new release roundup: Oh, the Underwhelm-ment

Peter, Bjorn, & John - Living Thing
D.O.A.

Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years
Welsh supervillians glass-blow ELO-meets-Elephant6-collective magic pop. They release oodles of albums, so I just picked this one. The others might be as good, or just marginally different depending on your mood. Best moment: "The Very Best of Neil Diamond," with its Bollywood-meets-Love nuttiness, tops most of their catalogue.

U2 - No Line on the Horizon
Completely un-listen-able noise pollution.

The Animals - Deluxe BBC Files (1964-1967)
Don't sleep on the Animals. Their version of "Paint it Black" is nuts, and Eric Burdon was maybe Europe's best blues howler for these short years. I always wished the Who had hired him.

Doom - Born Like This
I love the guy, but I usually end up breaking out my KMD vinyl. Sue me, I'm old. And yet all the skillz in the world, which Doom has, can't justify another tired sampling of ESG. Unless they got paid.

Here We Go Magic - Here We Go Magic
Love this. Folk songwriting shot through analog vs. electro instrumental breakdowns. It creates a world.

Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why There are Mountains
It was a good thing for music when the Blind Melon singer died. Always remember that.

The Strange Boys -And Girls Club
It's working on me, in a way I like. Young bucks could do worse than worship Dylan's Highway 66 sound with a sharp ear for Bob's guitar playing. Reminds me of the Deadly Snakes, at times. Jack Oblivion, meet your next production job.

Art Brut - Art Brut Vs. Satan
Like Super Furry Animals, Art Brut requires your ownership of only one album. Sigh. This one is a as good (or boring) as the others, but I declare myself sweet on it for a tongue-in-cheek 'Mats mash note ("The Replacements,") where hilarity results when a music geek's dilemma repeats as fiery drama: "second-hand records/ are cheaper /Reissue cds - /extra tracks!"

Bon Iver - Blood Bank EP
Vernon repents for the song-less wankery of "For Emma" with a stunner of a title track that is better than all of his previous albums, under any name, put together, and better than anything else you can name. It might be my 'track of the year" if I wasn't too lazy each year to make sure I had such a track of the year.

Condo Fucks - Fuckbook
A band named after yuppie twerps infiltrating Yo La Tengo's bohemian dream of Hoboken? I love you, YLT, and did a year or so of hard living as your neighbor there, but the art-town dream died with those tenement fires set by landlords in the late eighties. Thanks for this raucous, growling set of covers. Play more Slade, always.

The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love
This getting a bit Spinal Tap. And who has the time for an infrequently beautiful and complex concept album? The next one better be 12 pop singles, Meloy, or you're dead to me.

Davila 666 - s/t
Not new, but I slept on it and saw them open recently for the Reigning Sound. 6 or 7 dudes (all related?) of Puerto Rican descent, haling from Oakland I think, concerned with writing clean but hungry garage pop. If you can't dig the language barrier, it doesn't matter. Everything's catchy. On In the Red, too. Hope this helps them cash in.

Grizzly Bear - Vaeckatimest
Pitchfreak is going to spill their coffee all over themselves for this (8.8 or above), and justifiably so, since no one currently sounds like Grizzly Bear, whose crystalline, melodic waltzes approximate a dream you had in which the Alan Parsons Project was covering mid-career Brian Eno in the front room of an abandoned house in rural Maine. "Ready, Able" is another track of the year contender.

Bonnie Prince Billy -Beware
I know, I know, he's top shelf when compared to the riff raff, but I can't help wondering if WO is stretching himself too thin. Great Americana near-country, yes, but if I close my eyes you could tell me this is one of his last two BPB albums. I do wish he'd act more (see "Old Joy" or Kanye videos.)

The Boy Least Likely Too - The Law of the Playground
Volkswagon commercial: Scottish pop!

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz
It's over.

Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
Oh, the horror of underwhelm-ment. After this, to conserve my love for Ms. Case's career, I imagine I'm an innocent teenage girl discovering Case's music for the first time via Middle Cyclone's swirling, NPR-ready folk-dirges, which sound like early PIL in comparison to my Miley Cyrus mp3s. Case is still the best singer I've seen live, though. Bring back the Sadies, lady?

Tim Hecker-An Imaginary Country
Ambient instrumental landscapes from their best practitioner working today. But sounds like all analog instruments. Long live Seefeel, if that's why.

Dan Deacon -Bromst
You're not Brian Eno yet, Dan, and some tracks come closer to homage than influence. But this is a step ahead for Deacon, as far as complex pop with an electronic base, because I can't hear the computers at all this time. If I close my eyes.

Grand Duchy - Petit Fours
Ultimately unsuccessful but intriguing effort by Black Francis to craft a weird, Psychedelic Furs-like album of duets and processed guitar.

Jeremy Jay - Slow Dance
I wanna like this more than I can. Part Jonathan Richman, part Suicide, Jay can play some fine guitar but doesn't vary his demo-like spookiness with any levity or melodic variation. Hiring a female backing vocalist and horns might do the trick.

Bat for Lashes - Two Suns
Singer Natasha Khan could one day be bigger than deities, but her arranging partner ain't no slouch himself; imagine Sandy Denny surviving death and making a Kate Bush record in 1985.

Papercuts - You Can Have What you Want
"Future Primitive" is one of the few songs this year I kept on repeat. Not much else here will leap out of the speakers, but psych-folk never really offends, either.

Junior Boys - Begone Dull Care
See title, middle word.

Death -For the Whole World to See
Believe the hype. The 1975 missing link between the MC5 and Bad Brains, although there is something to be said for the Saints and Ramones getting here first. But Death reminds me of Squirrel Bait, weirdly, and they're angrier than latter two bands; hence MC5 & Bad Brains comparisons. Mind-blowing to be convinced it was recorded when they say it was.

the Mummies - Uncontrollable urge (live 1991)

#3 in Bands I miss Most from the 90s: The Mummies.

"This next one goes out to fuckin' me"

Maybe the best cover song of the 90s.

Good freakin' God I miss the Mummies. They get my vote for the greatest song title ever: "Sooprize Package for Mr. Mineo!"

skywave -don't say slow

#4 in the "Bands I Miss Most from the 90s"
While all you neu-shoegazers were still wearing Garanimals, I was scooping up Skywave seven inches without reading the price tag. Ackerman went on to help form A Place to Bury Strangers, which is alright, I guess, but Skywave had the songs. "Don't Say Slow" is not at all Skywave's only high point. Good luck finding their output - all of it was self-released, I believe -- unless you live in the Fredericksburg, Va area, where they were based and didn't seem to care to leave much.

I miss these guys mostly because I can't play it around the kids or they get angry.

Gang Starr - Mass Appeal

#5 in the "Bands/Artists I Miss Most from the 90s"
Gang Starr might have dropped their debut in '89 and a decent - actually excellent -- album in 2003 ("Ownerz"), but they're of and by the 90s. Most of their product still makes the likes of fitty, snoop, etc, sound like punks.
I represent /set up shit like a tent, boy / you're paranoid/ because you're my son like Elroy"

We interrupt this list for a translated album review

Pitchfork's review of the new Franz Ferd album (7.3):

More so than stoking the band's current commercial prospects, Tonight is an exciting record for what it could potentially spell for Franz Ferdinand's future-- from here, you could just as easily imagine the band further exploring electro-house productions, or stripping their sound down and making a folk record, or delving into tropical laptop-tronic pop.

J Frank's translation:

It sucks, but we don't have the balls to say so.

Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet

#6 in my "Bands/Artists from the 90s Whom I Miss Most"

Known widely for their theme ("Having an Average Weekend") and incidental music for the Kids in the Hall show, SMOASP made three of the best - maybe the best ever -- albums of surf-rock. And I'm counting the Ventures, Dick Dale, and the Mermen in that statement.

I think one member's death undid any chances of a reunion following their mid-nineties breakup.

Thanks, Canada. We should have traded Niel Young back to you for these guys in 1990.

MY CURSE the afghan whigs

#7 in my "Bands/Artists from the 90s Whom I Miss Most"

Did the Whigs make it out of the 90s? If they did, I decree it false. "Up In It" ought to be played in full at the next ATP.

Marcy Mays (Scrawl! I miss thee also!) breaks my heart anew with this one each time I hear it; I can almost feel my broken bed against my back in my cheap-ass DC basement apartment again. At least nowadays I don't have to step over the homeless guys when I leave home.

TAD - Wood Goblins

#8 in my "Bands/Artists from the 90s Whom I Miss Most" list

For those of us who saw them live, nothing needs to be explained. Not for kids.

seefeel 'industrius' live britronica moscow 1994

#9 in my "Bands/Artists from the 90s Whom I Miss Most" list.

I recall tenuous connections to MBV and Aphex Twin for these guys, could be wrong.

Engine Kid - Treasure Chest (Live '95)

#10 in my "Bands/Artists from the 90s Whom I Miss Most" list.

I think one of these guys is in SunO))) now

"Bear Catching Fish" was a stunner of an album, but Slint got all the press