na: david gray, ben kweller, cake and more

With this much hitting the site at once, it’s impossible that I won’t miss something. So here we go, deep breath — let’s dive on in.

So the biggest news is the batch of titles from ATO hitting the site today — namely, a bunch of older releases from Ben Kweller and David Gray. Unfortunately, I am probably the worst person to be talking about these albums, as neither artist are quite my cup of tea. However! I am willing to be converted. Any fans of Kweller or Gray want to tell me which song, or songs, I should start with? Clearly for Gray I am aware the “big” record is White Ladder (I know that because I was alive in 1999 and have a pair of ears), but I am also aware that often times artists do their best work after the public has stopped paying attention. So here I am. Convert me!

Cake, Motorcade of Generosity Also never really got into Cake, so I’ll let Yancey do the talking:

Released into the modern-rock wilderness of Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Nirvana in 1994, Motorcade of Generosity was an amazingly ill-timed record, a light, loose and flirtatious collection of tough-to-classify songs that, in other eras, might have been pegged as swing, ska, Balkan pop, new wave, country or even bossa nova. Singer John McCrea’s monotone and guitarist Greg Brown’s clean guitar strokes play the signature parts in Cake’s sound, both playful, never serious, their tonal oppositions often harmonizing. Lyrically, McCrea favors the oblique and witty (see later hits “The Distance,” “Short Skirt/Long Jacket”) and here we get the opening “Comanche” and the lovely “Pentagram,” a Nashville-style ditty about Satanic sacrifice (”your feet are dry with the ashes of dead babies”). It’s a feel-good album for sure, the sounds always bright and airy, the songs never weighed down by worry or introspection.

El Perro Del Mar, From the Valley to the Stars This one, I need no help with. I heart El Perro, and if this new one is a bit, um, brighter than its predecessor, well, so much the better. I was having a conversation with someone the other day about how almost all of my favorite albums this year are either by females or by female-fronted bands — Erykah Badu, Headlights, Lykke Li, High Places. I’m not sure this record is quite at that level yet, but it’s growing on me. Slowed-down shoop-shoop girl group songs set in the Twin Peaks Black Lodge.

Maybe It’s Reno, Maybe It’s Reno I feel like I’ve been using the phrase “One of my favorite records of the year!” a lot in 2008, but here I am anyway, about to use it again. This is one of my favorite records of the year. Backstory: Maybe It’s Reno is Bridget Cross, Mark Robinson and Phil Krauth of the mighty Unrest. It’s mainly Cross’s baby: she wrote all the songs and sings lead, but the whole album has a kind of Imperial vibe to it. My fiancée Maura ordered this direct from the TeenBeat website a few weeks ago (where, heads-up, you can also get made-to-order CD copies of old lo-fi cassettes by Air Miami, Unrest and others) and I’ve been obsessing over it ever since. So there you go. Let go your heart, let go your head and feel it now.

Etran Finatawa, Desert Crossroads Second record from eMusic faves (they placed in our critics and users poll in 2006), this one has everything you loved about its predecessor, and then some. To quote eMusic’s Michaelangelo Matos:

Group leader Ghalitane Khamidoune plays snakelike guitar leads and sings in a lightly cragged voice; both are personable and both carry a clear and immediate authority. All the other band members (who play acoustic and often traditional instruments and percussion) also sing; their call-and-response vocal lines and dense, keening harmonies are rich, robust and utterly hypnotic, as are their hard-loping rhythms — think one-TWO, one-TWO, with the “one” dragging a bit. Strong and cohesive, ultra-professional and instantly comfortable, with maturity to command instant respect and tunes that sway like holly in the breeze, Desert Crossroads, like 2006’s commanding debut, Introducing Etran Finatawa, is music to grow old with.

Chris Mills, Living in the Aftermath Right, so, disclosure: I consider Chris Mills a friend of mine, but I was a fan before I ever knew the man, and Living in the Aftermath is his finest work in years. I’d say it’s a meditation on the sad state of America in 2008, but that would just scare you off — and it’s unfair to call music this rollicking, raucous and unchained a “meditation” on anything. It’s certainly the most bracing Mills has sounded in a long time. “Calling All Comrades” comes out swinging, and the rest of the album maintains that sweaty momentum.

Larry Norman, Upon This Rock From the time I was 15 up until I was 19 or 20, I was a pretty serious Christian, and as such, I spent a lot of time buying records from Christian bookstores. Larry Norman was kind of the Syd Barrett of Christian music: totally revered, totally visionary, totally misunderstood and maybe more than a little crazy. Frank Black has repeatedly stated his affection, even going so far as to cover Norman’s “Six Sixty Six” on the first Catholics record. I was never bananas for Norman when I was a kid — I was more into the, uh, “cooler” bands, like Daniel Amos, the 77’s and LSU. Still, I respected him and what he’d done, and when he passed away last month I got a little sad. If you haven’t ever heard it, treat yourself to “I Wish We’d All Been Ready,” a gooseflesh raising ballad about the apocalypse that serves now as the perfect three-minute summation of the late ’60s Jesus People movement. If you can handle heavy doses of gospel in your rock & roll this album, in some circles, is considered a classic.

April March & Steve Hanft, Magic Monsters In 1996, April March put out a record called Chrominance Decoder, an unbelievable collage of sounds and styles that transcended kitsch to become something truly other. Call it kaleidoscope music. This collaboration with filmmaker Steve Hanft feels slightly more straightforward. It still puts March’s cottony voice waaaaayyy up front, but she shares vocal duties with Hanft, and the songs run from dreamy and chirpy to plain old indie rock.

The Night Marchers, See You in Magic John Reis of Rocket from the Crypt teams up with Gar Wood and Jason Kourkounis of Hot Snakes to make a record that sounds, well, exactly like what you think a record with that cast would sound like. Which is to say, awesome. Gritty, greasy, grimy, gravel-throated rock & roll with a few nods towards rockabilly and garage. Perfect for the convertible.

Sonic Youth, J’Accuse Ted Hughes More grand ambient soundscapes from SY. Pretty droney and spacey and ambient.

Jukebox the Ghost, Live & Let Ghost Jukebox the Ghost already has some acolytes on eMusic, and it’s easy to see why — this is bright, poppy indie rock, with pounding piano and big, brash hooks. Kind of fits inside the Ben Folds category, just as playful and bounding and loose.