best of new arrivals, 4/6

Photo by Johnny Blood

Here are the nine best albums to hit eMusic this week, with an embedded YouTube clip for almost all of them. Have at it.

01 Stars of the Lid, and Their Refinement of Decline: First new album since 2001 from the Austin drone duo, and it’s a mighty fine one. I must confess that I had never listened to SotL before — I think I had always assumed they were quirky indie pop, for some reason — but I’ve been greatly enjoying this double-disc set. The songs are very ambient, slow-moving like a Saturday afternoon, with none of the obligatory crescendos that are normally de rigueur for this sorta thing.

Here’s a nice little homemade Stars of the Lid video:

02 Wax Tailor, Hope & Sorrow: Hope & Sorrow is a (largely) non-rapping hip-hop record, a series of funk and spoken word samples looped with soulful vocals and heavy 4/4 beats. It’s also quite good, dabbling a bit in downtempo and deep house, but largely sticking to Shadow-like turntable-and-soul concoctions. Also, I realize this is backwardly phrased (can the master sound like the pupil?) but the Sharon Jones track, “The Way We Lived,” sounds like Amy Winehouse.

An EPK for Hope & Sorrow:

03 Paper Airplanes, Boyhood: Previously covered on 17 Dots, I really dig the Paper Airplanes, even if the rest of the record can’t live up to that tremendous opener.

04 Jarvis Cocker, Jarvis: I quite like Joe’s review of this record, but just reading it, I can’t really tell how much he liked it. His short response to me today: “If you liked Pulp, you’ll like this. If not, not so much.” Fair enough.

Video for “Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time:”

05 Jackie-O Motherfucker, fig.5: I love this record, always have. Jackie-O are from Portland, and play meandering avant-garde/free-jazz stuff, nicely varying between dissonance and quiet, the kind of “improvisation” that requires serious preparation and rehearsal. This is their first album, released in 2000, and while it’s definitely not for everyone, it has a broader appeal than my description has given it.

Jackie-O live. Hotness:

06 The Twilight Sad, Fourteen Autumns, Fifteen Winters: A bit of a hit here in the eMusic offices, Fourteen Autumns is very Scottish, singer James Graham doing nothing to hide his brogue. As the AMG review notes, the album is very conventional pop-rock. Not terrifically original, but that’s largely immaterial.

Twilight Sad at SXSW:

07Anthony Braxton, Nine Compositions: Just an overwhelming collection of contemporary jazz. Here’s the background from AllAboutJazz: “On April 3rd, New Haven’s Firehouse 12 Records will release the Anthony Braxton 12+1tet’s 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006 (FH12-04-01-002), a nine-CD (plus one-DVD) box set documenting what Time Out New York called “last Spring’s epochal run” at New York’s Iridium Jazz Club in March 2006. Described by Braxton as ”THE point of definition in my work thus far,” these concerts featured the world premieres of Compositions 350 through 358, the final works in his Ghost Trance Music series, recorded over the course of this rare four-night stand on an American stage.”

If you watch one YouTube clip today, make it this one:

08 Ozomatli, Don’t Mess With the Dragon: Two extra eMusic-only live tracks (hurrah!) from the LA fusion folk, and the album — going off the review and the samples I checked — is just as much about song as it is rhythm, definitely a plus for these dudes.

Video for “Can’t Stop:”

09 Efterklang, Under Giant Trees: This record feels somewhat ceremonial to me. It’s very orchestral and stately, very Serious and Important. It’s slightly distancing for those reasons, but it’s still very well done and pleasing.

Efterklang live in Stockholm: