Two Door Cinema Club, Beacon

Two Door Cinema Club didn’t write or record their sophomore album while touring the world in support of their popular debut Tourist History. Nevertheless, Beacon bears all the marks of a classic, melancholy, young-band-on-the-road opus. The album’s opening line (on standout track “Next Year”) — “I don’t know where I’m going to rest my head tonight” — establishes a tone that doesn’t let up. The lonely, triumphant songs chronicle not only the havoc that months of travel wreak on a “normal” life but also the personal growth it facilitates. You can hear that growth in the band’s sound, which expands to include a blend of electro-pop beats and post-punk guitars, with equal attention paid to catchy riffs (“Someday”) and earworm-y synth lines (“Handshake”). Two Door’s sound now lands somewhere anthemic between Passion Pit and latter-day Death Cab For Cutie, but a touch more focus (especially as Beacon moves into its second half) would do the young Irish trio some good.

The Fresh & Onlys, Long Slow Dance

By virtue of their hometown (San Francisco) and the labels they’ve worked with (In the Red, Captured Tracks, Sacred Bones, and now, Mexican Summer), The Fresh & Onlys are often grouped with shaggy-haired maniacs such as Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees. In reality, their gorgeous, glassy-eyed pop is more in line with The Shins, or, to use an era-appropriate comparison for the Nuggets-inclined set, the Zombies. The noisier, feedback-drenched reference points made a little more sense when the band was just getting started, but with each subsequent release, The Fresh & Onlys have refined their tunes, trading lo-fi riffs for jangling strums, garage rhythms for elegant, choral-enhanced accompaniment. What once could’ve served as the soundtrack for a Vice-funded documentary now sounds appropriate for starring placement in a Wes Anderson flick, and we mean that in the best possible sense.

Long Slow Dance feels like a young band discovering their true calling. The title track meditates on finding true love alongside an acceptance that nobody’s perfect. “Presence of Mind” grapples with precisely that, trying to attain it amidst a world of lies and disappointment. Multiple tracks feature a protagonist longing to unshackle himself from foolishness, sometimes over clean, dramatic guitars, other times backed by horn sections seemingly borrowed from an epic Calexico jam. The whole thing feels like a coming-out party for a band that’s been leaning toward its destined path all along. Perhaps the finest distillation of this weight-off-the-shoulders thesis comes in “20 Days and 20 Nights,” when frontman Tim Cohen sings, “Something so heavy in my mind/ I think I wanna try and let it out.” Feels good, doesn’t it?

Land Observations, Roman Roads IV-XI

Since disbanding his melodic post-rock outfit Appliance, James Brooks has not only continued his guitar experimentations, but also developed an interest in drawing and type-based media. The symbiotic nature of these projects is reflected in his solo debut as Land Observations, on which he is reacting sonically to the visual stimulus of his local landscape.

Roman Roads IV-XI is a set of eight instrumentals underlining Brooks’s longstanding interest in the possibilities of drone and repetition, each of them a response to a particular ancient London road. If that suggests a soundtrack to some dry, academic exercise in psychogeography, nothing could be further from the truth. Brooks’s serene and minimal, yet warm and lustrous pieces played on his electric six-string feature complex looping and layering and strong, intertwined harmonies, which are underpinned by powerful motorik grooves — a reminder that these Roman carriageways are the ancient equivalent of Kraftwerk’s beloved autobahns.

Despite the compelling, slow-build momentum of “Aurelian Way” and “Appian Way,” and the flickering, hypnotic pulse of “The Chester Road,” Brooks is not a hopeless retro-futurist pining for kosmische authenticity. His subtly expressive compositions also recall The Durutti Column and Robert Fripp’s work with Eno, while his fascination with concepts of mantric power is surely as old as human history itself.

Twerps, Twerps

This Melbourne, Australia, quartet makes no secret of what inspires them: the “Dunedin sound” that came from a little cluster of bands in New Zealand in the early ’80s, especially the Clean, and the records the Australian group the Go-Betweens were making around the same time. As it happens, they’re incredibly good at evoking that moment — not only does singer/guitarist Marty Frawley’s voice sound a whole lot like the Clean’s David Kilgour, but they’ve got the rhythms and guitar tones and production touches down too. (The background vocals in the chaotic waltz “Don’t Be Suprised” — hollering “whoa-oh!” from what sounds like the next street over — are the kind of brilliant touch that nobody thinks of if they live too far from the Tasman Sea.) And when Julia MacFarlane takes over singing on “This Guy,” it’s all but functionally indistinguishable from a great lost Look Blue Go Purple song. Twerps’ lyrics are alternately psychedelic existentialism and low-key vehicles for vowel sounds (the way Frawley draws out the title of “Who Are You” is particularly terrific), but this is a band whose focus is the feel of their songs: the rush of a simple beat, the echoing depths of a strummed riff or casually plucked-out guitar lead.

Norse to the Future: ECM’s Nordic Tinge

Almost since its inception in 1969, Germany’s ECM Records has featured Scandinavian musicians. A symbiotic relationship quickly developed, as the label and its artists grew into a new Nordic style. To be sure, the label has sponsored lots of dashing music that doesn’t fit that mold, from the splintery atonality of the UK’s Music Improvisation Company through Lester Bowie’s puckish The Great Pretender up to Tim Berne‘s or Michael Formanek‘s latest. We could go on and on with the exceptions, but when jazz folk say, “That sounds like an ECM record,” you know what they mean: chambery jazz that starts quietly and slowly builds, a music of icy vistas and pregnant silences, deepened by the house’s signature reverb.

Eventually critics began playing up the local color angle, likening the sounds of Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek or electric guitarist Terje Rypdal to echoes off a frozen fjord. I’m guilty too, and it was geological claptrap. Fjords are enormous: don’t freeze, don’t echo. That said, there was something to be said for regional identity. ECM’s stately spacious stillness can be found in embryo on Jan Johansson’s Jazz På Svenska, piano trio meditations on Swedish folk themes recorded in 1964. (Weirdly enough, American trumpeter Art Farmer’s To Sweden with Love beat Johansson to similar material by a week.)

There was another crucial aspect of the Garbarek-Rypdal Nordic sound: a barbaric Viking-horn side, rude blasts most effective when punctuating that stillness. But either player’s astringent timbre reflected more divergent influences. Some evidence can be found on three Garbarek ECMs — 1971′s Sart with Rypdal, and 1973′s Witchi-Tai-To and 1975′s Dansere both co-led by pianist Bobo Stenson — now collected in an anthology also known as Dansere.

Hearing Garbarek relatively early in his career, his non-local roots are easier to spot. You can hear a love of Albert Ayler in his low-register thrashing at the end of the tenor solo on “Song of Space.” Of course he also dug John Coltrane, and was hardly the only ’60s tenor to mash up those influences. On Carlos Puebla’s song for Ché, “Hasta Siempre,” the tenor’s torrid (as in non-icy) romantic rasp echoes another consolidator, Argentina’s Gato Barbieri, for years a frequent foil to honorary Scandinavian (and local hero) Don Cherry.

But in the midst of all that, Garbarek found the sound that became his signature: an arresting, quavering, nasal saxophone tone of his own. It’s not usual for tenor players with a big vibrant sound to get a more keening or pinched timbre on soprano, but Garbarek can get a remarkably similar sound out of either horn; compare his tenor on “Bris” with his soprano on Carla Bley’s tune “A.I.R.”

Those initials stand for “All India Radio,” drawing a connection between Garbarek’s tone and India’s double-reeds like the shehnai. (His later title Ragas and Sagas speaks for itself.) There may have been another, indirect prompt. Garbarek dug Keith Jarrett before he (and his bassist and drummer, Palle Danielsson and Jon Christensen) joined the pianist’s “European quartet” in 1974. He’d heard his “American quartet” counterpart Dewey Redman play double-reed Chinese musette, on which he got a similarly piercing western-eastern sound, as on Jarrett’s “Spirit” from 1971′s Birth.

Garbarek and pianist Stenson had close rapport, but nothing on their two albums together melds like the Garbarek-Rypdal unisons punctuating “Song of Space” — a nasty, nyah-nyah effect where vibrating reed and amplified strings sing as one. The guitarist’s sound was so arresting, ECM’s Manfred Eicher offered him his own recording date on the spot. It was the beginning of the label’s fascination with guitar eccentrics.

From Sart‘s wah-wah opening gesture, Rypdal brought a rockier sensibility to the ECM mix. His sustained saturated edge-of-feedback wail had some Hendrix in it, mixed with a jazz-guitar heavy attack, and his lines twisted like windblown trees. His axe sounded great, reverberating loudly into the quiet.

Terje Rypdal’s 1975 double LP Odyssey had been out in abbreviated form on a single CD. It’s now reissued intact, plus a 1976 broadcast with the same electric rhythm section and a 15-piece radio orchestra, as Odyssey In Studio & In Concert. Rypdal’s keening cries and dramatic silences are all over “Adagio” and “Fare Well,” and sound no worse for wear over funk beats and bass vamps on “Midnite” and the marathon “Rolling Stone.” The guitarist liked his electric Miles Davis. The newly-issued radio session isn’t so effectively stark, though it’s entertaining to hear an orchestral overlay on Milesian percolating boogaloo, on “Talking Back” and the electric-Gil-Evans-y “The Golden Eye.” (Like Garbarek, Rypdal had apprenticed with American composer George Russell, who liked his layers.) One thing some folks forget about the ECM sound: it can get pretty wild, Nordic or not.

Various Artists, Summer 2012 Saddle Creek Sampler

Saddle Creek, from Omaha, took the best of the burgeoning emo scene and cross-bred it with American roots music. They built a homegrown empire with unforgettable releases from Conor Oberst, Tim Kasher, and the Faint, and they fleshed and mapped out the contours of a still-inspiring scene with the dozens of smaller bands and artists they signed and championed. If you are a longtime fan, consider this sampler a free reason to remember why you love Saddle Creek; if you haven’t heard these bands before, well, we’re jealous.

Alice Hoffman, The Dovekeepers

Reaching back to the first century, Hoffman offers a feminist retelling of the Roman siege of Masada — a grisly event that was documented by a single contemporary source. Each section of the novel is told by one of her four narrators, all women who are part of the band of religious zealots led by Eleazar ben Ya’ir that take up residence in Herod’s old fortress. There’s Yael, daughter of an assassin, who has an affair with a soldier and gives birth out of wedlock in the desert. There’s the “witch” of Moab, Shirah, a medicine woman who is romantically involved with ben Ya’ir, although he’s married to someone else. Shirah’s daughter Aziza poses as a man so she can take her brother’s place in the war. Finally, there’s Revka, who has lost her daughter to Roman soldiers and is now raising her two mute grandchildren. The women’s stories eventually interlock as they each work in the fortress dovecote, producing fertilizer for the desert soil. As the final act of the battle with its dramatic mass suicide draws near, each must fight her individual struggle for independence and self-definition. Hoffman’s novel is skillfully researched, poetically imagined, and epic in scope.

Paula McLain, The Paris Wife

This fictionalized account of Ernest Hemingway’s first marriage, to Hadley Richardson from 1921-27, is a companion of sorts to his memoir A Moveable Feast. Only, McLain’s book is told through the scorned wife’s point of view. After meeting in Chicago through mutual friends, Hadley becomes Mrs. Hemingway and follows the aspiring author to Paris, where they fall in with a coterie of bohemians, flappers, and artists, including Gertrude Stein, the Fitzgeralds, Ezra Pound, and others — the epicenter of Parisian artistic culture. The hard-drinking couple, who call each other “Tatie,” soon meet conflict in the form of Hemingway’s temper, his frustrations with his career, and an ambivalence toward the arrival of their first child. But it’s the machinations of a seductive fashion editor named Pauline Pfeiffer who tests their loyalty to one another. As Papa entrenches himself in the publishing firmament, Hadley — sweet and dignified to the last — loses her hold on her Paris husband. Strewn with clever references to Hemingway’s and his friends’ work, The Paris Wife is a fresh spin on literary history, giving the missus the last word.

Amy Bloom, Away

After surviving the pogroms that killed her parents, husband, and child, 22-year-old Lillian Leyb has left Turov, Russia, for Ellis Island. The year is 1924, and a young woman on her own has to beg, borrow and steal to survive — or occasionally take well-to-do lovers. But Lillian’s plans of assimilating into American life are complicated when a visiting cousin arrives and informs her that her daughter is still alive in Russia. Lillian knows she must go back, but without enough money to book a ship, she has no option but to head west to Alaska and then Siberia. Hiding in the locked closets of trains takes her to Seattle, where she meets a black prostitute who takes her in only to involve her in the murder of a pimp, and then to Canada, where she ends up in a correctional facility. From there it’s onward into the frozen tundra. A psychotherapist, Bloom is brilliant at capturing the obscure and winding thoughts of her characters, their subtext-laden dialogue as well as the exacting detail that brings her heroine’s unlikely journey into believable focus. What begins as a familiar immigrant story becomes something wholly unexpected — a smart, moving novel that boldly traipses into foreign territory.

Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means

In this slim tale centered around a London ladies’ hostel at the end of World War II, the titular girls are under thirty, working for a living, and waiting for their lives to start. The residents of the May of Teck Club include Selina Redwood, the local beauty with a heart of ice; Jane Martin, a brainy but overweight publishing professional who sells authors’ letters on the black market; Joanna Childe, the daughter of the country rector who now gives elocution lessons; and Pauline Fox, who dresses up in evening gowns and (delusionally) claims to have dinner with a famous actor every night. Times are tight: The girls share rationed soap and chocolate and pass around a single Elsa Schiaparelli dress. Years later, when a former hanger-on, the anarchist author Nicholas Farringdon, is discovered dead in Haiti, it is Jane who reconnects with her fellow residents to find out more about him, and the incidents that lead to his death. With her minimal, playful, unsentimental writing style, Spark dances over the characters and their shared tenuous moment in time before a tragedy will change everything. Girls is filled with nostalgia for young unmarried women in a strange but hopeful era.

The Unjustly-Overlooked Bullet Records

Bullet Records of Nashville doesn’t turn up often in discussions of significant postwar independent labels. But it should. Co-founded in 1946 by former radio announcer Jim Bulliet, it was the first indie of consequence to emerge from what would eventually be known as Music City USA, and its catalog was diverse; in fact, its only two national hits were pop: Francis Craig’s 1947 “Near You,” which topped the charts for 17 weeks on the way to becoming the biggest seller of the year for any label, and the local pianist/orchestra leader’s follow-up “Beg Your Pardon,” which reached No. 3. Given Nashville’s current status, Bullet is remembered today mainly as a country label, recognized for releasing the first sides by Ray Price (as well as Chet Atkins, Minnie Pearl and others known mainly to country fans) and writer Leon Payne’s original version of “Lost Highway,” which became a Hank Williams signature song.

The reason Bullet is so often overlooked is that when the label was shut down in 1952 — Bulliet himself had been forced out by his partners three years earlier — the masters were destroyed. Or so it was always said. And because Bullet was thus left out of the initial reissue rampage when CDs replaced vinyl, the label grew obscure. Until now. Some of the tracks on the Bullet reissues that have become available are clearly taken off the original vinyl 78s, suggesting the masters were not available; but others sound so clean that they could easily come from the masters. Perhaps it’s enough to note that such albums as The Bullet Records Story: The First Americana Label, Bullet Records: Jump, Blues and Ballads, Bullet Records Blues and The Bullet and Sur-Speed Records Story now exist, and that’s what really matters.

Where there were recording studios there were blues and R&B scenes, and Nashville was no exception. Bullet also released B.B. King’s first four sides, early efforts by Guitar Slim (recording under his real name of Eddie Jones) before he made history with “The Things That I Used to Do” and by Wynonie Harris before he made his name as Mr. Blues, some first-rate Cecil Gant, and random sides by big names like Roosevelt Sykes and Willie Dixon’s Big Three Trio, cult figures like Rudy Greene and obscurities like the Red Miller Trio (whose 1948 “Bewildered” briefly reached No. 1 R&B).

The Gant material is especially noteworthy, since he was one of the most popular R&B pianists and singers in postwar America thanks to his original “I Wonder,” a massive 1946 hit for Gilt-Edge that he re-recorded in a more exotic-sounding version for Bullet. Sung from the point of view of a soldier overseas thinking dark thoughts of his girlfriend back home, it’s a dire, slow tune, not unlike one of Charles Brown’s heart-tugging cocktail blues, and it provided the template for his future hits. But the oft-ignored truth is that Cecil Gant was one breakneck boogie woogie pianist with more than a little stride mixed in, and uptempo romps like “Nashville Jumps” (an ode to his hometown’s drinking culture) are every bit as strong as his best ballads; so are the less frantic “Anna Mae” and “Boogie Woogie Baby.”

The B.B. King material shades more towards boogie than the subsequent hits (“Three O’Clock in the Morning”) that highlighted his early career; his voice here bears no resemblance to the pipes he would display just a few short years later, and he takes no guitar solos. But “When Your Baby Packs Up and Goes” and “Take a Swing with Me,” respectively walk and swing with real force and, as always, King knows how to assemble and lead a tight band. The two Wynonie Harris sides available are hardly poor, but certainly pale next to the exhilarating, barrel-chested jump sound he would later develop; perhaps the most interesting thing about them is the slightly unorthodox accompaniment from his pianist, one Sonny Blount, making his recording debut. Blount would soon move to Chicago, change his name to Sun Ra, and show fans what unorthodox could really mean while exploring outer space and beyond in his own music. As for rocking Rudy Greene, the only one of his five tracks here that even approaches the craziness that would win him his cult following is “Buzzard Pie,” and it’s a long long ways from “My Mumblin’ Baby” or “Juicy Fruit.”

Blues fans will find other small pleasures scattered across these compilations. Nashville homeboy St. Louis Jimmy’s version of his standard “Goin’ Down Slow” is a remake that doesn’t embarrass itself. Big Joe Williams is as prickly as ever on “Jivin’ Woman” and “She’s a Married Woman.” Memphis favorites Tuff Green and His Orchestra step out with the always-timely “Let’s Go to the Liquor Store.” The Big Three Trio, Willie Dixon’s first group, manages a non-risque version of “Signifying Monkey.” Max Bailey’s “Rockin’ the Blues” verges tantalizingly on rock ‘n’ roll. “Candy Man Blues” and “Why Should I Cry” are typically two-fisted piano blues from Roosevelt Sykes.

Bulliet’s original partners ultimately ran the label into the ground by signing pop stars like Milton Berle and Bob Crosby instead of exploiting the local omnipresence of country and blues/R&B. Bullet was briefly revived in the ’60s, along with the subsidiaries Sur and Speed, for about a dozen single releases (Shy Guy Douglas’s novel instrumentals “Midnight Soul” and “Shy” and the Burton Majors Band’s pop-soul “Cry, Cry” stand out). Jim Bullet kicked around a few more labels and other music companies — an early backer of Sun Records, he got out before the gettin’ at that breakout Memphis label got good — before winding up in…the candy business. His legacy is rather a modest one, but that’s okay; he was in the right place at the right time, and he delivered.

Various Artists, Arts & Crafts Label Sampler – MMXII

Looking for a soundtrack to your sunny weekend? Curious about some of the new bands on everyone’s favorite label up north? WONDER NO MORE. The fine folks at Arts & Crafts have furnished us with this absolutely free sampler so you can get acquainted with some of their new acts. There’s the moody indie rock of Zulu Winter, the fluttering, lovely Snowblink and the terrifically doomy Trust. It all adds up to a half-hour of greatness, and the perfect introduction to an excellent label.

Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

Death narrates this now-iconic young adult novel about an illiterate young girl whose hunger for reading incites her to steal books, beginning with the gravediggers manual she finds at the cemetery where her younger brother is buried. When the war begins, Liesel Meminger is sent to live with a foster family in the town of Molching. Her foster father teachers her to read and her new best friend (and would-be paramour) Rudy Steiner assists her on her thieving missions — some designed to help themselves in wartime poverty, others to rebel against the atrocities of Nazism. In the meantime, Liesel’s foster parents take in a Jew, hiding him in their basement from the S.S. As his relationship with Liesel warms, Max writes new books especially for her, painting over pages of Mein Kampf with his own illustrations. With Death as the storyteller and the Holocaust as the historical backdrop, the plot has a certain inevitability — we all know how this will end. Nevertheless, Zusak illuminates the humanity of his foul-mouthed, mostly well-meaning characters in their efforts to both resist and survive and his lyrical writing gives new form to well-trodden subject matter.

Various Artists, METAL BLADE RECORDS 2012 Summer Sampler

Metal Blade founder Brian Slagel launched his independent label in 1982 with the compilation Metal Massacre, which featured the first label appearance by Metallica, as well as songs by Black N Blue and Malice, who would both also go on to receive major-label deals. While many metal labels crashed and burned in the early ’90s when alternative and grunge became popular, Metal Blade became the go-to label for the underground. Slagel, and Metal Blade, have been ahead of the curve in metal for years now: get a taste of the label’s history with this sampler.

Onra, Long Distance

The French producer Onra first came to prominence with Chinoiseries, an adventurous 2007 collection of beat collages drawn from from an eye- and ear-opening visit to his father’s native Vietnam. His marvelous 2010 follow-up, Long Distance, is no less imaginative, though this time it’s a journey across time rather than space. This is what “future funk” sounded like from the vantage of Onra’s imaginary 1980s, all floaty synths, two-stepping drum computers, obnoxiously slapped bass and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis gloss. At his best, Onra achieves a mesmerizing cross between Daft Punk’s Homework and J. Dilla’s chunkiest stutter-funk — it’s distinctly modern while conjuring a bygone ecstasy. The charming “My Mind is Gone” (featuring Olivier Daysoul) wobbles along in fits and starts and “Long Distance” (Daysoul again) and “The One” (featuring T3 of Slum Village) maximize the possibilities of speaker-blown overmodulation. “WeeOut” sounds like an inside-out Soulsonic Force jam, a ferocious synth-swoosh punctuating every line. “Sitting Back” and “Don’t Stop” throb with a distinctive, FM-band euphoria, while the dense funk of “Tape This” is like the tape-warp comedown. The high point is “High Hopes,” a head-nod tribute to S.O.S. Band’s classic of the same name. It stretches the original’s bass-line to the very threshold of funk, as throwback crooner Reggie B leads the thunderous handclaps.

Gary War, Jared’s Lot

It should surprise no one that Gary War was once part of Ariel Pink’s live band. Much like the bedroom-pop savant, War also conveys the image of a loner possessed by a singular, intensely weird vision. War’s third album of aerobic synth madness is dense, frantic and strangely intimate. Punk riffs hammered out on keyboards (“Pleading for Annihilation,” “Superlifer”), Suicide beats that relentlessly bang on, arpeggios to the synth gods and not a human voice to be heard. “Thousand Yard Stare” sets the tone, pre-launch gurgles giving way to a glorious analogue run and a lonesome, distant vocoder. The maniacally screwy “Advancements in Disgust” sounds like three, distorted songs at once; all the while, two robots try to shoot each other with phasers. The dreamy, psychedelic “World After” is the most conventional song here; its gentle, coasting pace sounds downright lush alongside the high-resolution mania elsewhere. Jared’s Lot is a short album — it’s a shade under 30 minutes — but it’s easy to lose yourself in its jacked-up rhythms, hall of mirrors-reverb and meticulous layering. All the while, one waits for those moments when War himself rises above the fray — the sweet, ethereal reprieve in the middle of “Advancements,” the understated, vocoded harmonies of “Thousand Yard Stare.” Even then, he comes across like an outsider spooking his own songs.

New This Week: Swans, Matthew Dear, and more!

Great stuff this week, the last week of the summer. My personal favorite is the Swans record, but I have a taste for the dark and the slightly perverse. Even if you don’t, however, there’s something in this week’s new arrivals you’ll probably be interested in.

Swans, The Seer -The most punishing, epic music Michael Gira has made with his Swans alias in years. Inspiring and fearsome. Andrew Parks has more:

Clearly the sound of someone who still doesn’t give a goddamn what you think, The Seer isn’t just a sprawling listen. It’s a record that just went off its meds, a striking, supremely challenging mix of manic melodies, endless experimentation, ritualistic drones and rigorous repetition. Amazing stuff,  if you can make it to the other side without blowing your speakers.

Matthew Dear, Beams - Crisp, folded-napkin cyber-pop, shades of Eno and Gary Numan, from the former DJ who is slowly morphing into a shit-hot frontman. Andrew Parks, again, on the 1s and 2s:

At this point —  13 years, five albums, and several side projects into a preconception-skirting career as a producer/DJ/performer —  it shouldn’t be surprising to find Matthew Dear fully embracing his inner Eno, Bowie and Byrne. Beams is yet another step in Dear’s welcome evolution as a songwriter. Not a party-rocker. Not a floor-filler. A songwriter. And since he started off as more of a club crawler, Dear isn’t quite a pop star just yet. He’s getting there, though, as proven by the unparalleled perfection of this album’s lead-off single, “Her Fantasy.” A career standout, it’s willfully wild and downright weird, from its Kenneth Anger-cribbing music video to its woozy rave whistle and incessant sampled chorus of “Pump it!/ Pump the bass!”

TEEN, In Limbo - Hazy, lazy, unhurried pop, like Fleetwood Mac if they’d spent a few too many hours baking under the desert sun. Truly hypnotic and lovely, with the harmonies to boot. Marc Hogan had this to say:

Mixed and produced by Spacemen 3′s Sonic Boom, and engineered by Here We Go Magic’s Jen Turner, full-length debut In Limbo is a brainy, immersive and often-intriguing blend of pulsing krautrock drone and bouncy Phil Spector harmonies. The 11-track set has its share of reverby retro-pop gems, whether confidently thrumming “Better,” lovesick space-prom waltz “Charlie” or insistent, surf-flecked “Electric.”

Holy Other, Held - Sumptuous, stunning apocalypse music from the always-reliable Tri Angle imprint. Philip Sherburne writes:

Holy Other’s debut album opens with a bang. Literally: It’s a long, drawn-out rumble that might be a thunderclap, or perhaps simply the sound of a needle dragging its way across a felt slip-mat, agonized and enervated. It’s a fitting kickoff for Held, which feels like the soundtrack to the end of the world. But the Manchester musician’s vision of the apocalypse is clearly the whimpering kind: Slow, sad, and sensually soporific, his music revels in mournful vocal samples, plaintive synthesizers and slow-motion beats.

Dan Deacon, America - The manic, all-systems-go, hyper-pop auteur returns with another album that bears a sober title but beneath it capers with the same cartoony spirit. Mike Powell writes:

Don’t let the big, mature title distract you: America is still a Dan Deacon album, and Dan Deacon’s music is, more or less, the same sublimely hyperactive stuff it’s always been. The main difference between this album and his previous ones is that some of the synthesizers have been replaced by oboes, which tend to sound slightly less like laser beams. The album’s centerpiece is a four-part, 20-minute suite called “USA.” Is it a coincidence that symphonies traditionally have four movements? Probably not. Deacon’s showing off his ambition here.

The Flatlanders, The Odessa Tapes - Rare demo recordings from the legendary trio of Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, and Butch Hancock, a bluegrass powerhouse that united for only one official album. Bill Murphy writes:

More a Legend Than a Band, the title of the Flatlanders’ 1972 debut, speaks volumes about the band’s complicated history. For one thing, the three troubadours from Lubbock, Texas — Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely and Butch Hancock — almost immediately went their separate ways after making the album for Sun Records in Nashville. Each of them eventually found success as a solo artist, which piqued interest in the work they’d done together so many years before, and prompted a reunion that’s been going strong since the late ’90s. That legend gets burnished yet again with The Odessa Tapes — the long-thought-lost studio demos that bought the Flatlanders their original ticket to Nashville. Tracked one night in late 1971 in Odessa, Texas, these 14 songs are remarkable not only for how pristine they sound after 40 years, but for how thoroughly they capture the bluesy, dusty-road essence of the band.

Poor Moon, S/T - Delicate, dewy acoustic fingerpicking and mountain-stream clear high harmonies. Lovely, simple: a cross between Laurel Canyon pop and high Appalachia. RIYL: Fleet Foxes, Phosphorescent.

Dave Sumner’s Jazz Picks
Not a big drop this week, but there were some excellent albums that fall under the category of Something Different.And much to my delight, there’s a pick for fans of many many Jazz sub-genres.I try to avoid it, but I split the Pick of the Week honors between two albums.I’ve been listening to both albums continuously, and my adoration hasn’t waned for either recording, so backed into a corner and no a fan of flipping coins, I went with both albums.Let’s begin…

Scott McLemore, Remote Location:Drummer McLemore leads a quintet (featuring pianist Sunna Gunnlaugs) through a series of tunes that have terribly catchy melodies, while also plenty of intricacies to round things out.It gives the sense of an indie-pop tune hidden inside a jazz composition.Album has some of that Icelandic Jazz moodiness, but overall, emits more warmth than anything.Song “Citizen Sitting Zen” might be fatally addictive.Co-Pick of the Week.

Lionel Loueke, Heritage:Guitarist & vocalist Loueke has molded his own jazz sound, meshed from his West African roots and a forward-thinking modern jazz sensibility.The addition of pianist (and producer) Robert Glasper was an inspired decision, and the pairing works like a charm.Glasper shares many of Loueke’s characteristics… an earthy groove that seems born out of the air.Joined on the date by Derrick Hodge on bass and Mark Guiliana on drums (also, Gretchen Parlato sits in on vocals on a couple tracks).A magical album.Co-Pick of the Week.

There was another large Enja label drop on eMusic this week, and there’s several nice titles to choose from.The stand-out album, to my mind, is…

Wendell Harrison, Rush and Hustle:A veteran of the Detroit Jazz scene, and co-founder of Tribe Records, Wen-ha Records, and Rebirth Records, Harrison has been a moving force in Detroit for decades, and one of those artists who toil under the radar while fighting the good fight.This big band album is absolutely thrilling.Featuring Harrison’s “Mama’s Licking Stick Clarinet Ensemble” (which features James Carter on double B-flat contrabass clarinet), long-time Harrison collaborator Harold McKinney on piano, and Jerry Gonzalez at one of the percussion stations, the album hits a variety of themes… some groove, some soar, some swing… and all to great success.This is one of those albums that will never be rated as one of the all-time-greats, yet should be in everyone’s jazz collection.A real gem, and Highly Recommended.

Andrei Pushkarev, Bach Vibrations:Solo vibraphone performance of Bach’s “Inventions For Two Voices.”A surprisingly vibrant album, and not unlike how pianist Bill Evans would approach jazz through classical music.Nice.

Daniel Herskedal, Neck of the Woods:Duo album between tuba player Herskedal and saxophonist Marius Neset.Sounds like a set-up for a jazz joke, but there’s nothing funny about this music.Quite beautiful, with a nice mix of serenity and chatter.ECM fans should flock to this album, though I should mention it’s put out on Edition Records, a UK label that has been putting out a bunch of albums that make appearances in the Jazz Picks.Good stuff.One note:There’s a deluxe version of this album, but I can’t find any difference between the deluxe and “regular” version on eMusic.I link above to the “regular” version.Recommended.

Among many of Joel Dorn’s contributions to Jazz was resurrecting long-lost gems of albums that had dropped out of circulation.One of his labels, Hyena Records, was an avenue for jazz artists to dust off private recordings, either from at home or live events, and put them out for sale.Two more from that series dropped today.One from Les McCann and one from

Brian Castner, The Long Walk

The last few years have produced a plethora of memoirs, articles, movies and — more significantly — investigations over the post traumatic stress disorder suffered by returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. Though treading on nearly identical ground as the film The Hurt Locker, The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows, author-narrator Brian Castner’s own story of defusing bombs on the front lines still shocks, saddens and disturbs with both its clear voice and its brutal honesty.

“The first thing you should know about me is that I’m crazy,” begins Castner — though it quickly becomes clear that he’s anything but. A serious, dedicated Air Force officer with a background in engineering, the three-tour Iraq veteran is not the kind of adrenaline junkie depicted in The Hurt Locker, but someone whose experiences have produced rushing rivers of uninvited dread and confusion. One gets the sense that Castner would rather be feeling just about anything other than the need to patrol his own house with a rifle. Castner ruefully brings the listener along as he tries (or rather, endures) various treatments for his “broken brain,” all in a progressively desperate attempt to stifle the remaining panic. Heartbreaking and accessible, The Long Walk is the selfless result of those efforts.

Interview: Antibalas

When Antibalas performed in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg Park recently, trumpeter Jordan McLean dedicated the afrobeat big band’s show to the performance-punk trio Pussy Riot (recently sentenced to prison in Russia for “hooliganism”) as well as to “another pussy” — namely Igor, a recently deceased feline friend of the band. This mixture of politics and family nicely characterizes Antibalas, by far the best non-Nigerian take to date on the sound forged by composer, singer, multiinstrumentalist, bandleader, and anti-authoritarian polygamist Fela Kuti, who died in 1997.

Over the course of their five albums since forming in Brooklyn the following year, the Antibalas collective has built on what co-founder-saxophonist Martin Perna calls the “elastic” formal perfection of afrobeat, whose almost symphonic pleasures derive from polyrhythmic relationships and dialogues among horns, drums, guitars, and keyboards, topped by rabble-rousing vocals. On Antibalas, the band’s first album in five years, the band snaps back into powerful formal concision following the experimental ruptures and raptures of 2005′s John McEntire-produced Security. A reintroduction of sorts, Antibalas returns to the group’s Daptone-label roots: Producer and label co-owner Gabriel Roth is also a former guitarist and songwriter with Antibalas.

“Once you’re in Antibalas, you’re always in Antibalas,” Perna says of Roth, whose back-to-basics recording approach was pretty much the opposite of McEntire’s. “Daptone definitely has a way of doing things,” Perna explains, “and we were down with doing them that way. Everything was mapped out before we got into the studio. We recorded onto tape, and a lot of the horn parts were played around a single mike. A lot of attention was paid to doing it right the first time. There wasn’t any ProTools cutting and pasting after we recorded a song.” Perna, who literally helped gut and rebuild Daptone’s studio more than a decade ago, sees the label as a comfortable home to classic pop forms such as soul, boogaloo, gospel, and, of course, afrobeat.

Security was a financial disappointment but an artistic success. McEntire took the afrobeat template and added metallic, electronic, and other textures to create a dynamic futurist version of ancient African rhythms. Perna was almost amused by Security reviews that commended Antibalas for its fidelity to afrobeat. “Did you listen to this record?” he wondered. And while Antibalas is much more in the classic mold of afrobeat, it sometimes seems to Perna as though Antibalas can’t win for losing. “People complained that the songs were too long on the last record,” he says with a laugh. “Now it’s like, ‘What’s with the seven-minute afrobeat songs?’”

In-between Security and Antibalas was Fela! The energetic Tony Award-winning Bill T. Jones musical’s score was arranged by Antibalas members, who also performed it on Broadway from 2009-2011. Fela Kuti’s musical biography may have introduced thousands of theatergoers to afrobeat, but Perna feels there’s still a long ways to go. “It takes a while for this music to stick,” says Perna, who was working on a graduate degree in Texas during the show’s run. “Even when people like it, it takes a while to understand everything that’s going on. We’re faced with that challenge even after fourteen years of playing and explaining it. People respond to it physically when they see us live, but it’s still quite a bit for most folk to wrap their heads around.” Afrobeat functions equally well as dance and listening music, and you can’t beat that with a stick.

But Antibalas’s big funky sound has a cost. “People in the band really make tremendous sacrifices,” Perna says. To help make ends meet, Antibalas members often end up on the road with the likes of Iron & Wine, TV on the Radio and Mark Ronson. Among the various reasons to treasure Antibalas is its commitment to spreading the afrobeat gospel despite the logistics involved in getting a dozen-member combo, with members now dispersed around the country, into the same room at the same time. During the band’s first foray to England, Fela Kuti’s close friend J. K. Braimah gave Antibalas his blessing but warned them against overtouring, which he believed contributed to Fela’s downfall. Perna says the band took his warning to heart.

In this respect, Antibalas has been reinvigorated with a relatively new rhythm section: bassist Nikhil Yerawadekar and drummer Miles Arntzen (a star student of Medeski, Martin & Wood‘s Billy Martin). “It’s nice to have folks out on the road who aren’t jaded yet,” laughs Perna.”We all love playing, but it’s hard for someone who’s leaving his kids behind and still has memories of sleeping on a thousand couches for the past 10 years.”

Masta Ace, MA_DOOM: Son of Yvonne

Of the many things a time-traveling, 1988 Juice Crew fan wouldn’t understand about contemporary hip-hop: How did Masta Ace end up with the steadiest, most interesting career? It’s no knock on Ace, but he never possessed the gusto of Kane, the goofy charisma of Biz, the sheer arrogance of Shan and Shante. Now entering his fourth decade as a recording artist, though, Ace has excelled in recent years at making thoughtful, well-crafted concept albums that are nostalgic but never backward. Disposable Arts (2001) tracked the day-to-day comeback of a young Brooklyn ex-con, while A Long Hot Summer (2004) detailed the summer-long rise of a scrappy, neighborhood rapper. For Son of Yvonne, Ace draws inspiration from his late mom, chronicling his adventures as a young kid (“D-Ski”) and her influence on his evolving character. The perspective telescopes back-and-forth, from ’70s-era tales (“Me and My Game”) to scraps of back-then, grown man retrospection — “Moms even had a box fulla 45s/ Put the needle down, yeah that sounds sorta live,” Ace recalls on “Nineteen Seventy Something.” “Outside with a curfew/ Got lessons on honesty and virtue/ And the people that’ll hurt you,” he raps on the affecting title track, a thank you of sorts for “mom’s intervention.” The beats will be familiar to fans of DOOM (formerly M.F. Doom), as they draw from his Special Herbs series. But what Ace does with them is a different kind of fantasy. “I be hopin’ that/ Maybe one day/ Them old clubs I used to go open back,” he raps on “Da’Pro,” and it’s a reminder that Son of Yvonne is for a certain kind of audience. “Want y’all to hear me loud and clear/ If you don’t care for the real shit then get outta here.”