Hey Drag City

Jim O’Rourke, Tamper. Jim being droney and weird. If you think you don’t have the time, you don’t have the time. GOOD

Scout Niblett, The Calcination of Scout Niblett. Slides like hot metal. Scout Niblett moves from thick, soft guitar picking to hard-edged waves of noise effortlessly. She moves from great big philosophical announcements to realistic and specific lyrics effortlessly. It’s all very jarring and very soothing at once. Her voice, too––it’s molten hot but also cold cold cold. GOOD+

Gastr Del Sol, Camoufleur. It’s not everyday that you get to hear the phrase “for example” in a song. But then again it’s not everyday that you get to hear anything as good as Camoufleur. Unless you buy it, I mean. GOOD+

David Grubbs, The Thicket. Grubbs’s solo debut. Plucky and calm and exotic and experimental and noisy and shrieking. I don’t really know what this is; its earnest jokes sort of terrify me. GOOD

(Smog), Rain On Lens. I think of this album in terms of its two great center-piecing back-to-back tour de forces: “Dirty Pants” and “Lazy Rain.” These two songs are vastly different in just about every way; they represent very well Callahan’s song-writing abilities. “Dirty Pants” is terrifying: weird pick-axe-sound intro, first-person description of maybe the least savory character imaginable (”And so I dance in dirty pants, a drink in my hand/ No shirt, a broken tooth, barefoot and beaming…”), and then the totally unexpected but not at all unbelievable cryptic rape scene, sung in that same steady monotone: “Then I walk out to your house and let myself in/ Back you into a corner and I multiply.” “Lazy Rain,” on the other hand, is one of the sweetest songs about sex there is. Though it is also certainly sinister, Callahan’s monotone is nice-sounding and his slowwww delivery seems like a symptom of happiness (as opposed to a creep-out tactic). Also, “Lazy Rain” starts in almost exactly the same way as that other sinisterly romantic Smog masterpiece, “Strayed”: “Well it’s strange the way you walk behind but seem to lead the way” versus “Well it’s snaining outside, or is it just lazy rain?” The Well it’s is so goddamned familiar. As he gets home, at 6AM, his friend and him just cheated death, he describes his wife, sleepily watching him undress. “I slide into the bed/ Then my leg I thread/ Between hers.” Then: “We move faster toward the sill.” GOOD+

Silver Jews, Bright Flight. There is so much unbearable emotional pain in what we do up here! GREAT

Jim O’Rourke, Eureka. Don’t be thrown off by the weird canvas painting of a fat bald guy getting a blowjob from a rabbit on the cover. Er, well, do be thrown off by the weird canvas painting of a fat bald guy getting a blowjob from a rabbit on the cover. GREAT

Major Stars, Return To Form. Loud New England rawk that’s intellectual because it is. Sandra Barrett’s vox soar all over everything. And the record does that classic rock thing where no one thing is particularly catchy but the whole mess of chords and solos and fuzz renders it downright enchanting. Boston Tea Party? More like, Boston Riff Party. GOOD+

David Grubbs, The Spectrum Between. Just like a campfire: warm, familiar, and dangerous. GREAT

Bonnie “Prince” Billy & the Cairo Gang, The Wonder Show Of the World. Yeah, this one’s got that awesome Oldham Buzz, alright. You know, that breathy, trilling hum created by the gently/roughly strummed acoustic guitar, Oldham’s wet, thick, whiney voice and, oh, I don’t know, like a pile of Steve Albini’s dirty socks next to one of the microphones. AND JESUS H. CHRIST IS IT GOOD. “I once loved a girl/ But she couldn’t take that I visited troublesome houses,” Oldham hums on the opener, “Troublesome Houses.” And it only gets better from there. What a fucker. GOOD+

Royal Trux, Twin Infinitives. It’s––it’s really fuckin’ good. GREAT

CAVE, Pure Moods EP. Looking like and sounding like Lester Bangs’s ideal band, Chicago’s CAVE rock hard and burn slow. And the song titles! “Hot Bricks”! “Teenager”! “Brigitte’s Trip (White Light/White Jazz)”! This is krauty, krauty stuff; pure 1970s, pure vibes, pure moods. GOOD+

Various Artists, Hey Drag City. As is clearly stated, “Various artists have never been so varied, so artistic.” I would like to add: A label comp has never before been so fucking incredible, so fucking perfect. GREAT