Slipped Discs December 2019
Discs You May Have Missed
by John Noyd
Annie Hart formerly of Au Revior Simone - photo by Sebastian Kim
Initial Thoughts
Tactile and actual, tangled in the tangible, December album titles are living in the material world. Scoop up FM power-chord choirboys THE WHIFFS’, golden retro-rock, “Another Whiff,” then pick among sensitive alt-pop fence-sitter ANNIE HART’s thoughtful electro-acoustic prudence, “A Softer Offering.” or rock god Robert Plant’s podcast-based vinyl box-set, “Digging Deep.” Ashes to ashes, dust to slowcore legends DUSTER’s heralded return to recording after nineteen years, the gravity-strapped, synaptic-blasted, “Duster.”
Disc Reviews
Electric Litany - Under A Common Sky
Electric Litany
Album title: Under A Common Sky
Record Label: Apollon Records
Pitched in cinematic syntax, airborne angst and sophisticated insurrection, “Sky,” amplifies worldly concerns into existential menace, cradling social mazes in ephemeral surrenders while snakey bass crawls through withering situations and singed synthesizers spar faraway guitars beneath throbbing prog-rock after-shocks. Lost prophets lavishing embattled compassion over vast canvases, Electric Litany’s muted battle-cries rise through glorious discourse, orchestral stretches and cancerous fantasies.
(1524) Page Views
Electric Litany online:
• Website • Facebook
• Purchase Under A Common Sky on Amazon
Anna Nalick - The Blackest Crow
Anna Nalick
Album title: The Blackest Crow
Record Label: Chesky Records
Guided by a well-tuned ear, intuitive chanteuse Nalick gathered an eclectic mix of Country, Folk, American Songbook and Britpop for a songsmith’s set-list that gifts craft alongside sincerity, celebrating timeless feelings captured in classic lyrics possessing posh, melodic competence. Backed by acoustic guitar, cello, upright bass and drums, “Crow,” flows in restrained arrangements beautifully supporting Anna’s supple, casually confident vocals.
(1214) Page Views
Anna Nalick online:
• Website • Facebook • Wiki
• Download The Blackest Crow from Amazon
• Purchase The Blackest Crow on Amazon
Lee "Scratch" Perry - Heavy Rain
Lee "Scratch" Perry
Album title: Heavy Rain
Record Label: On-U Sound
Rock-steady grooves moving beneath phantom chants, haunted harmonica and sad brass, “Rain,” rains, “Soldiers collecting souls,” and “Children of the Night,” over slippery redemption days blazing in faith served by curdling serpentine certainty. Karmic shaman Perry’s scrubbed dub companion to this year’s revelatory, “Rainford,” welcomes mothership liberations; baptized night-walker trance channeling blessed messages through loose, echo-chamber complacency and studio-proven juju.
(649) Page Views
Lee "Scratch" Perry online:
• Website • Facebook • Wiki
• Purchase Heavy Rain on Amazon
• Download Heavy Rain
• Purchase Heavy Rain
Emily Yacina - Remember the Silver
Emily Yacina
Album title: Remember the Silver
Record Label: self-release
Lived-in pop props Yacina’s sensible premonitions against deceptive mid-tempo affections connecting rhythm-driven perceptions to calm, collected, level-headed introspection and inviting kind candor inside systemic memories from smart hearts. Personal journeys turned into happening maps, “Silver,” fills unavoidable joys with better judgment assumptions sealing the deal in learning-curve verses and well-informed choruses customized in friendly empathy, attentive mentions and centered defenses.
(704) Page Views
Emily Yacina online:
• Website
• Download Remember the Silver
Pedro Kastelijns - Som das Luzis
Pedro Kastelijns
Album title: Som das Luzis
Record Label: OAR
Zany mania tamed in psycho-samba soufflés, “Luzis,” muses in jarring cartoon lunacy, commanding gizmo-prone jabberwocky waking and shaking narcoleptic benders riding bold, dismembered tropical-pop dropped into rabbit-hole side-shows. Basted in booming bass, tasty bossa nova escapes and bouncy gaucho detours, psychedelic Brazilian Kastelijns’ lavender caverns spew groovy tunes fire-roasted and slightly singed, crispy fringe-art binges rattling cages and sparking imaginations.
(1252) Page Views
Pedro Kastelijns online:
• Website • Facebook
• Download Som das Luzis
• Purchase Som das Luzis
Hurt Valley - Glacial Pace
Hurt Valley
Album title: Glacial Pace
Record Label: Woodsist
Good-natured scoundrels, shaggy string-band brethren Hurt Valley leads ghost-town honky-tonk from pioneer cheer to hobo emo, thick with braided guitar licks and starry minor-key harmonies. Rolling-hill road-trips through Zen-centered relationships conjuring intricate rest-stop rambles radiating stray bohemian dreams, “Pace,” grazes sunrise highways, kicking up dust with wagon-train refrains in urban cowboy cadence, washing waltzing folk-rock off-spring in heady riverbed sedatives.
(1051) Page Views
Hurt Valley online:
• Website • Facebook
• Download Glacial Pace from Amazon
• Download Glacial Pace
Rachel Grimes - The Way Forth
Rachel Grimes
Album title: The Way Forth
Record Label: Temporary Residence Limited
A theatrical time capsule capturing prairie arias, settler soliloquies and rural ruminations; Grimes’ divine Folk Opera offers documentary memories examining Manifest Destiny while Western Expansion dances among minstrel shows and letters home. Multiple view points from bandshell barkers to second-generation perspectives carry, “Forth,” through heavenly choirs and biographical fragments, glorious story-telling orchestras weaving hoe-downs, sojourns and history into reverent evidence.
(722) Page Views
Rachel Grimes online:
• Website • Facebook
• Download The Way Forth from Amazon
• Purchase The Way Forth on Amazon
Sean Henry - A Jump From The High Dive
Sean Henry
Album title: A Jump From The High Dive
Record Label: Double Double Whammy
Cock-eyed sardonic rock stocked in slacker melodramatics, “Dive,” rides millennial divides slinging six-pack garage-pop against surf-punk smugness and indie-jangle sunshine. Free-wheeling chameleons Sean Henry display different faces with flippant simplicity and clever leveraged whimsy, softly mocking catchy affections with cheeky rhymes and bouncy renouncement; frivolous pillaging skillfully wielding wicked wit in sick jams digging ironic self-acknowledgment with savvy savage craftsmanship.
(849) Page Views
Sean Henry online:
• Website • Facebook
• Download A Jump From The High Dive from Amazon
• Purchase A Jump From The High Dive
Majjin Boo - Go Between
Majjin Boo
Album title: Go Between
Record Label: Egghunt Records
Jet-fueled power-pop dropping top-of-the-lungs math-rock onto weighty emotional cave-ins from bolstered reflex-injected explosions, Majjin Boo wrestle bereft regrets with heft and sweat; swift and dominant stalkers seeking chain lightning among machine-gun thunder. Trampoline fiends trading laser riffs fitted into start-stop blockbusters, “Between,” turn on the high beams careening over tire-squealing prog whose cruise-missile epistles launch conscious taunts for razor-sharp romps.
(782) Page Views
Majjin Boo online:
• Website • Facebook
• Download Go Between from Amazon
Itasca - Spring
Itasca
Album title: Spring
Record Label: Paradise of Bachelors
Country harvests rich in restless cleansing, rainy-day engagements grazing in fence-mending splendor, Itasca navigates intimate sympathies beneath exquisite six-string inquisitions framed by humble strums and subtle flash. Brisk trills and crisp fills decorate, “Spring,” spinning sad bittersweet ballads washed in centerless tempos, mournful chords and sagebrush twang; laundered quandaries folding close-quarter encouragements into fragile folk gossamer hung from box-canyon bridges.
(807) Page Views
Itasca online:
• Website • Facebook
• Download Spring from Amazon
• Purchase Spring on Amazon
• Download Spring
Coma - Voyage Voyage
Coma
Album title: Voyage Voyage
Record Label: City Slang
Chill, switched-on click-pop bobs in grand clandestine fanfare, steering a gleaming cyber-scenic, “Voyage Voyage,” past startled heartbeats, aching souls and brazen brain-waves with medicated raves skating on slinky morning-after haze. Modern transistorized romantics COMA sprinkles passive dazzle over famished trance, pl
(797) Page Views
Coma online:
• Website • Facebook
• Download Voyage Voyage from Amazon
• Purchase Voyage Voyage on Amazon
• Download Voyage Voyage
Rachael Dadd - Flux
Rachael Dadd
Album title: Flux
Record Label: Memphis Industries
Beautiful nightingale chamber-folk unfurling quicksilver rhythms with nimble art-pop visions and jazz casual accuracy in banjo-driven sophistication, Dadd’s compound rounds, slippery jigs and ballerina boogie delight in bright, diaphanous dialectics. Glowing vocals, klezmer clarinet and winged strings, “Flux,” flutters in butterfly landings, crackling campfires and rippling creeks, noble and focused opuses whose persuasive sway resolves knotted logic with dashing ingenuity.
(758) Page Views
Rachael Dadd online:
• Website • Facebook • Wiki
• Download Flux from Amazon
• Purchase Flux on Amazon
Black Marble - Bigger Than Life
Black Marble
Album title: Bigger Than Life
Record Label: Sacred Bones
Gated patience locked into timetable cadence, “Bigger,” triggers heavy-lidded dance-floor daydreams, perpetual engines plugged into unquenchable ping-pong palpitations and tugging at subtle pulses while sleepy, hourglass passages practicing well-honed digital diplomacy flows around bittersweet sequined séances. Vacuum-sealed cart-wheel architect, Black Marble harbors suave charms inside sullen futurepop lullabies lost in synth-rinsed labyrinths cast in chattering patterns tailor-made for form-fitting glitter.
(703) Page Views
Black Marble online:
• Website • Facebook • Wiki
• Download Bigger Than Life from Amazon
• Purchase Bigger Than Life on Amazon
Shana Falana - Darkest Light
Shana Falana
Album title: Darkest Light
Record Label: Arrowhawk
Possessed by Jungian thunder tunneling deep beneath primordial glories, Shana Falana champions new beginnings born from dire finality; unshackled majesty zapped in synaptic rapture twirl bare-foot shoe-gaze voyagers on tribal journeys through starlit forests. The karmic, “Darkest,” blazes in gothic mosh-pit steam-punk, dredging and shredding dream-rock prophecies while reaping intergalactic gypsy-folk with interwoven harmonies, oceanic tantrums and powerful bell-tower percussion.
(723) Page Views
Shana Falana online:
• Website • Facebook • Wiki
• Download Darkest Light from Amazon
• Purchase Darkest Light on Amazon
Longwave - If We Ever Live To Forever
Longwave
Album title: If We Ever Live To Forever
Record Label: Bodan Kuma
Triumphant and forthright, wandering and despondent, ”Forever,” weathers emotional storms, disembodied indie-rock melancholy pledging edgy amendments to precipice confessions through prowling guitars, climatic choruses and head-rushed rhythms. Breathless manifestos addressed to friends, banging in subterranean strangeness, Longwave plunges desperate hungers into rattled nostalgia, leaving heartbroken heads to sort jealous dregs from shipwrecked regrets, holding wildfire trials with burnt bridges juries.
(1020) Page Views
Longwave online:
• Website • Facebook • Wiki
• Download If We Ever Live To Forever
• Purchase If We Ever Live To Forever
Anna Meredith - FIBS
Anna Meredith
Album title: FIBS
Record Label: Moshi Moshi
Punctual pop whose splashy neo-classical maelstroms fuse Broadway bravado to scorching film-scores for cyber-phantom ear-candy, Meredith’s immaculate factories spew algorithmic symphonies gifted in ripped rock riffs, space-age whimsy and ironic art-pop homilies. The glib, “FIBS,” digs, wiggles and flies, defying, confiding and pacifying, rendering frenzied crescendos and sweetening synthetic beats to baffle in playful clatter and delight in daredevil feats.
(1077) Page Views
Anna Meredith online:
• Website • Facebook • Wiki
• Purchase FIBS on Amazon
• Download FIBS
Devon Welsh - True Love
Devon Welsh
Album title: True Love
Record Label: You Are Accepted
Personal searches versed in complex moods, “True,” brews tactfully monastic passions with pondering honesty, plush constructions buffed with minimal stimulus and maximum impact. A naked voice that aches to divulge stubborn secrets, Welsh swells in embellished telepathy, ravishing pathos and secular connections, mesmerizing with openness and purity, candid transparency lit with cathedral candles and layered in weightless, storied moral inventories.
(936) Page Views
Devon Welsh online:
• Website • Facebook • Wiki
Lady Lazurus - Impossible Journey of My Soul Tonight
Lady Lazurus
Album title: Impossible Journey of My Soul Tonight
Record Label: self-release
Rooted in simple acoustics and raised in self-appraisal, Lady Lazarus’ restless quests meander, unhampered by conventional structure; sage, languid language relaying authentic sentiment with picturesque speculation, intriguing secrets and elegant acceptance. Auditorium performances disclosing hopes, reasoning feelings and examining ramifications as recital-hall piano wafts in haunted reverb, “Journey,” ties recurring reminders to tender memories, skeletal melodies baptized in lyrical inquiries.
(726) Page Views
Lady Lazurus online:
• Website • Facebook
• Download Impossible Journey of My Soul Tonight
• Purchase Impossible Journey of My Soul Tonight
Final Thoughts
December albums are rare beasts but January promises to make amends with incredible releases from musicians whose tour plans include Madison dates. From paisley angels OF MONTREAL visiting the Majestic March 10th with lip-smacking electro-pop sparkle, “UR Fun,” to velvet tigers POLICA bringing their life-affirming gloss-rock, “How To Stay Alive,” to the High Noon March 19th, winter heats up fast. Meanwhile alt-rock stalwarts COLONY HOUSE invades the High Noon March 13th with, “Leave What’s Lost Behind,” and divergent musical surgeon DAN DEACON’s, “Mystic Familiar,” livening the High Noon April 4th.