Selected reviews of albums that made my selections for albums of the year, soon to be posted on Treblezine in its fifty-entry entirety. These were selected randomly and assigned by my editor, and do not reflect my first three picks.
1.
If your father was a member of the Blue Man Group, and was kind enough to buy you a laptop with recording software, you'd probably wind up with an album like Ring. Spare, but moody and full of veins and blood, Cameron Mesirow's enrapturing voice channels Kate Bush's hyperactivity and the wistful puerility of Elisabeth Frazier in a winning combination of New Wave with Dark Wave. True to the album's name, Glasser's music swirls in circular patterns, the dark synths, chimes, and junkyard percussion intoxicating and hypnotic. Throughout, Cameron Mesirow's nuzzling voice keeps Ring from being another chilled-out frigid-fest. Tremel' recalls the hot swelling of Homogenic, while the pained edginess of severely processed vocals on 'Mirrorage' are disquieting, but a belatedly welcome scuffing of the perfect polish. Glasser's debut is a rare thing, an atmospheric record with rock and roll attitude that evokes the feeling of circling an airport at twilight, stuck eternally in a womb-like holding pattern over snow-covered landing strips.
2.
Tighter and more refined than their 2007 debut, Yeasayer's Odd Blood is eleven slabs of sonic sugar, combining shimmering 80s synth pop, smart lyrics and soaring harmonic hooks in the equivalent of adding a whopping B12 supplement to the dance floor diet. Upping the album's bass-heavy body-movers while hedging previous world-music eccentricities does nothing to undermine its overall achievement as a highly cerebral, jubilant album that's ineffably fun to listen to, because it sounds like it was serious fun to create. Hand claps and saxophone work 'Mondegreen' into a dizzily chanted positivist pop mantra euphoria, while guitarist Anand Wilder's voice is more clearly decipherable than ever, his smile radiating through every trembling delivery, turning anthems like 'Ambling Alp' and 'Rome' into triumphant rallying cries. With Odd Blood, these relentlessly creative Brooklyn boys assimilate their influences into cohesion, separating themselves from previous comparisons to David Byrne, Grizzly Bear, and freak-folk torchbearers Animal Collective, beating them all at their own games by being more inclusive, addictive, and for reminding us to try lightening the hell up about ourselves once in a while.
3.
Matthew Dear is a handsome man, and it's only the second thing you should know about him. If not for his electronic compositions, he'd be working in a government lab somewhere on the Canadian border, breaking enemy code with his mind, all as an unpaid intern. Numerous 12” releases over eleven years leads to Black City, testament to a brainwave that has to tap into reserve power to crush its inspirational coal.
Opening number 'Honey' is creepy, like Scooby Doo plots from the late seventies. Dear's voice sounds filtered through asbestos, with the repetition of 'Put your lights on' during the fadeout will make you glad you paid your electric bill. If that's not anything you'd pay money for, the next song finds its groove instantly, and adds some Wrigley Park organ for a carnival of the grotesque exhibition. Again that same Bowie on nitrous voice that makes me swear I smell sulfur. The voice consumes everything, and by the time 'You Put A Smell On Me' tips its raunchy title to its sludgy funk, paranoia overtakes curiosity as the dominant reflex, it's time to pause and absorb and become it.
Does that sound attractive? The sole reason to nod your head vertically is that you haven't ever heard anything close to this. He doesn't really even sound like Bowie, but that's a distant but knowable reference point. There aren't too many times I can claim with notarized certitude that this might not be where popular music will eventually lead, but Black City has already staked a commanding lead towards another horizon. 'Little People' sounds so perverse and sleazy with its popped bass strings, even as Dear is telling you to 'love him like a clown.' A voice says 'fuck you,' over feedback before the song shifts unnecessarily into a monotonous girl's choir that shouldn't have drank the Cool Aid on the field trip.
If you're of similar opinion that album art is often representative of the music within, this will raise your average a point. Ghostly, but still handsome, his smokey apparition on the cover fades him into obscurity, forever out of reach, and worth chasing if you've ever wondered what might one day be heard by brilliant, and painfully isolated neighbors, friends and family.
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