amazon
Hollow Everdaze - Cartoons
Hollow Everdaze
Album title: Cartoons
Record Label: Deaf Ambitions
Rockin’ cosmopolitans, over-the-moon psyche-pop crooners and fab gentlemen tripsters, Australia’s Hollow Everdaze indulges in nostalgic pageants soaked in Sixties mystery, injecting hallucinogenic benders sprinkled in continental splendor and cat-burglar nerve. Touched in lush xylophone and champagne strings, “Cartoons,” draws curious augmented chords while artful guitars melt melancholy melodies into fuzz-pedal buzz and furious indie-rock exhaustion plunges into chronic symphonic sonnets.
(7729) Page Views
Hollow Everdaze online:
• Website • Facebook
Juana Molina - Halo
Juana Molina
Album title: Halo
Record Label: Crammed Discs
A primordial courtship between sultry synthesized slithering and limber South American rhythms, “Halo,” percolates in balmy cyber-samba calm, looping smoky jungle fugues around languid sleepwalker tangos to color galactic tapestries with eerie delirium. Soothing computer voodoo spawned from quirky circuitry, Molina’s sleek creatures oscillate between aqueous gymnastics painted in exotic polish and savvy electro-folk magic rooted in woozy spooky sensuality.
(17128) Page Views
Juana Molina online:
• Website • Facebook • Wiki
• Download Halo from Amazon
• Purchase Halo on Amazon
She-Devils - She-Devils
She-Devils
Album title: She-Devils
Record Label: Secretly Canadian
Chiffon bombs ticking in double-edged pleasures offer scintillating lust-encrusted invitations from vixen-commissioned dream-pop laced in swirling subversions; She-Devils’ groovy girl-group subterfuge hides contagious stalker-rock dangers inside bewitching pinafore choruses. Weaving steamy seductions in waltzing subterranean sock-hops and purring black-widow pillow-talk, the duo’s self-titled debut’s brooding duels wrestle suppressed affections threatened by schizophrenic tensions into irresistible temptations deploying coy post-modern decoys.
(5730) Page Views
She-Devils online:
• Website • Facebook
• Download She-Devils from Amazon
• Purchase She-Devils on Amazon
Final Thoughts
Where’s it at? Spring albums zero in on places. Portuguese alt-pop chameleons THE GIFT team up with Brian Eno for sumptuous beat-sweetened ballads and exuberant Krautrock concoctions in, “Altar” while bright, Simonized harmonizers GIRLPOOL plug direct, electric connections into, “Powerplant.” Find free-spirited story-teller WOODEN WAND’s meta-folk lullabies, “Clipper Ship.” then discover nomadic pop-naturalist CHRIS BATHGATE’s expansive, thoughtful, “Dizzy Seas,” before surveying supernatural appetites from voracious psychedelicists MOON DUO’s lava-lamp jams, “Occult Architecture Vol. 2,” and traversing multi-genre jazz-guitarist BILL FRISELL and ace bassist THOMAS MORGAN’s, gentle, scenic, effervescent, “Small Town.”