Crystal Castles: (III) (2012)

(Republic)

Not hard to get the gist of this record's oppression-targeted thematic passions; they sadly don't extend to any great musical revelation, least of all when compared to the bizarre, ear-futzing delights of the first two Crystal Castles records. This is exactly what you'd expect outtakes from the duo's earlier sessions to sound like; flabby and indistinct, it tracks how rapidly an innovative artist can begin to follow trends and fall behind the times.

Alice Glass' vocals are buried in the mix this time around; she often tries to shout above the din of Ethan Kath's trance-heavy production, to little avail. It sounds like a strange complaint, but the standardizing and calming of the band's sound gives us a record that's simply too pleasant. Some of what made Crystal Castles, marks I and II, so intriguing were their annoying and abrasive elements that would gradually reveal more to the more-than-casual listener. But casual listening is all that really works for (III), which involuntarily recedes into the background and never feels so pressing or important. Even when there's a bit of good ol' yelpy electro stuff ("Pale Flesh") it's all rather polite.

So it is that the nicest thing you can say about Crystal Castles' third album is that it sounds very much like Crystal Castles -- their carved-out sound remains a signature, but the world's caught up too quickly. "Insulin" is a neat creation, but just a repeat of earlier experiments; "Transgender" has a towering, church-like expansiveness tempered by trippy skipping effects -- but survey the par-for-the-course electronic records of 2012 and you'll find dozens of songs like those. Which brings us to the point that closing peak "Child I Will Hurt You" is pretty much a Beach House song -- all the beauty of the Castles' second record with none of the caveats, punishing blips, sonic terrorism. Maybe that's the future. Do we need more airlessly pretty, vaguely political indie rock albums? Probably not, but nor do we need more desolate and not-terribly-interesting electronic records.

[SEE ALSO:]
Crystal Castles (2010)

Quakers (2012)

(Stones Throw)

RECOMMENDED

I was listening to this lengthy, sprawling, odd album at the moment when I learned that Das Racist had split up. It was an interesting illustration of how quickly the culture moves along; a few short years ago, DR was just a promising new act before they legitimized a branch of wordy, reference-heavy, often sardonic hip hop ("Tumblr Rap"? Please, no) that had previously been given little critical attention. In the end, they bridged a gap in their brief reign before imploding. Now they're already influential: the hyperkinetic, tangential style of this 40-track, 70-minute opus, chock full of brief songs, annoying half-songs, and sonic jokes both good and bad may owe something to DJ albums like those of 2 Many DJ's and the Avalanches, but you can detect just as much of the eyeroll wit and scrappy futurism of DR's mixtapes.

Still, this is unmistakably a producer's album, even if it's more accessible than that would imply. Geoff Barrow and friends mean to present an album that's fun to listen to, and they succeed, but the mechanics of the thing are intimidating. They crowdsource MCs both semi-famous and completely obscure, some uncovered on Myspace's once-massive underground rap community. The volume of talent is rich, with not one person giving a duff performance, but the emphasis on style by producers 7-Stu-7 and Katalyst has the unfortunate effect of rendering Barrow's conception of hip hop kind of a monolith, despite the variance of talent on display; there's a bit of tokenism (only one cut showcases a female rapper, Lyric Jones) and it's a disservice to the general excellence of the vocal performances. It's less advantageous to emerging artists like Quite Nyce (who does a remarkable Kanye on "Jobless"), Dave Dub, Frank Nitty (who rhymes "Geritol" and "wherewithal") and the mysterious Deed than would be standard guest spots or even an amateur mix CD because they all find themselves subservient to the scope of Quakers' stunt.

Fragmented though it is, Quakers also coheres smartly, to the point that it's difficult to choose standouts until you make it through the record in its daunting entirety several times. The Radiohead-cribbing single "Fitta Happier" is an instant hipster-rap touchstone, and the Animals organ hook on "The Turk" will please a certain cross-section. The collective is at its best when the producers' noodling transcends its geekery into something foggy and new, and the corresponding MCs are able to keep up. "The Beginning" is a brilliant Beautiful Music concoction featuring newcomer Coin Locker Kid, while Phat Kat and Guilty Simpson pay their dues over the top of the dizzying disco-on-its-head chant "War Drums."

But yes, given the Portishead pedigree, much of what's here seems rather safe, lost somewhere in early '90s arguments about the Positive Tip, which can only occasionally result in something so far-out and smart as a Digable Planets (who are openly evoked on "There It Is," if not elsewhere). Quakers shy away from politics apart from a pointed "where the fuck is the change, Mr. Obama?" on Emilio Rojas' "Belly of the Beast," and they don't fool around with any dance floor idealism. It's an intriguing sociological quirk when Finale namedrops Kanye West like some sort of distant god or devil on "Oh Goodness," underlining the disparity of class and fame in hip hop that the record mostly sweeps away. It seems as if you're supposed to listen to this and be really impressed and thrill to the aural stuntwork of it all. The biggest news might be that it isn't a terrible way to spend your time -- and across one or more of these songs, you might be hearing someone who will matter a good deal in the near future.

Flying Lotus: Until the Quiet Comes (2012)

(Warp)

More agreeable yet also less artistically striking than its predecessor Cosmogramma, Steven Ellison's latest tightly constructed set begins with a skittering bang. Soulful and tricky in the gut-level fashion of J. Dilla in the spaces where Ellison's generally been cerebral, "All In" and "Getting There" are shots in the arm of the modern R&B revival. Thanks to Niki Randa's contributions, they're a little sweet and at times stunningly beautiful. So were the strange, jazzy textures of Cosmogramma, but it seemed so much work to peel the layers of that record.

Hard to say where one expects Until the Quiet Comes to go after that, but unfortunately it settles into a kind of staid and habitual ambiance that's quite accessible but only makes a scattered impression. Lotus is undoubtedly a brilliant musician, and maybe the purpose of this record is to convince skeptics to miss the things they might once have written off about him. There are catchy half-songs here, lovely constructions all, but there are also tangents that just sound like someone fussing with a Wii ("All the Secrets") or like Erykah Badu covering a Wolf Parade song ("See Thru to U").

For a guy who claims to have little use for modern pop music, Ellison certainly adheres to its conventions surprisingly often -- you can be generous and say "DMT Song" owes a lot to the Free Design and Spanky & Our Gang, but it's glee-club pop now as ever, and hey, here's Thom Yorke to offer his take on Destiny's Child. Those with a taste for easy listening and jet-set lounge music will appreciate the blown-out spaceship bass of "Sultan's Request" and the whole record's mutated bachelor spy flick conceit (peaking with the mysterioso carnival piece "Hunger"), but Quiet is really summed up by the awesomely titled "Putty Boy Strut," which divides itself between the pursuance of twittering annoyance and the immersive loveliness of the smooth, the groove, etc. It's background music; for some of us, that's not bad. But all of us know it could be more.

[SEE ALSO:]
Cosmogramma (2010)

Wild Nothing: Nocturne (2012)

(Captured Tracks)

This is screensaver music, albeit deceptive. Choose a random cut -- my way in was the opener "Shadow," which I liked enough to decide this deserved a full review, which I now regret -- and prepare to be wowed by two things: first, how much you still get hit squarely in the jaw by the sound of late 1980s jangly dream pop, even when you're hearing a third- or fourth-hand imitation of same. Secondly, is this the same Jack Tatum, the same Wild Nothing who put together the ridiculous but sort of delightful Belle & Sebastian / Smashing Pumpkins imitation Gemini? The two records have strikingly little in common, which is neat except that Tatum's choice now is to walk over even more well-trodden ground.

Again, the romantically druggy sound of all this is striking. Tatum knows his way around the Smiths / Cure corner of the galaxy and has a way with chilly intoned vocals and overdriven synth atmospherics -- it all falls on the ear quite agreeably, if ineffectively. When he bursts out of the template, it's enough of a derailment that you wonder why it doesn't happen more often. "Midnight Song" boasts a British Invasion melody buried under innumerable layers, an actual hook appears amid the sludgy pop of "The Chain Won't Break," "Shadow" is catchy and breezy enough to be a lost La's cut, and even at its laziest and most plodding you can still imagine kids playing pinball on Friday night with the album playing.

This might all add up to magic for you. It quickly cops to trends rather than revealing much that's personal or unusual, and the dull sameness keeps much of it from standing out. When it does command attention, it still seems oddly restrained -- that splendid Tame Impala vocal on "The Blue Dress" is wasted on a song that sounds like something from the bottom tier of the Chocolate War soundtrack, and "Paradise" embodies some romance and vindictive sarcasm in its lyric ("crush me with the lies / and tell me once or twice that love is paradise") but never pushes the buttons of its surreal imagery like reference point Vince Clarke. And though the record isn't all that long, it seems to go on for ages -- good for backgrounding, bad for concentrating. Still, give it a listen; I'd opt for Twin Shadow for 2012 makeout music, but something tells me this will suit some in much the same way.

[SEE ALSO:]
Gemini (2010)

Titus Andronicus: Local Business (2012)

(XL)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

This is not The Monitor, the high-concept 2010 record by Titus Andronicus that launched them into a world of ten-best lists, but nor is it thoroughly lacking in the earlier album's earnest grandness. We're no longer being thrust into a Civil War battlefield; the setting here is Patrick Stickles' heart and mind and all their own jarring impulses. One immediately notices a deliberate reining in of the production style on the aptly titled, aptly illustrated Local Business; the sound is punkish, thinner and more pressing if no less vital. There is, in a word I'd prefer not to use, less here that is "epic."

Nevertheless, this is a big album by design when you think about; modeling itself on Springsteen, the Rolling Stones and the Replacements, it's a true rock & roll album. More specific to its touch of the working-class anthemic is its status as a true American album, a true New Jersey album -- a gritty catharsis of drinking songs and camraderie by a group of decent guys who aren't afraid to occasionally expose their dark side, one defined by self-doubt and self-abuse rather than contempt for others. Like The Monitor, it's a quintessentially masculine recording, but not a "macho" one.

The three opening cuts are frayed, unslick fight songs that bleed into one another. The meaty punk of "Ecce Homo" is simple but towering, with Stickles' unprocessed and small voice struggling to be heard over the unadorned sludge. The band holds tight a bit until unleashing a skilled guitar attack atop the minimal punk rock on "Still Life with Hot Deuce on Silver Platter." The riffs are chunky and big, the melody is strong, and the tempo change on the bridge is utter screaming triumph, with "I'm not gonna cry!" the first of many built-in singalongs. It calls to mind Westerberg as well as Rhett Miller when both were more interested in rousing and commanding big groups of people, at least until its lovely Nicky Hopkins-like piano fade.

The hooks keep coming, aligned with Stickles' lilt and whine and scream, until the New York Dolls diversion of "Food Fight!" -- mostly an instrumental with exactly the chanted refrain you'd expect -- which along with the repetitive Ramones-lite "Titus Andronicus vs. the Absurd Universe" would've probably seemed more at home on a more self-consciously sprawling album; they're here just distractions. In between them lies the oddly triumphant extended rant "My Eating Disorder," which is about just that and contains the album's major musical risky strokes, a pounding and scary torment that Stickles makes harrowing with just the right balance of personal detail and universal dread. As a rallying cry, "Spit it out!" is no "The enemy is everywhere!" but it reveals significantly more.

"My Eating Disorder" sets the stage for the record's breathtaking second half. The final four cuts are as populist and immediate as this band is ever likely to get, tempering the slow release of something like "The Battle of Hampton Roads" with a restrained use of gigantic hooks and Stones riffs and -- until the finale, at least -- somewhat economical pacing. "From Jersey I come!" is the announcement on the glorious "In a Big City," an almost chanted mission statement, but "In a Small Body" turns these instantly appealing illusions of rock & roll spontaneity into a Pavement-like parlor game of cranked-up burger joint music that secretly means to wound. The absurdity of Stickles' lyric is barely noticeable against the brilliant throwback arrangement, which builds to an incongruously pretty choral decoration of "don't ever get in the waaaay," a classic Titus Andronicus sentiment of sorts. In the same vein, "(I Am the) Electric Man" is literally about being electrocuted but is a pure pop singalong with a "Honky Tonk Women" backdrop.

You're meant to stomp and clap and get a rise out of all this; it's punk gospel, if you will. The grand finale, "Tried to Quit Smoking," will surprise no one; it's the big ballad move that The Monitor hinted at in places, harnessing the rawness of the room for something stark and meditative, throwing off devastating but simple confessions -- "It's not that I wanted to hurt you, I just didn't care if I did" -- then suddenly, at the end, it's the fucking blues! Which is only too appropriate on an album that in nearly every sense is an unpretentious rallying cry that could've been issued thirty-five years ago next to Saints and Only Ones LPs and, except for the unbearably pretentious song titles, few people would've noticed. What Titus Andronicus have managed here is a record that's both destined for fist-pounding communal release in a certain setting but is also intimate, personal, and prepared to forge an immediate connection with the individual listener. It may not have the scope and breadth of The Monitor, sure, but it has something equally special.

[SEE ALSO:]
The Monitor (2010)

Jessie Ware: Devotion (2012)

(Cherrytree)

RECOMMENDED

That lounging, lazy EBTG beat! The hazy memories of beloved Texas, Seal, and George Michael singles we grew up with and pretended for a while that we didn't adore! The dredging up of the meaty synths, sleazy soundscapes and lush arrangements that launched your whole conception of New Romantic and the post-Prince R&B revival! Well, what we're saying is that this record is a nostalgia trip, the latest of many for all the things you never expected you'd miss about Adult Contemporary radio circa 1986 to 1996. Is this an intelligent, emotive deconstruction of the genre's still-resonant elements along the lines of Pet Shop Boys' Behavior or Destroyer's Kaputt? God no, but it's the kind of well-engineered, nicely (if unremarkably) sung schmaltz that can brighten up your evening almost invariably.

Devotion has a broader appeal, of course, than the chillwave and indie artists who've been mining this territory for the last few years, which is one reason it's been so unironically embraced. It deserves this treatment -- quite apart from any specific tie to a time or a movement, it's a highly serviceable and unpretentious pop and R&B record with a welcome Sade sultriness. It could've probably been an EP, for its best material is frontloaded: the agreeably subtle "Devotion" calls back to the most immersive trip-hop, and the retro hippery of "Running" adds a little grit to its Eurythmics throwback, which culminates in a beautiful vocally stretched breakdown that boasts Ware's best singing. And "Still Love Me" offers the aural intrigue of early '90s top 40 at its trickiest and most soulful; hardly a mere valentine, it's all quite convincing.

The trouble starts when you discover how much of the back half is built on persuasive production and moods (offered mostly by Dave Okumu) but offers few actual complete songs; the last two cuts are forgettable mush, and predecessor "110%" isn't much better despite its whispered deadpan. Some of the tracks are wondrous creations in theory. "Sweet Talk" is just a few paces away from "Love on Top" with its interpolation of upbeat mid-'80s R&B, but it never lives up to its wondrous sound or to its sources. "No to Love" comes on like Madonna circa Bedtime Stories, kinky low-NRG that will set you to swooning if this sort of thing's in your neighborhood, but there are more hooks in thirty seconds of "Secret" and "Take a Bow" than in this full 3.5-minute flush. The delicately screwy verses on "Swan Song" are an improvement, but it too cops out with an uninspired chorus. None of this does much to combat the old adage that imitation pop is nice enough but no substitute for the real thing.

The central conflict of Devotion is illustrated in two songs that might as well have been both sides of a 7". Ware is already a legend in some places for the demented "Wildest Moments," a pounding melodrama of the highest order that features her towering voice atop a titanic, Olympics-sized anthem. It's sticky but glorious, the kind of song that musically references Savage Garden's "Truly, Madly, Deeply" and somehow makes that sound like a good idea. But skip on over to "Night Light," an attempt at a similar kind of overdriven pop bliss, and you discover how easily the same concepts can fly off in the wrong direction. It's the same kind of classic melodic twistiness, the same faux-inspirational lyrics, the same utter Shadow Morton bombast, but it just plods, sinks, dies. This is a fun album, but it proves that sheer nostalgia has more limits than a lot of songwriters and producers are willing to admit.

Bob Dylan: Tempest (2012)

(Columbia)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

A corpse dragged through the mud, a ship and a planet hurtling toward bleak demise, a singer shot in the back, and a love more destructive than warm -- Bob Dylan's never been, it seems, in a darker state of mind than on his most striking left turn since Time Out of Mind returned him to the highest tier of American songwriting. Conversely, however, if he's on a rant it's one that finds renewed energy in the casual background C&W and fragmented folk of Modern Times and Together Through Life, because this is far more devotedly serious than either but also more defiant and devilish in its macabre humor. You detect unmistakable evidence in the 71 year-old's voice on even a gentle, dramatic sprawl like "Scarlet Town" that he is having, well, fun. A kind of fun, anyway, that which springs from a snapping into focus of creative energy; the last Dylan record that felt this vital was Love and Theft, and before that I couldn't even tell you.

Love and Theft saw release on September 11, 2001 and this album was issued eleven years later to the day; it could be an accident, but probably not. For all the well-oiled Dylan band's archaic textures, picking up impressively stripped snatches of traditional folk forms and cobbling them around their leader's vague musical and lyrical ideas, this is music that somehow captures, with surprising potency, the muted inner and outward chaos of its time. And does so as proficiently as any younger mainstream rocker or indie popper has this year or last. Its mythical romances and slightly abstract murder ballads don't just lie there in insular pleasure and wander off into the night; like some radio ghost he can prattle onward here for ten or fifteen minutes and hold you under a spell, beholden by a distance of wisdom and assurance but also incredulity. The album and the songs don't even seem to begin or end; they just come into existence and vanish.

To say this is a more focused variant on the messy Together Through Life is reductive but not actually inaccurate; that clean "classic rock" sound gets newly filtered here through better and more comfortably varied tunes. And Dylan's learning to own the fraying of his voice, at home in the studio if not on stage, and he manages to even put a Louis Armstrong spin of sorts on the weird ragtime country opener "Duquesne Whistle," and no amount of aged weariness and vocal cracking can bring down the persuasive (undoubtedly interpolated) melody of the title cut. That, by the way, is one of the big fifteen-minute showpieces here, something about the Titanic and what it revealed about how different people react to a disaster -- but try as I might, I can't seem to fixate on the lyric well enough to concentrate on its implications because the music itself, and the singing, are so hypnotic, casting a dusty, hazy magic with their moving roominess and sufficiently illustrative of their setting to render the words as a mere elevation.

Dylan enters Leonard Cohen territory with the love triangle sea chanty "Tin Angel," a bass-heavy menace with a hint of East Asian traditional music, or at least a westernized interpretation of same -- Dylan will never be Cohen or vice versa, and "Sing Another Song Boys" this isn't, with Dylan struggling to find a heartthrob bone in his body, but there is a yearning to this slow burn that's gradually acquired and cumulatively striking. The same goes for "Long and Wasted Years," which is like something from Empire Burlesque with vastly less intrusive production, and finds Dylan in his most sincere mode, a treat when it's surrounded by the robust, throaty sharpness of "Narrow Way" and the Van Morrison-like raveup "Pay in Blood," one of Dylan's most bruising songs in years. The manner in which these new songs contrast and play against one another is one of the two major elements to its success, the other being the sense of total immersion in its mystery, its haunted rambling.

A reliable band like Dylan's can generate beauty in the mundane, even in workhorse mode -- Dylan goes intimate and old-world on the soft doo wop of "Soon After Midnight" and Sexton, Hidalgo, Garnier et al. fall behind him as smoothly as can be imagined. They can make something vital out of a swaggering Muddy Waters lift, or make the distorted, deliberately backward Lennon tribute that closes the record feel as stuck in time as it should. All the while, Dylan never wavers from his own sense of purpose, renewed once again. Grab hold of the storytelling and the introspection if you want, but when he pitches in with a snarling "Even death has washed its hands of you," well, that's my Dylan.

[SEE ALSO:]
Together Through Life (2009)