album reviews
Against Me!
Transgender Dysphoria Blues Total Treble
"There's a brave new world that's raging inside of me," rages Against Me! frontwoman Laura Jane Grace – formerly frontman Tom James Gabel – on "FuckMyLife666," the melodic and emotional peak of the band's first LP since Grace came out as transgender. A series of bracing songs about a self-destructive girl in a boy's body, it's a thematic offspring of Lou Reed (see Berlin, etc.). Musically, it sticks to the band's established brand of warrior-cry punk ... | More »
Mogwai
Rave Tapes Rock Action
Few Nineties rock bands were better prepared than Mogwai for the movie-trilogy blocks of music allowed by the iPod. Over the past 18 years, the Scottish outfit moved from making bombastic explosions in the sky to crafting widescreen soundtracks to goin' down the road feeling bad. On their eighth album, they go with what they know, from childlike keyboard melodies anchoring guitar swells("Simon Ferocious," "Deesh") and nod-off piano mumbles ("Blues Hour") to robotic riff-welding ("Master ... | More »
Warpaint
Warpaint Rough Trade
Moody Los Angeles post-punkers Warpaint entranced heartsick indie fans with their 2010 full-length debut, The Fool. On their self-titled follow-up, the all-female quartet's gift for ringing, skeletal guitar lines, slyly defiant lyrics and keening melodies remains intact. This time out – aided by frequent U2 collaborator Flood's spacious production, with mixing help from Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich – the band proves it can work bodies as well as massage spirits. The ... | More »
Hard Working Americans
Hard Working Americans Melvin/Thirty Tiger
Todd Snider specializes in bitingly funny, populist country-rock storytelling (his 2012 album Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables was a vivid Great Recession indictment). Here, he convenes a tough, versatile band for a set of rootsy, lefty covers like the Bottle Rockets' "Welfare Music" and Frankie Miller's desperate 1959 hit "Blackland Farmer," which is redone with taut New Orleans swing. The highlight is a country-blues take on Randy Newman's "Mr. President (Have Pity on the W... | More »
Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
Give the People What They Want Daptone
The latest by retro-soul queen Sharon Jones opens on bass-drum thunder and orchestral chimes, like an Ennio Morricone fanfare for a lawman returned to settle scores. That's appropriate for Jones, who's been battling pancreatic cancer but sounds utterly unbowed. "Retreat!" is a funky warning to a cocky suitor, and "Making Up and Breaking Up" is all echo-chamber slow groove and girl-group backing vocals, sublime in period accuracy and in-the-moment passion. A dozen years in, her brass... | More »
Lucinda Williams
Lucinda Williams Lucinda Williams Music/Thirty Tigers
It's fitting that Lucinda Williams' 1988 LP was initially released by England's Rough Trade, home to the Smiths and the Raincoats – it deserves as much credit as any album for spearheading the so-called Americana movement, country's post-punk equivalent. Finally back in print, every song burns hot as ever: the indie jangle-twang of "Passionate Kisses" (which won a Country Song of the Year Grammy via Mary Chapin Carpenter's inferior version), the incandescent sex... | More »
Pixies
EP 2 self-released
It's not quite the Pixies; more like spray-on Pixies. As with EP 1, released last fall, this four-song set feels like a faint echo of the band's later albums, 1990's Bossanova and 1991's Trompe le Monde, lacking those records' frizzy menace, zany propulsion and memorable tunes. "Blue Eyed Hexe" wanly recapitulates that voodoo that they used to do so well, with guitarist Joey Santiago bringing sidelong scorch, and on "Greens and Blues" Black Francis sorta summons the s... | More »
Hiss Golden Messenger
Bad Debt Paradise of Bachelors
The recording project of former hardcore kid M.C. Taylor (see Ex-Ignota) blossomed on this intoxicating self-released set, a voice and an acoustic guitar recorded on a cassette player at his kitchen table in North Carolina in 2010. Many songs got more fully fleshed out on the excellent Poor Moon. Here, his world-weary meditations – on God, demons and, yeah, debt – sound ancient, pulled out of the dirt, yet as immediate as a foreclosure. It’s lean music for lean times. | More »
Mike WiLL Made It
#MikeWiLLBeenTriLL self-released
The thunderous productions of Atlanta beat-burster Michael "Mike WiLL Made It" Williams were undisputedly the sound of 2013. Except WiLL doesn't exactly have a "sound" at all. He's the man behind the trunk-caving boom and clatter-trap hi-hats of Ace Hood's oppressive rap banger "Bugatti"; the neon throb of Miley's "We Can't Stop"; and the murky caress of Ciara's minimal R&B grinder "Body Party" – wildly disparate songs aiming for wildly different audien... | More »
Various Artists
Beyond Inversion Accidental Guest
Great underground rock compilations – the D.C. hardcore classic Flex Your Head or the Eighties Homestead Records sampler The Wailing Ultimate – feel vibrantly alive. The 23 bands on this excellent anthology, a benefit for homeless advocates Rachel's Women's Center in Washington, D.C., Instagrams a vibrant, international basement punk scene. There's savage hardcore (total rippers from In School, Frau and the stellar Hysterics), maximum fist-pump (Roomrunner, Hive Ben... | More »
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