by Michael Tatum

I'm delighted by the symmetry of touting two pick hits from Mali featuring the ngoni (I'll explain in a minute), both distributed by German imprint Out Here. Unfortunately for me -- and, I'm afraid, for you -- Rokia Traoré's CD should have been re-issued stateside by Nonesuch, who as of this writing have pushed back the release date indefinitely. I have no idea if it's a licensing issue, but nevertheless, enough publications have run reviews on the record that I'm justifying its inclusion this month. If need be, do yourself a favor and hunt for a good price on the import -- or at least bug WEA to put it back on their release schedule. Good rock and roll is so hard to find these days.

Dieuf-Dieul de Thiès: Aw Sa Yone Vol. 1 (Teranga Beat) Outshone in their time by a certain nonpareil Dakar outfit, these competitors from nearby Thiès couldn't garner the necessary financial backing to commit these 1982 sessions to cassette, let alone the more expensive vinyl. So even if thirty plus years later the resulting CD is prone to the occasional channel drop out, be thankful Baobab producer Moussa Diallo had the foresight to record them live at the Sangomar Night Club gratis when no else would. Although their name translates to "collective good deeds undertaken in hopes of future profit," one gathers from the testimonials from bandleader/guitarist Pape Seck and singer Gora Mbaye -- both of whom take pains to remind us that they've had no recompense from this project -- this short-lived aggregation was a labor of love that, despite its failure to live up to its nominal promise, has been unmatched musically or spiritually for either man before or since. Mbalax fans will find much to appreciate in Bassirou Sarr's dynamic tenor, but what really distinguishes this band -- and keeps their spellbinding jams going for an average of nine minutes each -- are insinuating, serpentine rhythms that rumble rather than rock, and two wild card saxophonists whose expansive, incisive solos actually go somewhere. In short, for those who covet the idea of garage rock, but are more persuaded by the kind of scrappy upstarts who are too poor to own a car -- let alone a garage. A–

Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba: Jama Ko (Out Here) Showcasing passionate vocal performances not only from Kouyate himself but also lifemate Amy Sacko, Khaira Arby, Kassé-Mady Diabaté, and my favorite, leather-larynxed Zoumana Teretayou, you might be led into believing this is a singer's album. Of course, it is -- inasmuch as so many Malian records are -- but it owes its majesty and power mainly to the ngoni, a lowly stringed-instrument fashioned from wood or calabash and covered by a layer of dried, stretched animal skin: in other words, if one had a hankering to "shred one's ax," no match for a Fender Strat. In theory. But because its string placement makes it ideal for executing dazzling, pirouetting runs, and because this is arranged for not one but four players shadowboxing around each other, this is a guitar workout like few others, and with the help of amplification, effects pedals, and two percussionists who must have at least four hands each, their desert protest blues is powerful rock and roll indeed. Recorded with careful thought to space by Arcade Fire hand Howard Bilerman, Kouyate's leads are as lightning-quick as you'd expect, but he's equally deft at string-bending and one-note freakouts reminiscent of Santana or the Doors, resulting in an album with no dead spots, right down to the Howlin' Wolf tribute and the sprint-to-the-finish-line named after Kouyate's son. And the manic climax to "Ne Me Fatigue Pas" says more about doom and uncertainty about Mali's recent political coup than mere words ever could. A

Kate Nash: Girl Talk [Deluxe Edition] (Ingrooves) Nash's riot grrrl move makes a lot more sense when you work your way back through her discography. Compared initially to Lily Allen because each masked her privileged upbringing by cultivating a Mockney accent and a potty mouth after her egalitarian parents sent her to public school, one could argue the British record buying public cottoned to them because although they swore like Liverpudlian sailors, they remained "proper birds" about it. Even so, Allen herself would never have countenanced the tart homemade production of Nash's Made of Bricks and My Best Friend Is You, nor would Allen's bright, fluttery soprano have been capable of tackling Nash's new material -- hints of the nasal yowl the latter employs here have been hinted at in her darker timbre all along. And most crucially, many of Nash's songs, beginning with the anti-bullying "Dickhead" on the debut, address relationships with women: platonic of course (the phrase "best friend" reoccurs in song after song), romantic up in the air, and either way for you and The Daily Mirror to puzzle out. So while this first sounds like a mess, immersion reveals itself to be both a logical progression and a good way to stick it to the British pop music journalists who would turn their noses at the prospect of putting a "lightweight" on the cover of Mojo. And though the domestic release ends with a whimper -- the fey "You're So Cool, I'm So Freaky," followed by a lullaby that rubs its mawkish orchestral arrangement in old fans' faces -- the import deluxe concludes with three good-to-great tracks, including the self-explanatory "I'm a Feminist, You're Still a Whore," preceded by an ode to Pussy Riot that speaks feminism's universal language ("Meow, meow, meow, meow"). And note how Nash connects to her Russian compatriots: "They're the kinda girls that you'd be friends with/Cause they look cool and they give a shit/About the kind of things you give a shit about." Sisters gotta stick together. Brothers, take notice. A–

Orchestra Super Mazembe: Mazembe @ 45rpm, Vol.1 (Sterns Africa) Although identified with Nairobi benga -- their biggest hit, the lovely "Shauri Yako," appears on the magnificent 1991 Earthworks compilation Guitar Paradise of East Africa, though not here -- the Super Earth Shakers are actually carpetbaggers who came up in the 70s from the Congo, less to flee Mobutu's kleptocracy (one could hardly argue Daniel arap Moi's vile police state as an improvement) but because Kenya promised bigger money. Their basic approach, covering both sides of an affordable, ten-shilling, 45 rpm single, will be familiar to benga/soukous/what-have-you fans: luminescent verses/choruses, followed by a brief caesura, after which the music bursts into a breakneck reverie in which voices and guitar bounce off each other so ebulliently you'll be thankful compiler Doug Paterson, as with the great 2010 D.O. Misiani compilation he also curated, painstakingly fuses both sides together (besides, who wants to get up and turn over a record while he's dancing?). Unlike most Afropop combos, there is no prime mover here: the band had as much a revolving door policy as the Drifters or Parliament-Funkadelic -- the liner notes list twenty members, plus nine confederates of indistinct involvement. And they sung the majority of their material in their native Lingala, a language denizens of their adopted country understand only slightly more than you and I. So with beauty, beats, and Atia Jo's buoyant bass their only non-variables, why do you suppose sold these records like hotcakes? Clues can be found in the included pics, one displaying the band goofing around in hardhats and yellow slickers (their name also translates to "construction workers"), another a group shot in which they lightheartedly mug for the camera. Eager to please any which way, they're almost a little too accommodating -- this isn't nearly as lively, resourceful, or magical as Guitar Paradise of East Africa, which I guess is my way of saying eleven bands are better than one. Or maybe I mean one band is better than none -- the band's lack of cohesive identity is a problem. Beauty against adversity may be Africa's gift to the world, but that's no excuse to make pleasure feel like business. A–

Brad Paisley: Wheelhouse (Arista Nashville) Musically, Paisley's crazed strategy here reminds me of long-dismissed grunge reprobate Art Alexaxis: begin with a genre record, flirt with crossover, scurry to an apology, then heroically stage-dive into a full-fledged, gonzo sellout. The difference is that because he theoretically comes from right field, Paisley risks far more, not just by nodding three times to "rap" (the best by Charlie Daniels, who makes me wonder if "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" was the antebellum "The Breaks"), but with samples, my favorite from a Roger Miller song I'm willing to bet that before this no one who actually own a Pro Tools setup has actually heard. Yet the knee-jerk conservatism of the lyrics shows how much Paisley is hedging his bets. It's one thing to remind red-staters that not everyone owns a gun, another to muse affectionately about "Those Crazy Christians" (Jeff Foxworthy: "If you bless a casserole or pray before a football game, you might be a Christian"). And while I love the gleeful abusive boyfriend revenge fantasy "Karate," songs like that have been staples of the genre long before Garth Brooks. But consider "Runaway Train," where Paisley opines, "When I was a young'un, my momma used to pray/That I'd find me a Christian girl and settle down someday," without revealing what kind of strong-willed woman took that archetype's place, or "The Mona Lisa," who regardless of her status as a ne plus ultra is seen, not heard, or the beer-commercial plots of "Harvey Bodine" and "Death of a Single Man." And while I'd point out that the Bob Doles of the world don't fear Bill Cosby or Ben Carson as much as they do brothers in gold chains and do-rags, you don't have to be Dolores Kearnes Goodwin to doubt the veracity of LL Cool J's closing benediction to Robert E. Lee (!!) and Abraham Lincoln in "Accidental Racist." Next time, Paisley should ring up Chuck D. But somehow I doubt Chuck's gonna return to the calls of someone who spends two "sensitive" verses rationalizing his reasons for proudly displaying the Confederate flag on a T-shirt. B+

Rilo Kiley: Rkives (Little Record Company) Completists complain -- and don't they always? -- why not include the juvenilia from their obscure first EP? Why not "Big Break" (the desultory b-side to "The Moneymaker")? Or the acoustic "Somebody Else's Clothes" (which appears only on the Live at Fingerprints EP) or "Xmas Cake," their bummed-out contribution to Nettwerk's Maybe This Christmas Too? Diligent Youtube research reveals however that these sixteen rarities plus one hidden novelty comprise the cream. Sure, there's Blake Sennett's mealy-mouthed demo "Rest of My Life," as well his petulant title-says-it-all "Well, You Left," which lies stillborn until Jenny Lewis adds a backing vocal to a disingenuously joyous coda. Yet although it took me several spins to suss it out -- the band would never have left a potential radio hit on the cutting room floor -- this is the rare odds and sods deal that can stand with the original records, and with three of the stragglers from 2004's heartfelt More Adventurous and seven more from 2007's slicker Under the Blacklight, what it offers in sonic variety makes up for what it lacks in thematic heft. Jenny is the star -- that goes without saying. But it never before occurred to me how much Sennett brought to the table until I heard how much muscle and imagination he put even into Lewis' second-stringers -- and had the benefit of Lewis' slightly more perfunctory solo efforts with Johnathan Rice and the Watson Twins for comparison. Great singer-songwriters are one thing. Great bands are another. A

Rokia Traoré: Beautiful Africa (Out Here) You won't be disappointed if you backtrack through this Malian singer-songwriter-guitarist's four previous albums, but as a whole they're slightly static: graceful to be sure, but also a tad too subtle, understated, and as deliberate as a piano recital, thus inaccessible to "world music" holdouts who thinks Oumou Sangare's records "all sound the same." This record poses no such hurdles. Beginning with the shotgun entrance of trap drum dynamo Sebastian Rochford, this electrifying set announces itself as nothing less than a rock record -- if you're wondering what might have inspired PJ Harvey confidante John Parish to sign on as producer, Traoré's crunchy guitar riffs, off-kilter time signatures, and awe-inspiring vocal gymnastics (from trilling coo to banshee wail to playful purr) must feel like familiar territory. And with the exception of the regretful "Mélancolie" this doesn't let up, including the two in English, a tough title anthem and a gorgeous song of praise for women. Not that you should let the ones in French and Bamako scare you off -- the killer girl-group backing vocals make the parlez vous ring out like doo wah diddy, hey-ya, hey-ya. A

Wire: Change Becomes Us (Pink Flag) Some bands evolve out of necessity; some evolve out of boredom. These shrewd shell-gamers evolve as to whatever fits their currents needs. If new wave bleaches punk, we'll bleach it even further by hiring Depeche Mode's producer. If our drummer quits, we'll lean harder on the drum machines. When our drummer returns, we'll get back to basics. And when guitarist Bruce Gilbert retires, we'll recycle and renew fragments from 1981's chaotic Document and Eyewitness like we were the Rolling Stones rolling from Some Girls to Emotional Rescue to Tattoo You, though letting thirty years pass by rather than three, well that's just shrewd shell-gamers for you. Their more obscure lyrics still don't signify without memorable melody -- the breakdown in communication theme may finally justify Graham Lewis' penchant for acronymic gobbledygook on "Re-invent Your Second Wheel," but it's still gobbledygook (and no, it's not code, Graham -- I applied a substitution cipher). But especially on the first half, catchier and more propulsive than their similarly-textured 2011 Red Barked Tree, their blast-chilled art punk makes the most out of lines like "How I adore your island/You're the one who should be spared," and a pile-driving anti-anthem that makes the change promised in their album title sound like a threat. And in the embittered opener, Colin Newman re-imagines "Reuters" from the point of view of an "ally in exile": "He breaks down in this theatre, but hopes not under these lights/Specifically those which gain strategic insights/By the best of good fortune, he had provisions in store/He doubles, then trebles the locks on his door." B+

Honorable Mentions

Suede: Bloodsports (Suede Ltd.) Okay I'm swayed, but the word "aniseed" appears in back-to-back songs, and "Like a cause without a martyr/Like an effigy of balsa/Like a hairline crack in a radiator/Leaking life" is from one of the good ones ("Barriers," "It Starts and Ends With You") ***

Atoms for Peace: Amok (XL) Joey Waronker isn't my idea of an Afrobeat drum titan any more than Phil Selway, but for chilly DOR he'll do ("Default," "Reverse Running") ***

Telekinesis: Dormarion (Merge) The question isn't can you be a one man band, but should you? ("Power Lines," "Dark to Light") **

The Rough Guide to Acoustic Africa (World Music Network) In which even songs I liked in other contexts are subsumed by a concept that could use its own change of pace (Syran Mbenza & Ensemble Rumba Kongo, "Mbanda Nasali Nini? (Madeleine)," Shiyani Ngcobo, "Yekanini") **

Justin Timberlake: The 20/20 Experience (RCA) Maybe Smokey belabored the corny metaphors too, but he had the good sense not to stretch them out over an average song length of seven minutes ("Don't Hold the Wall," "Strawberry Bubblegum") *

Trash

David Bowie: The Next Day (Columbia) I have no idea what has taken hold in David Bowie's mind and body -- whether it's psychological, biochemical, or the thought of time waiting in the wings and speaking senseless things -- but whatever it is, it's scaring him to death: "Here I am/Not quite dying/My body left to rot in a hollow tree/Its branches throwing shadows on the gallows for me/And the next day/And the next/And another." Yet as he grips with the thought of his own mortality -- for real this time, no romanticized bullshit -- his Anglophile acolytes pretend, as they have for the last twenty-five odd years, that this represents a new dawning, another phase in a many storied career no one will admit has too many vacancies on the uppermost floors. Both the album title and the Dadaist appropriation of 1977's Heroes cover imply that this record is the one that should have surfaced in 1979 rather than Lodger -- a pretty bold statement, I'd say -- yet nothing here hits as hard as the first three songs on that underrated record's b-side. Meanwhile, Tony Visconti's production (another connection to his lost past) recreates old affects without that fertile period's air of discovery (the disjointed beat of "Dirty Boys" recalls "Breaking Glass," the squishy synth-snares of "Love is Lost" evoke "Sound and Vision"). Only on "The Stars Are Out Tonight" does the artist completely abjure sad nostalgia (the Potzdamer Platz, the Nurnberger Strasse) for directness and Visconti's chilly art rock find a purpose. Read the lyric sheet and you'll find that the celestial bodies in question have curious names like Birgitte, Jack, Kate, and Brad, and spend their time aimlessly wandering, never sleeping: "The dead ones and the living." And, one assumes, those in between. Peace be with you, David. B

Johnny Marr: The Messenger (Sire) You don't need to shoot him because there is no message -- message (and I use that word with reservations) was his old songwriting partner's department. So maybe the title should be Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Guitar Player? Except on the basis of this record, he doesn't have anything interesting to offer in that realm anymore either. Besides, who needs "message" anymore when your sole frame of reference is what Fran Healey and the Gallagher brothers were doing better in the '90s? Although if there's a "Some Might Say" or (ulp) "Writing to Reach You" here, I'll happily scarf up whatever Morrissey's serving up at the Staples Center. C+

Roger Knox & the Pine Valley Cosmonauts: Stranger in My Land (Bloodshot) Proves that "blacks" are alike the whole world over, singer-songwriters too. B–

Josh Ritter: The Beast in Its Tracks (Pytheas Recordings) He just went through a terrible divorce -- can you tell? C+

Bilal: A Love Surreal (Entertainment One Music) Or: A Lunk Supreme: Airhead's Redux. C+

Holly Williams: The Highway (Georgiana) Shows restraint by not mentioning Grandpa Hank until track two, whose own "highway" is more lost than you think -- the title track is a self-pitying plaint about being on tour. C

Jake Bugg: Jake Bugg (Mercury) Or, The Freewheelin' Lonnie Donnegan. C

This is the 29th installment, (almost) monthly since August 2010, totalling 715 albums. All columns are indexed and archived here. You can follow A Downloader's Diary on Facebook, and on Twitter.

by Michael Tatum

It would be downright unprofessional for a rock critic to blame his occasional unpunctuality on "writer's block," but every now and then it certainly does feel that way. Then again, as far as inspiration goes, the artists aren't helping -- this has been an exceptionally dry month, and only one record in my current top ten is likely to be there by year's end. Maybe late March is a little too soon to declare an arts world recession, but I sure hope things pick up soon.

David Greenberger/Paul Cebar Tomorrow Sound: They Like Me Around Here (Pel Pel) Commissioned by Sheboygan, Wisconsin's John Michael Kohler Arts Center for "Hiding Places," a multimedia exhibition devoted to exploring the relationship between art and memory, David Greenberger's newest batch of spoken word pieces based on conversations with octogenarians, nonagenarians, and centenarians doesn't differ thematically from anything he's curated previously. But with a real live backing band supplanting multi-instrumentalist Mark Greenberg's overdubs, Paul Cebar's arrangements are more playfully interactive than those on 2012's Tell Me That Before, and although Mac Perkins' bluesy call-and-response routine on that father-son recollection evoke Saturday Night Live at its corniest, in fact vaudevillian humor enlivened by the delightfully sideways logic of his geriatric charges is the idea: is "Nemo" a gender appropriate name for a female butterfly? Are "sentimentality" and "utilitarianism" really polar opposites? And would a father in Newton, Illinois really send for toys in nearby Quincy to perpetuate his children's belief in Santa Claus? I object to "The Thrill," in which we are set up to expect a tawdry sex story and in fact get a profound meditation on skydiving, mainly because the original speaker clearly didn't intend the double entendre implied by Cebar's musical misdirection. But I'm absolutely amazed by a piece in which a narrator's mother secretly votes for the first time in Woodrow Wilson's 1912 presidential election. At least I think it's 1912, because 1916 was Wilson's re-election. But wait a minute: only nine states (none of them Wisconsin) allowed women to vote that year. And Wilson didn't come out for women's suffrage until 1918, when political pressure forced him into it. Come to think of it, only Theodore Roosevelt included women's suffrage in his platform, and he split the Republican vote with Howard Taft, one more shift to the red state-blue state schism we're stuck in today. So who got her vote? That's the poignant, regrettably fragile thing about our memories -- we may never know, even when we think we do. A–

Ashley Monroe: Like a Rose (Warner Bros.) No matter how many longtime residents of the 37203 zip code you might suspect are hiding up in the rafters pulling Hippie Annie's strings, it's Monroe's youthful sensibility -- indeed, the sensibility she shares with Kacey Musgraves and her Pistol Annies cohorts -- that rejuvenates these agreeable variations on the usual workaday moon-June-shotgun honeymoon tropes. Vince Gill's sparkling neo-trad production, fine as it is, could be anybody's (and often has been), and the nine outside song doctors do aid and abet Monroe's treatment of the standard Music Row subjects (paying the rent, unwanted pregnancy, good girl gone bad), but Monroe gets more mileage out of their meddlin' than someone twice her age precisely because at this point in time, mapping out the lives of working class post-millennial kids is undiscovered country. And with Miranda Lambert the exception and most likely the linchpin, not since the halcyon days of Dolly and Loretta has someone in this notoriously patriarchal genre this young gotten away with expressing her irascible self rather than solely depending on some hack to hand her a script, something you can't say about Kellie Pickler or (God knows) Carrie Underwood. Admittedly, Dolly and Loretta had a better developed sense of humor: although the karaoke contest in the gratifyingly broad Blake Shelton duet "You Ain't Dolly (and You Ain't Porter)" becomes even more amusing when you remember who wrote "I Will Always Love You" and for whom, the two cheeky Fifty Shades of Grey references are asinine if not downright repugnant. Let's be frank: the male protagonists in the current tidal wave of erotica are billionaires because when a rich man hits you, it's sexy, but when your trailer park sweetie hits you, it's domestic violence, a "distinction" that the author of "Gunpowder and Lead" would clear up straight away. But when Monroe abjures puns and novelty -- virginity lost in a painfully observed ballad, secret lovers treating each other cruelly in public -- you'll know who gives the Pistol Annies their soul. In the meantime, I await Angaleena Presley's solo album. A–

Kacey Musgraves: Same Trailer, Different Park (Mercury Nashville) As reality show singing competitions go, Nashville Star is no less meretriciously sappy than American Idol, yet it's somehow managed to produce two major artists where Idol has only squeezed out (and let's be kind here) around 0.5. Although I missed Miranda Lambert's television debut in season one (I caught up the year after, when the presumably predominately female viewership voted for snoozy Brad Cotter and George Canyon over endearingly goofy Roger Miller disciple Matt Lindahl) my best explanation for that statistical anomaly is that unlike Idol, which grooms contestants for the stultifying eventuality they will have little control over what minuscule career lays ahead of them, Star encourages versatility: singing of course, but also, crucially, songwriting. This native of Sulphur Springs, Texas (season five, finished seventh out of a field of nine) hasn't yet cultivated a distinctive vocal style, which may explain her disappointing placing. Instead, she lets her pleasing but plain-jane alto serve as the vehicle for her impressive songwriting, which though Musgraves herself would deny it, bucks traditional country hits-plus-filler philosophy by adhering to the Taylor Swift strategy, i.e., cultivating a strong batch of top ten potentials. In fact, despite Musgraves' downwardly-mobile greasy-spoon-waitress-makes-good aura, such homiletic bromides as "Silver Lining" and "Follow Your Arrow" sit firmly in the Swiftian tradition, except the more worldly Musgraves a) has no qualms shooting down sexist double standards, and b) extols bongloads and boys (". . . .or girls, if that's what you're into") as a corrective. You could argue there's more to heaven and earth than what is dreamt in her somewhat narrow philosophy, that dulling the pain of small town boredom with sex, dope, and consumer culture is no way to get off the merry go round common to blue states, as well as red. I say after years of Stepford blondes this twenty-four year old is a step in the right direction, and that's she's just getting started. A–

The Rough Guide to Cumbia (World Music Network) Perhaps Senegal is on my mind because of that Rough Guide compilation I reviewed last month, but comparing that West African nation's music to the cumbia-exporting countries of Colombia, Venezuela, etc. is instructive. Though heavily influenced by that style, the Senegalese music scene is highly competitive: artists vie for the top spot in national contests, ensembles compete against each other to snare a job as a nightclub's house band, with individual members often defecting when a particularly good opportunity presents itself -- or, at least that's how it's always seemed after years of reading dramatic liner notes. By contrast, South American musicians aren't tribal so much as communal, often playing on each other's records, toiling for the handful of labels that dominate the market -- note that the majority of the songs on this compilation are borrowed from the cumbia kingpins at Disco Fuentes. I don't know what that says about Latin-African cultural differences, but I do know that on a good mbalax compilation, songs leap out, fight to distinguish themselves. On a good cumbia compilation -- like this one -- the songs string together seamlessly, with few clunkers spoiling the party, yet few tracks where you say to say yourself, "Oh man, I gotta hear that one again." Excepting the irritating opener "La Guacharaca" (named after the percussion instrument that supposedly inspired it, though "La Fluta" or "El Hustle" might be more appropriate, if anachronistic) this survey is as listenable as any I've ever heard, but boasts no peaks or climaxes, even when the music incorporates "rock" or even "hip hop" elements as a corrective to its inherent gentility. That's why I hope some smart person lassos up more of the artist on the (once again) excellent bonus disc from Los Corraleros de Majagual, whose plentiful hooks are as cheap as their esmoquines. I'll take a chatty accordion over a long-winded flute any day. A–

Salva: Odd Furniture (Friend of Friends, EP) Paul Salva's 2011 debut Complex Housing isn't exactly a wash beat-wise, but it nevertheless suffers from the same musical vagaries that plague so many up and coming laptop musicians. This 5-track quickie, the title of which I can only assume is a snide jab at Tyler, the Creator's quickly disintegrating Ottoman empire, snaps to attention in the first bar with an enticing lickety-split rhythm that loops yet another obscure rapper you've never heard of: "You at the club/Every weekend/Bitch/Get a life," which even before the sampled cuíca and cell phone join the fun signal Salva's game: stupid dance music for smart people. Sure, you could complain about Salva dropping the b-word yet again into the hook for the next song, but who can resist the percussive drive of what suggests a dozen typewriters clacking in unison, accented by the whirr of a camera's rapidly advancing motor drive? Boosters insist that hip hop has always been one weapon in this producer's arsenal, but I'm betting his popular 2012 dancefloor remix of Kanye West's "Mercy" convinced him that a heavier dose of it would imbue his two-step with some much needed personality. There are some of those for whom a hook like "back back back back back back it up" repeated over and over at least a hundred times would be akin to Chinese water torture. If, like me, you're one of those people who would blast such a song over and over at the expense of your significant other's mental health, you know what to do. A–

Serengeti: Saal (Graveface) I conceive Dave Cohn as sort of a hip hop John Cheever, constantly churning out snapshot vignettes illuminating the details of his place and time, with subcultural ne'er-do-wells replacing the gin-and-tonic set. Unlike Cheever however, whose main outlet still publishes forty-seven times a year, it's probably difficult to convince your otherwise sympathetic record label to pop out another dozen or so songs every time you're ready, nor will beatmasters always have copacetic beats lying around with which to frame your never ending cascade of stories. Nevertheless, the inexhaustible Cohn leapfrogs from collaborator to collaborator, label to label, exhibiting productivity so fecund you wonder why Ryan Adams even bothers. Here he's once again in avant-mode, teaming up with German minimalist musician Tobias Vethake, who provides sparse arrangements consisting of guitar, bells, and cello, against which Cohn sets some of his bleakest narratives: a lazy boyfriend who manipulates his codependent girlfriend from the comfort of his couch, a sorry creep who crashes an ex's wedding wearing a clown nose, a husband who wishes he could redo a ruined evening with his wife, who's most likely lying in the next room as he ruminates in self-pity. The wordplay is so astonishing it would be a shame if his fans lost them in the stillness of Vethake's subtle settings: an abusive mom who gives her karate-loving son "belts and stripes," a pimp who hates tennis because of "the rackets, the courts, the scoring/the time honored tradition." Think Cohn can keep this up for another thirty years, until someone consolidates his greatest hits in one capacious volume? Ask me again in three months. A–

They Might Be Giants: Nanobots (Idlewild/Megaforce) In the bizarro world of Brooklyn's John Linnell and John Flansburgh, catchy tunes are like prime numbers: a multitude endlessly spiraling into infinity, mind-bogglingly random in their pattern, and when a new one is discovered, only MIT students give a shit. But though their cleverness quotient is such one figures they might one day prove Riemann's Hypothesis, it hasn't made for great longplayers since their 1986 indie debut, nor have they been able to take full advantage of the band they hired when they realized two men and a drum machine wasn't enough, and the pabulum albums they've released on their own label in the past decade have failed to make a case for autobot autonomy. That's what makes this record such a mindbender -- a dizzying song cycle suggesting the second side of Abbey Road infused with the spirit of Weird Al's polka medleys that dazzles whether the song length is three minutes or thirty seconds. While it goes without saying your subconscious won't know what to wake up humming the next morning, it's worth noting that while their usual modus operandi is to load up their tunes into an airgun, fire away, and see what sticks to the wall, here the tunes aren't just means without ends, they're often appropriated for devious cross-purposes: a sweetly meandering melody for a nonchalantly amoral drone pilot, a poignantly touching threnody for Nikola Tesla, two indelible bars of a saloon-styled singalong protesting Lyme Disease. The bouncy "You're On Fire" proves they've had sex enough times to figure out how to craft an irresistible dance song. In "Stone Cold Coup D'état," they don't just employez une expression étrangère quand anglaise suffira -- they do it twice! And in the rollicking, outrageous, and oh-so-true "Call You Mom" Linnell unashamedly dons a sailor suit and gets down to business with his own Oedipal Complex. The men don't know, but the perpetually boyish nerds understand. The men are missing out. A

Waxahatchee: Cerulean Salt (Don Giovanni) While this unquestionably eclipses American Weekend's hollow bedroom demos, it would be hyperbole to claim former P.S. Eliot bandleader Katie Crutchfield has suddenly transformed her new brand from an art project into a working band. For one thing, the bass and drums -- both commandeered by roommates, one of whom happens to be her boyfriend -- drop in casually and intermittently: she arranges her opener solely for her voice and electric guitar, adds unobtrusive bass and tom-toms to the one that follows, and in both you forlornly wish the assertive crack of a snare drum would jolt the music out of its blankly wide-eyed detachment. Of course "intimacy" is one of Crutchfield's cardinal selling points, much like the early Liz Phair, who Crutchfield resembles in both her vulnerable candor and flattened alto, and certainly Exile in Guyville had its share of austerity, mooniness, woolgathering. But Phair also possessed a shrewd talent for pacing -- on Guyville, the startling immediacy of "6'1"" and "Help Me Mary" grab your attention before segueing into more challenging, nuanced material. Here, Crutchfield rounds out her first half with the loping brushstick pattern of the vaugely country-flavored "Lips and Limbs," another solo turn, then a slow-burning dirge where bass and drums provide the only accompaniment. It's not until track six -- a relationship metaphor disguised as tour van reminiscence, scuzzed up with grungy swirls of electric guitar -- that the players quit fooling around and start acting like a real band, and that song ends prematurely after an economic verse-chorus-verse in 1:46. Yet because Crutchfield no longer sings as if emoting to an opened guitar case or the dirty clothes littering her bedroom floor, now you can finally absorb her highly literate, deeply personal lyrics -- a bitterly observed wedding, an unnerving heroin confession, repressed anger boiling over on the blistering "Misery Over Dispute." And while I'm not sure the meaning of life is learning to "embrace the lows," there's enough spirit in her that I'm betting -- hoping, anyway -- that she rights herself before that swan dive into the asphalt. A–

Honorable Mentions

Wussy: Berneice Huff and Son, Bill Sings . . . Popular Favorites (Shake It free download) Sort of like the Beatles' Live at the BBC, except, well, the Beatles never gave it away for free ("Nomenclature," "Retarded," "Runaway") ***

Chelsea Light Moving: Chelsea Light Moving (Matador) Finds out the hard way that muculent riffs and laughably ersatz beat poetry are no way to sever the Gordonian knot ("Sleeping as I Fall," "Lip") **

Nuru Kane: Exile (Riverboat) Well-traveled Senegalese singer-songwriter-bassist does a little bit of this, a little of that, but sometimes I just wish he'd settle for making me dance ("Afrika," "Bayil") **

Marcos Valle: Previsão do Tempo (Light in the Attic) Brazilian singer-songwriter's unearthed 1973 record delights when it presages Tom Zé, intrigues when it celebrates classic tropicalia, and annoys when it blithely sails on The Love Boat ("Mentira (Chega de Mentira)," "Nem Paletó Nem Gravata") **

Richard Thompson: Electric (New West) Siobhan Maher Kennedy plays the Linda role, but not so much Richard would cede her an album credit ("Another Small Thing in Her Favour," "Where's Home?") *

Golden Grrrls: Golden Grrrls (Slumberland) I know there's no money or glory in being labeled the rightful heirs to Standard Fare, but they could up their Kelly Blue Book value by doling out their cute melodies one at a time ("Time Goes Slow," "Date It") *

Trash

The Bryan Ferry Orchestra: The Jazz Age (BMG) Don't get me wrong -- nobody likes parlor tricks, shell games, and pomo mind fucks more than I do. And for Bryan Ferry to "validate" the music he once drolly parodied by releasing an album of flapper-era recastings of eleven of his copyrights (six Roxy, seven solo) rather than the usual rehashing of the great American Songbook is pretty funny, and certainly the live-to-mono recording and pianist Colin Good's startling arrangements provide that soupçon of "authenticity." It's also downright ludicrous. Sure, the jitterbugging "Do the Strand" would have made a nifty epilogue to Roxy's For Your Pleasure. But Ferry's long suit has never really been melody -- "Love is the Drug" is many things: a dance floor classic, lead off to landmark album, the blueprint on which Duran Duran forged their sorry careers, and a great vehicle for Bryan's spiffy white tuxedo, but not necessarily a stellar tune. And stellar tunes are what Louis Armstrong and the like were elaborating on when they weren't pulling them out of thin air. I suppose it would have been fascinating to hear Louis and the Hot Fives run "Virginia Plain" or, hell, maybe even "This Island Earth" through some changes. Cornetist/trumpeter Enrico Tomasso is no Armstong. C

Iceage: You're Nothing (What's Your Rupture?) Many bloggers have accused this Danish quartet of dealing in crypto-fascism, most persuasively Scott Creney, who cites their appropriation of suspect iconography (hooded figures, Iron Crosses), their support of right-leaning bands (such as the National Socialist German death metal band Absurd), and lead singer Elias Bender Ronnenfelt's racially-charged drawings. I've also seen plenty of passionate rebuttals -- many point out drummer Dan Kjaer Nielsen is Jewish, and I've even read a testimonial from guitarist Johan Surballe Wieth's mum, who notes the band's concern over the disconcerting populist influence of the anti-immigrant Danish People's Party. I'm sure that's true. But the band has thus far been unwilling to attach their loaded imagery and whatnot to meaningful context either in print or on record -- like Nixon or Reagan, Ronnenfelt continually blames the "media" for misconceptions he's evasive about clearing up. Me myself, I hardly think they goosestep even in the privacy of their own homes -- like the pathetic young punks in my neighborhood sushi joint who bedeck their walls with swastikas, I suspect they're attracted not to ideology, but shock value: they want to be perceived as dangerous, and I'm willing to bet they didn't expect their music to be famous enough outside of Europe so that they'd have to justify their dubious ruses to, say, the American press. I suppose it's easier for me to dismiss this band's sophomore effort because it's less hooky than 2011's New Brigade if equally inscrutable lyrically, but their continuing ambivalence to align themselves anywhere politically -- nothing deeper than the passive "this is what we see and feel" -- is disturbing, and I don't mean aesthetically. The Ramones may have dabbled in this shit too, but Joey and the gang yanked it by the nose and gave it an eye poke, undercutting their brutality with a gleefulness and charity these Danes suspiciously lack. What are they tearing down? What do they want to erect in its place? I have no idea. But nothing in these forbiddingly ascetic anthems for weekend stormtroopers tempts me to find out. B–

Jamie Lidell: Jamie Lidell (Warp) "People in the house! Make some noise for MICHAEL SEMBELLOOOO!" B–

Pissed Jeans: Honeys (Sub Pop) Less incontinent pants than incompetent rants. B–

Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell: Old Yellow Moon (Nonesuch) Author of best song: Roger Miller, rounded out by more questionable entries by Patti Scialfa, Matraca Berg, Kris Kristofferson, Crowell himself, and hmmm, some guys from Harris' 70s touring band. C+

The Joy Formidable: Wolf's Law (Atlantic) Ritzy Bryan's Welsh prog-rock trio will never catch on in America -- doesn't she know Rush fans are terrified of women? C

Grouper: The Man Who Died in His Boat (1-2-3-4-Go) Q: What do you call a hundred Enya imitators at the bottom of the ocean? A: a good start. D+

This is the 28th installment, (almost) monthly since August 2010, totalling 695 albums. All columns are indexed and archived here. You can follow A Downloader's Diary on Facebook, and on Twitter.

by Michael Tatum

Although I'm not the perfectionist that My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields claims to be, the self-imposed first of the month deadline that I originally set for myself back in August of 2010 has become a major albatross -- ever mindful of the quality of my "product," I find that rushing does (and sometimes has) compromise both my conclusions and the pretty prose in which I vainly try to cloak them. So don't expect the future of this column to run like clockwork: while more or less keeping things monthly, I'd rather sit on something until I'm satisfied than dump out something half-assed. Those who crave a little more should check out my new tumblr page, where I'm essentially posting all of my work notes, often going into a little more detail than what I give here, especially in regards to the records that wind up in the trash and honorable mentions sections. I'm not sure who'd be crazy enough to peruse everything there, but at the very least it illustrates how much work goes into building this little beast, which hasn't gotten joyless or boring for me yet.

Bettie Serveert: Oh, Mayhem! (Second Motion) I'm not sure who pissed Carol van Dyk off, but curse him in public and thank him in a private corner of your mind, because this time Bettie doesn't just serveert but she scoort -- half-written in the studio, their tenth and best record blazes and blisters like their then-overrated, now-forgotten 1992 debut Palomine never did. And you can be damn sure "him" is the correct pronoun -- the m-word in question isn't "mayhem," though it aptly sums up Peter Visser's cuspidate guitar and Joppe Molenaar's powerhouse drumming, but "monogamy," the explicit subject of an unbearably sexy interlude that begins "the body remembers what the body was taught" before promising she'll "pop" if you prolong that foreplay. Biologically just past the big 5-0 and having led some form of this band for half of that, Van Dyk finally belts over the boys rather than settling for Nico-esque sprechgesang, which gives heft to such unforgiving declarations/indictments as "You're gonna hear the allegation," "You can tell me all you want/But I'll never believe it," "I'm gonna get my tough skin back," and "Just say it/Just say it," all of which have me hiding from my stereo speakers and cowering behind furniture. Though you'll be immediately smitten with the winsome Brill Building throwback "Had2BYou," the manifesto is the all-purpose avowal "D.I.Y." -- "Carpe your diem/Is the essence of my being" -- which could be directed from a woman to an ex-lover, a band to a former label, or anyone with a vagina to anyone without. Don't open the door for her, douchebag -- she'll get it herself. A–

The Box Tops: Playlist: The Very Best of the Box Tops (Sony/Legacy) Item culled from the April 18, 1997 issue of coastal California's music magazine Bam, previewing the Box Tops' upcoming one-night stint at the House of Blues: "This is for the bozo who shouted out for 'The Letter' at that Big Star reunion show from 1994." Well friends, now the story can be told: I was that bozo, witlessly hollering for Alex Chilton's initial vehicle's biggest hit for no other reason than that during that time period, I wasn't playing with a full deck. But despite their status as minor league two-hit wonders, the Five Tops weren't merely puppets of producer-songwriters Dan Penn and Chips Moman -- granted, four of said Tops rarely played on a studio track, but if Big Star taught Chilton the limits of autonomy, his first big break exemplified benevolent despotism, even if the legendarily acrid man himself would have bitterly disagreed. Sure, their four albums were hastily thrown together (although the first side of 1968's Non Stop mostly succeeds despite itself) and outside of a few exceptions, their handlers would never have wasted a surefire hit on them, hence why Mark James gave "Suspicious Minds" to Elvis, leaving to Chilton the underrated "Turn on a Dream" and "You Keep Tightening Up On Me," the latter of which functions as an amusing love-hate letter to his record company. But in fact Penn's stinginess with the top drawer material somewhat comes as an asset, leading to such left-field winners as Eddie Hinton's "Choo Choo Train" (which beats the dirty minds at Kasenetz-Katz to the double entendre punch) and Penn/Oldham's amazing "I Met Her in Church" (Alex goes looking for love in all the wrong places). This could stand to rock a little more -- the missing include the killer "She Shot a Hole in My Soul," the only cut you'll miss from Atlantic's 1988 and Arista's 1996 compilations, and their downright bacchanalian cover of the Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On." But for a solid fourteen tracks in thirty-nine minutes this is the bubblegum R&B of B.J. Thomas' dreams, with a fervent shout-out to unsung hack-genius Wayne Carson Thompson, responsible for not only "The Letter," but the faux-psychedelic "Neon Rainbow" and the gorgeous "Soul Deep," the latter of which belongs on your Life Jukebox. Benighted September gurls and December boys, learn your lessons here. A–

Cakes Da Killa: The Eulogy (Mishka download) "Homosexual or not," begins an approving blurb on The Needle Drop ("home of the internet's busiest music nerd," harrumph), but before you jeer that amusingly persnickety verbiage, I ask you: why would a straight, upcoming hip hop star choose for his persona one clearly modeled on Meshach Taylor's scene-chewing mega-queer archetype in the abysmal Andrew McCarthy vehicle Mannequin? Other than, say, to put himself in a position where he could conceivably beat the shit out of Chris Brown for a parking space? Then again, that naivety aside, The Needle Drop is one of the few sites I've seen to even touch the former Rashad Bradshaw's unapologetically filthy handiwork with or without protective rubber gloves -- for example, no one at the usually industrious Rap Genius has at this writing parsed a single one of Bradshaw's uproarious rhymes, which considering they subvert red-button words like "faggot" and "bitch" differently than any other rapper to date, should neither shock or scandalize anyone. Me myself, I think it's a riot -- over the Mishka/Greedhead empire's trademark abstract-in-your-face beats, commencing with a histrionic flourish from "Macarthur Park," Bradshaw orders that thug to pay off his loans then finger-fuck his asshole, boasts about the seductive power of his "goodie goodies," demands you remove that jockstrap, and calls out that bitch-ass Eddie Murphy for gay-bashing in his standup then picking up transvestite prostitutes in his down time, all in a tenor that's tough and demonstrative even when Bradshaw lisps his esses. My fondest hope is that he starts beef with Azealia Banks. But I'll settle for a cameo for Frank Ocean, at whom Bradshaw blows this playful little kiss: "I've been thinking about dick -- have you been thinking about it too?" A–

Kitty: D.A.I.S.Y. Rage (self-released, EP) Straight outta the fearsome hood of Daytona, Florida, laying down tricky rhymes when not peddling cheap jewelry at Claire's Boutique, nineteen-year-old flame-haired coquette Kathryn Beckwith took her 2012 fluke internet hit more seriously than Kreayshawn did hers in 2011 -- which is to say, rather than relying on the no doubt obsessive social networking that got her noticed in the first place, she instead sharpened her rap skills. Transcending the mere novelty of which she's often been accused, the result is this engaging eight-track EP available through her tumblr ("you can download it for free, I'm not that money hungry of a slut"), where over a theme best described as "My Little Pony" you'll also find such helpful biographical tidbits as where she met her producer/boyfriend ("Christian Mingle," ha ha) and what she thinks of Pitchfork's recent pan ("I'm always a 10, shawty"). Whether her crushes on various hip hop bad boys are real, imagined, or mere cyber-stalking, her self-consciously girly delivery is the perfect mask for complicated adult feelings, most notably the pain of being a young woman pointlessly in love with a much older man. Of course, older men cultivate ambivalence because leading young women on is sometimes what they do, but she nevertheless connects her rejection to a shame that encompasses such painful admissions as her urinary incontinence, cellulite hang-ups, anxiety rashes, and Complex's accusation that she can't hold a mic -- literally. In her many lighter moments, her clumsily half-hearted attempts at talking tough are both charming and revealing -- how many "authentic" homegirls would spend a song protesting innocence to the mother that lurks on her tell-all blog, or begin another with the winningly tentative "I don't have an opening/I guess I'll go ahead?" Admit it: isn't a girl who claims "I grew up on the shy side/the free wi-fi side" the kind of girl you'd want to get to know? A–

My Bloody Valentine: mbv (Pickpocket) Stop me if you've heard this one before: fussy wunderkind leading seminal alt-rock band of considerable if somewhat pernicious influence takes twenty-two years to release follow-up to iconic if somewhat inchoate landmark album, except -- and here's the punchline -- the resulting recording sounds exactly like its predecessor, so much so that an innocent greenhorn (a green-horned Martian, let's say) would be hard-pressed to tell the difference. I mean, what pertinent context are we missing here? Was Kevin Shields playing an existential game of chicken with the universe? Was he in a dick measuring contest with the equally autocratic Axl Rose? Consulting London's best tinnitus doctors? Experimenting with woozier downers? Or was he merely waiting out the day when whatever contract he put his name on all those years ago was null and void? And while we're at it, why do critics feel rushed to overnight reviews for a record that took twenty-two years to reach their ear holes? Suffice it to say, immersion reveals this isn't quite a carbon copy of 1991's Loveless -- it emphasizes sensation over substance even more than Loveless did compared to its predecessor, 1988's Isn't Anything. But although too often this music feels like you're meant to perceive it solely via tactile impression -- perhaps blindfolded, through holes in a wooden box -- it makes up for what it lacks in its bone marrow with an aesthetic rapture appropriate to their increasingly hymn-like song structures: meadow, grove, and stream, the earth, and every common sight, appareled in celestial light. Wrapped in a gauze of childlike awe, revelling in the splendor in the grass, the glory in the flower, this is music composed by and for ex-Catholics who still long to connect to the divine. Sometimes when it's on I wonder what words are really worth. But not when the music's over. A–

Parquet Courts: Light Up Gold (What's Your Rupture?) Carpetbagging Texans who migrated to Brooklyn partly because Austin is a lousy town for bagels and partly because their hometown job opportunities boiled down to a career in combat or a stint in the church choir, this quartet could be Mark E. Smith trading in his working class London accent for something resembling aesthetic consistency -- I certainly don't remember This Nation's Saving Grace keeping it up for a solid fifteen songs in thirty-three minutes. The secret -- why didn't that arseholed sod think of this? -- is two lead singers rather than one: hard to lapse into self-indulgence when you're constantly trying to one-up your partner's last one-liner. Your guess is as good as mine whether Andrew Savage or sidekick Austin Brown can claim the copyright on their observations on North Dakota ("Cigarette advertisement country -- wild and perfect, but lacking something"), the River Styx ("It's no river at all/It's a tidal estuary"), and their slacker lives ("Time was measured in balls of lint, laundry claim tags/The number of cents it takes to drown your brain into a just-dowsed former fire") but they maintain the witty repartee even as their narrow diet of Swedish Fish, roasted peanuts, and licorice keeps them "stoned and starving." The guitars are propulsive rather than galvanic, the merely functional tunes slanted rather than enchanted, but other than those small quibbles, these guys are the best tribute act in this vein since you-know-who. So keep lighting up those gold soundz, fellas. Or, as you put it so evocatively in that policy-stating title track: "Sifting like a miner in the conscience debris, hunched down/Gleaning embers from a burning field/Trying to find something warm and real." A–

The Rough Guide to the Music of Senegal (World Music Network) Epochal though it may be, Etoile de Dakar's line-drawing "Thiely" doesn't belong in this classy company, partly because it's already a key track on two must-own records -- Etoile's 2010 Sterns compilation, as well as 1998's awe-inspiring The Music in My Head, where it sets the uncouth tone -- but also because it doesn't fit the tenor of this extroverted, cosmopolitan overview. The Orchestra Baobab number from Made in Dakar -- the other track with which most Afropop neophytes might be familiar -- gives you a better taste of what to expect: crossover Afropop proud of its roots in mbalax and other indigenous styles even as it reaches out to Cuba, Mali, the Congo. The first half cobbles together winners from Cheikh Lo, Nuru Kane, Fallou Dieg, and Baaba Maal, as well as a solid rap from Sister Fa so hypnotic musically you won't mind that compiler Dan Rosenberg, as per Rough Guide policy, skimps on the trots. The sequencing could have used some tweaking -- the last four tracks, predominantly acoustic and showcasing relatively new artists, might have had a greater impact had they been interspersed rather than clumped together toward the end, though the faux-Gypsy violin and accordion on the generous actually-a-bonus bonus CD, 2005's Introducing Daby Balde, exhibits how many persuasive musical risks you can take in that mode. But this closes with a bluesy solo turn from Ismael Lô so compelling you'll wonder why he wasted so many years futzing around on synthesizers. Skeptics who doubt Dakar to be a musical mecca on par with Detroit or New Orleans should take a flyer. A–

Skrillex: Leaving (OWSLA, EP) I'm not willing to do the research, but I'd venture a guess that the man whose mama calls him Sonny Moore is the only Grammy awardee never to have released a "proper" record. Then again, I suppose EPs and singles, aside being natural formats for the glowstick-waving crowd, are also signposts of our digital age: only too aware he'll probably make chump change from records his fans will conceivably download anyway, Moore instead channels bigger energy into live performance and production work, where the bigger money undoubtedly lies. This three song freebie, available through his label's subscription service, his Youtube page, and the usual dodgy online sources, is more of the same whizz pop sputter crash boom bam. Created mostly on the run in hotel rooms on tour, it's dismissed by its admirably generous creator: "[I use this] more as a DJ tool, but I wanted you guys to have it." Agnostics will shake their head in disbelief: why would any sane person want more of the same? True believers will cry out: "Thank you, sir -- may I have another?" Adjust your own reaction accordingly. A–

Tegan and Sara: Heartthrob (Warner Bros.) "I made a promise to myself I wouldn't mention their lesbianism in my review," declared a young rockcrit friend of mine, and when you scan such cringe-worthy descriptors as Pop Matters' Enio Chiola's "the band of super cool twin lesbians," one might sympathize with my friend's political correctness (and by the way, Enio: a duo is not a "band"). The way I see it however, such signifiers are useful in terms of fixing artists contextually, especially in the case of this super cool lesbian duo's brave bid for the top 40. Sure, those glitzy synth-pop hooks in of themselves crackle like Fourth of July fireworks, but the generalized lyrics only fall into place when you think about who's singing to whom, by which I don't merely mean woman to a woman -- though "Your arms outstretched/Your hair cut shorter than it'd been" is pure bliss -- but as lesbians/indie rockers expanding from their possessive core fan bases to the mainstream audience. Where once they boasted sardonically in an unreleased song, "I'm in the army of sell out, shut up, go home/Make your money when you're dead and gone," here they hide their subcultural disillusionment in plain sight like they were Bob Dylan in 1964: "I couldn't be your friend even if I tried again," "You never really knew me, never ever/Never ever saw me, saw me like they did," "If you're worried that I might've changed/Left behind all of my foolish ways/You best be looking for somebody else," and especially, "I'm not their hero/But that doesn't mean that I wasn't brave/I never walked the party line/Doesn't mean that I was never afraid/I'm not your hero/But that doesn't mean we're not one and the same." And if those comparatively kind kiss-offs fail to do the trick, there's always: "One day soon/I will be the one to insult you" and "What you are is lonely." Notes Sara to Rolling Stone: "I didn't want a passive [album] title . . . something that made us sort of seemed martyred. I wanted something that was very confident because we were feeling so confident about the album that we had made." And why shouldn't they be? Resist their brazen "It's not just all physical/I'm the type who will get oh so critical" at your peril. A–

Yo La Tengo: Fade (Matador) Because allure comes so effortlessly to this long-running Hoboken trio, the yardstick by which their albums are judged -- to each other if not to those of others -- should be measured slightly differently. Revisit 2003's beguiling Summer Sun -- dismissed by many at the time as insubstantial -- and you will descry any number of captivating moments: the extra two beats the band sneaks in at the end of the first chorus of "Little Eyes," the two-chord transposition at the second refrain of "Season of the Shark," the pizzicato denouement of "Tiny Birds," the fluttering conclusion of "Take Care." Although undeniably pretty, no such flashes of magic occur here -- you might say the arrangements, many of which stick to steadfastly basic patterns (indeed, the first and final songs are constructed around a single chord) function as metaphors for the dependably stalwart constancy of a marriage entering its fourth decade and a musical partnership beginning its third. "Honey, that's okay," Ira sings to Georgia, and perhaps to us, "If we're getting old/If we're not so strong/If our story's told/That's the point of it," which reminds me of those couples who claim they can sit in silence at weekday dinner yet still divine each other's innermost thoughts. In a relationship, it must be a comforting place to be. Musically however, something in this band's dynamic needs to be shaken up: the horns and strings, more involved here than on their previous two records, are brave steps toward that, but although they could conceivably make records this sublimely graceful forever, it's also possible they'll be incapable of tours de force like Summer Sun unless the unthinkable occurs -- a rift in the band itself, or, ulp, Ira and Georgia's marriage. No compassionate person would ever want that to happen. So once again, this delicately exquisite but ultimately unrevelatory splendor will have to suffice. A–

Honorable Mentions

Solange: True (Terrible) Proves that subtlety is no more "true" than star power ("Locked in Closets," "Losing You") ***

Peter Stampfel & the Ether Frolic Mob: The Sound of America (Frederick Productions/Red Newt) Too damn communal for its own good ("Drunken Banjo Waltz," "I Will Survive") **

Monoswezi: The Village (Riverside) Scandinavian jazzbos plus Zimbabwean vocalist/thumb pianist and Mozambican vocalist/percussionist do right by tape loops and soundscaping, not so much by improvisation ("Hondo," "Ndinewe") **

A$AP Rocky: Long.Live.A$AP (RCA) Until a few key guests get Rocky going, it's rocky going ("Fuckin' Problems," "Wild for the Night") **

The History of Apple Pie: Out of View (Marshall Teller) Sonic Youth plays your junior prom ("Tug," "Mallory") *

Trash

Tim McGraw: Two Lanes of Freedom (Big Machine) I'll admit it -- the title of this record goaded into me into hoping for so much more, mainly the kind of jingoistic tripe and xenophobic baloney a cynical Alabaman expatriate like me could sink his teeth into. Imagine my profound disappointment when I discovered that not only does the emancipation in question refer to McGraw's heroic escape from the infernal Curb Records plantation, but McGraw himself is a proud Obama supporter who labels himself a "blue dog Democrat." But don't get too excited about that biographical tidbit, because Tim has no desire to upset the Music Row applecart -- this performer-not-writer will sing whatever bland, formulaic three minute scrap his handlers will throw his way, from the hapless "One of those Nights" (you know, the kind you'll remember forever), the unctuous "Southern Girl" (what do the Pistol Annies see in boys from the South, anyway?), the mawkish "Book of John" (a scrapbook remembering a late father), to the execrable "Nashville Without You" (which damn near Xeroxes the song list from Brad Paisley's "This is Country Music"). Then there are the requisite local-newscaster puns ("Mexicoma?" "Truck Yeah?"), as well as the implausible fate of convict "Number 3745," whose fifteen year plus sentence for drunk driving/vehicular manslaughter, though just as far as I'm concerned, doesn't mirror the appalling reality of the public record. Sure, there are no monuments of cheap sentiment here as smarmy as "Live Like You Were Dying." But that's only because this ten-gallon dildo's speed is more like living like you were merely living. C+

Christopher Owens: Lysandre (Fat Possum) I imagine this puppy dog of a singer-songwriter to fall madly in love with a "lucky" fan in every city he tours: Helena in Baltimore, Hermia in Chapel Hill, Demetrius in Providence. That's his business. But as you might expect from someone who cloyingly a-prefixes the word "hugging," he labors under the illusion that the critical issue with his worldview lies in those who question the veracity of his sincerity ("What if everybody just thinks I'm a phony/What if nobody ever gets it") rather than those who question the maturity level underlying that sincerity. "I'm not sorry/Gonna keep on usin'," he boasts in that wispy pre-pubescent tenor, a reference to the opiates he'll be damned if he's going to give up, but also to the love interests he's going to latch and hold on to for dear life. I know that his delayed entry into the Real World after years of isolation in that religious cult should make me allow for his forestalled adolescence, but his unaffectedly callow sentiments were fresher when they a) were new, and b) had his former bandmate Chet White toughening up the arrangements. Think "I remember learning how to make a quick hundred bucks/Sleeping in the back of a pickup truck/I remember looking through the barrel of a loaded gun/Texas cops and cooking drugs" is a trenchant lyric? Now imagine it juxtaposed with annoyingly cheesy flute and/or tenor saxophone and maddingly framed by ad nauseam reprises of a meager snatch of melody that makes "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" sound like "Greensleeves." C

Ex Cops: True Hallucinations (Fat Possum) So adept at sampling other people's hooks one would hope they'd also figure out a way to appropriate other people's vocals. B

Foxygen: We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic (Jagjaguwar) Supposedly a throwback to the halcyon days of Dylan and the Velvets, but the best line in their standout cut gives them away: "There's no need to be an asshole/You're not in Brooklyn anymore." B–

Camper van Beethoven: La Costa Perdida (429) These days David Lowery would rather take the skinheads golfing. B–

Dawn Richard: Goldenheart (101 Distribution) Blowing up manageable interpersonal struggles into epic sagas, the only thing that separates this from The Real Housewives of Atlanta is the occasional dubstep move and Dawn's impressive taste in body armor. C+

Adam Green & Bikini Shapiro: Adam Green & Bikini Shapiro (Rounder) I always thought Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood were two hunks of processed cheese food, but what happens when some Velveeta morning these two too-hip-to-be-hipsters wake up and realize they're actually the reincarnations of Eydie Gorme and Steve Lawrence? C+

West of Memphis: Voices for Justice (Legacy) Should come with a t-shirt that reads: "I was wrongfully imprisoned for eighteen years and all they gave me was this shitty soundtrack featuring Marilyn Manson covering Carly Simon." C

This is the 27th installment, (almost) monthly since August 2010, totalling 674 albums. All columns are indexed and archived here. You can follow A Downloader's Diary on Facebook, and on Twitter.

by Michael Tatum

My grandmother had no idea I wrote a music blog -- by the time I began writing "A Downloader's Diary" in August of 2010, she had been for all practical purposes permanently silenced by Alzheimer's, an autobiographical tidbit I utilized (one could argue exploited) for my review of the Caretaker's an empty bliss beyond this world last July. When she passed away a few weeks ago at the age of eighty-eight, she had been a hollow shell for so long that her death seemed cruelly redundant, but it still affected my family deeply. When I think of the kinetic energy she harnessed as a younger woman, I have little doubt who I can isolate as the source of my own creative livelihood -- even my love of music can be traced back to her and my grandfather, both of whom were responsible for making "De Colores" one of the first songs I loved as a child. This column is dedicated to her dynamism, her spirit, her memory, and the passion for song that binds our family together, an ardor that has become one of the bedrocks of my life: la luz que ilumina, la gracia divina del gran ideal.

Azealia Banks: 1991 (Interscope, EP) Not exactly a Youtube troller, I'm a bit late to discovering what some call the best single of 2011 -- sorry, if you're not an adorable kitty, I probably haven't seen you. Even after having owned this four-song (plus one polarizing skit) EP for several months I didn't quite register its dumbfounding achievement -- because the pleasures of "212" and its worthy company are out front and Banks' raps themselves so lickety-split, like many people I slotted this merely as "fun" and dismissively filed it on the shelf. After all, zip zip zip zip and their sixteen minutes are up and out, burying Banks' vulgarity in electrohop beats so sneakily you can understand why Samantha Cameron could enthusiastically extol a song about pussy-licking without getting too much flack from The Daily Mirror. But then I bore down on the lyrics, only to be shocked into discovering that many of them turn the usual hip hop braggadocio upside down -- accusing that brother of sucking dick down by the Hudson River by noting the jizz in his do-rag would be vile coming from Rick Ross, but in the service of demeaning him by claiming that as a woman you can lap up his boo's cunt better than he can, well, that's something new under the sun. Banks is such a cunning linguist that she gets away with shit like this line after line, so craftily that unless you parse her jive she'll go right over your head, which is the way this gleeful provocateur wants it, even when she slows down to a crawl for that Ghostface parody that everyone hates. Resenting the ostensible upward mobility of Pell Grant awardees who think they're hot shit because they eat at Chipotle rather than McDonald's would be one thing -- hating on their new found preference for white boy metrosexuals makes a little more sense. But when you play that retarded (in the musical sense, dummy) section back at "proper" speed, you'll discover it's not Banks herself (she laughs in the background) but a man, which puts another spin on that scenario entirely. What's the intention? I have no fucking clue. So I start the record over and play it again. And again. A+

Lana del Rey: Paradise (Interscope, EP) Beginning with her somewhat outrageous protestation to Billboard that she doesn't "even know any people who are musicians" (and note the deliberately adolescent use of the word "even"), Lizzie Grant strikes me as a highly calculating young woman -- the question is, do people get the joke, and does it matter if they don't? Like Nabokov (of all people) she razzes traditional Electra complex pop psychology, from "Dying young and I'm playing hard/That's the way my father made his life an art," to "I pledge allegiance to my dad/For teaching me everything he knows," and like hey-Lolita-hey she has a propensity for calling men who don't share her DNA "Daddy" (though truthfully, as a literary device that reminds me more of Springsteen's "sir"). For shock value she contrasts babyish constructions ("Jesus is my bestest friend," "treat me real niceys") with sweepingly melodramatic bits of doggerel such as: "In the land of gods and monster/I was an angel/Lookin' to get fucked hard." At first I cynically guffawed at that line, which reminded me of the unintentionally hilarious Oedipal confessions of Jim Morrison (who of course is fervently referenced, along with Springsteen, Elvis, and Marilyn). Then I dug deeper, and found plenty of redeeming correctives, such as her ironic admission she's "like a groupie, incognito, posing as a real singer," and even chuckled at her Axl Rose tell-all/reveal-nothing "Bel Air." And while I'm not sexually available to take the Pepsi challenge regarding that claim about her pussy (Azealia Banks, are you reading this?), I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for that product placement negotiation, or that gynecological visit following her tête-à-tête with Marilyn Manson ("More like Listerine and green algae, young lady.") Feminist heroine? I say as an upper class woman whose first record was funded by Daddy she knows there's more than one way to be a kept woman, and if she has to sing in her chains, why not make codependent romances in trailer park palaces her metaphor of choice? "Of the king," indeed. B+

Iris DeMent: Sing the Delta (Flariella) I'm not surprised by DeMent's switch from coffeehouse guitar to tent revival piano -- when I saw her solo tour in 1994 in support of her masterful second record, she rarely strayed from basic chord shapes strumming her six string acoustic, shifting her capo up and down the fret board when switching songs/keys. Short in stature and with dainty hands to match, it's not an instrument she's born to play. But when she pulled up that bench to play those eighty-eights, it was impossible not to be struck by her fluid, expressive accompaniment -- I was reminded less of Carole King than Aretha's demonstrative opening chords to "Don't Play That Song." But even though this record represents an impossible return to form after fifteen years laying low, with only an album of gospel covers released under her own name, I'm disappointed by her avoidance of any Great Statements -- while the absolutely classic My Life addressed the death of her father, and the worthy sequel The Way I Should cast a bitter eye on the state of the nation, this record settles for humble evocations of where she came from: reasons why she left, affirmations for coming back, both on her terms. As a metaphor for her artistic life, this is apt. But stripped of that metaphor, songs like "Go On Ahead and Go Home" or "Makin' My Way Back Home" could belong to anybody. Not quite the case however with the astonishing "The Night I Learned Not to Pray," which in its own subtle way neither states a case for atheism nor even denies the existence of an afterlife -- DeMent ends the lyric with a one-way conversation with a 41-year old photograph -- but rather notes that God can be one ambivalent son of a bitch indeed. Her mother, who we're told comforted her daughter about death by suggesting Iris and not she might go first, would certainly agree. A–

Donald Fagen: Sunken Condos (Reprise) The problem with Fagen's ambitious side -- at least how I think he conceives it -- is that "avant-garde" cocktail jazz is a complete oxymoron: when he doesn't a hit a lyric just right, the music fades into the background as it might in a dentist's office or a skyscraper elevator. Perhaps Al Jarreau (or Larry Carlton, ha ha) might have a "serious" concept album in them about post-9/11 America, but who would want to hear it? That's why 2006's uneven Morph the Cat perked up at its most shallow, lapsing back into the ever-reliable dirty old man routine that's been serving Fagen well since "Hey Nineteen" convinced him that thirty-two was the new sixty-five. This takes off from that record's "What I Do" (young Don solicits Ray Charles for sex tips) and "Security Joan" (something about the way she moves that wand gets him hot), with the added thematic draw of downward mobility, or at the very least the seduction of innocents suckered in by the promise of Donald's liquid assets: no longer hunting fine foxes at the Strand or Dean & Deluca, these days he takes what he can get at bowling alleys, Looney's pub, or the reptile cage at the Washington Zoo, with a detour to the Passaic, New Jersey Best Buy to halfheartedly threaten the tech geek moving in on his latest conquest. Which is why his irresistible cover of "Out of the Ghetto" sounds like such a nasty threat, in the vein of Philip Oakey in "Don't You Want Me." Better your dirty work be done by Isaac Hayes than David Palmer, I always say. A–

Flying Lotus: Until the Dark Comes (Warp) Steven Ellison's primary innovation -- as well as his primary limitation -- is that he conceives beats, samples, melodic snippets, and other assorted sonic doodads not merely as "music," but rather as bits of information, a series of zeroes and ones randomly arrayed back to back. 2010's frenetic, jarring laptop fantasia Cosmogramma still retains its intellectual appeal over multiple listens, but not once does the music ever open up a side door to entice you in -- in Ellison's aesthetic, ideas supplant emotion, chaos displaces discernible patterns, Jackson Pollock's fractals illuminate the universe in ways that Gene Davis' resplendent ribbons do not. Described by the artist as a "children's record" (for whose children, though -- Stephen Hawking's?), this chillier, more atmospheric follow-up isn't so anxious to impress: the arrangements emphasize space, allowing the variegated elements room to breathe -- though lest the math geeks at Warp start chewing their cuticles, not so actual songs develop, and you have to give credit to someone who consigns killjoys like Laura Darlington and (sorry) Erykah Badu to the role of glorified sound effects. But it's not the guest stars that will command your attention -- it's the beats, "African-inspired" says Ellison, and though while not exactly Fela Kuti let alone James Brown, they're as hypnotic as they are austere, fluctuating from handclaps to wood blocks to old fashioned synth kick drums. I wish he had more to offer the world than cognitive dissonance. But any man who can cajole Thom Yorke into singing a bar of an old Destiny's Child chestnut has earned the right to his watery Alice Coltrane harp flourishes. A–

Homeboy Sandman: Subject Matter (Stones Throw, EP download) We respect the literary acumen of the underground rapper. We recognize his soulful thoughtfulness, his embrace of the sublime, his observations of the everyday. But what too often keeps us from playing his records is his stubbornness in adhering to principle, his refusal in acknowledging that the mind and the body really do work best in tandem -- something you can't say (lest you accuse me of sexism in my deliberate choice of pronouns) about non-bepenised emcees from skyrockets like M.I.A. to fizzles like Kreayshawn, neither of whom wastes too much time worrying about catchy hooks emasculating her manhood. From his plaintive observation "It all starts with the beat" to the more elegantly imagined "Once me and my inner ear drum agree/My adrenal gland and my organs begin to argue audibly" to the startling "Where do these melodies come from" -- melodies, in hip hop? -- Angel del Villar never lets his dedication to the word supplant his innate musicality. Claiming his songs illuminate themes (as he boasts in the liner notes) "no one has ever rapped about before in the history of rap music" would be a stretch, but in fact touches like the off-kilter string section and (is it?) Natalie Cole sample that floats through the lost love remembrance "Unforgettable" shows how smart music can ground a good lyric -- the chic arrangement exquisitely evokes the persistence of memory, yet you could also argue it undercuts del Villar's introspection with self-conscious mockery. Then there's "Canned Goods," which doesn't rely on such frills, pivoting on that astonishing pun on the word "spoils" and pithy aperçus such as: "After the earthquake in Haiti/People gave a damn for like almost a month maybe." Savor that phrase: "like almost a month maybe." Says so much with those ironically mush mouthed qualifiers. And is it musical, too? You bet. A–

Pink: The Truth About Love (RCA) I don't quite buy the autobiographical readings that have been dogging this record. Sure, Alecia Moore's marriage is shaky even by showbiz standards, but from that morning photo shoot with Shape to an afternoon working off that pregnancy fat with a personal trainer to an evening recording in the studio then hopping off late night to make an appearance on Jimmy Fallon, when in the world does she have time to barhop, get soused, and take home that Channing Tatum lookalike? (And when does she order Chinese with Kara DioGuardi and write a song called "Sober?") Nevertheless, whether these excellent songs are well-detailed reports from the front or half-remembered tour shenanigans tinted by a colorful imagination, either way they satisfactorily sum up the inner life of a turbulent romantic who likens her attention span to "an infant tryin' to crawl around." The two peaks here are a political anthem disguised as a relationship plaint -- "I know you think it's not your problem/I know you think that God will solve them" stings like battery acid -- and the addictive "Slut Like You," which turns the tables on a nightclub conquest who drinks the shots that our heroine calls. But while journeyman Butch Walker gets lucky on the former and the ever-reliable Martin/Shellback team do their thing on the latter, the record is otherwise dominated by producer Greg Kurstin, who reveals himself once again to be a bit of a tabula rasa: pretentious with Rufus Wainwright, uptight with the Shins, and absolutely supercharged here, so much so I wish he had his fingers in the tracks assisted by Eminem and Nate Ruess -- neither adds as much as Lily Allen, who opens more emotional space in her lovely bridge on "True Love" than Pink herself does in belting the histrionic closer "The Great Escape." But from doing the walk of shame down a hotel hallway in last night's dress to the morning stink of your true love's armpits to that witty parenthesis that separates the qualifying "One Last Kiss" from "Blow Me," she's earned that pesky exclamation mark. Maybe now she can talk "Lily Rose Cooper" into taking her old patronym back. A

Sebadoh: Secret EP (self released, EP) Forgive me for trumpeting this minor blip in the indie rock world -- a download-only five song EP marking the return of indie rock's purest song band -- as a Major Happening, but it's not merely the nostalgic college grad talking. I'm unfazed by the slight tentativeness of Lou Barlow's three contributions -- if this really presages the full length the band promises will appear early next year, his legendary prolificness guarantees he's hoarding the best until then, while his prevailing subject matter (the difficulty of maintaining long term relationships, a theme that surely encompasses Barlow's various estranged collaborators as much as it does his wife) suggests there's more inspiration to be drawn from that well. But the blistering "My Drugs" ("Can't hang with sober people/They scare the shit right out of me") and the lilting country ballad "I Don't Mind" had me dreamily murmuring Barlow's partner's name like I was Nick Nolte at the denouement of The Prince of Tides -- supposed second banana Jason Loewenstein adds not only the expected musical muscle throughout (heard Barlow's '00s records?) but also takes the helm as producer. As a result, this sonically resembles their touchstone, 1994's scrappy Bakesale, more than it does 1999's slicker, if admittedly underrated, swansong The Sebadoh. And thank Loewenstein for drafting his Fiery Furnaces buddy Bob D'Amico, whose rough and tumble stickwork recalls ousted drummer Bob Fay (fired for an ostensible incompetence that I never registered) more than it does his replacement, the more four square Russ Pollard, who never fit in with the game plan. Credo: "Rock my days the harder way/My body and my mind/Beautiful and old/Keep the boy alive." A–

Taylor Swift: Red (Big Machine) Once again, I'm impressed with this teenpop heroine's talent for subtly manipulating received bits of language, which despite a overreliance on nature and color metaphors frees her from the cliché that brings down so much of her less-inspired competition. Try "We are alone, just you and me/Up in your room and our slates are clean," or "We're singing in the car getting lost upstate/Autumn leaves falling down like pieces in to place," or "You tell me your past thinking your future was me," or the entire lyric of the amazing "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," which pulls off this trick with nearly every line. But if she wants to take over the world, she's going to have to hire smarter lieutenants than the snoozy Ed Sheeran and Gary Lightbody, duet partners who fail to lighten up a second half dominated for the most part by songs the artist penned without outside help. But with teenpop svengali-saints Martin and Shellback pumping up three instant winners, the first half peaks even higher than the best of Speak Now -- from Rihanna the whomping "dubstep" breakdown of "I Knew You Were Trouble" would be all too predictable, but from the relatively conservative Swift it's a welcome curveball, and either way, she's better off sanding things down to a pop sheen than wandering star struck through sunlit forests. And I love how she channels Kesha's adenoids on the delightful tribute/parody "22," which begins by dissing the hipsters she's apparently not aware love her to pieces. As even the humorless singer-songwriting icon she's slotted to portray on film must know: you turn her on, she's a radio. A–

Honorable Mentions

Ry Cooder: Election Special (Nonesuch/Perro Verde) Mitt Romney is yesterday's papers, but class warfare and Jim Crow "state's rights" are ubiquitous ("Brother is Gone," "The 90 and the 9") ***

Titus Andronicus: Local Business (XL) De-evolving from Tommy to several haphazard shots at "A Quick One (While He's Away)" ("Upon Viewing Oregon's Landscape With the Flood of Detritus," "Ecce Homo") ***

Neneh Cherry & the Thing: The Cherry Thing (Smalltown Supersound) Glad the avant jazz combo rocks, wish the pop singer swung a little more ("Cashback," "Too Tough to Die") ***

The Soft Pack: Strapped (Mexican Summer) Or: Now That's What I Call Indie Rock 2012 ("Second Look," "Saratoga") **

Van Morrison: Born to Sing: No Plan B (Blue Note) "I'm not proselytizing, it's not some kind of manifesto. Songs are just ideas, concepts, and you just put the mic there and go" -- Rock Cellar, July 2012 ("End of the Rainbow," "Educating Archie") **

Trash

Neil Young & Crazy Horse: Psychedelic Pill (Reprise) I know I'm supposed to love Neil in epic rocker mode, but with eight songs totaling nearly ninety minutes and "Driftin' Back" alone as long as "Down by the River," "Cowgirl in the Sand," and "Like a Hurricane" combined, I think I can be forgiven if my mind wanders as much as Neil's apparently does. Oddly, this is nowhere near as ramshackle as Americana -- no false starts, few mistakes, comparatively clean arrangements -- so much so I can imagine Neil editing down a two hour marathon session of "Driftin' Back," excising all the relatively duff bits until he's cobbled together an acceptable, steady-rocking 27:37, kind of like Teo Macero on Bitches Brew. But what makes it onto the record is pure nutball-uncle-in-the-corner-on-Thanksgiving territory: donations to the Maharishi, hip hop haircuts (which are what, exactly?), Picasso co-opted by "tech giants," and the corrupted dynamic range of MP3s. Much like his autobiography Waging Heavy Peace, this looks back: to his marriage, to his childhood, to hearing "Like a Rolling Stone" on the radio for the first time, to (oh, dear) what the sixties generation didn't accomplish. But as with the book, it also does so superficially, saying in three, seven, twenty-five minutes what he might have accomplished in a brief Twitter post, like this response to a no-duh question posed by manuelv1695: "Do you have favorite keys in creating chord progressions to sing over?" Answer: "Yes." B

Jessie Ware: Devotion (Universal) Much like last year's Katy B record, this works both the arty and commercial angles of UK dance music ("I like both kinds of music: dub and step!"), so one can understand why the usual UK suspects are going gaga for this Jewish-Briton chanteuse's much-anticipated debut. But what's in it for Americans like Pitchfork's Ryan Dombal, who gushes she "consistently strikes [ed: strikes?] blue notes somewhere between Sade and Whitney," as if he actually has a collection from either sitting on his shelf? At any rate, I challenge him to isolate one flattened seventh note on this on this highly sterile Mercury Prize nominee, accurately described by Clash's Joe Rivers as "the missing link between Adele, SBTRKT, and Sade." Putting aside that Ware actually sings for SBTRKT (technically a null link, wouldn't you say?), this made me wonder how much of a distance there really was between Adele and Sade. A lot, actually -- Adele actually knows what a blue note is, and occasionally indulges herself one. B–

Dwight Yoakam: 3 Pears (Warner Bros.) Thinks he can be the fourth Flatlander, but he should pay better attention to his Hollywood handlers, who rarely play him against type. B–

Lupe Fiasco: Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album Pt. 1 (Atlantic) Thank God -- finally he made a totally uncommercial record. B–

Avett Brothers: The Carpenter (American) Rick Rubin: "You guys don't have the stuff for Full Moon Fever -- let's say we shoot for Wildflowers?" B–

A.C. Newman: Shut Down the Streets (Matador) New Pornographer henchman deserves credit for the brilliant title "There's Money in New Wave," but why does he set it to music straight out of a Renaissance fair? C+

The Walkmen: Heaven (Fat Possum) They're here to tell you they've been witness to the music of the spheres: the tinny tinkle of Paul Maroon's malnourished guitar. C

Cat Power: Sun (Matador) I was going to mock her perpetual sad little rich girl routine -- then I realized she's 40. C

Rachael MacFarlane: Hayley Sings (Concord) You wisely avoided her brother Seth's show tunes fiasco, but how about this voice actress' mishmash of pop standards and sixties classics, gauchely arranged in faux-Tin Pan Alley style and dubiously connected to her hippie chick character on Americian Dad? D

This is the 25th installment, (almost) monthly since August 2010, totalling 638 albums. All columns are indexed and archived here. You can follow A Downloader's Diary on Facebook, and on Twitter.

by Michael Tatum

Because I have so many worthwhile records still left untouched on the proverbial back burner, I probably won't be repeating last year's post-Halloween Trick or Treat bag, in which I took a tour of the year's worst records -- blame that partly on me skipping my August column, though I certainly have plenty of non-worthwhile records to write about as well. You'll see me before then however, as I have yet another in my continuing series of single-artist columns ready to drop mid-month. Until then, we're adventuring through far off climes: Mali, Brazil, Sweden, and, er, Canada. For bonus content -- videos, talkback, etc. -- feel free to hit me up on my column's Facebook and/or Twitter page, link provided below.

Zani Diabaté & Les Héritiers: Tientalaw (Syllart) Malian guitarist/bandleader Diabaté arrived on the international scene far too late, recording his only album, Mango's 1988 Zani Diabate and the Super Djata Band, long after the Rail Band and Les Ambassadeurs' respective heydays, narrowly missing the brief window when Paul Simon's Graceland briefly made Afropop a hot topic amongst musical dilettantes. So the modest success that greeted some of his better-known countrymen eluded him. Instead, he spent two decades toiling in Bamako clubs, occasionally traveling with the National Ballet, and mentoring young musicians he would eventually welcome to the fold. In a parallel universe, perhaps he recorded a string of excellent albums that Sterns Music might have judiciously excerpted and we might be talking about now. Instead, what actually happened was even better. With crucial assistance from his band of princely inheritors, including his guitarist son Sinaly, vocalists Moussa Fané, Sikasso and Baden Sangaré, and a fierce group of percussionists, Diabaté marched into a Bamako's Bogolan Studio and laid down a set that for all we know could very well be his greatest hits, practiced and honed over years in nightclubs, replete with ennervating rhythm shifts, fleet guitar, and joyous vocal arrangements that will inspire you to play their call and response games whether you know Bambara or not. And now he's gone, passed away in a Parisian hospital after an untimely stroke. This is his accidental testament: catchy, ebullient, far more propulsive than the Malian norm, and the best homegrown Afropop record in far too long. A

Divine Fits: A Thing Called Divine Fits (Merge) Most musicians use "super group" side projects as pretenses to dump lesser material they wouldn't have risked on albums released under their established brands, but this Austin outfit, fronted by Spoon's Britt Daniel and Wolf Parade's Dan Boeckner, constitutes the rare exception. Its appeal lies in an unsystematic spontaneity that prevents the principals from backsliding to their respective vices. Exempting Boeckner's austere "Civilian Stripes," the music is strikingly unpremeditated, most likely elaborations of riffs forged during impromptu jams, often structured around primitive patterns utilizing only two or three chords, dominated by Daniel's choppy synths but propelled by New Bomb Turks drummer Sam Brown's intense bash and roll. Because the aesthetic urges instinct rather than self-consciousness, it opens up the usually tightly-wound Daniel ("I wear a poker face so well/That even my mother couldn't tell," he confesses offhandedly) while simultaneously thwarting Boeckner from the introspection that might have afforded him the opportunity to craft the thoughtful doggerel that until now has been his trademark. Which makes them not a super group at all, but a band. Facetiously sequencing a song called "Like Ice Cream" next to one called "Neopolitans" -- the kind of drollery completely lacking in their previous identities -- is the reason they need to stay together. A–

Bob Dylan: Tempest (Columbia) No one considered Together Through Life a masterpiece because Robert Hunter wrote the lyrics, and as Gene Simmons can tell you from painful personal experience, what point is there to collaborating with the Bard of Hibbing if he isn't going to at least throw you some scraps? But in fact Hunter is partly responsible for the buoyant opener "Duquesne Whistle," which doesn't refer to a train, but rather the "Dorothy Six," once the world's largest blast furnace -- the Delaware and Hudson Railroad that connected Kingston, New York to Carbondale, Pennsylvania didn't even run though Duquesne, and in fact, to "keep on going" after the Carbondale stop meant you were leaving that town's anthracite mines and traveling west. Somehow though, I suspect that the journey is rather a spiritual one, signaling "the coming of the Lord" in a very literal sense, which may be why Dylan spends so much time cramming in as many honeys, harlots, heavy-stacked women, and flat-chested junkie whores into his itinerary before he reaches that final destination. Some may bristle at the licentiousness quotient, preferring instead the righteous indignation of the killer one-percent diatribes "Pay in Blood" and "Early Roman Kings," but I say Dylan is better off indulging his apocalypse jones in service of laughs, whether political or sexual, than the leaden solemnity of the final three tracks, which take up almost as much time as the previous seven. If the end of the world is drawing high, I'm pretty sure James Cameron isn't one its soothsayers. And if dedicating a song to John Lennon was such a great idea, why did Dylan wait thirty plus to do it? "The Late Great Johnny Ace" at least boasted a compelling metaphor. "Here Today" offered up personal experience in the service of genuine pathos. All Dylan has are William Blake, the Lord's Prayer, song titles that could have been coughed up by a random generator, and not so thinly-disguised self-pity. Its subject sings from the grave: "Hey Bob, maybe you should serve yourself?" B+

Kid Koala: 12 Bit Blues (Ninja Tune) Considered state of the art when I was in high school, utilized by the Bomb Squad on Public Enemy's hip hop milestone It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back, and beloved by producers for its ability to mimic the supposed "warmth" of vinyl recordings, the E-mu SP-1200 boasts a loop length of about ten seconds and is so elementary to operate the manufacturer printed the instructions on its top panel. Obviously these days, no one uses it anymore -- among other reasons, its reliance on floppy discs makes it cumbersome to load up -- and in fact Eric San spent years looking until he luckily chanced upon one on Craigslist. One wonders why he'd bother, other than perhaps a sentimental attachment to EPMD's Strictly Business, but one listen to this record, a knotty stitch-up of scratchy blues, gutbucket rhythms, and hip hop savvy, will tell you why: while Moby's Play achieved similar effects with comparable raw materials, in that case the new context lifted the music to the heavens. Here, San's impressively frowzy aesthetic drags these Depression-era obscurities through the mud, subtly arting up the structures while simultanouesly championing "mistakes" of the sort that on those old blues sessions the players often didn't have the money or resources to fix. Indeed, San's digital helpmate is antiquated enough so that it sometimes short circuits mid-song, last gasps that San cleverly utilizes to his advantage, though I wish he had erred on the side of noise or momentum rather than the stretches of languidly hazy somnolence that sink the middle of this record into tedium (well, he is "trip hop" identified, after all). But hey, he packages both the CD and vinyl with your very own, easily-assembled cardboard turntable (plus one plastic flexidisc) -- sewing needle and dexterous right hand not included. Can't get much more old school than that. A–

Jens Lekman: I Know What Love Isn't (Secretly Canadian) Here's a breakup album with a sense of humor: at least four different women mentioned by name, not counting Everything but the Girl's perpetually melancholic Tracey Thorn ("All I know 'bout love I learnt from you," which explains everything), and a Edinburgh Gardens possum the lovelorn artiste names Samantha ("I offered a slice of apple from my hand/She would sniff it, frown and then lumber back to the trashcan"). Elsewhere, he dishes all sorts of observations about Jennifer (who should come with a pamphlet warning off prospective boyfriends) and Danae (a lesbian who humors Jens by rating female passers-by on the classic ten-point system), yet despite the chatty details, the key line here is "She asks you what's wrong/You say nothing, it's nothing." Part of me has doubts about encouraging the frustrated romantic exploits of a passive-aggressive who clearly lets his women do the dirty work, only engages when he's positive he's been set up for failure, and plays ambivalent one moment and clingy the next. "Well, at least he's honest, working through things," the boys protest nervously. "Maybe in song," the girls reply, "but then there's that thing called real life." I'll note that you don't have to be a sociopath on the order of Frank Sinatra to have your "shit figured out," nor do you need to don "a pair of cowboy boots" to walk the straight and narrow. And having said that, the top-drawer melodies, stylish arrangements, and witty aperçus render such petty objections moot, especially since he slips his failed paramours all the best lines, including this one that sums him up: "I wish you had cheated on me instead." A

Pet Shop Boys: Elysium (Astralwerks) I prefer to imagine "Elysium" as a nightclub where yesterday's pop culture figures wheedle away the wee hours. Bryan Ferry is there, at his usual table in that darkened corner, stirring his martini with a stainless steel pick, counterclockwise, as if attempting to turn back the years, forlornly staring at Kate Moss, who breezes by without looking directly at him. By now she's used to his ogling, but still finds him creepy enough that she avoids him in favor of Neil Tennant, who has his own spot in the center of the room, where he'll affably chat up anyone who approaches. "Neil Tennant!" she exclaims. "I thought you were dead!" "I am dead, sweetie," he replies drily. "I stick around in the land of the living to continue providing context for [here, gesturing around him] all of you beautiful people." Shrugging nonchalantly, he adds, "Though the party's over, and I'm not much use." His old mate Chris Lowe is there as well, crouching in the dark behind his sequencers and synthesizers, spinning subdued sounds over the club's sound system, occasionally glancing at his Issye Miyake blowup suit from Top of the Pops hanging proudly on the wall. American tourists, clearly out of place, approach: a boyish middle-aged man with jet black hair and his demure, blonde wife. The latter remarks: "You've been around but you don't look too rough, and I still quite like some of your early stuff," while her husband notes that even though he has his doubts about their new single -- a gay identity anthem masquerading as an Olympic theme -- he still loves their tunes and finds the one which sticks it to Sting hilarious. Tennant looks him over in bemusement, and snaps his fingers, at which Lowe reverts back to what could have been an oldie but goodie: "Face Like That." The couple looks at each other in surprise. And everyone, even doleful Bryan, gets up to dance. A–

A Place to Bury Strangers: Onwards to the Wall (Dead Oceans, EP) Call this Brooklyn trio's genre wind-tunnel rock, an aesthetic they've mastered more splendidly than their Ontarian competitors in the somewhat tentative Weekend and the downright abysmal P.S. I Love You. They excel at noise because guitarist/bandleader Oliver Ackermann loves discord so much he actually owns and operates his own guitar effects pedal company, the fittingly dubbed Death by Audio -- check out those head-splitting detonations that close this five song EP's "I Lost You," which you can duplicate yourself at home with the "Fuzz War" for a mere $150.00 (the website avers: "a high-tech fuzz mutilator at an affordable price"). They sell that noise by keeping things simple, combining unadorned, modal song structures with remorseless rhythms that seamlessly merge their drummer of the moment (here, Robi Gonzalez) with the pitiless churning of machines, suggesting what Joy Division might have sounded like had Ian Curtis lived to have Arthur Baker remix them. This may not strike their fans as consistent as 2009's Exploding Head or the current Worship, but that's partly because the production is dirtier, burying Ackermann's lyrics to the point of incomprehensibility (er, I'm assuming he's going through a bad breakup?) but also because in the time-honored stopgap fashion, he's trying new things, like adding Moon vocalist Alanna Nuala to the anxiously taut title track. Hey, it worked for Phil Spector and his Wall of Sound -- why not this post-punk equivalent? A–

A Place to Bury Strangers: Worship (Dead Oceans) Differentiating the stylistic shifts in their admittedly similar-sounding records may seem a daunting undertaking for those who can't distinguish their meticulously orchestrated cacophony from a battalion of pneumatic drills, but it can be done. While Exploding Head, their previous long player, is comparatively speaking a much more traditional "guitar" record -- check out the brutally thick riff that kicks off the wild "Is It Nothing" -- starting with the Onwards to the Wall EP, Oliver Ackermann abandoned conventional playing to embrace a sheets-of-sound approach, fuzzy striations that he layers over new bassist Dion Lunadon's rudimentary patterns. Here, the noise is more calculatedly utilized, integrated into songs rather than suicide bombing into them, which provides for better dynamics and, not coincidentally, leads to better songs. I still think that Alanna Nuala, who guested on the EP, endowed them with a much needed higher end -- doubling your melody at the octave may not be your idea of sophisticated harmony, but it did provide them with some much-needed additional color. Admittedly, they compensate for their lack of depth with a compelling singleness of purpose: cold, steely-eyed, unsentimental noise rock. As musical tricks go, it's persuasive. But it's the only one they have, and they can't keep doing it forever. A–

Tom Zé: Tropicália Lixo Lógico (Lapa) I'm unable to provide very many concrete details for this little item, the title of which translates into the enticing "Junk Logic," as I haven't come across any related articles I haven't had to run through Google's piss poor translator. It's currently not available domestically, and without the benefit of a trot, the import of the lyrics eludes my meager grasp of Portuguese (what's with that delightful ditty about Maria Clara and the motorcar? and the line about Frank Sinatra in "Tropicalea Jacta Est?"). Yet as always, I'm both elated and enchanted by everything in this Brazilian's droll arsenal, from his impish vocalese, herky-jerk beats, whimsical arrangements, and occasional dollops of English, here represented by a number in which Zé takes Paul Simon's line about prophets scrawling poems on subway walls at face value (personally, I missed "Stand clear of the bloody cross" on the Green Line back to the Sherry Netherland). 2000's Estudando a Bossa: Nordeste Plaza looked backward, lovingly skewing the music of the artiste's youth, but this record, his wildest and edgiest since the '70s period immortalized on Luaka Bop's 1990 landmark compilation, braves the future, with the help of various newcomers: quirky pop star Mallu Magalhães, rapper Emicide, Los Hermanos' Rodrigo Amarante, even retired soccer star Washington Stecanela Cerqueira. From the pitch-tweaked vocal that opens "Amarração do Amor," the mock-tortured growl that introduces "Não Tenha Ódio no Verão," and the here-come-the-giants stomping that serves as his overture, there's plenty that will catch your ear. But I'm partial to the jarring segues, the way certain songs drop out mid-bar then dash straight to the next intro. Is this purposeful, or merely a sign my lowly download has been corrupted? The beautiful thing about Zé is that I have no idea. And I don't care. A

Honorable Mentions

Kanye West Presents G.O.O.D Music: Cruel Summer (Island/Def Jam) Too commercially viable to give away for free, not good enough to issue under the overlord's name, and either way I hope he gives away the profits to the committee to reelect the president ("To the World," "New God Flow") ***

Diamond Rugs: Diamond Rugs (Partisan) If all it takes to form a super group with John McCauley is paying his bar tab, tell him I'm free this Friday ("Gimme a Beer," "Christmas in Chinese Restaurant") ***

Azealia Banks: Fantasea (free download) Nineteen track free mixtape competes with a four track EP she's selling for $5.98 -- where would you put the quality work? ("Fuck up the Fun," "Jumanji") **

Four Tet: Pink (Domino) The title signifies as "undercooked," though a few choice cuts toward the end are well done ("Pinnacles," "Peace for Earth") *

The xx: Coexist (XL) Baria Qureshi's musical departure emphasizes the space between the principals, which in turn emphasizes the space between the principals and their audience ("Angels," "Chained") *

Trash

Carly Rae Jepsen: Kiss (604) I can explain the addictive appeal of "Call Me Maybe" scientifically. Lyrically, it succinctly pins down a specifically adolescent state of being -- particularly in its ingenious use of that magical word "maybe" -- while at the same time musically reinforcing its mixed up romantic confusion by never quite settling on the tonic chord, i.e. the "home" key. In other words, the resolution that the ear craves -- the extra-verbal metaphor signaling that guy with the ripped jeans really will call the song's heroine back -- never comes, instead ping-ponging back and forth without setting the listener back on solid ground. It's such a cleverly simple trick one marvels why no one has ever thought of it before. Nothing else here however will distract you from the hard truth that this attractive but otherwise nondescript ingénue was a finalist on the fifth season of Canadian Idol -- thankfully (and surprisingly), she doesn't fall back on the mawkish ballads that epitomize her American counterparts, but she evinces a great deal less personality than, for example, guest star Adam Young, who's irritating to be sure, but who can at least be described uniquely, without resorting to stock universals like "youthful" and "perky." In fact, one wonders if the ubiquitous observation that this twenty-six year old comes off at least ten years younger than her actual age is only everyone's transparently diplomatic way of saying she acts a great deal dumber and immature than you'd expect from reading her bio. Or maybe not. I suppose Hilary Duff with one undeniable hit under her belt trumps Hilary Duff without one. But not by much. B–

Caetano Veloso and David Byrne: Live at Carnegie Hall (Nonesuch) Ordinarily I stick to reviewing records rather than branching out to cover gallery openings, especially ones which skimp on the vino and meagerly compensate by offering up exotic cheese plates. But alas, the event in question also turns out to be a summit between two stiff ex-art rock heroes that reminds me of the old joke: "How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice, practice, zzzzzz." Veloso's mostly solo acoustic set is gorgeous, nuanced, and interminably boring, Judy Collins for Lusophones, featuring only one relatively well known song, "O Leãozinho," anthologized by Byrne on Luaka Bop's Beleza Tropical, although including his touching ode to Manhattan from 1998's Livro is a nice gesture. And then, seven tracks in, Byrne himself shows up, awkwardly reprising embarrassing duds from his solo career while forgetting that Talking Heads were great at least in part because their rhythm section rocked -- Allmusic's Fred Thomas tactfully describes Veloso percussionist Mauro Refosco as "understated," but I might opt for descriptors like "abstract" or "inconspicuous." Consider this record's "Life During Wartime," a specter of its former self, in which Refosco pathetically compensates for the loss of Chris Frantz' nervous pulse with a metronomic plip that I swear he's generating by popping his cheek with his index finger. And the audience's reflexive sycophancy is a downright annoyance -- is Veloso's floridly arch vocalese in "(Nothing But) Flowers" intended to be self-parodic? Or even funny at all? How would you know? He always sings like that. Amusing anti-climax: when Veloso encourages audience participation at the end of "Terra" -- and no one joins in. C

Bob Mould: Silver Age (Merge) Proof he's hit rock bottom: "Briefest Moment," a post-punk "When We Was Fab." B–

Alanis Morissette: Havoc and Bright Lights (Columbia) Buffered little placebo. B–

David Byrne and St. Vincent: Love this Giant (4AD/Todo Mundo) Yes, I get your references -- now shut up. C+

Passion Pit: Gossamer (Columbia) Critics flock to Michael Angelakos' bombastic synth pop because his testicles are at the very least a millimeter in diameter bigger than Owl City's Adam Young -- why, you can tell even without the benefit of an orchidometer! C+

Dan Deacon: America (Domino) Oh, beautiful -- a specious guy. C+

This is the 24th installment, (almost) monthly since August 2010, totalling 615 albums. All columns are indexed and archived here. You can follow A Downloader's Diary on Facebook, and on Twitter.

by Michael Tatum

Because the hyperactive British music industry covers such little geographic ground, careers can often explode, burn, then smolder into ash in alarming record time, which explains why this beloved Manchester quartet could release four albums and ten standalone singles in a mere four years, never chart a 45 higher than #10 in their homeland, yet be missed so intensely after their breakup that they've been offered millions of dollars to re-form for an afternoon -- proposals they've shot down without exception. Choosing their moniker precisely for its anonymity, the Smiths revolved around the strangely glorious partnership of two opposites, forged when nonpareil guitarist Johnny Marr (born John Maher) knocked on the door of bohemian eccentric Stephen Morrissey (who would drop the Christian name he hated soon enough) to play Leiber to his Stoller in May of 1982. Although the duo originally imagined themselves as songwriters rather than performers, they soon rethought that strategy, and with the addition of bass player Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce -- both, like Marr and Morrissey, working class and of Irish ancestry -- the band came together in December of the same year. Despite their collective professional inexperience, success arrived surprisingly quickly: they released their debut single, the bewitching "Hand in Glove," in May of '83, recorded four legendary sessions for John Peel's radio show between May and August, while simultaneously hashing out their debut album on Rough Trade (then the UK's preeminent indie label) with Teardrop Explodes guitarist Troy Tate. But when pro-producer John Porter worked magic on an interim single -- the masterful comedy routine "This Charming Man," in which a "jumped-up pantry boy who never knew his place" talks Morrissey's sexually confused nerd-protagonist out of an ill-advised marriage -- Rough Trade prexy Geoff Travis was impressed enough to ask Porter to salvage the job everyone in the band's orbit thought Tate had botched. And how did that turn out? That and more in this, A Downloader's Diary's second full-artist exploration (the first was KISS).

The Smiths: The Smiths (1984, Sire) Their legions of acolytes unfairly blame producer John Porter for this debut's flat sound rather than copping to the early Smiths' tendency for woolgathering -- indeed, the band had already recorded most of these tracks three or four times without success. That in itself must have been dispiriting, though it's worth noting Porter himself found the duo's early material "meandering," and having been together only a short time, the band must have been too preoccupied feeling out their dynamic to brighten the arrangements -- Andy Rourke in particular is more sedate here than he would be from the spritely "This Charming Man" onward. Revisiting this record for the first time in years however, the overall tone strikes me as fitting to the material. With the exception Morrissey's well-timed delivery of the slacker credo "No, I never had a job/Because I never wanted one," the wit that would become their calling card is purposefully almost completely absent. Instead, they languidly unfurl -- in what had to have been a first for rock and roll -- a somber bildungsroman in which a teenage boy loses his virginity to an older man: "It's time the tale were told/Of how you took a child and made him old." With occasional detours for class-conscious sarcasm and punk nostalgia, this part tender, part painful experience and its aftermath is explored from all angles: wistfully on "Reel Around the Fountain," role-reversed on "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle," out-and-proud on "Hand in Glove," bitterly on "What Difference Does It Make," and on two ill-advised heterosexual detours thrown in for good measure, with abject humiliation. Leading up to a song the significance of which I had never fully registered: "Suffer Little Children," a lugubrious rumination on Manchester's gruesome "Moors Murders." Years later, it's still unlistenable, but thematically it's revealing -- a song about the vulnerability of trusting innocence falling into the wrong hands, a metaphor for what might have happened had young Stephen's first sexual experience been with someone more devious. So maybe we should shift the blame for this one to the auteurs, one of whom wasn't ready to be a star, and the other of whom merely followed his lead. B+

The Smiths: Hatful of Hollow (1984, Rough Trade) An accidental classic, released budget-priced in the UK because Rough Trade conceived it as stop-gap product between proper records, the unlikely definitiveness of this compilation suggests divine intervention. Famously comprising ten songs culled from the BBC radio shows that preceded their proper debut and peppered throughout with six songs originally appearing on singles, one wouldn't expect it to cohere. Showcasing the attractively agile jingle-jangle hooks that made them famous would be one thing, but this adds an unlikely extra dimension by documenting the fiery energy completely absent from their later records, which were sometimes emasculated to the point of passive asexuality -- comforting to their doleful acolytes, but completely useless to curious outsiders. If several of the songs later remade for The Smiths are a draw (surprise: session rat Paul Carrack does have his uses), this primal "What Difference Does it Make" punches holes in the studio wall, while the remaining obscurities display the band at their most graceful (the fluttering "Back to the Old House," the exquisite Shelagh Delaney re-write "This Night Has Opened My Eyes") and brutal (the salaciously carnal "Handsome Devil"). And the landmark singles reveal how key producer John Porter was to their early success, including three from one legendary twelve-inch: the cattily anti-marriage "William, It Was Really Nothing" and the deceptively beautiful "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want" each get their business done in roughly one hundred and twenty perfect seconds. Their B-side, this record's centerpiece, the monolithic "How Soon Is Now," was the reason scrawny teenage kids like me coughed up import-prices for this collection's first CD reissue in the late '80s, after which it took permanent residence in our record collections, right next to Murmur and Candy Apple Grey. Were we fools to blow those hard-earned twenty bucks on a mere sixteen songs? You shut your mouth. A

The Smiths: Meat Is Murder (1985, Sire) With Margaret Thatcher de-regulating the market, crippling the power of unions, and invading the Falklands to boost her sagging approval ratings, England circa 1985 would have been a fine time for agitprop. Unfortunately, despite what you've heard, this ain't it -- unless you count the repulsively carnophobic title track and the two that come out against corporal punishment (the latter especially not a particularly controversial stance) there's nothing here that could be described as explicitly political per se. Even the one in which the Moz drops his pants to the Queen ("I'm a man of means/Of slender means,") signifies more as satire than protest. But of all Smiths records, this is the one that engages the most with the outside world, which I suspect is why many fans consider this the dark star in their catalog, and also why -- what a coincidence -- it rocks the hardest, particularly on the first six songs of the original UK release (leave "How Soon Is Now" on Hatful of Hollow where it belongs, please). The middle triptych on side one sympathetically addresses a working class that only finds release from provincial boredom in sex and violence -- a stabbing at the fairground juxtaposed against lovers scrawling their names on their arms with a fountain pen, illicit sex in a railway station alley when the marriage bed gets dull, the "tattooed boy from Birkenhead" who awakens the prudish bookworm's libido in the pile driving "What She Said." And the two songs sandwiching that sequence are two of their undeniable peaks: "The Headmaster Ritual," a condemnation of "the belligerent ghouls who run Manchester schools," and "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore," in which Morrissey joylessly blows a smug journalist in the backseat of his car, only deriving satisfaction from the knowledge that someday, inevitably, that empty cynic will one day be as lonely as he is. B+

The Smiths: The Queen Is Dead (1986, Sire) Americans guffaw at the bald-faced football mentality of UK music magazines, like when NME myopically declared the Arctic Monkeys' debut the fifth all-time greatest British album the month of its release. Though I'm sure a similar argument could be mounted against Rolling Stone and its reflexive five star reviews for Bob Dylan, in a perverse sort of way I admire the Brits for that -- what links the Kinks, Blur, and the Jam (not Oasis) is a healthy disinclination to cater to the tastes of the American audience, undoubtedly why their countymen cherish them, even if those bands sometimes sound grumpily reactionary to us Yanks. This analysis applies as well to the record Q anointed the third best album of the '80s, which limits its political statements to swipes at the Royal Family, spends two songs dishing on Morrissey's gleefully antagonistic relationship with the British press, and dedicates two more to Dole Age denizens who would rather spend their time debating Wilde and Keats in graveyards than suffering through the indignation of day jobs. Though not wholly convinced myself of its supposed masterpiece status, as a compact disc this makes more sense than a piece of vinyl -- "I Know It's Over" may be their most epic weepie, but sequenced alongside the dirge-like "Never Had No One Ever," it's a leaden doorstop in the middle of side one. Likewise, even if one of the two throwaways charmingly celebrates a cross-dressing vicar, their positioning toward the end of side two ends the record on a misbegotten note. That leaves their two greatest achievements. In the title powerhouse, the band razes Buckingham Palace with a wrecking ball while Morrissey greets Her Majesty with "a sponge and a rusty spanner" to chat her up on the wretched state of the nation. The other is a tribute/parody to melodramatic teenage death ballads in which the undying light of young love is subsumed by an oncoming double-decker bus. Following that with a bemused ode to a nudie calendar is an act of typically droll British self-deprecation. Which is funny. But still. A–

The Smiths: The World Won't Listen (1987, Rough Trade) This half-cocked gambit to assemble a Hatful of Hollow 2 might have made the grade had Rough Trade waited a measly three months -- this band was that prolific -- for the twelve-inch of "Sheila Take a Bow," which would occupy three of the first four tracks on this record's stateside equivalent Louder than Bombs, released later that spring. Instead, they compensate by lazily reprising four mega-obvious titles from their previous two studio releases to pad this out to the requisite seventeen tracks (the infamously horrid Twinkle cover "Golden Lights" was added to subsequent digital reissues). The five good-to-great A-sides (including one rejected) prove the band had mastered the catchy single -- the eternal cheap shot "Panic," with its irresistible exhortation to "Hang the DJ!" is an obvious highlight -- but except for the startling bridge of the culture-thieving "Shoplifters of the World Unite," what's missing is depth. I know that's a tall request from such perpetual post-adolescents, but it reminds me why smart people prefer albums to singles -- not because they're organically conceived by the artist rather than than thrown together by some label lackey (indeed, a good compilation would qualify in this category) but because good ones are laid back to front in such a way that respects variety, flow, and nuance. By contrast, this is inevitably more haphazard, making room for two superfluous instrumentals (instrumentals? from the Smiths?), the self-parodic "Unlovable" ("I wear black on the outside/'Cos black is how I feel on the inside?") and the socially irresponsible suicide paean "Asleep." Leaving profundity to four-count-'em-four stellar obscurities: two very different takes on kids leaving the North for the big city, Morrissey's truest/only celebration of sexual devotion, and the astonishing "Rubber Ring," in which the auteur acknowledges that "the songs that saved your life" -- i.e., his songs -- will fade into sentimental memory once his audience grows up. B

The Smiths: Louder than Bombs (1987, Sire) Purchased on an innocent whim by yours truly on a San Francisco choir trip to impress high school crush L, the nostalgist (and perhaps solipsist) in me believes "Is It Really So Strange?" should be the first Smiths song everyone should hear -- better to convert the benighted to the Moz's unique persona with a wacked-out travelogue in which the protagonist murders a nun in a dither of sexual confusion than with a stately ballad in which a variation on that character loses his virginity to an older man, even if in the end, the latter is truer to his vision. This twenty-four track pig-out, designed as a primer for the American audience and similar in functionality to Sire's less messy (if more juvenile) Catching Up With Depeche Mode, starts off strong and doesn't include any tracks owners of their three proper studio albums would have already owned -- even the lone repeat, "Hand in Glove," is the superior single version. But it ignores chronology, frustratingly compresses the mix, signs off with the two-song nadir of The World Won't Listen, and chooses inferior versions of "These Things Take Time" (slicker), "Back to the Old House" (more conventional), and "Stretch out and Wait" (would you believe, Morrissey turns out to be an impressively subtle vocal stylist?). If this was the only Smiths record I owned, I'd probably (please excuse the cliché) play it to death. But in more ways than one, this could give unsuspecting young people the wrong idea. B+

The Smiths: Strangeways Here We Come (1987, Sire) Bored with feeling locked into six-string jingle-jangle and perhaps -- though Marr denies this -- slightly pressured to beef up the sound to take the band to the stadiums like R.E.M. and U2, this boldly announces its paradigm switch by not even incorporating guitar into the tango-ready arrangement of the destiny-manifesting opener "A Rush and a Push and the Land is Ours." Consciously taking The White Album as its model, this flitters all over the genre map: glam, zydeco, folk, whatever the fuck the two-minute travesty "Death at One's Elbow" is. When it works, as on the cataclysmic "Death of a Disco Dancer," which casts a cynical eye at the baggy hordes collapsing from extreme dehydration at Ecstasy-fueled raves, or the lovely "Girlfriend in a Coma," which shows up adolescent revenge fantasies for the empty boasts they are, it almost justifies Stephen Street's dense, theatric production. But when it doesn't, as on the overrated "Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me" (Morrissey rips the t-shirt from his chest while emoting atop Mt. Sensitive), the limp threat "Unhappy Birthday" (didn't you learn your lesson on "Girlfriend in a Coma?"), and the sourly prescient "Paint a Vulgar Picture" ("Re-issue! Re-package! Re-package!") you're reminded how much of a difference a carefully drawn lyric can make. When your pettily banal closer only gains its modest modicum of interest from its putative hidden message to your songwriting partner, that's a problem. B

The Smiths: Rank (1988, Sire) A post-mortem live album borne out of contractual obligation presents all kinds of problems, beginning with the obvious fact of being at the mercy of the material left at your disposal, in this case a set recorded at Kilburn's National Ballroom in October 1986, right around the release of "Ask" and naturally showcasing material from the current The Queen Is Dead. One would figure Morrissey's impishness would translate well to a live setting -- consider stunts as the band's Top of the Pops performance of "William, It Was Really Nothing," in which he crooned the initial verse while dreamily propping his head on his hands, then coming to life for the chorus by ripping open his shirt to reveal the sardonic slogan MARRY ME. But on that appearance they mimed to pre-recorded tracks -- here, the band rushes the tempos, at times reducing Morrissey to flubbing lyrics so that they resemble incomprehensible animal noises. Likewise, Marr's guitar-playing, often elegantly interwoven on these songs' studio incarnations, here leans heavily on vague wah-wah washes and depressing showbiz moves like replacing the lilting highlife figure dancing through "The Boy With the Thorn in His Side" with a bluntly loutish bleat worthy of an Aerosmith solo. Although I will say the brief but delightful snippet of "Marie's the Name (of His Latest Flame") that contextualizes "Rusholme Ruffians" for the young'uns does make me pine for a whole album of Elvis covers. It's not too late, guys. B–

The Smiths: The Sound of the Smiths (2008, Rhino) It's said that singles represent this band's natural métier, which is why most fans revere 1995's self-explanatory Singles, which marches chronologically from "Hand in Glove" (May 1983, didn't chart, and what do you expect with homoerotic cover art) to "Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me" (December 1987, highest UK chart-placing #30) and encoring with the single-that-should-have-been "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out." It's serviceable and consistent in ways their proper studio albums are not, and can be found cheap from the usual online sources. But though the deluxe 2-CD version adds an extra disc of unwisely chosen ephemera, I prefer this more thoughtfully compiled 2008 upgrade, which augments Singles' original eighteen tracks with five mostly early vintage add-ons that remind us first and foremost they were a rock band, not merely a cult pop phenomenon. Occasionally you could imagine subbing a selection here and there -- I would have switched Meat Is Murder's laughable funk workout "Barbarism Begins at Home" with "What She Said" or "Rusholme Ruffians," and Marr's folk leanings are criminally shortchanged. But from declaring your short-lived romance by bragging that "the sun shines out of our behinds" to offhandedly noting that "eighteen months hard labor" is a fair enough penance for your interpersonal fuckups, this smashes the canard this band was strictly for mopes and schoolmarms -- with a few devastating exceptions, almost every one of these songs boasts at least one line that will make you laugh out loud. I'll assume you already knew that. But this improved configuration more deftly showcases the wily moves and clever riffs of the greatest British rhythm guitarist this side of Keith Richards. Play "Brown Sugar" alongside "The Headmaster Ritual," or "Jumpin' Jack Flash" alongside "Bigmouth Strikes Again" and "How Soon Is Now," and ask yourself the real reason why Johnny Marr's former partner hasn't been the same since NME declared the Smiths were dead. A

by Michael Tatum

Even notwithstanding skipping my August installment, this has been somewhat of a weird month: no full A records (unless I'm mistaken, a first for me) and no titles that most of my readership, such as it is, aren't hep to already -- lots of backtracking here, with many more titles still languishing the queue. The big news is the inclusion of a short "choice cuts" section, which drop the names of two great 2012 singles -- one you've heard six times this morning, and another you should hear six times before you go to bed -- on otherwise middling albums that didn't merit a takedown. I gave that honor instead to a reissue of a record from the year I was born and a tribute record to Fleetwood Mac. Like I said, a weird month -- the Dirty Fucking Projectors? If I come back in October extolling the virtues of Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective, I may have to begin questioning my sanity.

Francis Bebey: African Electronic Music 1975-1982 (Born Bad) Like Brian Eno, to whom he is sometimes compared, this Cameroonian is a bit of a Renaissance man -- after retiring from UNESCO's information services division in Paris in 1974, he dabbled in novels, short stories, poems, and of course music, recording upwards of forty tracks that have earned such unlikely admirers as classical guitarist John Williams. As a child, he toyed with the traditional Pygmy flute, later learned mbira and guitar, and most importantly, at around the same time he quit UNESCO, purchased an early synthesizer that he installed in his living room and gleefully presented to family and friends as a novelty, which of course at that time it was. The key to falling in love with these low-rent tunes is to embrace their chintziness -- for example, he could have hired live percussionists to put some flesh on these charming, AA-battery beats, but that would have robbed the music of its originality: what might have sounded garishly dinky in the manner of Juan García Esquivel instead miraculously achieves a strange, almost homespun affability. By juxtaposing the native instruments of his youth with these synthetic drones and squiggles, he effectuates "futurism" without indulging in the bachelor pad sci-fi trappings that inevitably date themselves. And while the French and Duala lyrics outnumber the ones in English, I won't complain, especially with the chattily surrealistic "New Track" humorously peeling off one layer after another with every listen: "There's something wrong with the system," he remarks in an instrumental break. "Everyone says so . . . so I believe it." Now, really -- what kind of slogan for the revolution is that? A–

Dabke: Sounds of the Syrian Houran (Sham Palace) An Arab folk dance performed primarily at wedding ceremonies, dabke traditionally incorporates the lute, the mijwiz (a sort of double-reed clarinet), hand percussion, spirited chanting, and most crucially, foot-stomping, the latter element the literal translation of the word dabke from Arabic. Pumping up both live and sampled beats so that the relentless 4/4 resembles a stadium full of wigged-out football fans, this compilation from the fertile Houran region stretching across southwestern Syrian and northwestern Jordan pulsates with a potent, electrorave groove that pounds with the inexorable energy of a bull hopped up on Viagra. These six tracks culled from '90s cassette-singles would be thrillingly galvanic had they been assayed more conservatively; instead, the cacophonous, brazenly modern touches once again prove how prime Middle Eastern music is for this kind of treatment, incorporating spiky noises that at various points recall sci-fi movie laser beams, the cheers of electronically-processed munchkins, a NASCAR racer careening into a brick wall, and an ululating bungee cord jumper, all riding a singly-purposed, monotonic bass pattern that makes Dee Dee Ramone sound like Jaco Pastorius. And the appealingly melodramatic titles, many of which straddle the line between the deadly-serious and knowingly-kitschty ("Love is Not a Joke," "Your Love Made My Head Hurt," "I Will Grieve Until I See Her Again") flesh out the general concept: masking vulnerability with macho bravado, which given the genre's matrimonial mien is only apropos. More fun than slow-dancing to power ballads or cheek-to-cheeking to Tony Bennett, that's for sure. A–

Death Grips: The Money Store (Epic) This trio's chaotic, apocalyptic noise-rap polarizes reviewers, and with tangible hooks completely nonexistent until track five, figure that's the way these Sacramento rabble-rousers want it -- think of the four tracks preceding the jolting, tough-talking "Hustle Bones" as an adult-proof cap for this bottle of bitter pills. Regardless of what you've read however, the music's challenge stems not from withstanding its punishing volume levels or hearing through its abrasive dissonance, but rather negotiating its near-lack of middle ground: rumbling bass and frenetic drum samples on one end, screeching discordance on the other, with bellowing rapper Stefan "MC Ride" Burnett left alone to verbally box his way from either side. His unceasing vitriol has been extolled by his admirers as "stream of consciousness," though I would compare it to Burroughsian cut-and-paste the obtuseness of which doesn't always signify -- "Bubonic plague/Spreaded faceless/Lurking in the deadest spaces/On your knees, black goat anus" is as laughable as anything Korn's Jonathan Davis has offered up -- but the exhilaration of the music, pungent in its inarticulation, catapults Burnett's glossolalia to a level it couldn't possibly achieve on its own. Sometimes however, when Burnett flays off the pretense, his lyrics can be harrowing indeed: certainly "Hacker," with its mighty "I'm in your area!" refrain, but particularly his incendiary ode to desensitization "I've Seen Footage," which contrasts the memories he can't delete from his neural hard drive ("Hand held dream/Shot in hell," which is actually pretty good) with the ugly gift of the Internet (viral snippets of a hit and run ambulance, a little boy shooting cats). I'm reminded of the shallow irony and middle-brow distance of Sting's "Driven to Tears": "Too many cameras/Not enough food." Favoring emotion over logic, confrontation over withdrawal, I'll take Burnett's ominous information-overload in a second. A–

Dirty Projectors: Swing Lo Magellan (Domino) The first few bars of the opener -- an arch two-part male harmony defined by jarring interval jumps -- are so aurally grating I dreaded subjecting myself to these critical darlings twice, but a funny thing happened when I concentrated during repeated listenings. When wobbly tenor Dave Longstreth hands off that part to bandmates Amber Coffman and Haley Dekle, the passage steadfastly rights itself, after which the leader audibly clears his throat and croons some acceptable verse. And then the band pulls the rug under his artsong by veering into a blistering chorus that alternates between 3/4 and 5/4 -- all illustrating this collective has finally learned that prog devices are meaningless unless they provide some sort of musical or emotional payoff, a lesson that this surprising, sometimes even beautiful record showcases in song after compelling song. While Coffman and ex-band mate Angel Deradoorian's killer wails made 2009's Bitte Orca, here the band builds on that advance by marshaling a smarter sense of dynamics, unfurling Longstreth's knotty melodies so much so they could be described as straightforward, even clear. Granted, his quirky histrionics still annoy, and anyone who rhymes "bergamot" (in this context, referring to the herb endemic to North America, not the orange used in Earl Grey tea) with "guillemot" (one of several species of seabirds in the auk family) deserves the Colin Meloy Award for Shameless Doggrel. But I reserve the right to believe Coffman has encouraged him to reveal the man underneath the fop: when she dryly observes, "That made no sense what you just said" after he sings a typically cryptic line about "morbid poetry," it's just the sort of self-deprecation he so desperately needs -- I mean, this is a guy who refers to meaningful fucking as "congress," an amusing banana peel for lyric sites who think he's referring to the legislative body. And if the love songs don't convince you, the masterful "Gun Has No Trigger," about a rich man and the outside world his gated community can't keep out, does everything but call Mitt Romney out by name. A–

Greenberger Greenberg Cebar: Tell Me That Before (Pel Pel) Now seven years away from legally being designated a senior citizen himself, David Greenberger's strange journey began after graduating from art school in 1979 and accepting a position as activities director at a nursing facility in Boston. Rather than engage his charges in painting however -- something he omitted from his repertoire on his first day of work -- he began talking to them, writing and recording their conversations, later utilizing them for a series of zines, compact discs, radio shows, and public performances, the most famous of these being The Duplex Planet Illustrated, comic book adaptations of his transcripts spearheaded by Ghost World author Daniel Clowes. In all of their media incarnations, two things strike me as pertinent to this project. First, unlike fellow caretaker John Leyland Kirby's 2010 collage record an empty bliss beyond this world, Greenberger doesn't portray the aging process as dreadful or haunting, but rather kindly, as a part of the natural order, which explains why he delivers these brief, appropriated monologues himself in his genial, insurance-salesman cadence, rather than allowing us to hear their cracked, aged voices ourselves. Secondly, his delivery is straight, completely devoid of judgment or prejudice -- when one octogenarian makes the wacky claim that bowling began in Cannes under the auspices of a French dietitian, or another insists women will only eat food aesthetically appealing to them ("and that's proven behavior!"), you never get the feeling Greenberger belittles or even pities them. The austere music, mostly composed by the Coctail's Mark Greenberg with valuable assistance from guitarist Paul Cebar, enhances this respectful aura -- the marimba chattering away at the end of "Good Girl Spend It," the asthmatic bass harmonica underscoring "On the Mayflower." I'm less reminded of my mother's mother, frozen in time on her cot in my uncle's bedroom, and more of my father's mother, who never fails to tell me she's the only Democrat in her retirement home: touched only minutely by shadows, but still funny, wise, noble. A–

Himanshu: Nehru Jackets (Mishka download) I avoided reviewing Das Racist's Relax last year partly because its dense production played a large role in other critic's pans -- Ian Cohen of Pitchfork drew comparisons to De La Soul is Dead, but I'm inclined to cite the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique, another one of those records so jam-packed with musical and lyrical stimuli it takes time to sort it out piece by piece. The three free solo mixtapes released from the duo earlier this year throw both its difficulty and its rewards into sharper perspective: both of Kool A.D.'s efforts suffer from their hazy disconnectedness, with the relatively more grounded 51 the more penetrable of the two. But here, with valuable assistance from DJ Mike Finito, Himanshu Suri continues sardonically blowing smoke rings around Relax's chock-a-block grooves, acerbically darting back and forth through breakneck Bollywood and Punjabi samples that never flag for a solid eighty minutes. Once again, Heems doesn't mind if his rapid-fire references bounce off your cerebrum -- even if, for example, you're unaware the album art parodies the Parle G biscuit boxes of his youth, the joke is there to amuse him and the handful of knowing Indians and Pakistanis that rank among the "nerds that buy our records." But as usual, he doles out jokes you won't only laugh at, but will enjoy hearing again, my favorite being where he neglects to rhyme this couplet in his paean to "Womyn": "They like to take showers/And when they let you take 'em with them it's really awesome." And his brutally vivid response to the Strokes' "New York City Cops" isn't funny at all, reminding us that if Julian Casablancas had come up with something more damning in 2001 than "They ain't too smart" -- like Abner Louima, assaulted and sodomized by the NYPD with a bathroom plunger in 1997, or 57-year old Alberta Spruill, who died of a heart attack after the NYPD mistakenly tossed a stun grenade into the wrong apartment -- there would have been less of a rationale to ban that song in the wake of 9/11. Suri's details of these crimes are heart-wrenching. Trayvon Martin -- who died not at the hands of the NYPD but the fucked racial profiling endemic of police and citizens alike across America -- is why they need to be remembered. A–

Elle Varner: Perfectly Imperfect (RCA) Turko-American producer Warren "Oak" Felder and protégé Andrew "Pop" Wansel paid their dues producing the likes of High School Musical grad Ashley Tisdale and Hulk Hogan's talentless daughter Brooke, finding pop success more recently with hits for Big Sean, Trey Songz, and Nicki Minaj. Chortle at that roster all you want, but I'm betting that thankless apprenticeship enabled them to hone a spunky pop/R&B that they've been waiting to match with the right artist. Enter twenty-three year old lightning rod Gabrielle Varner, graduate of NYU's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music (voted "Most Likely to Win a Grammy" by her classmates), who comfortably slips into the Janet Jackson role to their Jam/Lewis. Like Minaj, Varner is charismatic, witty, and absolutely born to be a star, and also like Minaj, she's a hard-working, unapologetic self-promoter: Conversational Lush, her download-only mixtape from earlier this year, proves she could have expanded this eleven-cut debut without wearing out her welcome, with special mention for the outrageous "WTF," in which she catches her boyfriend with another man, then runs into a mugger who makes off with her purse. But even with that track sacrificed to the internet to keep that dreaded parental advisory sticker off the cover, there's still plenty of warmth, pizazz, and hooks left to go around -- bet Oak and Pop have been sitting on that fiddle-not-violin sample sashaying back and forth across "Refill" for years. Those who require quick conversion should proceed straight to the breathless "Sound Proof Room," in which a snazzy two-key layout, nimble bass line, and a Morse Code guitar line straight out of "You Keep Me Hangin' On" rouse Varner into belting the year's most undeniable sex jam. Not "fly" enough? Girl, are you kidding? A–

Jack White: Blunderbuss (Third Man/XL) No (male) rock critic in the world will ever agree with me, but Jack White's postmodern blues suffers sans the crude bashing of his ex-wife drummer Meg. If that sounds like crazy talk to you, consider how much of this record finds the newly solo artiste sorting through the aftermath of not their romantic relationship -- which would be a little nutty given they signed those divorce papers over a decade ago -- but rather their uncomfortably prolonged professional relationship, which their early success made increasingly difficult to sever. "I woke up and my hands were gone/I looked down and my legs were long gone" states his problem in a terse little couplet; later, two back-to-back lyrics allude to the surname he borrowed from her for his nom de rock. And the Samson and Delilah metaphor in the Blasters cover is bitterly purposeful, though what has he been robbed of, exactly? His manhood? His music? His identity? Whatever the answer, the hussy brandishing the scissors clearly isn't ex-wife number two, model/singer/songwriter Karen Elson, who provides harmony vocals throughout, and reportedly split up with him so amicably they threw a party to "celebrate" their legal dissolution. There are plently of good songs here, and catchy riffs are a given. But on some level, White must know how flatly professional he sometimes sounds without his former foil. He can chide her all he wants for "not having nothing to do." But no matter how many other female backing musicians he sucks into his orbit, it won't compensate for her loss. B+

Honorable Mentions

Henry Clay People: Twenty-Five for the Rest of Our Lives (TBD) Emotional immaturity is one thing, musical immaturity is another ("Every Band We Never Loved," "Hide") ***

Nas: Life is Good (Def Jam) That may be true, but don't let it make you complacent ("Accident Murderers," "Daughters") **

Killer Mike: R.A.P. Music (Williams Street) Pushing the envelope by impersonating Ice Cube circa 1991, denigrating a president who's been out of office since 1989, and demanding his wife not re-marry should his overblown martyr complex become a self-fulfilling prophecy ("R.A.P. Music," "Reagan") **

Santigold: Master of My Make-Believe (Downtown/Atlantic) Yes, but M.I.A. wouldn't have outsourced beats from the same indie rockers who collaborated with Amadou & Mariam ("Disparate Youth," "The Keepers") **

Usher: Looking 4 Myself (RCA) "Revolutionary pop," my ass -- merely the kind of record Chris Brown might make if Diplo and Max Martin returned his calls ("Scream," "Climax") **

Kool A.D.: 51 (Greedhead download) Das Racist joker eschews verse-chorus-verse to create a new songform: asides-asides-asides occasionally justified by a killer hook ("La Piñata," "Oooh") *

Deep Time: Deep Time (Hardly Art) Stereolab as Rough Trade signee is a great idea, but I wish the trade was a little rougher ("Clouds," "Coleman") *

Choice Cuts

Carly Rae Jepsen, "Call Me Maybe" (Curiosity, 604)

Mystery Jets, "Greatest Hits" (Radlands, Rough Trade)

Trash

Paul & Linda McCartney: Ram (Hear Music) Saddled with the Herculean task of making their charge's much maligned solo material relevant in the ears of modern day reviewers, Paul McCartney's current publicity team deserves some kind of medal -- Lord knows the man himself must be tired of churning out myriad live albums showcasing his immortal Beatles material to remind the world he once Meant Something. And yet last year, they successfully brainwashed many naïve critics into championing 1980's McCartney 2, heard at the time even by his apologists as half-assed and scatter shot, as a brave, overlooked electronica experiment (yes, the great triumvirate: Eno, Kraftwerk, Macca). Now, Jayson Greene of Pitchfork burbles, "What 2012's ears can find on Ram is a rock icon inventing an approach to pop music that would eventually become someone else's indie pop," and given that he cites Of Montreal and Fiery Furnaces as the feasibly influenced, I deduce instead the times have caught up to this record in the worst of ways. In 1971, only an artist of McCartney's caliber could have made this kind of album -- both pretentious and aimless, unfocused and ornate, an enterprise like this once required the artist to have plenty of money and time at his disposal, not to mention a label that would humor his contented insularity. But now you can achieve the same effects on your laptop for next to nothing, and judging from Pitchfork's reviews section, records as self-indulgent as this get released by the score every week. What's frustrating is that McCartney was so much better than one side of post-Beatle bitchiness that titillated fans then and most likely embarrass him now, and another of pastoral whimsy that peaks with a goddamn Buddy Holly-style throwaway about eating at home (because let's face it, even if you're a millionare, it's impossible to get good Szechuan on the Scottish countryside). So while his handlers are dreaming up ways to connect the dots between 1972's atrocious Wild Life and Animal Collective, think about the man who fondled a pig on the inside cover of Imagine: because you know damn well they wouldn't be able to sell their bullshit if he was still alive. B–

Just Tell Me That You Want Me: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac (Concord/Hear Music) Unlike 1998's insipid song-by-song Rumours retread, which featured such "alternative" blandouts as Tonic, Matchbox 20, and the Corrs, this aims higher than merely matching FM perennials to contemporary superstars -- indeed, four of these covers predate the Mac's better known and universally revered late '70s lineup. In fact, because these indie-identified performers respect the band's quirkier, more experimental side (Peter Green, Tusk, "Future Games," the latter over-literalized by MGMT into a synth-drenched miasma) this boasts plenty of variety, and even a few left-field risks. But with a half point awarded to Gardens & Villa's nicely textured "Gypsy," which I'd enjoy more with the benefit of a singer blessed with actual presence, only two songs earn their reprisals: Best Coast's endearingly clumsy "Rhiannon," which renews the original by recasting it in a major key, and the New Pornographers' "Think About Me," which amps up a worthy Christine McVie obscurity. But ignoring obvious misses like Antony's, er, recitation of "Landslide," what's mostly missing is magic, which might be defined in this case as the knowledge that many of these songs were originally emoted to someone often singing and strumming on the other side of the studio, something that will occur to you in the middle of Lykke Li's cavernous, overly-overdubbed "Silver Springs." Also, if I may allow my prejudices to surface, the remaining "classic period" choices are divided unequally -- two from Buckingham, one from McVie, and ten from Nicks, whose spacey post-Rumours tracks suffered from her ex's musical disinterest. No, "Sisters of the Moon" does not improve with St. Vincent co-handling the lead vocal. B–

The Tallest Man on Earth: There's No Leaving Now (Dead Oceans) "I knew a man, his nickname was 'tall' [harmonica wheeze] He couldn't think of nothing at all [harmonica] He's not the same as you and meeee. He doesn't dig poetry. He's so unhip . . . when you say DYLAN [harmonica] -- he thinks you're talking about Kristian Matsson . . . whoever he is. The man ain't got no cultcha." B–

OFF!: OFF! (Vice) Not a one joke band, a one punch line band: to get to the other side! To get to the other side! To get to the other side! To get to the other side! B–

Twin Shadow: Confess (4AD) This just in: a reissue of the Real Genius soundtrack earns an 8.6 and "Best New Music" designation in Pitchfork. B–

Joyce Manor: Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired (Asian Man) Come to think of it, the Descendents had a touch of emo about them, too -- except they weren't so, you know, emo about it. B–

Kool A.D.: The Palm Wine Drinkard (Greedhead download) A shame he released these 51 rough drafts after the fact rather than before -- he could have fibbed it was his "dub" project and the hipsterati would have creamed in unison. C+

Gold Motel: Gold Motel (Good as Gold) Rilo Kiley knew Los Angeles from the inside, but Chicago's Greta Morgan knows it only as a tourist, which explains why all her friends are "street musicians" rather than denizens of the Whiskey-a-Go-Go. C+

Future of the Left: The Plot Against Common Sense (Xtra Mile) So much comic potential in such promising titles as "Sheena is a T-Shirt Salesman," "Failed Olympic Bid," and "Polymers Are Forever" -- too bad these Welsh blowhards don't believe humor is enough to stave off inevitable global apocalypse. C

Lambchop: Mr. M (Merge) 'M' for 'maudlin' of course -- Kurt Wagner's throat catches so often you'd think Shari Lewis had her fist in it. C

This is the 23rd installment, (almost) monthly since August 2010, totalling 586 albums. All columns are indexed and archived here. You can follow A Downloader's Diary on Facebook, and on Twitter.

by Michael Tatum

Rock critics and rock critic-o-philes love guessing what records will win, place, and show in the Village Voice's Pazz & Jop poll. Below, you'll find four picks that I'm fairly certain will wind up in the top ten, including the winner, with the Beach House record my only deviation from conventional wisdom. Perhaps because lately I've been so deluged with good music, I haven't had much time or patience to clear out much material for the Honorable Mentions and Trash sections, which for the last two months or so have been relatively scant. Trust me, if you wasted six plus hours of your life to that goddamn Fela Kuti live record you'd want to reward yourself with more worthwhile stuff, too.

Fiona Apple: The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do (Clean Slate) Like so many singer-songwriters, male or female, young or old, Fiona Apple is a narcissist -- if she's broken up with a guy named Jonathan, you can bet his name will grace a song title, and you shouldn't be surprised when she packages the resulting album with samples of her own "therapeutic art," scrawlings so dreadful they make Joni Mitchell look like Van Gogh. But what separates Apple from Michelle Branch, Vanessa Carlton, Suzanne Vega, and the like, aside from an awesome talent never quite in such sharp focus until this record, is that she has no interest in pretending to be nicey-nice -- she candidly owns her own massive failings and screw-ups, could care less about playing the doe-eyed ingénue, and delights in casting herself as the madwoman in the attic, provided you pay attention to the noise she makes on her floor/your ceiling. Plus, she actually has a sense of humor, something that absolutely eluded Joni Mitchell, from "I could liken (lycan?) you to a werewolf" to "I guess I just must be a daredevil/I don't feel anything until I smash it up," from rhyming "orotund mutt" with "moribund slut" to admitting "I'm a tulip in a cup/I stand no chance of growing up," all the way up to the irresistible novelty number in which she slyly offers you to cut her butter with your hot knife. And then there are the pleasures of the music, not merely those hip hop touches, expressed more in odd noises and sounds rather than the standard banal guest rapper, but her piano style, which regardless of its harmonic sophistication, in its approach to play reminds me of my high school friends and me fucking around during lunchtime on the choir room piano, devising songs to amuse each other. Think stuffing your album title with twenty-four words is pretentious? So does she -- the joke's on you. A

Beach House: Bloom (Sub Pop) Although admittedly not exactly a dream pop aficionado by nature, I know my resistance to this Baltimore duo's allure stems not from objecting to Victoria Legrand's mildly depressive temperament, but rather from her unusual detachment from it in song. "Help me to name it," she sings, as if holding this curious, strange new emotion to the light, turning it between her fingers, cataloging the nuances of each facet. Her sadness isn't the standard metaphorical "blue," but the more consciously arty "lapis lazuli." She observes of a break-up, "Other people want to keep in touch/Something happens and it's not enough." Though I don't subscribe to the idea that you have to "relate" to an artist to "get" them, this sort of compartmentalization of your feelings is so foreign to me that part of me suspects I resent her for being able to do it. Now I realize such judgments are not only unfair to Legrand as a person -- experience being relative, after all -- they also ignore the uncommon gorgeousness of the music, deeply affecting where 2011's Teen Dream settled for merely pretty. Without renouncing the basic harmonic simplicity of their previous work, the arrangements are now more expansive, slow-moving tidal waves riding the hypnotic pull of Daniel Franz's detailed drum loops. Although the music is even more beholden to electronic manipulation, there's something charmingly faux-organic about it: the "tin can" beats underneath "Myth," the "toy xylophone" that tinkles through "Lazuli." And though I'm mystified how a contralto this devoid of carnal suggestion could ever move any music scribe to describe it as "sultry," Legrand's cautious scalar ascensions and descensions, punctuated by the occasional glissando, are well-matched to her lyrics, which relinquish overweening metaphor in favor of straightforward language. Though when she sends off a lost love to a "strange paradise" where the next woman lies in wait, you have to wonder what runs though her mind when the song is over. A–

Clams Casino: Instrumental Mixtape 2 (free download) The biggest mystery about Mike Volpe's highly in-demand production work is why he donates so much of it to second-tier rappers. The best way I can rationalize it, working on the fringes enables him the widest amount of creative freedom possible, though why would he feel the need to leak two download-only instrumental sets if he truly respected what Lil B and Soulja Boy did with his handiwork? Though Volpe would benefit from the discipline of a major label -- one that would encourage his creativity, allow him to challenge himself, and yet force him to work within certain strictures -- there's no denying that this sequel represents a major step forward: those who found last year's batch of rescued backgrounds a little obtuse or soupy will have no problem accessing these more user-friendly pieces. It's no secret that Volpe mines inspiration from the feminine -- two very different tracks employ the same Imogen Heap song, though as with the Lana del Rey and Washed Out "remixes," not so you'd actually recognize the original source material -- but like many admirers, I'm shocked how much some of this approaches New Age antecedents: Enya, Enigma, even those damn Benedictine Monks. What makes him superior are those spellbinding beats: sluggish but authoritative, spaced-out but dragged through mud. Best of all, this includes my favorite Volpe track, the absolutely entrancing "Unchain Me," the rare instance you might conceivably identify the sample. The implication? If he can do this shit with an overblown track from the teen vampire flick The Lost Boys, he can do it with anything. A–

Lotus Plaza: Spooky Action at a Distance (Kranky) If you've resisted this Deerhunter spinoff, I fully sympathize -- although somewhat won over to that band's woozily alluring Halcyon Digest, Bradford Cox's pretensions (the Atlas Sound solo project, his one-hour Andy Kaufmanesque "My Sharona" piss-take) are often more fun to read about on blogs than actually listen to. But this nifty little record doesn't belong to Cox but rather his guitarist cohort Lockett Pundt, who gives up more shimmering hooks here than he does for his day job, worthy of Dean Wareham or Martin Phillipps, radiating a seductive beauty that brings to mind Tennyson: "And deep-asleep he seem'd, yet all awake/And music in his ears his beating heart did make." Although Pundt deliberately (and predictably) obscures his words via his nerdy baritone and lo-fi production, if you're patient enough to penetrate the music's attractive surface you'll discover that much like the mariners in that masterful poem, Pundt's dream world of beguiling, captivating melody is his anodyne for coping with the uncertainties of the outside world: a relationship threatened by distance, a friendship destroyed by drug use, days when "there's no going back" and it seems "you're on your own/there's no one else." But despite his rather offhandedly mesmerising gift for tune -- a complete surprise after the amorphous noodling of this project's 2009 debut proper -- what really made me take notice of all this was, of all things, the drumming, which while not powerful in the conventional sense, carries the music with a hypnotically bracing pulse. You'll wonder why Pundt doesn't recommend his band mate to his Deerhunter buddies. Then you'll peruse the liner notes and realize there's a reason for that: he's already in Deerhunter. He's the guitarist. A–

Frank Ocean: Channel Orange (Def Jam) Even if Ocean had second-guessed outing himself and altered the pronouns and details in the last three songs here from the masculine to the expected feminine, this would remain an audacious, courageous record. He eschews sampling not because he fears late night visits from Don Henley's team of lawyers -- really, if Coldplay are willing to give away "Strawberry Swing" for free, one would figure anyone would have given Ocean eight bars for a chunk of the publishing -- but because he's been there, done that, and moving on. Having hooked the indie rock audience by playing pomo games with MGMT and the Eagles, he's now more interested in pushing the envelope of the music he grew up with, meaning not just Marvin and Stevie but D'Angelo and Maxwell -- i.e., form-free R&B, with the mid-tempo beats, non-linear melodic sensibility, and atmospheric arrangements that implies. In other words, he's asking both halves of his audience to meet him in the middle, on his terms. And once he's drawn you into his world with his seductively exquisite music, he'll captivate you with songs that empathize with strippers and moshers and crack addicts, take swipes at the idle rich, and denigrate any "bad religion" that forces him to his knees for professing his love for a man. Intelligent, humane, and absolutely fearless, you'll root for "Forrest Gump" to give him a second chance. A

Plug: Back in Time (Ninja Tune) I'd forgotten how much I had loved drum 'n' bass in theory: its sputtering beats, relentless loops, metallic arrangements, and sanded down chunks of noise, although perhaps I would have loved it more in practice had many of its practitioners hadn't fallen short of that ideal and tended toward John Williams, James Bond soundtracks, and nineteenth-century Romanticist twaddle. I didn't take much notice of Luke Vibert at the time, partly because there was so damn much to wade through, but also because he didn't fall neatly into any dance subgenre: like his buddy Richard James, Vibert straddled the line between workaholicism and releasing every last self-indulgent minute he committed to tape, not only under his own name, but also under the aliases Wagon Christ, for his trip-hop/ambient output, and Plug, for drum 'n' bass. You won't be disappointed if you spin his well-regarded, 1996 Drum 'n' Bass for Papa, which for me was lost in the IDM deluge and sounds pretty good now, even if the only moment that sticks in my brain is his sample of John Goodman's frenzied tirade from Barton Fink, erased from Nothing Records' 1997 reissue (and too bad -- "I'll show you the life of the mind!" really says it all, don't you think?). This vault-clearing of contemporaneous material has been dismissed as redundant in some quarters, but not only are the beats denser, busier, and more hectic, the samples are wilder and woollier, folding in -- and this is merely a partial list -- a rumbling timpani, a tip-toeing harp figure, a snake-charming flute, a Speak and Spell, James Brown concert patter, an uncomfortably bizarre male orgasm, a cheesy electric sitar figure more B.J. Thomas than Brian Jones, the "running away" sound effect from Scooby Doo, the cyborg stewardess from Eastside Connection's "Frisco Disco," and the hypnotic suggestion that "You might become aware of your anus or genitalia." A pretty direct admission that the life of the mind is infinitely richer when the extremities cooperate. A–

Patti Smith: Banga (Columbia) It's become so de rigueur for rockers over the age of sixty to devote whole albums to mourning their own mortality it's startling to hear one unapologetically celebrating discovery, transcendence, and hope. Punk rockers have always exulted in ringing in the new while tearing down the old, and indeed part of me muses this record's fearless embrace of undiscovered countries both literal and figurative is appropriate for a woman who pledged much of her early career to reveling in post-apocalyptic vision. But this only makes for good copy. I imagine the real reason is more simple: she's a woman. More specifically, she's a woman who views her children, both biological and spiritual, not as competition or a reminder of her waning potency, but rather as "the hope of the world, embarking on adventures of their own." Those poignant words culminate her astonishingly gorgeous liner notes, which offer a more evocative view of her introspective journey than mere printed lyrics would have, looking both forward and backward to progenitors and inheritors alike, including not only art heroes like Mikel Bulgakov, Andrei Tarkovsky, Sun Ra, Maria Schneider, and Michelangelo Antonioni, but even Johnny Depp and Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins. But she's not just dropping names like she used to when she was a kid -- there's a sense of gratitude, humility, and grace, accompanied by calmly majestic singing and music that unquestionably signifies as the most nakedly beautiful of her career, only more remarkable when you register how many of the songs utilize only a handful of chords, or like the hypnotic title track or the tititanic epic celebrating Piero della Francesca, ride galvanically mesmerizing drones. "All is art," she wails, and of course, we've heard that before. But how about "All is future?" She won't see that future -- neither will you or I. But as the recontextualized Neil Young cover illustrates so lovingly, by necessity and by right, the future does not belong to us. A

Le Super Borgou de Parakou: The Bariba Sound (Analog Africa) The capital of eastern Benin's Borgou Department, Parakou is home to at least fifteen distinct ethnic groups; its name is derived from a Dendi word that translates into "the city of everyone." Benin's independence from France in 1960 promised democracy, but after a decade of turmoil marked by multiple regime changes, a weakened three-person "presidental council" crumbled, replaced by a brutal military dictatorship run by Mathieu Kérékou, who drove out foreign investment, crippled the educational system, ran the occasional sham election, and generated state revenue by turning his country into France's nuclear waste dump. It's against this backdrop that guitarist/bandleaders Moussa Mama Djima and Menou Roch conceived this superb Afro-funk powerhouse, which The Quietus' Richie Troughton claims mixes native folk influences with the usual American R&B appropriations, but my less savvy ears hear as a deft combination of highlife and Afrobeat, both exports of neighboring Nigeria. Hook hounds should note that these guys love to decorate their songs with catchy chants, and even if the rhythms aren't as polyrythmically insinuating as Fela or Adé, drummer Bori Borro does have a bag of tricks, my favorite being the rug-yanking change-up he pulls off on the opening "Gandigui." And while the limited vocabulary of the organist could easily have been disguised if they'd distorted the sound a little bit, the guitar playing is remarkably imaginative given its primitive mien, particularly in a passage that mimics a violin played pizzicato. And then there's the incendiary, endlessly repeatable "Abakpé," which wonders what Carlos Santana might have sounded like if he had forsaken John Coltrane for James Brown. A–

Honorable Mentions

Japandroids: Celebration Rock (Polyvinyl) Remember last night's keg and bong blowout? Remember when, remember when? ("Evil's Sway," "The House that Heaven Built") ***

Rhett Miller: The Dreamer (Maximum Sunshine) If only if he had the kind of ego and/or imagination that would inspire him to title his next record The Arranger ("Marina," "Swimming in Sunshine") **

Saint Etienne: Words and Music by Saint Etienne (Universal) Sarah Cracknell feels a right to the memories of her misspent youth because she knows she's now almost a memory herself ("I've Got Your Music," "Tonight") **

Metric: Synthetica (Mom + Pop) Boasts she's as "fucked up as they say," but fails to provide us with much corroborative evidence ("The Wanderlust," "The Void") *

Trash

Fela Kuti: Live in Detroit 1986 (Knitting Factory) Comprising four, er, "songs" lasting 29:33, 40:35, 34:06, and 38:57, this has to be the most appalling example of rockcrit sycophancy in recent memory. "You'll wish you'd been there," avers BBC Review's Steve Chick. "You'll wish it would never end." "[It] provides an exhilarating reminder of his presence as a live performer," swoons The Guardian's Robin Denselow. Inspiring the very first Downloader's Diary Throwdown: I challenge either of these clowns to upload a video of themselves listening to this two-CD document all the way through, from start to finish, without getting up, yawning, twiddling their thumbs, pounding their fists on the table, puncturing their eardrums with gardening shears, or displaying any other body language indicators of boredom, tedium, or mercy-begging. The prize: I will put you up in any Nigerian hotel, seven days and seven nights, all expenses paid (note: A Downloader's Diary is not responsible for any theft, kidnapping, or murder you may experience. Quarter at any foreign embassies is exempt from this offer). Fela was many things: icon, rabble-rouser, sloganeer, and sometimes, great bandleader. What he was not was a brilliant improviser on the electric piano. Four songs. Two hours and twenty minutes. Think about it. C

Carrie Underwood: Blown Away (Arista Nashville/19 Recordings) "Thank God for hometowns/And all the love that makes you go round/Thank God for the county lines that welcome you back in/When you were dying to get out/Thank God for Church pews/And all the faces that won't forget you" -- vomit, vomit, vomit, vomit. I mean, why not "Thank God for Gucci handbags/Dinner at the French Laundry/Thank God for Prada one-pieces/And a mansion on the hill?" Because after all, pandering to your target audience about the former batch of platitudes makes access to the latter bunch of goodies possible (and now that I'm on it, why not make explicit God is some combination of Clive Davis and Simon Cowell?). In any case, if the airbrushed vixen on the cover didn't clue you in, the record that Entertainment Weekly's Melissa Maerz unironically glows is her "most stadium-rock-friendly album yet" doesn't suck up to the country audience as much as it does the more potentially lucrative American Idol audience -- you can tell, because she doesn't sing as much as yell, showing up the title as not meaning "impressed" so much as "deafened by cavernously loud volume." A pity, considering she's clearly (and clumsily) toughening herself up on what's essentially a Miranda Lambert move. Though to be fair, Miranda would have passed on the one in which Carrie faces down Cupid in a Mexican standoff -- which Carrie's hyperactive emoting only makes even more patently ridiculous. C+

Bobby Womack: The Bravest Man in the Universe (Honest Jon's) He once was lost, and now he's still lost. B–

Alt-J: An Awesome Wave (Infectious) If Radiohead specialized in madrigals, but replaced Thom Yorke with two Gary Numans. C+

Screaming Females: Ugly (Don Giovanni) Babe in Progland. C+

Royal Headache: Royal Headache (What's Your Rupture?) Described by the indie rock blogosphere as garage rock with "white-soul" vocalizing, the latter of which Pitchfork's Paul Thompson favorably compares to such "greats" as (find the ringers) Rod Stewart, Sam Cooke, young Roger Daltrey, Argybargy-era Glenn Tilbrook, and . . . Robert Pollard. C+

This is the 22nd installment, (almost) monthly since August 2010, totalling 559 albums. All columns are indexed and archived here. You can follow A Downloader's Diary on Facebook, and on Twitter.

by Michael Tatum

By some strange confluence of events, many of the records reviewed below in the main section have attracted controversy from one rockcrit corner or another, leading many to label them "problematic" if not dismissing them outright. Such records often pique my interest even before I actually hear them, but I was surprised by how many of them I turned out liking if not downright loving. I'm not a contrarian, merely someone who often finds music more rewarding when it has to be unraveled before it can be understood. Then again, one of the reasons I love such unfairly maligned records as the Neil Young or Die Antwoord is that I don't have to work so hard to derive pleasure from them. So I hope this month's mini-dissertations inspire you to take a chance on some actually good-to-great items you may have thought twice about. If not, well, there's always De La Soul.

Amadou & Mariam: Folila (Nonesuch) The title translates into their native Bambara as "music," which in this highly cross-promoted case doesn't necessarily make the bourgeoisie and the rebel come together. A little background: originally, Mali's most famous musical couple intended to make this a double disc affair, split between one set of sessions cut in New York with a bevy of indie rock musicians, and another comprising the same songs re-recorded with traditional musicians in their hometown of Bamako -- a world music take on Shania Twain's Up!, if you will. Later, they rethought this strategy, integrating the two halves digitally (a world music take on, er, "Strawberry Fields Forever?"), a painstaking process that reportedly took longtime engineer Antoine Halet about three months. The results are as pleasurable as anything they've ever done, and because the duo has always been so openhearted and catholic in their musical approach, cynical accusations of selling out don't wash; but on the other hand, no one would be complaining if the album wasn't denser and busier than 2009's more expansive Welcome to Mali -- all of the musical elements feel jammed together. Like cheap CGI effects, the music dazzles superficially but lacks organicity -- I think I'd appreciate the boast that they eschewed westernized drum kits in favor of traditional Malian percussion if not-so-indigenous drum machines weren't constantly churning in the background. Then there's the bizarre PR nightmare of French pop star Bertrand Cantat, convicted of uxoricide (I say tomato, the French say dolus eventualis) and inexplicably paroled after serving only four years of his sentence: shunned by the French music industry, yet who somehow cajoled his way into not one, but four of this record's tracks. Oh Amadou, tu n'as pas le choix/Oh Amadou, c'est plus fort que toi, he sings tortuously, lines pitilessly lifted from so many chansons: "You don't have a choice/You can't do anything about it." The callousness of the subtext is predictable and cowardly. More importantly, Amadou and Mariam's passivity toward that callousness clouds this project -- not least because it shores up their passivity toward everything else. A–

BBU!: Bell Hooks (Mad Decent/Mishka download) Sympathetic of slam poetry as an extension of high school arts programs if not necessarily convinced its leading lights should be anthologized, I was completely caught short by the apocalyptic allegory borrowed from seventeen-year-old Malcolm London, in which a metaphorical hurricane tears through south side Chicago as teens ravage the streets armed with guns and camera phones. "This is a wake up call/So how many of you will answer," it ends, and the extraordinary mixtape that follows provides the answer: a cocky, literate, downright incendiary Chicago crew claiming to have no interest in being stars, yet who hardly tow the underground hip hop line, gleefully noting: "Too many conscious rappers need to face facts/That drug dealers happen to make better raps." An unfair generalization, you say? Maybe, but one not without a kernel of truth, and even more than their buddies in Das Racist, this collective bridges the chasm between "politics" and "fun" better than anyone since the Coup, making the oft-heard complaint they run their choruses into the ground completely moot -- did anyone hurl that complaint at Run-DMC or A Tribe Called Quest? Testifying not only for Bobby Seale and James Baldwin but also for "sisters in the struggle who fought to be seen as queens" and "young queer kids who never fit in the scene," they also wonder if Sarah Palin would still have a hard-on for the Second Amendment if fully strapped brothers showed up at a Tea Party rally. Which leads me to the "cracker" issue, a word their presumably white manager (gleefully slipping into the "Steve Berman" role in a series of three hysterical skits) counts they use a total of "48.3 times." Quaint, damn near archaic, and far less scabrous than "honky" (which appears only once, toward the end) its pointed over usage only underscores how few racial epithets there are for whites to begin with -- as Chevy Chase learned from Richard Pryor the hard way, and this trio must know all too well. And besides, their idea of outreach is sampling Nirvana and (someone alert Don Boy!) the Eagles' "One of These Nights." I wish the piecemeal production cohered a little better. But "Fuck gangsta rap/Black Power is the hardest" is a credo the hip hop world should take to heart. A–

Best Coast: The Only Place (Mexican Summer) Those who disparage this record's aesthetically conservative approach should consider Bethany Cosentino's blasé acknowledgement that two years ago, her "song writing style was pretty different" and they are now recording in "a much more professional studio" -- a purposefully banal way of cloaking the fact the debut would have sounded like this had they had the experience, the resources, the money, and producer Jon Brion. Those who laugh at the naivety of sentiments such as "I don't want to die/I want to live my life" should consider the leagues of young people who don't -- that such a statement achieves profundity precisely because it risks elitist scorn. Those who roll their eyes at the amount of time Cosentino sings the word "fun" in the cheekily breezy Beach Boys homage that opens should consider "Rockaway Beach," or at the very least, appreciate the joke that a song about the state that's got the babes and the waves sets up a concept record about the state of mind of the babe who dates the Wavves, i.e. indie fixture and Cosentino boyfriend Nathan Williams. Those who think Cosentino comes off as a long-suffering codependent should consider how many strong-willed feminist types know the gender war score intellectually even if they can't reconcile what they know emotionally -- hell, anyone who admits that both she and the object of her affections are "too lazy to make it work" can't possibly be that submissive. Those who turn their noses at the deceptively simple lyrics should consider a subversion like "You seem to think you know everything/But you don't know why I cry." And those who swoon in song that Nathan Williams "knows everything" should probably be reminded who was whose opening act. If she had -- and I do mean she -- this would be one more concept record with an end, not just a beginning, middle, and cliff-hanging question mark. A–

Cornershop: Urban Turban (Ample Play) Roughly, think of the subtitular "Singhles Club" as Tjinder Singh's equivalent of Kanye West's "G.O.O.D. Friday." As West did in the weeks before My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Singh and musical partner Ben Ayres e-mailed their website subscribers six collaborative projects over a period of as many months, all of which they reprise here, augmenting them with three newbies, an encore, and a "bonus track" (what that means in this digital age, don't ask me). On the one hand, I'm delighted to have a third Cornershop record in four years, especially since the ten years preceding only generated one, but I feel two ways about their sudden burst of productivity. Perhaps I've been conditioned to expect a period of dormancy between their great records (1997 to 2002 to 2009 makes the young Lucinda Williams look like a workaholic), but there's a touch of hobbyism here, of expediency, of messing with Mr. In-Between -- though everything save the dessicated udder that is "Milkin' It" rides a good groove that sometimes the band actually puts in service of a good song, like last year's Bubbley Kaur project, there's a sense that much of this material would have been filler on their peak albums, improved in their proximity to that increasingly rare of beasts, Cornershop songs that actually feature their head honcho's lead vocals. Too bad, especially since the one classic here, the mischievous "What Did the Hippie Have in His Bag?," ranks as one of their best kiddie numbers -- Singh signals a breakdown by announcing he's dropped a crayon, and amuses his primary school charges with wordplay that must signify to them as pleasurable gobbledygook even when it means something to you and me ("Doubleday books and Double gum"). Then again, maybe since he swiped the backing for that song from 2002's "Staging the Plaguing of the Raised Platform," maybe a little chill out time between releases should be recommended. B+

De la Soul's Plug One and Plug Two Present . . . First Serve (Duck Down) Because they've been in the game longer than other rappers of the first rank -- only Public Enemy and (we hope) the Beastie Boys have longer tenure -- De La Soul's latter-day albums have a winning maturity about them uncommon in the hip world. Songs about your newborn daughter have become the hoariest of genre clichés, but songs about being forced to explain terrorism and religious fanaticism to that daughter when she's a little older, as Kelvin Mercer a.k.a. Posdnuos a.k.a. Plug One did on 2002's AOI: Bionix? Much more unique, as almost everything else released by this Long Island crew. Still, introspection and adulthood haven't necessarily endeared themselves to the mainstream hip hop audience, who with a few exceptions never trust anyone over the age of thirty. So for this concept record about the ups and downs of a fictitious hip hop duo, Mercer and De La Soul cohort Dave Jolicoeur re-invent themselves as "Jacob 'Pop Life' Barrow" and "Deen Witter," whose rocky but loyal partnership the more ambitious Jacob sums up thusly: "Known each other since grade four and I've been cheating off his homework since grade five." The temptation is strong to compare this record to their buddy Prince Paul's 1999 A Prince Among Thieves, but not only is it funnier, starting with Deen's malapropism-loving mother ("I didn't squeeze your little ass outta me so you get shot over some east coast/west coast pork!" Jacob: "It's actually beef, Mrs. Witter."), but it's also darker, and more personal: while in the former album one comrade murders another for a hit song, here business and personal difficulties crush a friendship while the record company sits back and happily profits. Even the ironies are deeper, as the duo parlays multiple plays on the title trope, and turn "Push It Aside, Push It Along" from a promise to parents to get serious when the rap game falls through, to an anti-anthem "celebrating" music played for money not for love (while the record company sits back and happily profits). Best of all, while the Prince Paul record is nuanced like a good novel, this record, with French production team Chokolate & Khalid on the beat, is all climax all the time, from start to finish. Think they had this much juice when they were kids? They didn't -- I checked. A

Die Antwoord: Ten$ion (Downtown) Critics revile their nightmarish rap rave because at no point do Watkin Tudor Jones and Yolandi Visser ever drop their masks to reveal the prankish performance artists underneath -- in one of their promotional videos, they're portrayed as dirt-poor urchins living next door to each other in a South African squatter camp with their respective parents, when in fact the real-life duo are longtime musical professionals who have a son. Artist and countrywoman Jane Alexander -- who one assumes would be hep to this -- sued them for their appropriating her anti-apartheid "Butcher Boys" sculptures for a recent video on the premise that she feared her original intent would be perverted and misconstrued, yet not only did the band delete the video from YouTube without argument, Jones noted: "These beautiful sculptures are one of the few South African artworks we are truly proud to be associated with." Likewise, it's clear their vitriol for South African president Jacob Zuma has little to do with the color of his skin than the fact he's a corrupt racketeer and unrepentant polygamist who should rightfully have been prosecuted years ago for the rape of that HIV activist. Meanwhile, their American label kicked them to the curb for DJ Hi-Tek's use of the word "faggot" in their projected single, but check out Jones' rationalization: "DJ Hi-Tek is gay . . . [he] says the word faggot doesn't hold any power over him . . . [he uses it] all the time. He's taken that word and made it his bitch" (didn't Hi-Tek's threat to "fuck you in the ass/fuck you till you love me" strike anyone at Interscope as paradoxical?). Even "Ninja"'s boasts about getting fucked up are part of the ruse -- the real life Jones doesn't even drink. In the warped skit in which he plays a creepy benefactor drooling over Yolandi, he offers her herbal tea -- how funny is that? So resist these hard beats and rapid-fire rhymes all you want -- this is some of the most exciting music I've heard all year, and that it makes the uptight politically correct side of me nervous only intensifies its aesthetic charge. And it closes with a choir of integrated South Africans singing, in what is apparently a Zulu and Afrikaans mixed criminal language, "You can't stop me." May they rake in a shitload of cash and donate a hefty chunk of it to something useful. A–

Tommy Womack: Now What! (Cedar Creek Music) The Lord forgave this Nashville-based roots rocker for nicking "Greensleeves" for the dire "A Songwriter's Prayer" by providing him his great theme: making something of failure, defined in this particular case as "not becoming a famous rock star," the "shameful" (albeit completely redundant) admission of the centerpiece of 2007's well-turned There, I Said It!. If the back-to-back exclamatory titles didn't clue you in, this record picks up where its predecessor left off, transitioning from last time's "If that's All There Is to See" (in which "seeing it all" includes touring such gorgeous Meccas as Hoboken and Omaha) to the diminished but contented sexual expectations of the absolutely graceful "It Doesn't Have to be That Good," in which Womack gently coaxes his wife to let the kid play Nintendo while they beg, borrow, and steal a little time for themselves. Because the tunes are sturdily functional rather than solid gold catchy -- Freedy Johnston's Can You Fly serves as a good paradigmatic comparison -- Womack's neurotic self-deprecation always strikes one as humble rather than maudlin, a rare trait in your standard self-absorbed singer-songwriter. Still, I could do more with his more visionary detours, represented last time by "Alpha Male & the Canine Mystery Blood," a rumination on lost youth spurned on by a concert poster, and epitomized here by a sorta-rap featuring only him and his drummer, and the rollicking "Guilty Snake Blues," both of which sneakily reference the twelve step programs that I'm betting are the reason -- more so than even the love of his wife and son -- the man's made two albums this strong in a row. A–

Neil Young & Crazy Horse: Americana (Reprise) Although not normally accustomed to quoting from someone's Twitter account, I can't resist this bon mot from Rob Tannenbaum: "There will be people who like the new Neil Young album. There are also people who drink their own urine." Well, I say pull the tap and make sure there's a head on it, because this hippie weirdo has just pulled off the ultimate parlor game for jokers who complain his albums with the definitive proto-grunge trio all "sound the same." Covering twelve oldie moldies, the majority of them in the public domain, the selections range from Stephen Foster to Woody Guthrie, from "Tom Dula" to (the one ringer) "Get a Job," and include two I sung every morning before school at Rocky Ridge Elementary. Had the artiste replaced their familiar lyrics with the usual ruminations on love and war, everyone would be championing this as another classic Crazy Horse record. But in fact, I would argue the resistance to this record partially stems from precisely those sentimental childhood memories to which I just alluded, memories which Young underscores by enlisting the backing of a grade school choir that play it far straighter than the kids who hang out with Tjinder Singh. But there's a few twists, because between digging up forgotten verses and re-writing a few of his own, re-arranging chords from major to minor and sometimes discarding melodies and starting completely from scratch, these songs aren't as engraved in memory as you might remember: is the narrator of "Clementine" a tormented father or lover? Why did my second grade teacher neglect to teach us the line in "This Land is Your Land" about hungry people at the relief office? And what about that astonishing passage in "God Save the Queen" about confounding politics and frustrating dirty tricks? Damn near inventing its own genre -- let's call it campfire grunge -- Young's production hasn't been this admirably ragged in years, and one can't help but love that the Talbot-Molina rhythm section is finally in a position to juice up songs more four-square rhythmically than they are. If they're too unkempt for your tastes, get over it -- I bet David Crosby doesn't think they have the chops for that delightful Silhouettes cover, either. A

Honorable Mentions

Disappears: Pre Language (Kranky) Looking forward to their intraverbal period ("Joa," "Fear of Darkness") ***

Actress: R.I.P. (Honest Jon's) The Secret Life of Geiger Counters ("Holy Water," "Marble Plexus") ***

Regina Spektor: What We Saw From the Cheap Seats (Sire) Outweirds Tori Amos -- outcharms her, too ("Don't Leave Me (Ne Me Quitte Pas)," "Small Town Moon") **

Rye Rye: Go! Pop! Bang! (Interscope/N.E.E.T.) M.I.A. secretly dreams of Nicki Minaj's numbers, but wouldn't dream of stooping to her commercial level, which is why she's only too happy to have this Baltimore native do her dirty work ("Sunshine," "Never Will Be Mine") **

John Mayer: Born and Raised (Columbia) He hasn't given up the shallowness of his previous life as much as chosen to wade at the opposite end of the pool ("Queen of California," "Shadow Days") *

K'Naan: More Beautiful Than Silence (A&M/Octone, EP) Takes optimism in the face of genocide a little too far ("Nothing to Lose") *

Trash

Odd Future: The OF Tape Vol. 2 (Odd Future) I resigned myself to accepting beforehand that this collective's "proper" debut would sound nothing like Frank Ocean's sublimely beautiful Nostalgia, Ultra, the finest record of 2011, and more like Tyler the Creator's baldly stupid Goblin, one of 2011's more dubious artifacts. Far more comparable to the latter in its scattered, chaotic music and reliance on tasteless shock tactics, it distinguishes itself by being completely undistinguished -- five plays and I can't tell you anything about the record other than the ninety second spoken word intro. Which I've thoughtfully transcribed for you, as it provides as good a taste as any to their scintillating poesy. [Cue muzak, with light drum machine accents] "Let me tell all you niggas a little motherfucking story real quick. Once upon a time, there was this group of dusty-ass motherfuckers, created a little group for they-selves, they called themselves 'Odd Future.' These little niggas made a motherfucking tape: Odd Future Tape Volume Two. You know, that ugly ass nigga Tyler, with his bitch ass, I should FUCK that nigga up when I see him . . . nappy ass hair. Left Brain? That nigga ugly as FUCK! Big ass nose? Syd, gay ass . . . puttin' her . . . clit on other bitches' nipples and shit, whatnot. Matt? Big ass, big ass nigga with with some small ass earrings, bald? Mike G, crusty ass? My nigga Earl, ugly as FUCK! Let's have a moment of silence for that nigga real quick. [brief, merciful caesura] Fuck silence, fuck that! My nigga Jasper, dirty fat ass, that nigga's boxers STANK! My nigga Frank? [another meaningful pause, disgust clearly building up in the face of actual talent] Fuck, fuck Frank nigga, fuck you! Taco? Ohhhh . . . young bitch-ass, I should . . . aw, fuck, I hate all these niggas! And you know, that little short, gay, light-skinned nigga Hodgy and that fat ass nigga Domo? Let me jes [blows disdainful raspberry]. C–

The Chap: We Are Nobody (Lo Recordings) "Writing's for cowards/Talking's for men/Cowards write songs/And never do what needs be done." B

Gotye: Making Mirrors (Universal Republic) This Australian-by-way-of-Belgium's music and singing have been compared to Phil Collins, Sting, Peter Gabriel, and Toto -- and this is from his supporters. C+

Claro Intelecto: Reform Club (Delsin) Este intelecto no está claro tanto como vacío. C+

Garbage: Not Your Kind of People (Stunvolume) They swipe the hook for lead single "Blood For Poppies" from, I shit you not, Laura Brannigan, from whom they also could have learned subtlety, or perhaps borrowed a slightly less bonkers mastering engineer. C

Kimbra: Vows (Warner Bros.) Easy to stuff your songs to the gills with arrangement ideas when they're totally empty. C

PS I Love You: Death Dreams (Paper Bag) As I write this letter, over the blare of arena indie in the Lincoln Tunnel . . . C–

This is the 21st installment, (almost) monthly since August 2010, totalling 541 albums. All columns are indexed and archived here. You can follow A Downloader's Diary on Facebook, and on Twitter.

by Michael Tatum

Although this month's jewel comes from a folkie singer-songwriter in his fifth decade of record making, most of the excitement this month is provided by hip hop -- much of it download only, some of it absolutely free, and more waiting in the wings. Which inevitably puts into question the justness and practicality of legislation currently putting a damper on big bad downloaders like myself. To which I would reply, I never bought a record I didn't like -- in advance. For those who feel the same way, but are squeamish about trolling the net for goodies themselves without a little guidance, I'll continue to provide this little public service, almost nearing its second anniversary.

Action Bronson: Blue Chips (Fools Gold/Reebok Classics) "Don't ever say my music sounds like Ghost's shit," Queens' favorite Jewish-Albanian ex-chef rapper warns, and though he refuses to alter that peculiarly similar vocal timbre, new producer-collaborator Justin Nealis (cheekily dubbed "Party Supplies") commands a far more expansive musical vocabulary than Tommy Mas, who provided the beats on Bronson's 2011 download-only debut Dr. Lecter. As such, Bronson sounds less here like a Wu-Tang wannabe than his own man. Launching with an audacious string quartet sans beats, Nealis appropriates old standbys like the Ohio Players and "I Only Have Eyes for You," ventures into left field with Iron Butterfly and "Jackie Blue," and gets downright perverse with a cunningly looped snippet of Dean Martin's "Return to Me" -- all catchy, all propulsive, and musically, this record never lets up. So much so, you might be dismayed how lazily El Bronsonlino falls back on the standard hookers-and-drugs palaver -- you almost want to hit the guy up on Facebook and tell him to pursue some healthier relationships. But having long since bonded with the man behind the character ever since I caught his amusingly low budget cooking show Action in the Kitchen (marveling over a slab of sushi-grade Ahi tuna: "We don't play games -- I pulled it off the carcass myself!" Or, poking his nostrils into a handful of chopped basil: "Smells like my favorite marijuana!"), I'm instead impressed by a vulnerability to which very few rappers will admit. Naturally, he buries it in the usual tough talk and jokey culinary metaphors, but it's there, most notably in this mixtape's painful centerpiece, in which he undergoes a penis extension to win back a first love turned to (sigh) hooking and drugs -- even if Bronson repudiates it as fiction, rapping about your tiny johnson rises to a level of shameful self-deprecation even Eminem wouldn't dare. Not that excuses Bronson for callously demanding that "bitch" to get him drinks. But the reveal, whether imagined or otherwise, provides a rationale worthy of, well, Dennis Coles himself. A–

Allo Darlin': Europe (Slumberland) Although I'm sure she'd covet the opportunity, Elizabeth Morris doesn't need to audition for the next Stuart Murdoch or Stephin Merritt side project -- she can write catchy, winsome songs on her own. But her popping Tallulah into the tape deck on her road trip from "St. Lucia to Surfer's" (about an hour away from each other, if you're curious) only tempts me into pointing out the obvious truth that one talented woman does not equal the Go-Betweens. This has less to do with the bright tunes and well-turned lyrics that she has in spades than the lack of anything to play against them -- maybe she is Grant McLennan in the making, but where's the arch Robert Forster type to play the foil? Where is Amanda Brown providing side commentary on oboe and violin? Where's her "Right Here" or "Apology Accepted?" These may seem like unfeasibly tall orders, but even their 2010 debut's arrangements had a little more kick: brittler guitar lines, hopscotching flute, and a charming duet with the Pipettes' Robert Barry. The musical approach here is comparatively more streamlined, not unlike the Go-B's airy, 1988 16 Lovers Lane, or better yet, McLennan's own 1995 Horsebreaker Star. Even Sheffield's Standard Fare accomplishes more with less -- their Emma Kupa isn't nearly in Morris' league as a songwriter, but lively drummer Danny Beswick and low-rent Johnny Marr impersonator Danny How interact with Kupa to the extent they feel like a band, rather than your basic "singer-songwriter with backup" approach. I guess that leaves me asking myself just how much I love Morris' singing and songs despite her current limitations. Well, how much did I enjoy Horsebreaker Star? A–

Macy Gray: Covered (429) Everyone approves of this messy hodgepodge of alt-pop covers in theory if not in practice, but I draw the line in describing it as "brave" -- in the '60s, the Beatles could cover Smokey, Aretha could cover the Beatles, and the Burritos could cover Aretha and no one would blink. But some people really do think this R&B diva tackling the Eurythmics and Radiohead is akin to an act of career suicide -- in one of this record's three uproarious skits, J.B. Smoove muses that if she really wants to scare her fans, she should go onstage with a sword instead of a microphone and prowl menacingly. Personally, I don't object to her "adventurousness" per se as much as I question her taste in what constitutes as a worthwhile song, but what's surprising is that the songs that work aren't always the ones you'd think -- she turns Arcade Fire's "Wake Up" into a Saturday morning cartoon theme and pointlessly dashes through the Yeah Yeah Yeah's "Maps" precipitando, but corralling her daughter and her daughter's friends for a cheeky cover of My Chemical Romance's "Teenagers," a gem that previously flew over my radar, is funny indeed. Others give up minor revelations -- it never before occurred to me that Colbie Calliat's "Bubbly" concerned cunnilingus, howsabout that -- yet leave you wondering why she bothered in the first place. Gray is such a strong-willed artist that I'm tempted to blame her solely for the fifty-fifty hit-or-miss ratio, but I'm dismayed as well in producer Hal Willner, who couldn't have taken this much of an aesthetic back seat when sorting out songs with Marianne Faithfull. Maybe next time he can slip her some old Dolly Parton records. B+

Madonna: MDNA (Interscope/Live Nation) Twenty years after the Sex book, almost thirty since writhing onstage in a wedding gown on MTV, she's become so fully absorbed into the mainstream it's easy to take for granted how much she loved to provoke, titillate, and scandalize back when she was building herself up into a cultural icon. The transition occurred in the early '90s, following the backlash against Sex and the vastly underrated Erotica -- both, it should be noted, the first projects from her now-liquidated Warners imprint Maverick, thus the first projects over which she had complete creative control: even for the most famous person in the world, a considerable blow to the ego. After that, her record making became a great deal more cautious -- a newborn daughter does rearrange one's priorities, after all -- leaving "transgression" as such to the comparatively more banal Disney dollies who took her place. Happily, this seizes 2005's Confessions on a Dance Floor and 2008's Hard Candy welcome if imperfect regressions to her younger self and slathers them with context -- namely, her nasty split from British film director Guy Ritchie. So thank goodness this "disco-fied divorce record" (to quote Joe Levy) cultivates a lot less emotional maturity than, say, Kathleen Edwards' boringly civil Voyageur -- in the first track, she flashes her tits in front of God; in the second, shoots Ritchie in the head and threatens to force him to be her chauffeur when they meet again in Hell ("I've got a lot of friends there," she reasons). Throughout, she gleefully references her glory days, quoting her old hits, appropriating some Cyndi Lauper, and stages a few cheerleader cheers a la Toni Basil, faltering only when she gets mushy toward the end (though I do appreciate her acutely-observed pointillism metaphor, "If you were the Mona Lisa/You'd be hanging in the Louvre" makes as much sense as "If you were a Big Mac/You'd be served at McDonald's"). The message? There's nothing sexier than autonomy. Nicki Minaj, please take note. A–

Spoek Mathambo: Father Creeper (Sub Pop) Maxinquaye never came across as powerfully onstage as it did on album partly because Tricky didn't always play well with others, but also because dissociative music rarely translates effectively in live settings. Theoretically, the disjointed electrorap crafted by South Africa's Nthato James Monde Mokgata (along with key collaborator Richard Rumney on synthesizers) is designed specifically for darkened nightclubs, juxtaposing jittery, anxious grooves against dark, expansive music. Tune in to the lyrics however, and you'll realize his anomie is a product of his impoverished environment rather than faulty brain chemistry or junk food dependency, and as such his depressive tendencies feel more earned, providing more than enough rationale for a bleak concept album that follows the imagined arc of his life from horny adolescence fumbling for finger pie to a compromised marriage promising nothing but adjoining graves. In between, he chooses waiting tables to turning tricks, spits in the tourists' curried goat and then begs for the scraps, and pays sorrow, tears, and blood for an engagement ring on a wicked track that banishes do-gooding Kanye West and Jay-Z to the realm of feeble, upper-class irony. He doesn't even take respite in music -- the one that begins "No, you don't need to be scared/Of bullets raining on your head" is sarcastically framed by a lithe Mbaqanga sample whose subverted desecration could make tears run down Paul Simon's face. The girl who leaves an imprint of cherry lipgloss on the back of her wrist in the opener becomes an old woman with saggy lips and crusty eyes he can't bear waking up next to by the record's end. And in this couplet, he says more about his world than others could in weighty, book-length commentaries: "I feel like I can't go home/But I feel like I want to go home." A

Rusko: Songs (Downtown) "You see, 'roots music' is creative music," idealistically muses the unidentified Jamaican musician sampled at the beginning of this record. "You understand? Dat means it original, it come from de heart. So whatever's in your heart, and you feel, say, you want to create a different sound, you create dat different sound. So who's to say dere's any boundaries?" In the background, his companions passively grunt their collective approval (one can almost imagine them cloaked in a leaden cumulonimbus of ganja smoke). Unquestionably, this preamble is Leeds musician Christopher Mercer's way of second-guessing his notoriously insular target audience's reaction to this record, who have already invented an admittedly hilarious designation to dismiss his vivacious dancehall/dubstep hybrid: "Bro-step." Pigeonholing the high energy of his music as testosterone-fueled seems slightly disingenuous considering how many female voices still do the heavy lifting, and I wouldn't even consider a crime even if there were any truth to it. I imagine what really rankles U.K. scenesters are the promised "songs" of the album title, which aren't signified in verse-chorus-verse structures so much as in pithy catchprases and demonstrative musical motifs, sharpened by the random noises that supposedly justify this as a separate subgenre (dig that tiger growl in "Opium"). And though I hate to once again bring in Moby as a reference -- as electronica's evolution branches out ever further, every dance musician who colors outside the lines inevitably evokes his influence -- I'm reminded of Everything Is Wrong's "Feeling So Real" and "Everytime You Touch Me," two similarly-minded touchstones to which Moby himself never returned to for inspiration, for a song let alone an entire album. Having said that, I should probably warn you that my favorite track is the one everyone else seems to hate: the slavishly pornographic "Dirty Sexy," much maligned by uptight types on both sides of the pond. Sure, all that "I'm a pimp" stuff is pretty calculated, even cynical perhaps, completely fashioned with American radio in mind (even if American radio is never going to play it). That a sassy woman delivers its catty lyric should provide all the respite from "masculine energy" any anxiety-prone politically correct type should need. A–

S/S/S: Beak & Claw (Anticon) Lamentably (and predictably), Pitchfork's Jayson Greene put indie pop wunderkind Sufjan Stevens at the center of his wrongheaded review, waiting until the second paragraph to mention avant-classical composer/second banana Son Lux, as well as this four-song, download-only EP's true draw, Chicago alt-rapper Serengeti -- the latter, in Greene's estimation, the trio's "wild card," even though of the three, Stevens is the only one not actually signed to Anticon. Granted, the interlaced synthesizers and drum patterns, as perfectly woven as the osier on a wicker chair, resemble Stevens' 2010 The Age of Adz more than anything on Serengeti's résumé, but this still strikes me akin to beginning a film review by praising the set designer rather than the screenwriter. And while no lyric on the frustratingly diffuse Adz pinned down a note of the intermittently beautiful music, here all of Serengeti's stories, beginning with an opener in which two ex-dopers wander aimlessly through the dinosaur exhibit at the Museum of Natural History, provide crucial context. Though all four vignettes share a verbal density that occasionally approaches obtuseness, each thoughtfully explores the often vast gulf separating perception from reality, including the wry, unfairly maligned closer that attempts to humanize Nadya Suleman. "If I could figure out what it was all about . . ." Stevens warbles in a key moment (through effects, to be sure), and Serengeti finishes his thought: "I had the world figured out beyond any doubt." Not that any of Serengeti's spiritually adrift characters have it figured out, either -- that's why Stevens and Serengeti need each other. Well, why the former needs the latter more so than vice versa, but we'll get to that next time. A–

Loudon Wainwright III: Older Than My Old Man Now (2nd Story Sound) Although there's great poetry in Loudon III's observation he's older now than Loudon II when he passed, it's almost certain that Wife I sparked this awe-inspiring song cycle about "death and decay" -- she's the unnamed subject of the poignant "In C," co-author of a revisited old age song they wrote together as kids, and proud mother of Children I and II. More importantly, she fuels the survivor guilt at the heart of the title track, pushing this self-confessed asshole into pondering what he dubs "the heavy shit": namely, relationships between parents, children, ex-wives, and close friends, some whose number has been called, others still twiddling their thumbs in the waiting room, and all appearing on this record in one capacity or another. This in itself is an unprecedented accomplishment in pop music -- the few families that boast talent this profoundly rich wouldn't dare rebuilding their burnt bridges in public, let alone on album. But in fact, familiarity with the Wainwright clan's ongoing soap opera puts that lump in the throat on the touching filial duets "The Days That We Die" and "All in a Family," and cajoling all IV Children and Wives II and III to serve as the Greek Chorus in the flippant up-to-now life story that opens is one of many strokes of ironic genius. Burying the emasculating pain of impotence in two tortuously funny vaudevillian turns is another. The underlying theme -- that a combination of humor and forgiveness gets one through the pains of life -- is no secret. But the extraordinary capper is that underneath it all, the asshole still lurks: comforted only by the hard truth that hellhound on his trail is out to get you and me, too. A+

Honorable Mentions

Amadou & Mariam: Folila (Nonesuch) The title translates into Bamako as "music," which in this highly cross-promoted case doesn't necessarily make the bourgeoisie and the rebel come together ("Dougia Badia," "Metemya") ***

Carole King: The Legendary Demos (Hear Music) I've been waiting for this to happen for years, but I'd still trade most of the six repeats from Tapestry for, oh, her demos for "Locomotion," "Something Good," etc. ("Pleasant Valley Sunday" "Take Good Care of My Baby," "Natural Woman") ***

M. Ward: A Wasteland Companion (Merge) That companion is Ms. Zooey Deschanel, who comforts M. about his inability to sing like Roy Orbison (or write like T.S. Eliot) ("Me and My Shadow," "I Get Ideas") ***

Bonnie Raitt: Slipstream (Redwing) The beneficiary of a slipstream, not the generator of one, and consider the Gerry Rafferty cover and the titles of the two best songs if you doubt me ("Used to Rule the World," "Down to You") **

Rufus Wainwright: Out of the Game (Decca/Polydor) Dreamed of a gay Lily Allen, woke up to a Rufus Wainwright album produced by Greg Kurstin ("Jericho," "Montauk") **

Dr. John: Locked Down (Nonesuch) In which producer Dan Auerbach confuses acid jazz for a New Orleans subgenre ("Locked Down," "Ice Age") **

Trash

Norah Jones: . . . Little Broken Hearts (Blue Note) The cover art was reportedly inspired by the poster for Russ Meyer's Mudhoney (and who knew I would one day type the words "Norah Jones" and "Mudhoney" in the same sentence?), but for some perverse reason, I'm reminded instead of the cover of Linda Ronstadt's Mad Love -- you know, murkily photocopied image, tousled hair, lip gloss typography? The one where she covered Elvis Costello and, er, Little Anthony and the Imperials in an attempt to covet the lucrative "new wave" market? Ah, but the differences between the two musically! For one thing, although Norah is the same age now as Linda was in 1980, the latter's skinny-tie moves were a deliberate ploy to "youthen" her up, whereas Norah is, at long last, merely "acting her age." For another, Linda always styled herself as an "interpretive" singer, splitting her time between rehashing familiar (if not totally obvious) hits of yesteryear and giving greater exposure to up and coming songwriters, while Blue Note signed Norah on the wobbly premise that they would allow her to "develop" her unproven songwriting while supplying her with commercial material in the interim. Now, I wouldn't necessarily argue that Jones has failed on that front -- though how many of today's chanteuses (uh, Diana Krall? the contestants on American Idol?) feel motivated to croon any of her copyrights, I wonder -- but I will say that nothing on this dubiously-touted breakup record is as lively as Linda's embarrassingly forced "How Do I Make You," let alone Adele's "Rolling in the Deep." Brian Burton's wishy-washily atmospheric production style would be a bad match for Jones' meandering melodies in any case, but I'm fascinated by the impersonal detachment in what some call a "confessional" singer-songwriter breakthrough -- "I'm holding on/To a thing that's wrong/'Cause we don't belong/But you like my songs," sounds as dispassionate sung as it reads on the page, and if the songs themselves are this staid, what does that say about the broken relationship they supposedly memorialize? And can you really blame that unnamed fiction writer for running off for that unnamed twenty-two year old? Best in show: "Out on the Road," the only time she leaves the safety of her living room couch. B–

Georgia Anne Muldrow: Seeds (Entertainment One Music) Boosters claim that Madlib emancipates this underground R&B thrush from the incompetence of her own self-production, but even if the results weren't frustratingly ragtag, the artiste would still have much to answer for. A helpmate of the ever-declining Erykah Badu who takes her wardrobe cues from Alice Coltrane circa 1971 and shuns melodies in favor of complexly layered harmonies for which she doesn't have the chops, she's also the kind of noodle head who regards the syllogistically dubious "Why do we kill each other/When we're all the same" as Deep Philosophy. Then, after devoting 3:33 (someone alert the numerologists!) to the subject of "Kali Yuga," she suggests you go and Google it to educate yourself further. Now, I personally think that if you're going to expound for that length of time on any subject (you know, the Mayan calendar, the Age of Aquarius, like that) your listener should be somewhat of an expert by the time you're through. Nevertheless, as reindeer games are my raison d'être, I decided to humor her and hightail it over to that very search engine, and if I had done so before listening to the record, it might have spared me the review: "Kali Yuga . . . is the last of the four stages the world goes through as part of the cycle of Yugas described in the Indian scriptures . . . considered by many Hindus to be the day that Krishna left Earth to return to his abode. Hindus believe that human civilization degenerates spiritually during the Kali Yuga, which is referred to as the Dark Age because in it people are as far away as possible from God . . . A discourse by Markandeya in the Mahabharata identifies some of [its] attributes: Rulers will become unreasonable: they will levy taxes unfairly . . . Rulers will no longer see it as their duty to promote spirituality, or to protect their subjects: they will become a danger to the world . . . People will start migrating, seeking countries where wheat and barley form the staple food source . . ." C+

The Chromatics: Kill For Love (Italians Do It Better) For five impressive songs led by vocalist Ruth Radelet, they make like the xx, after which multi-instrumentalist Johnny Jewel's xy takes over and then they zzzz. B

Zammuto: Zammuto (Temporary Residence) Ex-Books multi-instrumentalist's blank page of a debut proves who got the Times New Roman in the divorce settlement. B–

Estelle: All of Me (Atlantic/Homeschool) Her taste in American boys last time ran to Kanye West and John Legend, this time to Chris Brown and Rick Ross, and the miseducation in her Lauryn Hill-esque skits is even worse. B–

Great Lake Swimmers: New Wild Everywhere (Nettwerk) I'm spreading the rumor they were discovered at a tailgate party for a Fleet Foxes show. C+

Alabama Shakes: Boys and Girls (ATO) I'm not sure if Janis Joplin would second Brittany Howard's declaration that it's more important for rock bands to be "sincere" than "original," but even if those virtues really were mutually exclusive, being painfully sincere is something else entirely. C+

Perfume Genius: Put Your Back N 2 It (Matador) "I will carry on with grace/See no tears, see no tears on my face," this James Blake acolyte emotes weepily, and even if he believed in drums and guitars I still wouldn't believe him. C

This is the 20th installment, (almost) monthly since August 2010, totalling 521 albums. All columns are indexed and archived here. You can follow A Downloader's Diary on Facebook, and on Twitter.

by Michael Tatum

This column's newly expanded format (suggested by Noisecritic's Joey Daniewicz) has presented me with a few unexpected problems. Where once I could merely dump a record under the "trash" heading and wipe my hands clean of it, now I'm forced not only to assign each a letter grade, but also concoct a succinct dismissal to justify it -- a task that might sound easy, yet I've been finding myself at a loss to describe such inexplicably hyped items as Ital's Hive Mind, Grimes' Visions, and Jon Talabot's Fin, even after subjecting myself to more than the requisite five listens. I suppose the best way I could (as a for example) sum up the Ital record for the curious reader would be to attempt a sort of post modern review in which I repeated the phrase it doesn't matter if you believe in him it doesn't matter if you believe in him it doesn't matter if you believe in him for a few pages, like that climactic scene in The Shining, but something tells me you'd rather hear about music more worth your consideration. So would I. Onward.

Air: La Voyage Dans La Lune (Astralwerks) As fans of George Orwell and Disneyland's defunct Adventure Thru Inner Space ride know, what its contemporaries regard as futurism has a nasty way of dating itself very quickly -- in the introduction to his collected short stories, J.G. Ballard glibly recalls how a reader took him to task for describing his poetry-composing computers as operating on "valves" rather than chips and wires, after which the author bemusedly notes he didn't have the foresight in the early sixties to imagine PCs and pagers either. Georges Méliès' 1902 science fiction classic doesn't fall into that trap -- relying more on the whimsical and the fantastic, Méliès ridicules his scientists and scholars, shoots his heroes' rocket into l'oeil de l'homme lune, and populates the moon's surface with little green men. This makes the duo of Nicholas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel, no stranger to beautiful but otherworldly kitsch -- fromage-vert, you might say -- perfect for scoring the restoration of this film's once-thought-lost hand-colorized version. The resulting fifteen minute film can be easily found online and is worth watching to appreciate how well Godin and Dunckel understand their countryman's sensibility -- they decorate the theme for the "Astronomic Club" with mock-regal drum rolls and synth-brass proclamations that lampoon the explorers' befuddlement, while the brief snippet that plays underneath the factory scene (frustratingly absent from the album) rattles with evocative clinks and clanks redolent of hammers hitting anvils. Padded out with material not used in the film, including two tracks featuring the usual vocalists for hire, the track order might initially be confusing, forsaking the film's chronology to sequence the more atmospheric material toward the end. But this is a minor quibble: their soundtrack to Sofia Coppola's 2002 The Virgin Suicides was arid by necessity, as it filled empty space in a dialogue-heavy film, but because here they're providing music to supersede the original narration, they're forced to be more creative in their attention to detail. The result: their most consistently beautiful and beguiling record since the last time they took a safari to the moon, way back in 1996. A–

Chiddy Bang: Breakfast (Virgin) Drexel dropouts whose combined ages barely surpass that of your humble downloader, Chidera "Chiddy" Anamege and Noah "Xaphoon Jones" Beresin came up through mixtapes, one of which brought them to the attention of England's Parlophone Records, best known to you and me as the label that gave the world the Beatles -- perhaps a propos for a duo who claim to have a thing for British shorties and sample such non-R&B entities as Sufjan Stevens, MGMT, and Radiohead. But don't fall under the impression they're arch or arty, even in the slightest: musically, this duo is a nonstop pleasure machine, doling out playful hook after playful hook, mining kiddie pop sources as disparate as Sweden's Icona Pop and British soul singer VV Brown and incorporating them into a seamless, sparkling production style that gives you plenty of sweet stuff to chew on. But speaking as someone who rarely indulges in the meal that nutritionists always remind us is the most important, their aesthetic is less ham and eggs than Count Chocula, especially when you hone in on the lyrics. Although heartwarmed by Amamege's admission in the delightful "Mind Your Manners" that he had a crush on his junior high school principal -- "I guess I was turned on by the leadership," he muses, which I doubt, but okay -- I don't find much evidence of the intelligence that he vows not to dumb down in the title cut. He's clever for sure, but that's slightly different -- I'm not wanting wisdom or enlightenment as much as I am a little imagination, or at least a worldview that extends beyond the mundane pursuit of girls and weed, not necessarily in that order. Certainly, anyone whose list of life goals includes getting high with Keith Richards probably shouldn't have to ponder why the women in his uncomfortably naïve relationship songs keep telling him to grow up. Then again, I was probably a lot like Anamege when I was his age -- only a great deal less witty, warm, and outgoing, all qualities best appreciated on the dynamite "Ray Charles," which turns Anamege's obliviousness with the ladies into one of this year's must-hear singles. And if you're wondering why those qualities can't quite sustain a whole record, fast forward to the finale, in which he vows to go out "hard in the fourth quarter," at least two quarters too late. A–

Karantamba: Ndigal (Teranga Beat) Gambia's Bai Janha is the consummate Afropop journeyman -- as a writer, arranger, and guitarist, his résumé includes Black Star, the Whales Band, Fabulous (later "Supreme") Eagles, and the Alligators. The latter group disbanded, reformed without Janha, and recorded as Guelewar, the band whose 1982 live recording Teranga Beat label founder Adamantios Kafetzis excavated and released as 2011's Halleli N'Dakarou. By this point in his career, Janha had moved on and founded this aggregation, essentially a "school of mbalax" for young, upcoming musicians, which as legend has it beat Youssou N'Dour and Super Etoile de Dakar by two places in Senegal's Zone II Music Festival -- must have been a sensational night. This particular item captures Janha and his charges in a live recording from Janha's Club Sangomar in Thiés, Senegal, and if it's as not as hot as prime Etoile de Dakar, that's not to say it doesn't often come close. As you might expect, Janha's wailing guitar reflects the standard Santana influence so common to West African musicians, and his authorative tenor commands impressive gravity, but in all fairness, this is not his record: the explosive synergy and blazing groove is dominated by the woefully uncredited percussionists, who thump their sabar drums so forcefully they muscle their way center stage for the entire set. I don't know if these nameless players wound up going to medical school or driving taxis. But they deserve far more than the one night they got. A–

The Magnetic Fields: Love at the Bottom of the Sea (Merge) Stephin Merritt must have secretly loathed recording for Nonesuch. Sure, among major labels the patience and latitude extended to its roster, from humoring Jeff Tweedy's migraines to providing a forum for various world music summits, approaches a rare degree of corporate sainthood. Nevertheless, they do exude a certain aura of propriety, the kind that turns up its judiciously-trimmed nose and sniffs: "Yes, I listen to NPR on my drive to work, read The New Yorker on my lunch hour, and take two brisk, environmentally conscious showers every day." This might explain the relative conservatism of most of Merritt's projects for that label, which aside from last year's vault-clearing Obscurities included four soundtracks and the Magnetic Fields' so-called "synthesizer free" trilogy -- note that in the former category, the sole standout is the hilariously macabre Gothic Archies companion to buddy Daniel Handler's Lemony Snicket books, while his proper band's outré Jesus and Mary Chain homage Distortion trumped the limply soft-rock i and the sterile Joshua Rifkin simulation Realism. Now back on Merge, the triumphant return of cheap synths and cheaper jokes suggest the delight of a young boy who's just discovered he can get away with dropping f-bombs without the censure of his parents -- subjects here include premarital sex, vibrators, orgies, putting out a contract on your ex's new flame, running away to join the fairies, and leaving the big city for Laramie, Wyoming, all executed compactly between 2:01 and 2:35. As both a fan and unapologetic dispenser of lowbrow humor, I wholeheartedly approve. But what's missing is that moment when the artist lets his guard down and reveals the vulnerability that sarcasm so often veils -- the only song that approaches anything resembling depth is the gender-fucked "Andrew in Drag," about falling in love with a girl who doesn't exist, because he's actually a guy (and contains the most loving use of the epithet "fag" you've ever heard). Nothing wrong with plumbing the lowbrow depths. But a moment or two of profundity might have made these fifteen quickies as memorable as the sixty-nine he made back before the taste makers crammed him into the respectability box. A–

Nicki Minaj: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded (Universal Republic) "[On] my first album I was very guarded," the artiste revealed to Ryan Seacrest last Valentine's Day. "I felt like I was making music to please everyone else. I had to be politically correct, but on this album I am just creating music, and there's such a big difference." But then, only a breath later, she adds: "I've tried to make it very, very balanced, because I don't ever want to be boxed in, and that's always what drives me. So I made a very diverse album." If those two thoughts read like they contradict each other, you'll have no problem sorting out this semi-disappointing sophomore effort's incommensurate halves. The first seven tracks thrill in the same way that Terminator X's beats and samples once did: they're abrasive and hard to hear, but not because of the music per se, which of course is high grade, juiced-up commercial hip hop, but because of Minaj's voice, which grunts, growls, and whines without sacrificing any of her innately pleasurable musicality. And the joy she takes in allowing her id to run rampant in this sequence is palpable, especially in the much-maligned "put my dick in your face" segment, which I think is hysterical -- first manipulating her voice with studio effects to ugly it up even more, then sweetening her delivery for an uproarious a cappella breakdown: the musical equivalent of what's she's threatening to do. After that, she hits the brakes and cruise-controls through what's basically a quality Rihanna record -- except for the bathetic power ballad "Marilyn Monroe," which dubiously updates Bernie Taupin for the Reality TV generation, fine as such stuff goes, but completely safe. More importantly, alter-ego Roman Zolanski completely disappears, materializing again only for the outlandish, endlessly repeatable, whoop-whooping finale, "Stupid Hoe." "I am the female Weezy," she brags as the song screeches to a halt, and sometimes I find myself marveling how close she comes. I just wished she also didn't have designs to be the Trinidadian-American Fergie. B+

Skrillex: Bangarang (Atlantic, EP) Sonny Moore's impressively swift ascendancy to the dance-pop heap offends snooty John Talabot fans, and I'll say this for him: any hairstyle that resembles a palomino's hindquarters when viewed from an elevated height commits cosmetological crimes so outrageously grotesque they could send Korn's Jonathan Davis into a raging fit of trichotillomania. Fortunately, these follicular quibbles have minimal impact on Moore's electrifying, exhilarating dance-pop -- anyone who champions Sleigh Bells has no right to be slamming this guy. Like that band's Derek Miller, Moore harbors a weakness for '70s stadium rock that he updates with dynamic, sledgehammer beats, although since ravers rather than rockers constitute Moore's target audience, his mallet-blows to the head are more cannily timed, a boon to those mindful of their aspirin consumption. Perhaps absurdly, I'm reminded of R.E.M.'s "King of Comedy," a song I'm certain Moore has never heard, but might serve as a suitable entry point for all of you agnostics out there who still cling to the fallacy, like the chump Moore samples at the beginning of 2010's Grammy-validated Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites, that musical artistry equals two guitars, a bass, and a drum. On this EP comprising seven songs and no remixes -- which in itself signifies as an improvement over his 2010 EP -- Moore elaborates on his industrial-strength minimalism by enlisting numerous collaborators and experimenting with arrangements, unquestionably peaking with the sensational "Breakin' a Sweat," in which the surviving members of the Doors not only re-affirm that people are strange, but also kindly donate a snippet of the Lizard King intoning from beyond the grave about a future in which lone musicians rely solely on "tapes, machines, and electronics." Now, I've personally always regarded as ravers as the present day hippies. But won't those sixties holdouts freak when they not only realize their sainted Jimbo really was a prophet -- was there any doubt? -- but that he forecasted the existence of the very music that sends so many of them into apopletic convulsions? I'm playing it for my father the first chance I get. A–

Sleigh Bells: Reign of Terror (Mom + Pop) The kids are bummed about this one, but hey, aren't the kids always bummed about something? Once a debut lays down the ground rules, noise technicians as severe as these only have a few options when it comes time to return the studio: they can repeat themselves, in which case they'll be accused of playing it safe. They can take the dissonance even further, in which case they run the risk of alienating their audience. Or, they can do as what Derek Miller and Alexis Krauss do here: experiment and branch out, which as you might expect has confused a few of their former supporters, many of whom have taken an annoying amount of smug satisfaction in reminding us Krauss clocked hours in a teen R&B outfit. But if we're to trust interviews over liner credits (which blur the details somewhat) and Krauss contributed more to this record than 2010's Treats, her input actually ups Miller's game, introducing him to such pop conventions as middle eighths, the 6/8 time signature, trickily layered harmonies, deft countermelodies, and even a dash of optimism for "Comeback Kid." Most importantly, the new lyrics speak to teenagers, directly, in their language, rather than condescending to them with stray references to good grades, telephone calls, and what your boyfriend might think about your new braces -- bet Krauss wrote the lyric for the painful morning-after plaint "End of the Line" and post-breakup "Leader of the Pack." Leaving Miller to pursue his perverse dream of transforming himself into the indie rock Roy Thomas Baker, which he damn near accomplishes. A–

Todd Snider: Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables (Aimless) Preferring songwriters to mere storytellers, I was comparatively mild on Snider's 2011 live double -- sure, his sardonic sprechgesang never fails to put his words over, but as with most acerbic guys with acoustic guitars, he often needs musical color to drive those words home. Hence, his proper studio albums are the best place to access his righteous sarcasm and caustic wit, and this ranks as his best since 2006's The Devil You Know. The major advance here is the addition of backing vocalist and violinist Amanda Shires, who saws at her strings as if felling an oak, the perfect musical foil for songs that in one bitter lyric after another address the Americans that have fallen straight thought Mitt Romney's mythical safety net, from a New York banker who rips off an entire school faculty's pension fund to an cranky small-town reactionary who kindly suggests the local rabblerousers improve their lot by picking up trash in the park. Of course, there are scores of Martin-toting wags similarly sticking it to the one-percent, if not with such wit and accuracy. What separates Snider from so many other smartasses is the purposefully uncultivated grain of his music -- compare Jimmy Buffett's original "West Nashville Grand Ballroom Gown," which plays out like a kitchen-sink melodrama and sinks its potent punch line in a morass of strings, to Snider's striking cover, which makes every consonant smack like a slap in the face and doesn't stoop to reducing a young woman's life to a cheap genre exercise. And pithy truisms like "Good things happen to bad people" and "The best revenge is revenge" sting all that much more soaked in the vinegary tang of Snider's out-of-tune guitar. A

Honorable Mentions

Bruce Springsteen: Wrecking Ball (Columbia) Lee Greenwood for Liberals ("Shackled and Drawn," "Death to My Hometown," "Easy Money") ***

Carolina Chocolate Drops: Leaving Eden (Nonesuch) More soulful than a Civil War re-enactment, but equally as unconvincing in that you sense they're not too keen on deviating from the script ("No Man's Mama," "Country Girl") ***

Balkan Beat Box: Give (Nat Geo) Ori Kaplan and Tamir Muskat once again DJ the bar mitzvah of your dreams, but Tomer Yosef's simplified sloganeering suggests a future career emceeing at Reggae Sunsplash ("Political Fuck," "Money") ***

Escort: Escort (Escort) The spirit of August Darnell exits their disco dance party far too early ("Chameleon Chameleon," "Cocaine Blues") ***

The Shins: Port of Morrow (Columbia) Won't change your life, but will certainly perpetuate the one you already have ("No Way Down, "Simple Song") **

Lee Ranaldo: Between the Times and the Tides (Matador) More tuneful than Bill Callahan, but still needs Kim and Thurston for roughly ten changes of pace ("Xtina as I Knew Her," "Shouts") **

Sinéad O'Connor: How About I Be Me (And You Be You)? (One Little Indian) I do not want what I haven't got, I do not want what I haven't got, okay maybe I do ("4th and Vine," "The Wolf is Getting Married") **

Wire: The Black Session: Paris: 10 May 2011 (Pink Flag) And now for something truly perverse: the quintessential frigid art-punks at their warmest ("Drill" "Map Ref. 41°N 93°W," "Two People in a Room") **

Jamie Woon: Ghostwriting (Verve) Sino-Briton Woon plays Craig David to William "Burial" Bevan's Tricky, and guess who's the weaker link ("Shoulda," "Lady Luck") *

Lilacs and Champagne: Lilacs and Champagne (Mexican Summer) Half of the post-rock quartet Grails imagine an aural utopia in which Josh Davis would never dream of trolling record stores to sneak his product into the hip hop section ("Nice Man") *

Trash

The Men: Open Your Heart (Sacred Bones) Superficially, this improves upon last year's Leave Home by bearing down on a fierce groove that rarely lets up -- clearly, touring has tightened these Brooklynites' brutal prog-punk. But while it's hard not to be impressed by the velocity of a fast moving freight train, what sort of goodies do these guys have stowed in their hopper car? Lyrics? Tunes? None that I can discern. They can't even be said to craft hot guitar riffs -- most of the tracks here, especially the longer ones, are really only extended one-chord vamps on which guitarists Mark Perro and Nick Chiericozzi solo, and not especially imaginatively at that. In fact, the only reason they choose "Open Your Heart" as the title track isn't because they want you to think they're succumbing to unguarded vulnerability, but rather because that song is the closest they get to traditional verse-chorus-verse, not counting the totally bizarre Laurel Canyon ringer "Candy," in which they attempt the kind of bone-simple country rock that wouldn't have gotten John Fogerty a quarter mile out of Lodi. B–

Tennis: Young and Old (Fat Possum) I too am charmed by kissy-face newlyweds, but in this case, a record whose most dramatic moment occurs when the two principles miss each other in a train station only goads me into secretly hoping one of them develops a severe drinking problem. B

The Cranberries: Roses (Downtown) These roses are blue, and will never be read. C+

Dierks Bentley: Home (Capitol Nashville) The gag-worthy "Diamonds Make Babies" cements this Arizonian's well-deserved rep as the finest country singer ever to graduate from New Jersey's prestigious Lawrenceville prep school. C+

Belbury Poly: The Belbury Tapes (Ghost Box) Air gets Georges Méliès; Jim Jupp makes like Robert Moog out to score a colorization of Ed Wood. C+

Heartless Bastards: Arrow (Partisan) Humorless actually-the-youngest-of-two Erika Wennerstrom compares life to a marathon for an endless 6:10 and actually titles her "redemptive" anthem "Got to Have Rock and Roll," by which I presume she means '70s AOR -- her band sure does. C+

The Hunger Games: Songs From District 12 and Beyond (Republic) I have seen the post-apocalyptic future, and its impoverished survivors still apparently record their music in sports arenas and coffee shops. C

Wilson Phillips: Dedicated (Sony Masterworks) If they really wanted to be honest to their birthright, they'd re-name themselves "Gilliam Rovell." D

This is the 19th installment, (almost) monthly since August 2010, totalling 499 albums. All columns are indexed and archived here. You can follow A Downloader's Diary on Facebook, and on Twitter.

by Michael Tatum

I was going to extoll the virtues of my new digital, er, "entertainment unit," which plays both hard discs and MP3s, making the additional yuks in the newly expanded trash section possible. Then, my iPod's wake/sleep button stuck. Oh, well -- at least there are ways around that. These are the first of my findings for 2012, with a heavy emphasis on co-ed energy, plus a bit of trash from late, late 2011 I couldn't leave, shall we say, untouched.

Thomas Anderson: The Moon in Transit (Four-Track Demos 1996-2009) (Out There) To give you insight into the quaintness of these "four-track demos," no one records on portable analog studios anymore: technology has evolved to the point where you can not only record dynamite sounding demos digitally, but you can feasibly produce an entire album from the comfort of your own living room and no one would be the wiser you didn't book a week at Sear Sound. So such marks of amateurism as that ungainly drum machine or that seemingly two-stringed guitar might strike some as chintzy to those weaned on Stephin Merritt and Tune-Yards. But in fact, as with Anderson's papyrus-thin tenor and nursery-rhyme-simple melodies, such low-rent conventions only heighten the timelessness of the lyrics, which at their best approach top-drawer John Prine (as Anderson notes of doomed rockabilly minor player Warren Smith: "Could have been a hundred years ago/Could have been today, for all we know"). After a somewhat frivolous instrumental (how many of those did Prine record?) Anderson takes on the Donner Party ("Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah/Good one boys, now fill my plate") and Harry Houdini ("What if she screams, 'My God, it's really real?'"), but also tries his hand at more modest sketches: a transvestite babysitting uncle, a former Humble Pie groupie, the perils of following in Fred Gwynne and Boris Karloff's footsteps. But the song that hits the hardest, both musically and lyrically, undoubtedly hearkens back to this former Oklahoman's small-town ennui, a rationalization for a bored high school kid spinning his wheels: "Hear my roar from miles around/Nothing else to do in this dumbshit town." A–

Bhi Bhiman: Bhiman (Boocoo) A busking graduate of the San Francisco BART station, this Sri-Lankan singer-songwriter reminds me of no one more than Ted Hawkins -- his stridently percussive strumming and warmly commanding tenor suggest the experience of someone who knows he has only a few chance seconds to capture your attention before you board that 8:30 train. In fact, although Bhiman overdubs most of the instruments himself, many of the arrangement touches -- hand claps, vibraphone, double bass -- could all conceivably be reproduced on a street corner without the benefit of amplification. Even so, he relies so heavily on texture, atmosphere, and sublimated rhythm that I'm curious what he could accomplish with the help of someone like Tchad Blake, who might have transformed Bhiman's stately pulse into something more scintillating without sacrificing the artiste's innate naturalism. Nevertheless, Bhiman's inventive music is far more postmodern than anything Hawkins ever dared -- he processes one of his many Wall Street reprimands so that it sounds like an old 78, while he nicks the melody for that perhaps overly optimistic retiree from the traditional lullaby "Hush, Little Baby." And the amazing "Kimchi Line" doesn't concern the train you take to your favorite K-town restaurant, but rather a convict imagining away his time in a North Korean prison. Not exactly Ted Hawkins material, is it? A–

Burial: Kindred (Hyperdub, EP) Having generated no major music since 2007's watershed Untrue, killing time with two EPs purposely issued under the radar only in download and vinyl formats, another cavalierly distributed obscurity may strike the impatient as more premature Burial. Certainly, any of the tracks from last year's unobtrusive Street Halo EP could conceivably have been folded into either of William Bevan's regular-release albums as filler -- fine experienced as background music, but too noncommittal and indecisive to justify a standalone release. But this time around, sputtering breakbeats and stacatto keyboard figures grab your attention early and refuse to let up, sustaining an impressively high level of energy for two tracks lasting almost twelve minutes and one almost eight, cresting on a wave of astounding momentum that never once bursts over the dam nor collapses in exhaustion before it reaches the shore -- Bevan even peppers what few rest breaks he allows with the unsettling sound of needles ominously skipping back and forth in out-grooves. Much can be said about the fascinating multipartite structures, cleverly repeated motifs, and occasional moments bordering on the ecstasy that raves and religion merely promise. But I marvel in how Bevan's pretensions condescend neither to his audience nor the house music they love: disembodying those divas from their original contexts and releasing their essence skyward as if doves in a cathedral, he's less outside a tradition than a true believer devoted to bringing that tradition closer to God. Of course, whether or not the mysterious Bevan actually promulgates any religious beliefs, conventional or otherwise, is doubtful. I certainly don't. But no matter whether you spend your Saturday nights on the dancefloor, your Sunday mornings in church, or your entire weekend purveying the outside world from the privacy of your living room couch, this is an incantation whose power you can believe in. A

Cloud Nothings: Attack on Memory (Carpark) With major help from his incendiary new band -- especially pitiless drummer Jayson Gerycz -- this indeed improves upon the wiry lo-fi rock of Dylan Baldi's 2010 one man EP: the music is more developed, the noise more articulate, and the reedy vocals slightly more muscular. But with the ad hoc band still slightly embryonic, having only recently been assembled for touring purposes and until now unproven in the studio, the choice of Steve Albini as a producer is somewhat questionable. Nobody questions Albini's technical proficiency -- his abrasive aesthetic is both singular and unmistakable -- but by his own admission, he tends to set up shop, press record, and stay out of the artist's way. So while this burns and blisters as mercilessly as In Utero or Surfer Rosa -- undeniably the touchstones Baldi aims to evoke -- Kurt Cobain and Black Francis' musical visions were so strong they didn't need much intermediary tinkering, which is why they could get away working with someone so laissez faire in his production style. One wonders if someone with a more applied approach might have pointed out to Baldi that, for example, the dirge-like opener wastes too much time getting started, grinding away for three and a half minutes before shifting upwards to the brutal climax that justifies the song's sluggish tempo. But between the song titles -- "No Future/No Past," "Stay Useless," "Wasted Days" -- and Baldi's sardonic admission "No one knows our plans for us/We won't last long," one gets the sense that not only does he no longer consider this band merely a way for him to kill time between classes, but the songs are his way of triumphing over his own boredom and complacency. No wonder he fixates so much on Nirvana and the Pixies -- he's an heir to a grand tradition indeed. A–

Lana del Rey: Born to Die (Polydor/Interscope) From "Leader of the Pack" to Tom Waits, fatalism has always had a place in rock and roll. But as a product of sincere expression it often indicates an immature worldview, as an invention of cynical contrivance it smacks of base audience manipulation, and either way rarely succeeds in reflecting the way the world really works. The former Lizzy Grant however, falls into neither trap. Shrewd enough to surmise she would never hit the big time under her own name, she adapted an alter ego not only to fascinate the fickle blogosphere, but also because it provided her a medium in which she could explore fatalism ironically, as an explicit subject, an aspect of her art which has oddly gone unnoticed in the United States, even at Pitchfork, where they see irony in music the same way Fundamentalist Christians see the face of Jesus in convenience store breakfast sandwiches. Owner of a highly sophisticated, thought-through vocal style that reveals the otherwise decent bonus tracks on the "Deluxe Edition" as the juvenilia they probably are, Lana del Rey passively torches from an alternate universe where good girls live for the thrill of Bacardi chasers, slot machines, red nail polish, open-mouthed kissing, and wife-beater undershirts, who wait out their old man's release from Rikers by sipping Diet Mountain Dew through a plastic straw while leaving the Jesus on the car dashboard alone. The first six songs are pop perfection. After that it's somewhat more hit or miss, but even so each song will grab you by hook or by (ha ha) crook if you put in enough time, especially in regards to Grant's phrasing: the way she shortens the "i"s in the word "vitamin," or coos the phrase "like a fuckin' dream I'm livin' in" so sweetly you'll have to consult the lyric sheet to verify what your ear's not quite sure it's heard. Lindsay Zoladz completely missed the mark when she wrote, "Even when Del Rey offers something that could be read as a critique...she asks that we make no effort to change, escape, or transcend the way things are" -- what does she expect, a coup on the order of what Randy Newman did in 1974 when he singlehandedly solved America's race problem? Ruing the loss of the real-life middle school friends she lost when Daddy sent her to rehab -- which actually ends the record on an appropriately poignant note -- is one thing: it's the only moment in which she imbues her subject with the touch of the genuine. But when Del Rey asks that bad boy, "Do you think we'll be in love forever?" she has no idea what to expect. Lizzy Grant on the other hand knows for sure the answer is no. Get it? A–

Ani DiFranco: ¿Whose Side Are You On? (Righteous Babe) I agree with the consensus that after ten years, DiFranco has finally cured herself of Joni Mitchell's Disease, the artistically crippling malady that deludes its victims into thinking that her highly suspect jazz pretensions supersede their unassailable (but highly specific) songwriting gifts. Perhaps the dire political climate convinced her to forswear the posturing and get back to business, but writing about politics has always been tricky, even for those with instincts as comparably as sharp as DiFranco's. Her Florence Reece appropriation hits all the right notes -- corporations, stolen elections, the not-so-free market, and so forth -- but the titular slogan has become as empty a platitude to the left as, oh, "Buying Ani DiFranco albums means the terrorists have won" is to the right. I cheer her on when she bullet points the rationale for the Equal Rights Amendment and admire how she poignantly incorporates abortion in her painful homelessness song, but even if it's intended as a joke, I wince when she attributes her "balance" to her astrological sign (because horoscope readings only reinforce patriarchy, don't you think?). And while the doobie-on-the-front-porch rumination "J" at least sets itself up to be somewhat unfocused, it's criminal that she aligns an insight as astute as Obama "could be the next F.D.R./But instead he's shifting his weight" next to the Weekly World News-worthy fear that street drugs are entering our water supply (according to WebMD, prescription pharmaceuticals represent a far more worrisome threat, and even those still appear in negligibly low quantities). She reminds me of a vegan acquaintance I once had several years ago, who while well-informed on most subjects, kept insisting that dairy farmers disguised blood-contaminated cow lacteal by utilizing it for chocolate milk. Then again, I never always agreed with Chuck D either, and even at her most trenchant, DiFranco never fails to radiate warmth and empathy, both in her deft singing and underrated guitar playing. Tipping the scales (like Libra, ha ha) is the wise, knowing "Promiscuity," which DiFranco defines as "research and development." Where was that line when I was in college? A–

Imperial Teen: Feel the Sound (Merge) A decade plus past toiling on the major label treadmill and regrouping only when the spirit is willing, these San Franciscans remain one of indie rock's longest running bands, and none of their albums disappoints tune-wise. But if you think tunes are their reason for existing, I say subject yourself to a little test. Listen to 2007's excellent The Hair the TV the Baby & the Band, which begins with a perfectly serviceable "Be My Baby" cop via drummer Lynn Truell, and compare that to the punchy, unstoppable "Ivanka," which jumpstarts 2002's galvanic On. Now immerse yourself in the breathless rush of this album's glossy opener "Runaway" and ask yourself if, like the B-52s before them, this band's music bursts with so much life because these two gay men and their female rhythm section divide their time equally between discos and rock clubs. Although they playfully dirty up such two dollars words as "palindrome" and "affidavit," you may be disappointed initially by the lyrics, which adhere primarily to simple rhymes and automatic tropes: "Book the time, set the tone/Something borrowed, something sewn," preceded by the even more nonsensical "Are these feathers meant for down?/Are these letters meant for noun?" But they structure their songs thusly mainly because they prize rhythm above all else, though every now and then they subvert clichés for a cheap laugh, from "go in, go out" to "I could be you and you be me," topped by my favorite, "If I had my way, my way again/It would come in a spray." And the bracing music pulsates with so much sexiness, whether you're male or female, gay or straight, you'll feel its charge. And for those who like their clever a little more obvious, there's the catty "Last to Know," which concerns a doomed affair with a closet case stashing "steroids in the cabinet" and saddled with "a trophy wife with benefits." Me, I'm hoping it turns out to be about Rick Santorum. A–

Prinzhorn Dance School: Clay Class (DFA) Although this husband-wife post-rock duo's 2008 debut veered precariously close to performance art territory, the audacious "Anthrax" cop that opens this follow-up announces their ambition to re-create the classic Gang of Four sound with half the personnel. It can't be done outside the studio, of course -- although they've toured by themselves with a shared, modified drum kit, the tenser, springier, more sophisticated rhythms this time around demand someone with two hands and undivided attention. Bassist Suzi Horn, who rarely adventures beyond rudimentary single-note lines, is still the weaker link, reminding us once again how lucky Dave Allen was to apprentice in that disco covers band. But while on the debut she clung to those root notes like a child to a teddy bear, here her confidence has increased enough so that she fights a little against the beat, and Tobin Prinz has replicated Andy Gill's choppy signature so masterfully it more than compensates. Initially chagrined that they sang/chanted/hectored primarily in unison rather than playing off each other like King/Gill, I accepted happily that perhaps they don't have that kind of adversarial relationship. True, the album begins with the couplet "I'm glad you're here/Building on sand," which I'm assuming references their marriage, described later as a "fleeting pact" and a "loving prison." But when they jointly attack the "Usurper" that dares come between them, you'll have no doubt where their loyalties lie. A–

Standard Fare: Out of Sight, Out of Town (Melodic) The few critics that know this Sheffield power-pop trio unfairly dismiss them as "twee," but that shortchanges energy and spirit even more in evidence here than on the fine 2009 debut The Noyelle Beat. Bassist Emma Kupa's winsome alto, which dominates over guitarist Danny How's affably conversational baritone, is surer of itself this time around, while How's tuneful six-string cascades and arpeggiatons underscore his debt to Johnny Marr, although he doesn't shy from crunch and crackle when drummer Andy Beswick bears down on the tempo, which thankfully occurs often. With violin and trumpet making occasional cameos, this would be their maturity move, and there's not an unmemorable tune in the bunch. But while they may be dead set on growing up musically, their relationships are still stuck in high school. Kupa's dig at "Older Women" is irresistible, but she lets off that cougar chaser too easily -- he's not interested in the thrill as much as he is in being mommied, something made clear by the lovely separation ballad you'll be caught short to discover begins with the couplet, "I'm not Darth Vader/Luke, I'm not your father." The issue? She's going out for the night with her friends. For the night. I suppose this is a step up from The Noyelle Beat's love interests, one of whom was fifteen (what was that about older women?) and another whom lived an ocean away in Philadelphia. But when Kupa sweetly sings "You're not five years old" -- a line you'd expect would be sarcastic reading it on paper -- the forty-year-old married man listening wonders why she doesn't dump the simp and search for an equal. A–

Honorable Mentions

Schoolboy Q: Habits and Contradictions (Top Dawg) Appreciate his zeal for sex, but if he wasn't always so blunted he might not be reduced to treating sex as some sort of rare event ("There He Go," "Raymond 1969," "Hands on the Wheel") ***

Paul McCartney: Kisses on the Bottom (Merge) Finally as cute as he's always wanted to be, in part because he no longer has the youthful energy to shove his cuteness down your throat ("More I Cannot Wish You," "It's Only a Paper Moon") ***

Dr. Dog: Be the Void (Anti-) Toby Leaman should ditch Scott McKicken and lobby to replace either Taylor Goldsmith or Matt Vasquez in Middle Brother ("Lonesome," "These Days") ***

Hospitality: Hospitality (Merge) Björk and Sebastian, except would you believe it's the former who needs to dial down the twee? ("Friend of Friends," "The Right Profession") **

Nada Surf: The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy (Barsuk) Melodies like diamonds, though the charisma is so devoid of sparkle I wouldn't blame you for mistaking them for cubits zirconium ("The Moon is Calling," "Waiting for Something") **

Kathleen Edwards: Voyageur (Zoe/Rounder) It's like they tell you in therapy: never follow an ultimatum with a bunch of ballads ("Empty Threat," "Change the Sheets") **

The Little Willies: For the Good Times (Milking Bull) Psst, Norah -- "Jolene" wasn't a fucking Childe Ballad ("Fist City," "For the Good Times") *

The Caretaker: Patience (After Sebald) (History Favours the Winners) Has clearly mastered embalming, now should try his hand at cremation ("When the dog days were drawing to an end," "I have become almost invisible, to some extent like a dead man") *

Wiley: Evolve or Be Extinct (Big Dada) Grime kingpin confuses his own phyletic gradualism with punctuated equilibrium ("Boom Blast," "Link Up") *

Wilco: iTunes Session (Anti-) Although the Nick Lowe cameo makes me sad, it does point out the philosophical superiority of "You gotta be cruel to be kind" over "You gotta know how to die to learn how to live" ("Born Alone") *

Trash

Craig Finn: Clear Heart, Full Eyes (Full Time Hobby) Hold Steady albums work when they do -- I'm thinking particularly of the one-two punch of Separation Sunday and Boys and Girls in America -- when Craig Finn fights to make himself heard over Tad Kubler's guitars and Franz Nicolay's keyboards. Because Kubler and the now-departed Nicolay have been the primary architects of the band's music, this record finds Finn not only in the novel position of having to devise tunes himself, but also leading and arranging his backing band, two highly specialized skills for which he has up to now shown no perceivable knack. As a result, the band mostly chugs along anonymously while Finn delivers his latest missives from the lapsed Catholic front in a passively subdued sprechgesang -- the difference between drunkenly careening into a confessional and blandly wishing "Peace be with you" to the stranger on your right. Regardless of what he claims in song, these days he doesn't learn his lessons from Freddie Mercury or Johnny Rotten -- more like Jackson Browne. B

The Weeknd: Echoes of Silence (free download) Musically, the latest transmission from the House of Buffoons is sharper and edgier than Thursday, itself sharper and edgier than the debut (only eleven months ago, my how time flies). Unfortunately, in this context that's not a plus -- much like Michael Jackson de-evolving from "Billie Jean" to "Dirty Diana," the upped testosterone levels only make Abel Tesfaye's innate gynophobia that less forgivable, and that he chooses "Dirty Diana" for his first cover only illuminates his hypocritical damnation of any woman who sluts it up as much as he does (and by the way, Michael could hit those notes without the benefit of Auto-Tune, though I hope retaliatory testicle squeezing is responsible for the bum note Tesfaye blurts at the song's climax). Although Tesfaye's observation that his latest conquest needs money for a face lift at least encourages me he's an equal opportunity perv (and here I thought he limited his penthouse parties to minors), I wouldn't exactly rank "All that pain you feel/You can tell we ain't makin' no love" high in a list of the all-time great come-on lines. Plus, I'm spreading the rumor that downloading this little item gives you a dangerous virus. The virus? Herpes. B–

Sharon Van Etten: Tramp (Jagjaguwar) A forty-five minute swooping contest between Sharon's voice and Aaron Dessner's guitar that neither seems happy to win. B–

Cate LeBon: Cyrk (The Control Group) Evoking Nico a lot less than she does Lætitia Sadier, she satisfactorily explains her "abnormal fixation with death" to BBC Wales by citing "early experiences with a string of pet deaths." C+

Bahamas: Barchords (Jagjaguwar) Toronto singer-songwriter Afie Jurvanen makes like John Mayer channelling Santo & Johnny for the purpose of scoring jeans commercials, which I'm sure are already in negotiations. C+

Laura Gibson: La Grande (Barsuk) Postmodern "country," because without the prefix and quotation marks the mediocrity of the songs would be (even more) obvious. C+

First Aid Kit: Lion's Roar (Wichita) Not to say these Swedes don't nail the twang -- but why do they insist on accenting all the wrong words? C+

Howler: America Give Up (Rough Trade) Sure, they're influenced by the Strokes -- the Strokes of Angles. C

Keepaway: Black Flute (Greedhead) I have no problem with stoner rap, but stoner rock is another story. C

Rick Ross: Rich Forever (free download) Dozens of ways to rhyme the word "nigga," often with the word "nigga" itself. C

This is the 18th installment, (almost) monthly since August 2010, totalling 473 albums. All columns are indexed and archived here. You can follow A Downloader's Diary on Facebook, and on Twitter.

by Michael Tatum

For the last few months, I've been toying with the idea of devoting entire Downloader's Diary columns to individual artists. My objective would be to cover all "relevant" discography (with the word in quotes a hint to prejudicial discretion), rounded out with compilations that would augment the artist's story to my satisfaction. My first entry in this regard may strike many as downright perverse, but there really is a rationale. Artists like the Beatles or the Clash I might (might) be able to pull off exerting very little brain power -- I wanted my first few overviews to be of artists with whom I had some familiarity but a few gray areas, a little understanding but enough question marks that it would present itself as a kind of challenge. As KISS happens to be a childhood pleasure of mine -- 1976's supposedly seminal Destroyer, along with Elton John's Greatest Hits and Paul McCartney's Band on the Run, was one of the first records my doting parents bought for me -- they seemed like a natural for my initial wide-scale foray. For those who like to construct shopping lists -- you know, those who read this stuff because they actually want to get some use out of it -- there will be more of these to come very soon (along with the first column dedicated solely to 2012 releases on March 1st). Until then, enjoy this post mortem for a moldering corpse most people would rather keep buried. As Gene Simmons would probably agree, sometimes grave robbers have more fun.

KISS: KISS (1974, Casablanca) As brilliant as they were asinine, this Brooklyn-based hard rock phenomenon could only have happened in the '70s. And not just because they apotheosized that decade's gluttonous excesses either -- their "aesthetic" (for lack of a more appropriate word) both mastered and fused two very '70s concepts: the Grand Funk approach (in which catchy riffs supplanted actual songwriting) and the Three Dog Night approach (in which cheery singing put over jingly tunes). That's why complaints they later de-evolved into a "kiddie band" don't wash -- clearly, masterminds Chaim Weitz (bassist Gene Simmons) and Stanley Eisen (rhythm guitarist Paul Stanley) coveted that lucrative market from the outset. One could even argue that their respective singing styles identified with two very adolescent archetypes: Simmons' porcine bellow evokes a swinish teen whose trough requires constant servicing, while Stanley's histrionic shriek suggests a young boy in a permanent state of premature ejaculation. And then, the gimmick that became their trademark, that ridiculous makeup -- one can see how a lonely teenager might have found them the perfect band to preen in front of a mirror, tennis racket in hand. Yes, the playing is sloppy, the mix sludgy, and every single one of Peter Criss' beats directly pilfered from Charlie Watts ("Deuce" for example, bastardizes the break in "Satisfaction"). But their mind-boggling chutzpah is rewarded with three stone classics: the elemental bad girl anthem "Strutter," the not-so-inscrutable blowjob rationalization "Deuce," and the slow grinding "Firehouse" (though wouldn't the correct colloquialism be "Get the fire department," or "Call 911?"). But my reservations don't rise merely from the embarrassing Bobby Rydell cover, the space-filling instrumental "Love Theme from KISS" (ah, the 70s), or even the innate childishness of the whole enterprise, but rather two prescient harbingers. "Black Diamond," a laughable paean to a prostitute, needed the Replacements' brutality to illuminate its offensiveness. And while it was one thing when the Beatles yoked the falsetto-hooked "Please Please Me" to a polite demand for oral sex -- some reciprocity was at least assumed, right? -- when Simmons yokes the falsetto-hooked "Nothing to Lose" to a rumination about putting his wang in "the back door," there's no sense he's in it for anything else other than dominating some doe-eyed groupie. Unless of course, he's into pegging, of which we have no corroborative evidence. B

KISS: Hotter Than Hell (1974, Casablanca) Released a scant nine months after their debut failed to take the world by storm, this is more of the same -- or more accurately, less. Having blown their precious wad first time around, they scramble, salvaging rejects and writing on the fly, and boy does it show: the muddy, compressed mix notwithstanding, between the plodding rhythms, indifferent lyrics, shameless posturing, and aggressive use of cowbell, this inadvertently supplied the blueprint for '80s pop metal orthodoxy. Aside from awkward gaffes arising from some peculiarly forced rhymes (i.e. Paul Stanley describing his old lady's need to hump the next door neighbor as a "change of pace") and a few stray left-field musical devices (the girlish woo-hoos that hook "Got to Choose," the surprising key change in "All the Way") there are no ideas here, musical or otherwise, that aren't telegraphed way in advance. The sole exception is the bizarre "Goin'Blind," the tragic tale of a doomed romance between a ninety-three year old geezer and a sixteen year old girl that Gene Simmons (surprise, surprise) does not play for laughs. Guess emoting under that clown makeup makes a man take his statutory rape paeans seriously. C+

KISS: Dressed to Kill (1975, Casablanca) Turn your coke-smudged nose up at former Casablanca label head Neil Bogert all you want -- I say he saw the future. He correctly intuited that the sludge rock that the band slogged through on Hotter Than Hell was a dead end, that the key to the remainder of the decade lay in instant gratification, in the short, sharp, fast: basically, punk and disco. The latter of course, became Bogert's bread and butter, even if he wouldn't have touched the former with a ten-foot toot straw. Although Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder would later execute this sort of pleasure more exuberantly (not to mention more humanely), this is where Bogert made his first move toward reclaiming the bubblegum pop he churned out for Budda -- in fact, because the spiffier tempos ensured the album clocked in at roughly half an hour (about five minutes shorter than the debut), the label was forced to fib about the running time of the songs on the back cover. True, the band still has delusions of their arena rock betters -- they zing Zeppelin on the pointless "Battle of Evermore"-inspired introduction to "Rock Bottom" and the lumbering "Moby Dick"-inspired "She." But slicked down and tricked up, this showcases these callous hedonists at their most eminently listenable, and it helps that their sexual escapades are so outlandish that it's pointless taking them seriously, from the under aged groupie soliciting "Room Service" ("Baby, I could use a meal"), the girlie smorgasbord of "Ladies in Waiting" ("The ladies are so inviting/And the meat looks hot tonight"), and the existentially sleazy, endlessly quotable "C'mon and Love Me" ("She's a dancer, a romancer/I'm a Capricorn and she's a Cancer"). Now if only those were all on the same side as the well-deserved three-time loser of"Two Timer" and the undeniable (note the fudged spelling, like that on hotel signs and theatre marquees) "Rock and Roll All Nite." Nevertheless, their most appealing platter. I mean, really -- how many bands of this, er, quality finally get it half-right on their third album in twelve months? B+

KISS: Alive! (1975, Casablanca) An absolutely astonishing document, beginning with arena rock patter startling in its puerility ("I was talking to someone backstage before, and they were telling me there's a lot of you people there that like to drink vodka and orange juice!") and its mind-numbing predictability (if the band has a song in its repertoire called "Hotter Than Hell," and the lead singer howls excitedly how it "look like one of those hot nights," what song do you think is coming up next?). Of course, connoisseurs swear such hokum actually constitutes part of the "experience," just as surely as the dry ice and fire-breathing -- in a typically glowing review, Greg Prato testifies to their "youthful energy" on this record's AMG entry. Which doesn't make a lick of sense -- that phrase implies to me upstarts like the Pistols or the young New York Dolls. KISS, older and more calculated, strike me as professional to their very core, in the vein of the Coasters or Steely Dan -- which isn't a criticism really, merely an observation (because let's face it -- if those smoke bombs don't detonate at precisely the exact moment at the beginning of "Deuce," someone could really get hurt!). This leads to my other point, the re-recording controversy, which makes sense for guys who took great pains to hide their ugly mugs underneath face paint and is something I'm not even going to begin hashing out. But it's telling how safe they play it -- suspiciously avoiding the comparatively knottier material on Dressed to Kill, they instead spend ninety minutes head-banging familiar warhorses until all that's left is a moist paste, ultimately sounding pretty much exactly as they do on the studio versions, right down to Stanley's "spontaneous," Beatle-esque exhortations on Simmons' numbers. The crucial exception would be Peter Criss' dunderheaded drum solo on "100,000 Years" -- when Stanley returns to the lyric after rote now-everybody-over-here clichés, his "I'm sorry to have taken so long/It must have been a bitch when I was gone" is as close as these staunch anti-intellectuals have ever come to an art joke. So why aren't the screaming teeny-weenies in the audience laughing? Oh, that's right. B–

KISS: Destroyer (1976, Casablanca) I'll concede this is their most "tuneful" record. I'll even acknowledge "King of the Night Time World" is an unsung shit rock classic -- delightfully dumb teen-centric lyric, indelibly memorable guitar solo, galloping drum line, and most importantly,fast tempo, all suggesting the handiwork (or at least intervention) of a smart producer, in this case Alice Cooper/Lou Reed knob-twiddler Bob Ezrin. But on everything else, he proves that the band has no stupid idea that he isn't capable of dumbing down further. He botches the other first-rate song here, the electric "Detroit Rock City," with a moronic wrap around story that asks the musical question: "Could 'A Day in the Life' have been improved by a gunshot in the first verse?" He plasters the torpid "God of Thunder" with not only crunchy synthesizers, but the screams of -- I kid you not -- under aged boys (perhaps primed to be thrown into a hell-pit where Jerry Sandusky lies in wait). Then he hires full choir for Simmons' umpteenth groupie song, which swipes its title from Dickens (alas, not Bleak House) and its opening theme from Beethoven. The halfway decent teen anthem "Flaming Youth" (just how flaming?) gets a calliope, while Gene Simmons' S&M plaint "Sweet Pain" is scored for a chorus of background singers who sound way too cheery to be there (though I love the way Simmons qualifies the line "You'll get to love me" with "anyway I say"). Then comes the first of many "Rock and Roll All Nite" rewrites, then the Peter Criss schmaltz fest "Beth," which a lot of young girls lost their virginity to -- and most of them probably desperately want to get it back from. Though you're free to question sincerity of any song in which the wife waiting at home has to compete with a band specializing in songs about fucking on the road, they counteract that with a closer in which Paul Stanley asks that star-struck fan with the black sunglasses if she loves him as much as his limousine and seven-inch leather heels. I suppose her answer is probably similar to my own qualified affection for this overblown record: of course I love you. But only when I'm shit-faced plastered. C+

KISS: Rock and Roll Over (1976, Casablanca) After years of lobbying, lead guitarist Ace Frehley finally convinced the KISS camp for Eddie Kramer to produce them, and objectively you can appreciate the difference -- aside from the cynical "Hard Luck Woman," which is to "Maggie May" what "A Horse With No Name" is to "Heart of Gold," this streamlines their sound, beefing up the basic guitar rock of the early records. Although I miss earlier idiosyncrasies -- the quirkiness of Dressed to Kill, and to some extent even the griminess of Hotter Than Hell -- they certainly hit upon the turbo-charged formula that briefly made them the greatest selling band in the universe. But although "finesse" isn't an attribute normally associated with this band, I find the tracks that work best here are the ones where Gene Simmons shows off his comparatively lighter touch -- the cheeky "Ladies Room" and the future Dr. Pepper advert "Calling Dr. Love" ("You're not the only one I've ever had?" What will Mr. Pibb think?). Much of the rest however -- particularly Paul Stanley's contributions -- pummels rather than rocks, which doesn't bode well for their increasingly vile sexual politics. Even without the sinister threat "You can run, you can hide/But you can't get away," one could alter the verbs on "I Want You" as an incitement to rape with the song's sentiment basically unchanged. B–

KISS: Love Gun (1977, Casablanca) Although it falls apart completely after the somewhat iconic, single-entendre title track gets its unsavory business out of the way, fans consider this to be the original lineup's last "classic" album. But even without Peter Criss puppy-dogging earnestly after Bob Seger or Paul Stanley's Crystals desecration, you can still hear the band beginning to fracture, resulting in a record far less of a piece than Rock and Roll Over. Compare Stanley's side-openers (both Neanderthal chest-beaters in the classic KISS fashion) to Ace Frehley's passé Foghat tribute, or to Simmons' anachronistic, endearingly sleazy "Christine Sixteen," which purveys the kind of tightly-wound retro-pop Cheap Trick themselves would abandon by decade's end. For all of Simmons' vaunted business savvy, Stanley -- who would controversially commandeer a disco single on their next studio album -- had a better grasp of the changing marketplace, which explains why he dominated them creatively (for lack of a better word) in the forthcoming decade: both "Love Gun" and "I Stole Your Love" point directly toward Bon Jovi and Poison, the future he and Simmons helped create but would struggle finding a place in. So given that legacy, you can appreciate why this last gasp might make some true believers get dewy-eyed. On the other hand, who needs nostalgia? As my friend Ali likes to rib every time I bring the title of this album up -- "Get it? He's talking about his cock." C+

KISS: Alive II (1977, Casablanca) The standard quibbles still apply, with a few bonus developments. Their second live double in two years, their eighth release overall in almost four, you can hear the exhaustion in their husky singing, perhaps why Paul Stanley's double magically appears whenever Eddie Kramer can craftily sneak him in. Poor Peter Criss croaking on top of the pre-recorded track for "Beth" is only marginally more listenable than the horrid "bait" tracks on side four, although sloppy thirds like "All American Man" and "Rockin' in the U.S.A." sound like Toys in the Attic next to Paul Stanley's grotesque Dave Clarke Five cover. And emphasizing the pronominal switch in "Makin' Love" -- from "doin' things that we wanna do" to "doin' things that I wanna do" -- leaves no ambiguity as to who's shoving what where during the after party. C–

KISS: Double Platinum (1978, Casablanca) Appearing at the exact moment these live-action cartoons became parodies of a parody, this solves the KISS problem I bet you didn't even know you had: how can I immerse myself in unadulterated (i.e. completely un-adult) prepubescent rawk classics like "Deuce" and "Strutter" and "Rock and Roll All Nite" without having to suffer through all of their B level dreck? Unfortunately -- and I know this shocks you coming from a band renowned for its integrity -- they cheat big time. Setting aside the two unavoidable Peter Criss-sung hits, the revved-up arena rock that made them famous would have overwhelmed their quirkier and/or swampier earlier material had they adhered to strict chronology. So instead they focus on the heavy rockers, hire Sean Delaney to remix almost everything, toss the results in a blender, and pretend their clunkier early albums never happened. Admittedly, it sounds pretty hot coming out of your speakers -- "Detroit Rock City" in particular benefits from deep-sixing Bob Ezrin's bullshit. But perversely, I actually miss that clunkiness, which at least helped distinguish them from their commercial competition. And I also miss their gooier confections -- not crap like "Beth" or "Hard Luck Woman," but all that hard candy on Dressed to Kill (represented only by three tracks) and actual singles like "Christine Sixteen." Maybe if they had widened the scope a bit, this record might have lived up to its failed titular self-prophecy, which admittedly is much ballsier than Single Platinum, or We're Pretty Sure This Is Going to Sell More Than Gold. B

Peter Criss: Peter Criss (1978, Casablanca) One can only assume Vini Poncia was awarded the honor of producing KISS' next proper studio album as a thank you for being saddled with the embarrassing task of assigning his name to this legendary turkey. Then again, it was Poncia who lobbied Stanley and Simmons to relieve Criss of his drumming duties and replace him with studio musician Anton Fig, so this experience must have been quite an onerous experience indeed. One can almost imagine Criss sitting Poncia down pre-production to explain his vision: "I really liked that Ringo Starr solo album you worked on -- but could we, you know, not make the words so complicated?" The titles tell the story best: "Hooked on Rock and Roll," "That's the Kind of Sugar Papa Likes," "Kiss the Girl Goodbye," "You Matter to Me," all but the latter dating back to Criss' pre-KISS project Lips. Graded leniently only because at least the innocently mangled idiom "rain or come shine" popped up on this album rather than Gene Simmons'. D

Ace Frehley: Ace Frehley (1978, Casablanca) Neil Bogert's half-ingenious, half-batshit insane brainstorm to release four KISS solo records on one day would have been unthinkable without each member on board. Unfortunately, by this point the four of them didn't have enough material for one album as a unit, let alone as individuals. Assuming the assertion that this was the "most critically acclaimed" is trustworthy -- I have no interest in combing back issues of Creem to find out -- I suppose one can intellectually wrap his head around this record's theoretical appeal: without straying too far from the usual guitar-bass-drums, Frehley's record is also the least calculated of the four. Of course, "least calculated" is also my polite way of saying "completely empty-headed," and Frehley's four-note range, complacent backing band, and the chintzy, clap-with-one-hand un-funkiness of his undeserving hit single don't help. And the lyrics! They're almost like random word-associations he temporarily laid over as scratch vocals until something more "interesting" popped into his legendarily spaced-out mind: "I'm the kind of guy/Who likes feeling high/Feeling high and dry/And I like to fly/I'm your kind of guy/And girl, I'm not too shy/And I want you to fly/So I think you ought to try." Of course, you could counter that Clapton wasn't exactly Percy Shelley in the lyricism department either -- he let that expressive slow hand do the talking. But what can you say about a guitarist when the only thing you derive from his solos is that he practices his scales -- a lot? And sometimes when the tapes are rolling? D+

Gene Simmons: Gene Simmons (1978, Casablanca) Gene Simmons has an arsenal of moderately witty comebacks to those daring to challenge his principles. "Sure we've sold out," he would say to detractors accusing KISS of de-evolving into a "kiddie" band. "We sell out every night!" Still, I can't help but wonder if deep down, the guy craves acknowledgment -- his annual tirade against the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination committee seems awfully defensive. But if you want incontrovertible aural proof of his need to be recognized as some sort of musical genius, look no further than this record, often described as the most "eclectic" of the four KISS solo records, although a more appropriate descriptor might be "ungodly pretentious." Granted, Simmons is a more reliable song factory than Ace Frehley -- he didn't need to enlist Russ Ballard for his hit single, probably dashing off the formula-pop "Radioactive" in a matter of minutes. And given that his idea of a clever pussy metaphor is "Tunnel of Love," his pretensions don't exactly extend to lyrics almost entirely cribbed from the letters section in Penthouse. But the inappropriately ornate arrangements, the backup soul-ettes, macabre orchestra swells, and precursory cries of "hosanna" define an ambition completely unbeholden to taste or good judgment. Otherwise, why cut a new version of "See You in Your Dreams" without realizing that its failure on Rock and Roll Over wasn't that of his band mates, but rather that the song was limp to begin with? And how to react to that stomach-turning cover of the Disney chestnut "When You Wish Upon A Star" -- the arrangement of which makes George Martin's orchestration on "Good Night" seem restrained -- when Simmons has already admitted a few songs prior his idea of wish fulfillment are the low rent bitches that drop in on him at the Holiday Inn? (Was Ramada all booked up?) Be careful, ladies -- I hear he sneaks out at 4 A.M. and sticks you with the hotel bill. C–

Paul Stanley: Paul Stanley (1978, Casablanca) Neither a boneheaded retreat to the basics nor a feeble stab at eclecticism, Stanley's entry into Neil Bogert's tetralogical gambit doesn't exactly stubbornly adhere to formula so much as slather it with drama -- lots of long intros underscored with acoustic guitars. Yet this is where Stanley cements his status as the Godfather of Hair Metal -- note how many of the songs here, including failed single "Wouldn't You Like to Know Me," get across on his multi-tiered vocal tracks, much as Def Leppard and Bon Jovi would on their smashes in the coming decade. Not an accomplishment to be proud of, I suppose -- but definitely of socio-cultural significance. Other points of interest: "Hold Me, Touch Me (Think of Me When We're Apart)," which makes Christopher Cross sound like Black Sabbath, and "Move On," a mother's advice number in which "shop around" becomes "fuck around." Caveat venditor, either way. C

KISS: Dynasty (1979, Casablanca) By 1979, every hard rock band in existence was piggybacking onto disco, conventional wisdom being if the Stones could do it with "Miss You," they could too. Certainly, after that four solo album debacle, these guys needed a little promotional rescue. So would it surprise you if I told you that the much-derided "I Was Made For Loving You" should be fondly remembered as a cornball classic? Unlike "Beth," essentially directed toward all those wimmin waiting for their man to come home (quite possibly in the kitchen making dinner -- just like "Summer Breeze!"), Paul Stanley strategizes on this song to "lower" himself to the level of the band's theoretical female audience: emoting a lyric that promises sexual equality, delivering it in a "feminine" register, and prancing around to the music that gets them, er, hot. Granted, solely to get into their pants and pocketbook, but the effort alone counts for something. Elsewhere, the changing tenor of the times has the band confused -- the other halfway decent song here, "Sure Know Something," could be Michael McDonald-era Doobie Brothers gussied up with "edgy" power chords. The overall effect is a little like that of the Beatles on the White Album, albeit at a different level of talent -- less two Georges and two Ringos than, oh I don't know, Pete Best, Billy Preston, and any two members of Badfinger of your choice. Questions to Ponder, by Gene Simmons, tellingly down to a meager two tracks: "Is it my fortune or my fame/Is it my money or my name/Is it my personality or just my sexuality/What is my charisma?" Answers: no, no, no, what the hell are you talking about? C

KISS: Unmasked (1980, Casablanca) The cover comic, which chronicles a fictitious journalist's quest to photograph the band without their trademark makeup, not-so-subtly suggests a fear already stirring in the back of Stanley and Simmons' minds: the only way the band's publicity machine would ever again approach the level of their late '70s zenith would be to wipe off that makeup for good. As for the glossy music inside the sleeve itself, I have considerably less to say, although this being 1980 they've given up sounding like the Bee Gees in favor of the Cars. The ghastly exception would be the (extremely) minor hit "Shandi," which is to your local roller rink what "I Was Made For Loving You" was to Studio 54. C–

KISS: Music From "The Elder" (1981, Casablanca) After two years of allowing outside influences to sway their artistic direction -- to the consequence of critical jeers and declining record sales -- the band re-united with Destroyer producer Bob Ezrin, recently on a high from major commercial success (is there any other kind?) with Pink Floyd's The Wall. Secluding themselves for several months, they refused to allow Casablanca executives to listen to their work in progress, which evolved from straightforward rock and roll songs into an incomprehensible fantasy/sci-fi "concept" record, the vapid "libretto" of which reads like Joseph Campbell's third-grade doodling. Don't ask me about the cockamamie plot -- something about a young man readying himself to undertake a quest that doesn't actually occur until the record ends, and they lard with epigrammatic howlers swiped from Tolkien, George Lucas, and, let's be honest, Greg Lake (a sample: "Only you are the manchild/You are the light and you are the way"). Ace Frehley soldiered along begrudgingly, outvoted by Stanley and Simmons, with new drummer Eric Carr a null vote as per his contract (I tell you, you gotta love these guys). Ezrin later demurred that his titanic cocaine habit massively compromised his musical judgment at the time, but unfortunately, Stanley and Simmons, both straight edge types, can't exonerate themselves so easily -- one gets the feeling that had their fortunes been reversed, had this pompous, badly-played and grandiosely-arranged prog-rock found an audience, they would have ecstatically subjected us to a movie, comic book, TV series, and laser light show over the Parthenon. Instead, it's remembered as the worst album with Lou Reed's name on it. Yeah, that's right, Lou Reed, one year away from the triumphant The Blue Mask, who took time out to barf up this bon mot for the abysmal flop single "A World Without Heroes": "A world without heroes/Is like a world without sun." Cher covered it in 1991. E

KISS: The Best of Kiss, Volume 2 [20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection] (2004, Mercury) Even from his head-banging constituency, Gene Simmons isn't exactly the kind of guy who arouses much sympathy, but this compilation from KISS' Mark II period makes me ponder the identity crisis he must have been suffering through during the eighties. KISS was his baby, and divorced from his genre, wiped clean of his makeup, and mocked for the pretensions of both of his solo album and Music From "The Elder," his involvement with the band decreased, at least in terms of studio hours clocked. Without question, he became less central musically from 1982's Creatures of the Night on, contributing less material, and responsible for only one of the singles here, 1982's totally lame "I Like It Loud" (which I swear Steven Tyler ripped off and snazzed up for "Love in an Elevator"). So while the band would never again sink to the nadir of "Elder," they also would never risk anything remotely as ambitious, settling complacently into pop metal hegemony by adapting to the current fashion: flashy guitar solos, booming drums, cavernous reverb, football-stadium choruses, and the occasional spate of heavy breathing. Note that while the first entry in the band's Millennium Series contains six top 40 singles from their "classic" period (seven if you count the double-sided "Beth/Detroit Rock City" as two), this sequel contains only one: the worst, the vapid power ballad "Forever," co-written by Paul Stanley with none other than Michael Fucking Bolton, who owes Stanley for his mullet -- and so much more. C

This is the first of a potentially long series of single-artist guides. All columns are indexed and archived here. You can follow A Downloader's Diary on Facebook, and on Twitter.

by Michael Tatum

With no less than six artists tinkering with old material and with one of my grafs a re-think of an honorable mention, the theme to this month's return to quality music is "remake/remodel." Still plenty of items on the back burner, and I'm vowing not even to touch any 2012 music until March or so. Regardless, you can look forward to some surprises in the early months of next year. Hope this will tide you over until then -- and provide some gift-giving ideas, for whatever holiday you celebrate.

James Carter: At the Crossroads (Emarcy) When Francis Davis dismissed this as hawking "which-way-back-to-the-chicken-shack clichés," my first thought was that he should listen to more Jimmy Smith, not to mention dig into a big greasy plate of pan-fried chicken -- especially since to my ears, his 2011 Carter of choice, Caribbean Rhapsody, spends its hour plus lounging under an umbrella at the George Town Hilton Garden Inn. In any case, Carter's approach to the organ trio isn't exactly Jimmy Smith, whose distinctive, be-bop influenced style is a great deal more straightforwardly percussive than Carter main man Gerard Gibbs, who favors choppy stabs and swirls of sound. Besides, Carter's bag has never been re-creation as much as re-invention, and here as elsewhere, his band follows the leader -- you could wince at the mawkishly sustained Hammond B-3 chord that introduces Gibbs' solo on Sarah McLawler's ballad "My Whole Life Through," or you could chuckle at how it pokes fun at such sudsy conventions before Gibbs explores more adventurous harmonic territory. No denying the vocal numbers are less successful, however -- nothing wrong with Carter's manly honks on "The Walking Blues," but both the band and Miche Braden overplay the punch lines (check out Jesse Powell and Fluffy Hunter's sexily understated original), while Ellington's "Come Sunday" and the traditional "Tis the Old Ship of Zion" completely betray the concept, dragging the record's tail half into an unwarranted sanctimoniousness not quite dispelled by a slightly unfocused Julius Hemphill reading that takes its sweet time getting started. But ultimately, there really isn't a real concept to betray, other than a vaguely loose aura undeniably stemming from Carter's knowledge that between his two 2011 records, this is the one less likely to shift major units. I say if you really want a concept, how about a blowing session with his quintet, like the scorching numbers I've seen popping up over YouTube? That would be a draw -- rather than all this in-between shit. B+

Class Actress: Rapprocher (Carpark) Once just another "meaningful" folk-pop singer-songwriter, former coffeehouse habitué Elizabeth Harper spent years struggling to get noticed under her woefully bland government name. Then, along came fairy godfathers Mark Richardson (producer) and Scott Rosenthal (engineer/multi-instrumentalist) with a battery of analogue synthesizers and bippity, boppity, boo -- like Madonna and Lana del Rey before her, she transformed herself into a coquettish, raven-haired ingénue, making like a Victoria's Secret model on her fetching album cover. True, Harper is less strikingly photogenic than either of the chanteuses just named (only adds to her appeal, I say) but she bests her electopop exemplars by actually possessing the musical chops necessary to layer her insouciant soprano with beguilingly tricky harmonies. Lucky for her, because one minor limitation of this music is that analogue synthesizers offer very little variations from their factory pre-sets, so although the songs are musically richer than the Human League and Depeche Mode records they take off from, the flat, brittle timbres offer frustratingly minute sonic variation from song to song. So if that makes Richardson and Rosenthal's medium the black and white movie, Harper's lithe singing is the image-softening, Vaseline-smudged lens, while her clever script slyly surpasses standard come-ons: "You made me late for work," we've heard that before, but "you made me late for church?" "I don't need to know any more than you tell me?" "Do you think that I care what we talk about when we talk about love?" Actually, I'm sure she does -- even though she blows the inevitable moment when Electropop Law mandates her to deliver a ballad revealing the heart of gold she keeps beating under the covers. Stanislavski would have seen right through that one. A–

Dessa: Castor, the Twin (Doomtree) This should be the final nail in the coffin for any purist cynically dismissing Minnesota's Maggie Wander as NPR's rapping white girl of choice. Here, she elaborately reworks three tracks from 2005's False Hopes EP and six from 2010's A Badly Broken Code, adding the excellent new "The Beekeeper" -- while rejecting programmed beats and samples in favor of her touring band, with guest spots from not only live string players but a goddamn mandolinist, too. The result is luxurious, grand even, especially if you compare the growth in Wander's singing to the tentative delivery of her EP -- angry moments turn conciliatory, edges elide until what's left is the grace that was always burning brightly underneath: For the Roses with beats, rhymes, and life. The trade off however, comes at the cost of sacrificing the dynamism of the original recordings, as well as the freshness of her initial conception: marrying hip hop innovations (i.e., those rejected programmed beats and samples) to basic singer-songwriter conventions. Take away those innovations and you're left with conventions. This is often beautiful and always intelligent even though it stays within the lines she no longer crosses. But like the "Mineshaft" theme she hammers home in two separate songs, we've been before and we know where it goes: it goes down. B+

Fruit Bats: Tripper (Sub Pop) Other than geographical proximity, or the possibility that James Mercer's perfectionist ethos has alienated every other alt-identified musician on the Pacific Rim, I don't quite see how Fruit Bats leader Eric Johnson fits in with the Shins. True, both bandleaders specialize in meticulously arranged indie rock that looks over its shoulder to pre-punk pop forms. But while Mercer's tightly wound arrangements underscore the ambitions of a guy hell bent on hightailing it out of Albuquerque for Portland even if it meant leaving his girlfriend behind, Johnson's more spaciously elegant aesthetic is as definitively Southwestern as the Meat Puppets or Georgia O'Keefe, the bemused observations of a wide-eyed wanderer whose nomadic ways stem from curiosity, restlessness, and boredom. Fittingly, he populates his lyrics with a motley cast of "broken down punks and zeros" that includes truck-hopping Tangie and Ray, long-suffering cutie Dolly, "the Mayor of Nowheresville," and titular hippie anachronism Tony, who defends his can of beans against an army of spectral snakes in a combustive, hallucinatory fit. And in a nice narrative arc, although Johnson inhabits the voice of a detached narrator rather than an active participant in the ill-fated cross country trip that opens the record, by the Supertramp tribute near the end, he joins that banished exile on her lonely exodus out of town. I wish that exodus didn't take Johnson off the edge of the record, however -- he should save instrumental doodles for his soundtrack work, and it would have been wiser to honor his late songwriting friend Diane Izzo with his own song, rather than meander through her lazily "spiritual" "Wild Honey." But I say any album that claims escape for its underlining theme ending with a song about a picture of a bird rather than the usual ho-hum ode to the bird itself has its pomo bases covered. A–

Note of Hope: A Celebration of Woody Guthrie (429) From Bragg/Wilco to the Klezmatics, the lyrics will be the primary draw on any of Nora Guthrie's projects utilizing her father's unfinished songs, but the window dressing does make a difference. The only constant on this long-gestating multi-artist compilation is bassist and arranger Rob Wasserman (whose fluid style curiously recalls that of Fernando Saunders, whose boss Lou Reed delivers the rueful "The Debt I Owe"), so more than usual, the success rate here hinges upon the delivery of the vocalists. However, while I have no problem with classy types like Kurt Elling, Madeline Peyroux, or (especially) Nellie McKay, I'm not sure if Woody Guthrie would have recognized his voice in theirs -- putting aside their respective political instincts, they neverthless represent the flip side of the dichotomy observed in Ani DiFranco's piece, in which the delicatesstan patrons she observes (and Studs Terkel later brillliantly inhabits) speak the "deep sound" and "full tone" she recognizes as her own. Note also that the lyrics that Elling and Peyroux appropriate are more generalized (and McKay's more sentimental) than DiFranco's and Terkel's more profoundly class conscious entries. But although I'd rather hear Todd Snider ruminate about "High Lonesome" than Chris Whitley, I'd say the remaining odds and ends are well matched to their collaborators, especially the two traditional singer-songwriter plaints. Lou Reed's fingerprints are so perceptible on "The Debt I Owe" it could have been sandwiched in the middle of Ecstasy and no one would have questioned its authorship. And while Jackson Browne normally foregrounds his solipsisms with that vanilla baritone, here his straightforward singing actually works to his advantage -- bereft of the histrionics he couldn't pull off anyway, he makes the lyric the star for fifteen spellbinding minutes. A–

Pusha T: Fear of God II: Let Us Pray (Decon) Initially slated for official Def Jam release until it was sent back for seasoning, this impressive salvage job of the original download-only mixtape demands a point by point scrutinization of the improvement. Four tracks dubiously designated "freestyles?" In the wastebasket. The intro appropriating that hackneyed snippet of Scarface? On the cutting room floor. The "Bohemian Rhapsody" misfire, with its dubious claim that if Wesley Snipes had only followed Pusha's sage advice, Snipes might have avoided time in the slammer? Discreetly disposed of. And the obscenely flaccid Kanye West fellatio plaint "Touch It?" I'm sure everyone involved is pretending that never happened (I know guys, it's hard to get it up when everyone's looking). That leaves by my count five holdovers from the previous record, and while they're undeniably the best tracks, they're also shuttled toward the end of this reshuffle, which should tell you how confident Terrence Thronton was with their quality to begin with. So although the seven superior new tracks are still too Michael Bay to suit me -- especially compared to Hell Hath No Fury's grainy film noir -- the level of care in both the music and lyrics are, as "Changing of the Guard" puts it, "closer to clarity, not parody." What's missing isn't self-reflection -- Lord knows one would be a fool to expect that from this candid narcissist -- but a second dimension. I'm thinking primarily here of his brother Gene, whose upcoming memoir details the Clipse's extracurricular drug dealing, Gene's own descent into depression, and his subsequent return to his religious upbringing. Now I know that scenario is as old as the hills, and with their former manager having plead guilty to masterminding a multi-million dollar drug ring, perhaps suspiciously timely in its convenience. But contrast that with Terrence's somewhat overstated acknowledgment of his culpability in "inner city genocide," his declaration that he's beyond redemption, that only God knows his pain even if the shorties he bangs don't, that he'd stop pushing kilos if we treated him like Michael rather than Tito -- it's cartoonish in comparison. Based on this work, I'd say he's Jermaine plus, and should coax Gene to play "Malice" one more time before the inevitable stint in the ministry. B+

Wire: 12 Nov 1978, SO36, Berlin (Pinkflag) It makes sense that any band with Justine Frischmann's attorney on speed dial would seek control over the torrent of concert bootlegs fans have been circulating for years. As so often is the case however, the question of how much of a difference any of these records might make a difference in your life boils down to utility -- even the 2000 San Francisco gig reviewed below doesn't come close to matching the ferocious set that blew me away in Los Angeles one month previous, despite reprising the same songs and running order. This record however, isn't about nostalgia -- it's a record with a mission. Reprising only the title cut from the masterful Pink Flag, skipping obvious recent high points like "I Am the Fly" and "Outdoor Miner," and ignoring ubiquitous drunken requests for "12XU," the band instead heroically rescues material from Chairs Missing and 154 by severing themselves from both Mike Thorne's intrusively arty production and their own increasingly arch studio personality. Beginning with a scorching "Practice Makes Perfect" that ironically outlines their mission statement (Newman: "Never for money, always for love." Lewis: "A-ha-ha-ha-ha!"), they serenade their appreciative Berlin audience with the Anglophillic confusion of "French Film Blurred," rip through "Former Airline" and "Two People in a Room," and even thoughtfully supply a ponderous intermission with eight minutes of "A Touching Display." I'm sure there are forty versions of these songs already in their catalog, and their legal bootleg series will probably unearth forty more. But having struggled for years with their late '70s material, this album is a tiny miracle -- undoubtedly where I'll return when I want to hear the most beautiful song ever written about Centerville, Iowa. A–

Wussy: Funeral Dress II (Shake It) I suppose to some degree, recommending a record no longer obtainable through legal channels smacks slightly of cruelty. So until Shake It prints more than the five hundred copies they drummed up for Record Store Day, you'll have to procure this from the usual dubious online sources. As well you should -- usually when artists travel down the unplugged route, it's at a point when they lack the juice for high-powered electricity anyway. But Lisa Walker and Chuck Cleaver aren't emoting these eleven wonderful songs for a respectful, middle-aged VH-1 audience -- they knocked this off in eight swift hours, most likely returning afterwards to their day jobs as a waitress and a stone cutter (the latter gig referred to in the opening verse of "Airborne," although I never noticed). And it's a classic nevertheless -- because 2005's Funeral Dress marked their first time in the studio as a band, to some degree they were still sorting out their sonic identity. That certainly signifies as one of its strengths, but by the same token, it shares less aesthetically with the other items in their catalog, which means this redux sounds less like the Ass Ponys and more like the fractured partnership this band would eventually become. Additionally, Lisa Walker returns to this material with increased confidence -- note that six years ago she stuck closely to Cleaver's melodies, but here damn near dances on top of them. And because the acoustic setting foregrounds the lyrics, the songs are imbued with more emotional range as a result. Funny -- here we thought Wussy was their breakup album, or maybe Strawberry. Turns out they were unraveling right from that very first song: "It was just another Thursday, like any other Thursday, except that we were through." Which only points up that for bands like this, there are no ordinary days, musical or otherwise. A

Wussy: Strawberry (Shake It) Robert Christgau aptly dubbed this Cincinnati quartet's self-titled third record as "brutal a relationship album as Richard and Linda Thompson's Shoot Out the Lights." But what happens when two world-class singer-songwriters break up romantically but not musically, mutually intuiting their best chance to make a mark professionally is with that ex-lover they're leaving behind? This record springs from the hard truth that falling in love on the job makes for a frustrating mess -- you may not sleep in the same bed or come home to the same one bedroom apartment, but you're stuck toiling away in the same studio, glaring at each other from opposite sides of the stage, making awkward small talk in the tour van. Tough new drummer Joe Klug also produces, and probably functions as mediator/therapist -- he certainly lets principals Chuck Cleaver and Lisa Walker bash each other with foam bats on the galvanic "Pulverized," and supplies empathetic undertones to the majestic ballad "Grand Champion Steer." "Do you love me or not?" Chuck asks, sitting in the back seat, riddled with doubt. Toking on a "breathing apparatus," she nonchalantly replies, "Sure," while leaving notes to another man for him to see: "You're pretty good, but hard to find." Her boxes packed and stacked around his feet, she removes the ampersand that once connected their names, as he observes: "Looks like I was the last to know." Meanwhile, he holds on by incorporating her vocals into every song he's written about her. She performs her own numbers alone. He passes the time, up in the air. She's changing her mind -- she's already there, and gone. A+

Neil Young: International Harvesters: A Treasure (Reprise) One of a string of "unrepresentative" '80s records that didn't endear the unpredictable artist to David Geffen, it took three years for 1982's Old Ways to hit record stores, and by the time it did, Young had altered its track listing so much he referred to it in interviews as a "sequel" to its original incarnation. As with his Devo detour and rockabilly debacle, his fans reacted with a combination of bewilderment, confusion, and disbelief -- Harvest and Comes a Time were certainly "country influenced," but between the traditional honky tonk structures, Waylon Jennings cameos, and Gogi Grant cover, musical questions on the order of "Are There Any More Real Cowboys?" came off completely disingenuous from a troubadour with real roots in Winnipeg coffeehouses. Maybe that's why his seasoned Nashville crew sounded so stiff on record -- maybe they didn't take his "back to the country" shtick seriously, either. By this tour however, they had loosened up considerably, reworking not only two tracks from Old Ways, but a pair from Re-ac-tor, and two oldies: a lively "Are You Ready for the Country?" and a listless version of "Flying on the Ground is Wrong" that points up how Richie Furay's squarer, sincerer tenor enhanced much of Young's Buffalo Springfield-era juvenilia. Though I'm rankled by the embarrassingly jingoistic cheers for American car manufacturing at the top of "Motor City" (guess they missed the line about that domestic car turning out to be a piece of crap), there's no denying the draw of the unreleased material -- how much top drawer stuff does this guy have lying around in his vault anyway? Highlights unquestionably include the spirited song for his newborn daughter, the sly David Geffen rationalization "Nothing's Perfect," and the wild, blistering "Grey Riders." But the real charmer is the utterly slight "Let Your Fingers Do the Walking," an unabashed throwaway which inhabits Nashville conventions (corny puns, two-step rhythms) with aplomb, yet without condescension -- which is probably why the set list selection from Old Ways tops out at two. A–

Honorable Mentions

Deer Tick: Divine Providence (Partisan) A little too anxious about proving he's more Paul Westerberg than Stephen Stills ("Let's All Go to the Bar," "Funny Word," "Miss K.") ***

Wire: 02 May 2000, Great American, San Francisco (Pinkflag) "I shift the blame/To the guy on the barstool/With the cheap ass tape recorder" ("Silk Skin Paws," "12XU," "Drill") **

Lydia Loveless: Indestructible Machine (Bloodshot) If only her tunes were as indestructible as she pretends to be ("More Like That," "Steve Earle") **

Crooked Fingers: Breaks in the Armor (Merge) Makes me yearn for the days when he feigned ignorance of minor chords, not to mention acoustic guitars ("Typhoon") *

Connie Smith: Long Line of Heartaches (Sugar Hill) A paradox: a relief from 2011 Music Row because it anachronistically hearkens back to Music Row 1971, yet had it actually been released in 1971, its dearth of top shelf material would have been (even more) obvious ("Ain't You Even Gonna Cry") *

Trash

Kate Bush: Director's Cut (Fish People) Like spiritual daughter Tori Amos, Bush attracts legions of acolytes who swear vociferously by her entire output, and hopefully one day one of them siphons from that output the dynamite compilation she no doubt deserves -- with the possible exception of her the fine 1978-85 EMI collection The Whole Story, none of her records lives up to its lofty literary and musical ambitions from beginning to end. So in a way, I'm grateful for these remakes and re-workings of songs from 1989's The Sensual World and 1993's The Red Shoes, because it inspired me to a burn a disc of the original recordings for the purpose of comparison, and perhaps even alert me to winners that I had missed. And indeed, I was completely won over by the tart "Song of Solomon" ("Don't want your bullshit/Just want your sexuality") and the gorgeous elegy "Moments of Pleasure," two excellent songs that failed to make on impact on me eighteen years ago. But while the 1989 version of "The Sensual World" was the hottest thing this once-emotionally repressed teenager had ever heard -- the siren song of the saucy librarian who would take my spark in her hand and whisper mmm yes in my ear -- this remake, approved by the Joyce estate and retro-fitted with Molly Bloom's famous monologue from Ulysses, not only proves that she knew more about the erotic than Joyce did, but also that her voice was better equipped to evoke that eroticism when she was young. Similarly, the new versions of "Moments of Pleasure" and the waiting room masterpiece "This Woman's Work," both slowed down and stripped to their essence, are completely robbed of their magic -- when Bush devotes a couplet to the sense of humor she doesn't have, boy is she not kidding. I mean, if you re-record eleven songs under the pretense that you've learned more in the two decades since their first release and the end result is longer by ten full minutes, how much have you really learned? C+

Architecture in Helsinki: Moment Bends (Downtown)

Gabe Dixon: One Spark (Fantasy)

Dubioza Kolektiv: Wild Wild East (Kool Arrow)

Iron and Wine: Kiss Each Other Clean (Warner Bros.)

Man Man: Life Fantastic (Anti-)

My Brightest Diamond: All Things Will Unwind (Asthmatic Kitty)

Over the Rhine: The Long Surrender (Great Speckled Dog)

S.C.U.M.: Again Into Eyes (Mute)

Veronica Falls: Veronica Falls (Slumberland)

This is the 17th installment, monthly since August 2010, totalling 428 albums. All columns are indexed and archived here. You can follow A Downloader's Diary on Facebook, and on Twitter.

by Michael Tatum

My original plan for this column was to switch gears somewhat and perpetrate my own version of Robert Christgau's annual Turkey Shoot (the last of which appeared in the Village Voice in November of 2004), but then I realized that metaphor might offend mopey Matthew Herbert, the auteur behind one of this month's most offending items. So call this the inaugural installment of my own annual tradition, the Downloader's Diary post-Halloween trick or treat bag: you rang my doorbell thinking I would give you Wussy or Das Racist, and instead I gleefully sent you glumly away with Superheavy and the Field. For me however, it doesn't just boil down to a dozen plus excuses to be sarcastic and sarcastic some more. I've always assumed that most people who read this column can probably already hear with their own ears what's good and what isn't -- in that regard, I've never felt like I offer anything new. Instead, I'm fascinated with the why, which for me anyway, is at least as worthwhile exploring with records you hate as it is with ones you love -- isn't that one of the reasons music criticism exists in the first place? If that rationalization doesn't cut it, there's always next month, which I can tell you for damn sure will not be repackages and reissues. (No, really.)

Trash

James Carter: Caribbean Rhapsody (Emarcy) Everything changed for this jazz great and multi-reed threat after 2004's Live at Baker's Keyboard Lounge. A showcase for fellow Detroit musicians and a project of personal significance to Motor City native Carter -- and a pretty good record if you ignore Gerard Gibbs' atypically mawkish synth workout on "Soul Street" -- Atlantic withheld its release for three years, until quietly dumping it out on Warners with little fanfare. Up to that point of course, the mercurial soloist (and candid egomaniac) had released six superb records on DIW and Atlantic, with most of his records for the latter centered around "concepts" -- make-out music, Django Reinhardt, duets with his mentors -- but following his falling out with Atlantic, hopping in frustration from label to label, his sensibilities split in half. His loose, noisy side he reserved for quirky, quickly-recorded blowing sessions -- live spots, that odd Pavement tribute record, and his two organ trio albums, including last month's At the Crossroads. Meanwhile, he relegated his "concepts" to bewilderingly tame, but more heavily-promoted, crossover sops to the dinner-jazz market that he clearly covets but will never win over, a category that includes his leaden Billie Holiday tribute and now this, a "concerto for saxophone and orchestra." Although sometimes on the otherwise fine At the Crossroads Carter feels like a guest artist on his own record, he says more with the incisive one-note jabs of "Oh Gee" and the cacophonous squelches on "Aged Pain" than the meaningless runs of sixteenth-notes that composer Roberto Sierra scripts for him here. But what really boggles my mind is how this in any way connects to Caribbean music -- what little syncopation the arrangements allow, like the herky-jerk figures in the opener "Ritmico," are choppy and disorienting, while pieces like the weepy "Tender" are pure glop, less Sketches of Jamaica than maybe some focus group-developed, cross-hybridized Muzak filtering unobtrusively into a high-end Cayman Islands resort. The "Soprano Epilogue," a Carter solo turn which I'm happy to report does not feature Kathleen Battle, is a sad reminder of everything he's capable of. B–

DRC Music: Kinshasa One Two (Warp) I may have overrated Damon Albarn's 2002 Mali Music at the time (slotted in the number two spot behind my beloved Best Bootlegs in the World Ever), but individual bits still sound alluring, calmative, modestly beautiful -- the project may strike some as fragmented and incomplete, but for me, that only adds to its charm. Recorded over several months during a trip Albarn made on behalf of the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief and featuring collaborations with Afel Bocoum, Lobi Traoré, and Toumani Diabaté, it feels like a labor of love even though much of it was reputedly improvised. Crucially, Albarn doesn't intrude very much: his remixing and post-production work allows the music to breathe, his comforting melodica lines are attractively humble alongside the contributions of his more accomplished cohorts, and he allows himself only one starring turn, the rueful "Sunset Coming On." By contrast, the backing tracks for this sequel of sorts were swiftly cobbled together over a meager five days, predominantly with Kinshasa street musicians, many of whom provided percussion with whatever was laying around -- old fans, sheets of tin, tree trunks, and metal rods --and as such, the finished product feels more like salvaged odds and ends, intermittently interesting "sounds" that never cohere into a compelling whole. Especially with Dan "the Automator" Nakamura assisting behind the boards, this is certainly a lot more assertive beat-wise than Mali Music, which is definitely a plus. But the forced artiness and lack of forward motion make me frustrated that we'll never know what kind of music those street musicians might have made with Timbaland or Kanye West. B–

The Field: Looping State of Mind (Kompakt) Pop critics have been rushing to drape this unabashedly naked emperor in highly suspect haberdashery -- NME's Noel Gardner trumpets dubiously: "the very definition of forward minded music" -- but these interminably montonous loop-de-loops strike me as the nadir of "avant-garde" synth-noodling and vacuous navel-gazing. Or at least so I thought, until I chanced upon the rather perplexing revelation that mastermind Axel Willner actually recorded these seven non-songs (average length: nine minutes) with a live band. I suppose there is some kind of perverse Zen accomplishment in how they kept the first five minutes of "Is This Power" up without any discernible break in the pattern (by counting to five hundred or some such?). Me, I'm reminded that what makes minimalism so fascinating isn't repetition per se, but rather variations on top of that repetition, tiny changes validating that there is no such thing as two completely identical moments -- like Warhol's 100 Cans, each can of soup may have looked blandly indistinguishable from the other ninety-nine, but after you spent some time scanning row by row, each one would reveal itself as wholly unique. Live musicians or not, no such miracles occur here, and for all I know what little "music" there is could have been created by setting up the synthesizer to run by itself, and then going out and getting a sandwich. In the meantime, I'll take Steve Reich. Suggested alternate title: Music For Zero Musicians. D

Givers: In Light (Glass Note) It goes without saying I'm a big fan of optimism, catchy tunes, verse-chorus-verse song structures, co-ed singing, postmodern Afropop influence, and turning up the amps to eleven. Never in my most perverse fantasies however, did I ever dream that a band would make a big splash by aggressively shoving all of those otherwise admirable qualities down the listener's throat. Accomplished, melodic, and about as irritating as an afternoon at a Christian day camp. Whatever happened to Up With People anyway? B–

Matthew Herbert: One Pig (Accidental) Although liberal/progressive on most issues, I've never understood the left's fascination with vegetarianism. While I appreciate the economic argument that you can feed more people with the grain it takes to feed one pig than you can with the actual pig itself, I'm more persuaded by Anthony Bourdain's observation that vegetarianism is a "first world luxury," a lifestyle completely unthinkable in developing countries where no one knows where their next meal is coming from. I mention this because it's only fair that you know that I come to this suite of manipulated "found sounds" detailing the life span of one pig "from birth to dinner plate" with my own set of quirky prejudices. This is more than I can say for UK knob-twiddler Matthew Herbert, who himself isn't a vegetarian either, merely someone who's disquieted about the state of commercial food production, and wants us simply to "listen to the world more carefully." As a fond frequenter of petting zoos, I would be more sympathetic to Herbert's concerns if he devoted more time to the beauty and nobility of animals, but that would be too difficult. What emerges instead from the gothic/industrial settings is pure shock value: knives sharpening, mouths slurping and chomping, and terrifying porcine squeals that anxiously erupt after several minutes of pastoral silence encourage you (sucker!) to foolishly turn up the volume on your iPod. The song titles (named after months) roll by like title cards in a horror film, leading up the big payoff for which the audience has been luridly waiting: the inevitable slaughter, which in this case doesn't even occur, thanks to British law. This omission has been sophomorically described by several reviewers as "ironic," which I guess means that there are a lot of humorless people out there who think Charlotte's Web would have gotten its message across better as a snuff film. I mean, I myself am against capital punishment, but there's a reason no one films executions in America: certain kinds of people get off on them. And I'm the bad guy for liking bacon? C

Muppets: The Green Album (Walt Disney) A true story: answering an invite from A&M Records, I attended the release party for the Carpenters tribute record If I Were a Carpenter (held in the A&M parking garage) as a fledgling rock critic for UCLA's Daily Bruin in the naïve hope that I would meet Sonic Youth, whose "Superstar" was that album's highlight. Instead, I got the bland Jann Arden warbling "We've Only Just Begun" and the odious Richard Carpenter opining that the Carpenters were a "garage band too," as they had literally honed their act in their parents' garage. Bored out of my skull (and embarrassed that my photographer kept antsily complaining what a bust this gig was) I approached Paul Williams, not only the co-author of "We've Only Just Begun" but also Jim Henson's go-to composer, to tell him how much I adored "The Rainbow Connection." Williams (looking and acting more or more like Truman Capote in his old age) lit up excitedly and exclaimed: "Kenny Loggins is recording it for his next album!" Supressing the instinct to laugh (oh, how jaded we get) I beamed back in approval. Because Willie Nelson notwithstanding, one of the most incredible tricks of Jim Henson's creations of felt and plastic is that they somehow imbued humor, poignancy, and magic to songs (and sometimes jokes) that you otherwise would have found insufferably insipid. Weezer, the Fray, the Airborne Toxic Event, et al can't even make their own insipid material sound interesting -- what chance do they have here? Two minor exceptions are telling: Amy Lee's striking (if predictably melodramatic) re-write of the childhood reminiscence "Halfway Down the Stairs" may be associated with the Muppets, but was actually adapted from a touching poem by A.A. Milne. And the Alkaline Trio's goofy "Moving Right Along" is one of the only selections that aims for comedy rather than corn, and is still owned by a certain bear and frog duo regardless. C+

Terius Nash: 1977 (mixtape) The man publicly known as The-Dream had a problem. Actually he has several problems, most of them revolving around his rather appalling callousness and emotional immaturity, but the one I'm primarily referring to here is his deep-seated need for self-expression, namely how to expiate his vitriol toward long-suffering ex-wife Christina Milian in glorious song. No idiot -- at least in terms of his raw I.Q. -- Nash knew that even though he could fully back up his statistical claim to Pitchfork that "99% of all narcissistic R&B singing sensations" will cheat on their spouses (he really said "99% of all men," but I can read into these things) he also knew that his audience would balk if he devoted a whole album trying to prove it. Then one day, a friend played him the Weeknd, after which Nash realized that the lauded mixtape format would allow him to get away with outlandish bullshit that so-called "fake bitches" and "fake niggaz" (which I take to mean those unfortuante enough to be tainted with normal human sensitivities) would rake him over the coals for. So although the end result is surprisingly tuneful despite its sparseness, even occasionally engaging though the arrangements never rise above the quality of spruced-up demos, Nash shows why sometimes it's beneficial for your audience to keep you in line: he promulgates a pathetic worldview in which tenderness is closing the door so she won't hear him fucking another woman, a relationship's death knell is the moment she stops considering stripping as foreplay, and justice is served when she no longer has access to your cars and yachts. Should this be a surprise from someone whose "female empowerment" song for Beyoncé revolved around demanding a ring and a marriage proposal before giving up any action? Hope Milian took him for every dime. C

Nikki Jean: Pennies in a Jar (S-Curve) I enjoyed at least half of this album until I realized that part of my attraction to it was that it was stroking my vanity. Certainly, its back story is a rock critic's wet dream: young R&B ingénue Nicholle Jean Leary seeks out partnerships with pre-punk songwriting greats (and "greats") and when appropriate, records their efforts in a manner that successfully duplicates her collaborators' respective production styles. Later, she jumped ship to S-Curve Records when Sony -- her original label -- balked that no one cared about that era anymore, which must have amused prize draw Bob Dylan, who has been raking in stacks of moolah for them since 1963. But I digress. The one remarkable thing about the finished product is that if you're well versed in pop music, you'll have no problem discerning who did what, especially on the superior first half: Burt Bacharach's title track evokes Dionne Warwick, Thom Bell's "How to Unring a Bell," zings the Spinners, and Bob Dylan's solemn "Steel and Feathers (Don't Ever)" recalls Slow Train Coming, to choose my three favorites. But even there, the success derives from Jean's knack for pastiche, as well as the listener's satisfaction in being able to pinpoint her sources ("Hey! That sounds like the Supremes!"), rather than anything Jean herself brings to the table lyrically or musically. And while her melisma-free vocals (perhaps necessarily) hearken back to when white and black pop vocalists alike delivered tunes a lot less histrionically, she puts less of an individual stamp on these songs than Dusty Springfield or Diana Ross might have. This becomes even more obvious on the dull-as-dishwater second half, in which she enlists second stringers like Paul Williams, Carly Simon, and Jimmy Webb. Were Randy Newman and Paul Simon unavailable? Certainly Raphael Saadiq wouldn't have made that mistake. Come to think of it, Saadiq also wouldn't have needed to enlist outside help, but much like this record, that's neither here nor there. B

Ashton Shepherd: Where Country Grows (MCA Nashville) I can hear why rock critics searching for the next Miranda Lambert are flocking to praise this Coffeeville, Alabama singer and occasional songwriter: her attractively twangy vocals are completely devoid of Countrypolitan polish and the record as a whole sounds dynamite if you tune out the lyrics. But following the killer "Look It Up," in which Shepherd feistily sends her ex to research the dictionary definitions of faithful, forever, easy, etc. (she spits out the word "asshole" at the end of the album version), as well as the only song here with any spunk or fire to it, we get two pandering red state paeans from a slumming Bobby Pinson, a "tender" plea for connubial intimacy that begins with the woozy double-entendre "He told me 'the ground's just right for plowing,'" and the usual phoned-in odes to Saturday night, Sunday morning, and "Beer on a Boat." Those are mostly courtesy hired help, of course. Shepherd's main contribution is the dreadful ballad "I'm Just a Woman," which boasts a lyric so ghastly in its gender politics it could inspire Michele Bachmann to send a check to NOW. Give me a crazy ex-girlfriend storming the pool hall with a pistol any day. B–

Super Heavy: Super Heavy (A&M) I have to say, when Joss Stone soulfully wailed halfway through this record "What the fuck is going ah-h-ahn?," my wife could hear me guffaw from her upstairs office -- when a "supergroup" is this dull, one would think the answer to such a question would be obvious, no? This is less too many cooks spoil the broth, or even don't mix your chocolate with my peanut butter, but more that the players are all sous chefs who work best in collaboration with others who mesh well with their respective styles. Mick Jagger has proven one solo project after another he needs Keith Richards to supply the catchy riffs, Dave Stewart hasn't been interesting since he and Annie Lennox pretended to be new wave, A.R. Rahman writes soundtracks for films when Peter Gabriel isn't available, and Joss Stone is a goddamn cipher, which works out perfectly for Mick, who must salivate when such a fine young thing soulfully parrots back all of his moistly "liberal" banalities (a sample: "You got endless ambition/Crying endless contrition/It really gets my goat/It sticks in my throat/You're defying demotion" -- so much for writing "songs which [sic] had meaning"). The exception that proves nothing is Damian Marley, whose music is the freshest of all the participants (and where's Nas when you need him?). Too bad the old guys reward him for supplying the rhythm section with their stupor-heavy arena and/or orchestral overkill. C

The Weeknd: Thursday (mixtape) I found Abel Tesfaye's debauched come-ons attractive musically on House of Balloons because on that set of songs he wedded a gift for disconcerting detail and eerily turned metaphor to spare, compelling music. But not only was I right when I said that was the kind of formal coup an artist could only pull off once, that assertion only doubles in probability when said artist tries to repeat it a mere six months later. And it's not because we know any more about him now than we did then -- where once we were fooled into thinking he was multi-layered, that there was some degree of guilt and suffering underneath his tortured confessions from half-remembered house parties, here he reveals himself to be as uniroincally reprehensible in his attitudes toward women as Kiss or the Knack. RapGenius' shockingly nonchalant note prefacing the vile, gang-banging entreaty "Life of the Party" accurately sums up the prevailing concept: "[P]ersuading a goodie-goodie into being an open-minded whore with a little help from some hallucinogens." Although the beats are stronger and the music more dynamic than on House of Balloons, the tunes are non-existent and the lyrics hateful doggerel, the only noteworthy turn of phrase subcontracted to Drake, the abysmal "Man, if pole dancing is an art/How many artists do I know?" No less than the Eagles or Motley Crue, this is one more asshole separating women into two categories, angels and whores -- note that the triplicate cover blonde is portrayed as trashy and hung over on Wednesday and Friday, but blushing and virginal on the day in between. If that gets his dick hard, more power to him -- I guess. But I can guarantee you that with women as much as music fans, spacing out with your cock in your hand is never a turn-on -- sooner or later, everyone will get bored of waiting for the Weeknd to come. B–

Wire: 17 December 1985, Paradiso, Amsterdam (Pinkflag) Because the definitive post-punk quartet has shuttled through so many distinct stylistic phases, all of the titles from their so-called "Legal Bootleg" series are worth hearing, at least in terms of documentary value, by which I mean some of the titles are more interesting to talk about amongst your like-minded friends than actually listen to. The prime example is this imfamous set predating their mid-'80s reboot, to which they had already so committed themselves that they excised all of their classic '70s material from their sets, hiring a cover band ("the Ex-Lion Tamers") to go through the motions they were no longer interested in going through themselves -- you can almost hear the sound of hundreds of heads swiveling back and forth to each other in utter disbelief as multiple shout-outs for "12XU" (the "Free Bird" of post-punk, no?) are greeted with Graham Lewis and Colin Newman's deadpan stage patter. Although "Ambulance Chasers" and "A Vivid Riot of Red" never made it to vinyl for good reason, there's nothing wrong with the material per se, at least if we are to judge that material by the final product: certainly, Gareth Jones greatly improved two out of the three songs that later appeared on 1987's The Ideal Copy and both of the numbers from 1988's A Bell is a Cup . . . Until It Is Struck. But while the three songs that later formed the bulk of 1986's Drill EP are more or less fully formed, the band's slack, confused, desultory performances belie the fact that even though they harbored an inkling that cold, industrial, rhythmic hooks would eventually define their comeback, they hadn't yet accepted that synthesizers and drums machines were the only way they could get there. True, The Ideal Copy contained flaws in its DNA -- botched sequencing, inappropriately chipper arrangement for "Cheeking Tongues" (this set's opener), and Graham Lewis' pro forma doom show "Feed Me." But until I heard this concert, it never once occurred to me that the reason I loved the blissful "Kidney Bingos" sure as hell wasn't the half-assed lyrics. C+

Gardens & Villa: Gardens & Villa (Secretly Canadian)

Junior Boys: It's All True (Domino)

Leyland Kirby: Eager to Tear Apart the Stars (History Favours the Winners)

Little Dragon: Ritual Union (Peacefrog)

The Men: Leave Home (Sacred Bones)

Marissa Nadler: Marissa Nadler (Box of Cedar)

Pure X: Pleasure (Alternative Distribution Alliance)

Sons & Daughters: Mirror Mirror (Domino)

Tiger & Woods: Through the Green (Running Back)

Title Fight: Shed (SideOneDummy)

This is the 15th installment, monthly since August 2010, totalling 382 albums. All columns are indexed and archived here. You can follow A Downloader's Diary on Facebook, and on Twitter.