Slipped Discs

Darren Hayman and the Secondary Modern - Essex Arms

Hefner’s Hayman weaves beautiful, magpie melodies inside English folk-rock serenades; brisk, busker’s delights laced in sweet, solemn solace and poetic biography. Adventurous remembrance culled from sharp, detailed hindsight and a journalist’s lens, “Essex,” breeches bittersweet sequences, framing youthful folly as personal mementos, adolescent messages turned into classic verbal portraits wistfully pilfering willful nostalgia, exhuming a vanishing era in crafted memories.

Host Skull - Totally Fatalist

Collaborating multi-instrumentalists concoct bristling hybrids plucked from tasty alt-pop influences. Thoughtful interlocking improvisations underline frolicking prog-pop playfulness haunted by jazzy contractions and mathematical happiness, “Fatalist,” yields exquisite eloquence from its sunny blues and clever new wave strategies employing artful brass and woodwinds.  Flipping from spastic to placid, HS’s skewed cool fuels back-lit mischief through cinematic poise and charming chromatic acrobatics..

John Wesley Harding - The Sound of his own Voice

Giddy literacy enlivens the already lively folk-pop mockery and jester-peppered cheer, “Voice,” cradles modern-day life-lessons lined with ticklishly articulate irony and sly subtext. A toastmaster backed by an all-star cast culled from R.E.M. and the Decemberists, Harding illustrates, extrapolates and occasionally speculates, dispensing battling narrators, bantering agitators and slanted sociology in neatly-packaged hooks wrapped around witty novellas harboring intellectual revenge.

Howlin Rain - The Russian WIlds

Shuffling thoughtful whiskey-soaked hopes through caterwauling crashes and leathery crescendos, HR’s haunted blues-rock gospel slithers in limber electric boogie and clustered power-chord hustle,. Steeped in urban cowboy solos, hurtling Wurlizters and jazzy-agile interludes, “Wilds,” piles spirited delirium onto galloping gallantry; driving rawhide harmonies around cantina tangents while lovelorn introspection storm buckboard ballads for raunchy revivalist fevers and sinisterly sated salvation.

Hollows - Vulture

Subverting flirty girl-group goop into razor-sharp punk-pop spunk and organ-driven rock and roll, Hollows’ tough chick grit, wound-licking love songs and cheeky bee-hive hand-jive concoct bite-sized blasts of surf-rock rumble, lipstick lambasts and pajama party harmonies. Leathery electric boardwalks flashing retro-active packages, “Vulture,” circles Tin Pan Alley pasts while carving tart B-52 grooves from Suzi Quatro quatrains and Shangri-Las facades

Kelly Hogan - I Like to Keep Myself in Pain

Embodying doe-eye survivors and embittered vixens, Hogan tackles Texas kickers glazed in café academics and honky-tonk philosophy rousing gospel-blues wearing cowboy boots, sneakers and high heels, “Pain,”: hosts smoky tones inside jukebox bop, Bubbly condolences hug observant mercies, funky country confessions stocked in battered kindnesses and wronged romance supply supple scenarios fueling dusky Delta voodoo, post-fiesta heartache and organ-driven R&B. 

Richard Hawley - Standing at the Sky’s Edge

Stretches of majestic messages wash over solemn longings and humbled profundity while six-string swarms form rip-tide flights; Hawley’s enthralling space-rock palsy rides smoldering overtones under sensual contentions and brimstone moments around reflective blessings. Dignified, primal, intimate and ethereal, “Standing,” faces an unkind cosmos seeking shelter around electric psychedelics and Zen renderings; channeling tranquil folk-rock optimism glazed in blistering, hard-core bliss.

Anne Heaton - Honeycomb

Tactfully adapting Sufi verse, Catholic prayers and Coldplay, a harmonically rich singer-songwriter, Heaton squeezes playfully dainty pop topped in warm intimate folk; joyous voyages from a smart, sweet songbird. Dripping in graceful haste and melodic valentines, “Honeycomb,” springs, swims and sasses challenges, turning perceptive memories into luscious pillow-talk, hip sophisticated whimsy into Christmas wishes and heady editorial into cozy poetry.

Holly Herndon - Movement

From dilating diaphragms to intergalactic collapse, “Movement,” molds audible monsters infiltrating cyber-jungle rumbles dropping modulated mazes framed in asthmatic mathematics. Congregating oscillations breathing alien, synthesized transmissions spawn suspense-filled pauses between sinister hissing, subtle mechanical insistence from oddly organic dissonance. Eerily disquieting, intriguing and secretive, Herndon’s inter-breeding machinery hatches captivating, elastic soundtracks bathed in gurgling turbulence, trapped gasps and vacuum-sealed squeals

Hayden - Us Alone

Sweet downbeat feats of casual brilliance, “Alone,” unfolds subdued grooves inside jaunty melancholy; soft-spoken folk soaked in ragged truths and wheezing bar-room organ, second-hand synths, plaintive piano and understated garage-rock guitar. A laconic chronicler whose solid, waltzing promises drop despondent prophets into modest odysseys, Hayden patiently paints drowsy prowlers and unguarded martyrs; shaggy captains steering weary wagons to uncertain flirtations

Hellsongs - These Are Evil Times

Known for turning devilish metal into heavenly pop, Sweden’s ingenious Hellsongs expand their repertoire on the deep-feeling, musical chameleon, “Evil,” dispersing perky yet prickly originals beside subtly cuddly covers of Rammstein, Black Sabbath and Entombed. A smart, impish mix of wicked rock-pop chart-toppers and fanciful dance-able folk-rock anthems, the trio’s mid-tempo brio serve wholesome potions slyly seasoned in playful treason.

Hello Phones - Future City

Diabolical coddling inside industrial cuddling, “Future,” tutors cruel New Wave sparks from dark, tungsten spunk for devilishly dystopian crunch melting sharp, splashy laser-glazed power-punk into subversive urban Armageddon. Tattered back-alley jags coated in curdling purrs and glowing neon threats, HP taps delicious, illicit prescriptions of hypnotic electro-rock concoctions before shaking them down and roughing them up into serrated low-grade persuasions.

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