Timber Timbre.
Sincerely, Future Pollution.
[City Slang]
Timber Timbre’s sixth studio album, Sincerely, Future Pollution is packed with dark atmospheric soundscapes, marking a departure from their acoustic beginnings and veering into electronic territories. The Canadian quartet’s world has been captured with ease in their most overtly contemporary record. However, there are moments that evoke arrangements of the past. Notably, Floating Cathedral’s imitation of Twin Peaks’ theme composed by Angelo Badalamenti and Grifting paying homage to David Bowie’s Fame. Once again, Timber Timbre have released a fantastic album with variety, energy and sincerity. – Zara Hedderman
The Black Angels: Death Song [Partisan]
The Black Angels’ fifth release begins with a song that sounds like end times. Currency is a thunderous slab of Sturm und Drang, aggressive and propulsive. They’ve always sounded like menace but this time they turn it up to full-on soil myself terror.
The album was recorded during the horror-show of the recent U.S. election, this would appear to be their response to the result. Don’t expect polemic or hand-wringing however, this band are in the business of coruscating head-fucking psych-rock and they are at their very best here.
Other notable standouts include the plaintive drone of Half Believing and the almost baroque sweep of closer Life Song. Every drum beat portends doom. Even the strings are strung out. Sublime. – Conor Stevens
Cat Palace: Why Don’t You Go // Why Don’t You, Go Off [Little L Records]
Like so many contemporary indie acts, Dublin’s Cat Palace draw liberally from the well of 90s college rock for inspiration. Thankfully, Cat Palace’s touchstones are a little more left of centre than that which have become wearyingly commonplace. David Blaney’s rumbling vocal and defeatist, occasionally arch, lyrical leanings eliciting the work of a young Bill Callahan, David Berman and the rest of their wonderful Flannery O’Connor meets Flying Nun ilk. Intermittently swaggering and downtrodden, Why Don’t You… , despite the telegraphed nature of its influences, arrives at satisfyingly local verisimilitude. Recommended. – Danny Wilson
Milk Music
Mystic 100’s
[Dom America]
Olympia Washington’s wild and wooly Milk Music have ended the hiatus that followed 2013’s astonishing Cruise Your Illusion and the world needs their patented brand of fuckyouism now more than ever. Mystic 100’s, like all their output, exudes an abandon that can only be born of truly not giving a shit. Channeling the greats of SST with a greater, even brazen, focus on guitar theatrics; think something akin to Nihilist Young and Crazy Horse. Milk Music’s narcotic, overdriven excursions are heavier than a death in the family. Underappreciated, embittered and utterly essential. – Danny Wilson
Imelda May
Life Love Fresh Blood
Decca Records
Life Love Flesh Blood coincides with a new, more serious image for Imelda May.
Darker and more downbeat than previous efforts, the album maintains a blues-rock sensibility with traces of rockabilly. It’s your run of the mill breakup album, emotional yet trite.
Black Tears benefits from a stellar vocal performance, while How Bad Can a Good Girl Be? is let down by clichéd lyrics. Lacking originality, each song on this album sounds familiar, a potential copyright lawsuit waiting to happen. – Sinead Furlong
Davy Kehoe
Short Passing Game
[Wah Wah Winos]
Eschewing what seems like a perfect opportunity to name one’s debut album “Says Hello”, Davy Kehoe’s Short Passing Game avoids playing the percentages and decides instead to keep it on the deck at all times. Bamboozling defences with its inventiveness, changes of direction and mesmerizing close control, Kehoe constantly finds space to play in between the lines of krautrock, dub, techno and the avant garde. As rhythmic as tiki-taka with the pizzazz of Brazil ‘82, Short Passing Game always finds the route to goal. – Ian Lamont
Colin Stetson
All This I Do For Glory
[Self-released]
In performance, Colin Stetson is one of the most astounding musicians you can witness, regardless of one’s tastes. He coerces freakish, endless undulations and ululations from his saxophones while disguising the human need to inhale oxygen with perpetual circular breathing techniques. It’s moving emotionally and physically. There are times when it’s difficult to distinguish this particular maelstrom of cranky sax, brute rhythmic pulsations and the desperate elephant melodies (sung while playing and caught via a throat mic) from those on his New History Warfare trilogy of albums, but I’m all for more of this freakish beauty. – Ian Lamont
Feist
Pleasure
[Polydor]
It’s ten years since Leslie Feist released her landmark album The Reminder and six since it successor Metals. A career trajectory that once seemed destined to guarantee second-tier festival billings has lost momentum with this patchy output. There’s little here to suggest imaginative reinvention. Tracks like Any Party sound like a shoe-in for a scene from from The O.C. But that show wrapped up a decade ago too. And therein lies the problem. The pleasure is familiar and comforting though not so thrilling. – Michael McDermott
