New Arrivals: Roundup!

Via beneffervescent

As I mentioned last week, sorting through Freshly Ripped is starting to become more and more of a “help, I’m being drowned in gold!” sort of situation. So much music, so little time. Combing back through the last week’s worth of stuff, I found enough, big and small, to do another New Arrivals post. Just a note: I’m going to try to focus on UK stuff this time around.

Various Artists, Horse Meat Disco – Ok, my pick of the day, easy. Just absurd amounts of killer, sun-kissed roller disco on this. Bumping Chic basslines, cooing divas, cow bells — this is a worthy successor in every way to Disco Not Disco and Disco Italia, Strut’s other two great compilations this year. If it wasn’t iimmediately clear, I should not write about dance music, basically ever, because I resort to bullshit like “sun-kissed roller disco,” but don’t let my herb-y new-jackness dissuade; this is great, great stuff.

The Herbaliser, Session 1 and 2 – The Herbaliser are still trafficking in thick, sample-heavy, spy-movie funk, and they still do it incredibly well.

Mount Eerie, Wind’s Poem – This is a really somber, dense affair from Phil Elverum’s Mt. Eerie moniker; he tends to go darker on Mt. Eerie, but this one is just pitch-black on first listen. Synth-and-drone-heavy, impressionistic, maybe a little too bleak and forbidding for me on this humid July afternoon. Thoughts?

The Gaslight Anthem, The ‘59 Sound EP – This came out in June, but I am just discovering that Gaslight had the wisdom to cover Pearl Jam’s “State of Love and Trust,” one of the pinnacles of aggrieved man-rock, at one of their Webster Hall shows. And then they had the wisdom to include it on this single, as a B-side. They nail it, unshockingly. I still love this band; someone in our engineering dept. was playing The ‘59 Sound yesterday and it still sounded just fucking great to me.

James Poyser Presents The Rebel Yell – So James Poyser is one of the many slightly nerdy behind-the-scenes-type producers who has decided, for reasons unclear, to step from behind the mixing boards and inflict a “___ Presents”-type album on the world. Poyser’s got some serious neo-soul and indie-rap production and songwriting credits under his belt — “Love of My Life,” off of The Roots’ THings Fall Apart, was penned by this guy, and he’s also worked with Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, and Talib Kweli. He also worked on the last excellent Al Green album.

But this record, unfortunately, does not sound like the comforting, cocoa-butter neo-soul record suggested by such a resume. It sounds like last year’s N.A.S.A. record — i.e., a clusterfuck. The kind of record where an avowed music nerd mistakes the “genre” presets on his synths and keyboards as mystical tickets to new musical pastures. “Army of Misfits” is faux-Britpop bounce; “Heartbreak 101″ is as much an aping of Kanye’s 808s N Heartbreaks as the title suggests; “Life,” one of the better tracks on here, sounds oddly like an electro-tinged take on The Good, Bad, and The Queen record. I swear, Kanye’s electro-house dabbling, while interesting when he does it, is paving the path to a whole new way for rappers to be terrible. Mark my words: the “eclectic, guest artist-jammed, house-music-influenced solo album” is on pace to eclipse the “terrible Jimi Hendrix and Prince-influenced solo album” trend that previous generations of rappers (Andre 3000, Common, etc) have found themselves ensnared in.

Kate Simko, Take You There – I don’t know Kate Simko, but this sounds nice — and a little rudimentary Googling tells me some interesting things. Former classical performer, now electronic musicians? My ears, they are pricked. Here’s a Q and A she did with Resident Advisor, the premier dance music magazine. (Incidentally, a one Todd Burns is their Editor-In-Chief.)

We got some new Criss Cross titles in, about which my silence will be embarrassingly conspicuous. I am not at all versed in their incredible catalogue, but Rob might be able to jump in the Comments section with some insights.

Billy Drummond, Native Colors
Greg Gisbert Quartet, Harcology

Speech Debelle, Speech Therapy – Normally, the sight of the appellation “ft. Micachu” is enough to freeze my blood, but this record, from a female rapper down with Roots Manuva, sounds really nice. Heartfelt, fun, breezy: “The Key” reminds me, for some reason, of old Aceyalone.

Finally, one US release:

Nadja, When The Sun Always Shines I See It On TV – Someone already called this out in the comments section, but wanted to rep it; fantastic covers album from doom-metal duo Nadja. Their cover of Slayer’s “Dead Skin Mask” somehow makes that song more tribal, hollow, and haunting, just as their cover of “Only Shallow” somehow increases that songs claustrophobic heaviness. They pull of small miracles like this throughout the album, not least of which is a cover nicked from The Kids In the Hall’s Brain Candy movie. Highly recommended.