Slipped Discs March 2015
Discs You May Have Missed
by John Noyd
Gal Pals
Initial Thoughts
With winter melting slowly into spring, March album titles try our patience. Acerbic journeyman NOEL GALLAGHER’s HIGH FLYING BIRDS stretch Britpop perceptions, flexing arena-rock expectations in the forward-looking, “Chasing Yesterday,” while smoldering pop-soul prankster THOMAS D’ARCY’s midnight-chilled scenarios, “I Fooled You Twice,” vivacious stock-car garage-rockers and switchblade playmates GAL PALS’ fuel-injected shin-dig, “Velvet Rut,” and disembodied audio engineers INVENTIONS’ dark, lush, celestial narcolepsy, “Maze of Woods,” totally test our resolve.
Disc Reviews
Lady Lamb the Beekeeper - After
Lady Lamb the Beekeeper
Album title: After
Record Label: Mom + Pop Music
Crashing mash-ups lashing lyrical punk-folk anecdotes to romantic alt-rock rodeos, “After,” harnesses quasi-Americana nirvanas into propulsive proto-pop hosannas in a perfectly unpredictable mixture of aggressive expressiveness and timid sympathy. A fierce, spirited renegade, Lady Lamb fans playfully intimate opinions into outspoken commotion whose melodramatic packages become competent romps exploding in complex connections between glib suspicions, embattled compassion and fiendish genius.
(2153) Page Views
Lady Lamb the Beekeeper online:
• Website • Facebook • Wiki
Tom Brosseau - Perfect Abandon
Tom Brosseau
Album title: Perfect Abandon
Record Label: Crossbill Records
Accompanied by his three-piece band and recording with a single microphone, sly, eye-twinkling troubadour Brosseau captures character-inhabiting sagas, tenderly spreading good-natured country-blues in crystal-clear cadence and disarming calm. Sweet, sleepy keepsakes tumbling from folksy podiums with minimal fuss, “Perfect,” births cozy poems detailing love’s errant struggles and life’s hard-won discoveries; hand-picked deliverance trimmed in ragtime rhythms strummed from beguiling smiles.
(1879) Page Views
Tom Brosseau online:
• Website • Facebook • Wiki
• Download Perfect Abandon from Amazon
• Purchase Perfect Abandon on Amazon
Purity Ring - Another Eternity
Purity Ring
Album title: Another Eternity
Record Label: 4AD
Glossy synth-pop toffee fracked in elastic beats and porous orchestras, “Eternity,” languishes and vanquishes, worming sublime electro-grinds from mechanical canopies whose vaulted velvet ceilings capture coy voices from steamy dream-weavers. Swimming in flickering spaceship ricochets, Purity Ring’s pinball ballerinas chase cyber-butterfly messiahs with well-placed haste; breezy squeezable divas hover suspended beyond recovery, immersed in multi-colored seductions promising masterful stratospheric pageantry.
(1832) Page Views
Purity Ring online:
• Website • Facebook • Wiki
• Download Another Eternity from Amazon
• Purchase Another Eternity on Amazon
Evans the Death - Expect Delays
Evans the Death
Album title: Expect Delays
Record Label: Slumberland Records
Rummaging among post-punk fun, indie-rock rage and swinging English soul, young Londoners Evans the Death chain flirty dirges to bratty-savvy ballads; hiding breath-taking craft beneath crashing attacks from withering wit hidden in scuzzy buzz. Casually calculating, sparring guitars rally incorrigible organ and rampaging percussion as, “Delays,” display laid-back jangle brimming in rebellious melodies and dark-tinted binges plastered with maddening dissatisfaction.
(1864) Page Views
Evans the Death online:
• Website • Facebook • Wiki
• Download Expect Delays from Amazon
• Purchase Expect Delays on Amazon
Coutney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometime I Just Sit
Coutney Barnett
Album title: Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometime I Just Sit
Record Label: Mom + Pop Music
A divine brag and slag packing blues-punk funk and chunky dockside rock into brass-tacks swagger down savage cafe catwalks, “Sometimes,” combines wickedly descriptive gifts with bitter, brittle rockabilly licks; blinding bull’s-eye rhymes smothered in powerful scowls and impoverished scoffs. Beatnik-sweetened cockney caroler Barnett teases devil-may-care savoir faire to launch clever double-barreled revelations within caustic mocking, indigent belligerence and delicious indifference.
(1854) Page Views
Coutney Barnett online:
• Website • Facebook • Wiki
• Download Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometime I Just Sit from Amazon
• Purchase Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometime I Just Sit on Amazon
Bombadil - Hold On
Bombadil
Album title: Hold On
Record Label: Ramseur Records
Quixotic, melodic and occasionally toxic, Bombadil’s blithe, but biting tunes bounce between self-effacing chamber-pop apologies and elegant a cappella elegies. Squired choirboys pair level-headed blessings with cloistered joys turning everyday fables into comical cosmopolitan operettas. Framing modern problems inside baroque love-notes, “Hold,” bestows precise polite delights where swooning harmonies take flight and side-lined instruments accentuate and punctuate with mischievous hindsight.
(1895) Page Views
Bombadil online:
• Website • Facebook • Wiki
Final Thoughts
Rushed customers seeking instant gratification can investigate backwoods minimalist LADY LAZARUS’ subtle art-folk lullabies, “Miracles,” or rogue road-warrior and burnished wordsmith JOE PUG’s perceptive, “Windfall,” while smooth indie-pop operators MACINTOSH BRAUN’s beat-powered New Wave haven, “Arcadia,” trippy Piccadilly-poppers THE MONOCHROME SET’s sprawling monument, “Spaces Everywhere,” and America’s oral historian, wistful minstrel and folk legend TOM PAXTON’s bluegrass-patched and nostalgia-waxed, “Redemption Road,” feed all your immediate needs. After sixty albums and decades on the road, Paxton is touring one last time, spinning his winning tales at Stoughton’s Opera House March 20th.