october treats

The fall comes in three chapters: September, October, and November. Or as most children see it: The death of summer, Halloween, Thanksgiving break. And just as we previewed some of the best that September promised (Girls! The Big Pink! Arctic Monkeys! Vivian Girls! Right, guys!) in August, this second chapter promises more to get us through the increasingly cold nights. Tomorrow is a blitzkrieg of good stuff, so Jayson and I rummaged through the release skeds and listed some things we’re geeked on for the rest of the month.

The Raincoats, S/t (reissue) – The reissue of this all-female primitivist punk-folk collective responsible for the most jarringly damaged cover of “Lola” ever put to tape. The Raincoats have an odd, lovely legend behind them — they are The Band That Kurt Cobain Saved, a group that reformed after Cobain made a devotional pilgrimage to Notting Hill to persuade founding member Ana De Silva to reform the band and got them signed to DGC records. This record doesn’t need a backstory to shine, though — it is entirely its own kind of odd wonderful.

Lightning Bolt, Earthly Delights – Rumors of Lightning Bolt’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Though the mighty noise duo (that’s drummer Brian Chippendale and bassist Brian Gibson) have homed in on some heretofore absent songwriting chops, Earthly Delights is ultimately, like all of the Bolt’s work, a flying fist of an album. Once again, I have no idea what any of these songs are about other than pure adrenaline.

Neon Indian, Psychic Chasms – There’s a weird little new lo-fi something blowing through the air these days, and you can tell it’s good by the increasingly amazing and mountingly absurd terms music writers are attempting to coin to describe it – glo-fi?? Chill wave? Alex already did a great wrap-up of some of this stuff awhile back, and I can’t really improve upon his description of Neon Indian, so I’ll just spit it back out again: “This is lo-fi used to effect, with a purpose: it’s hazy and chintzy and kinda beach-y. Like the sunburnt yin to Glass Candy’s icy yang.” This chill-wave-Soul-Glo-Lite-Brite-pop meme has been sorta-kinda blowing up lately, what with Memory Tapes getting a BNM from Pitchfork, but Neon Indian, to me, are still the most fascinating and unshakeable of the bunch.

Fuck Buttons, Tarot Sport – This decency-challenging experimental noise duo gave editors cold sweats as they searched for ways to censor the group’s name last year. They had to because critics the world over were losing their shit over Street Horrrsing, their powerful, mesmerizing debut which landed at #42 on our 100 Best Albums of 2008 list. Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power look to up the ante with this followup. Check out this two-song preview here.

Dam Funk, Toeachizown – Dam Funk, the pioneer of nu-West Coast laid-back synth funk, remixed and opened for Animal Collective earlier this year. Now he’s unleashing a massive slab of music into the world this year, a five-volume tome of instrumental ’80s robot boogie that should be enough to soundtrack a month’s worth of Ibiza after-hours parties.

Atlas Sound, Logos – Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox is a fount of fearless exposure, mining a troubled childhood, cracked relationships, and his struggles with Marfan syndrome for beautiful songs. But he says his second album is not an act of personal revelation. Instead he’s called it “panoramic,” a look at the bigger picture. A listen to “Sheila,” though, resembles what made 2008’s Let the Blind Lead Who Can See But Cannot Feel: Girl group harmonies, woozy strumming, and pained lyricism. “We’ll die alone together…” Cox intones over and over on the song’s chorus. Expect sadness, beauty, and a little self-indulgence on this one.

El Perro Del Mar, Love Is Not Pop – The new one from Swedish chanteuse Sarah Assbring, a sort of mini-album at just nine tracks, is as shimmering and delicate as 2008’s From the Valley to the Stars, but also deeper and darker. Working with one half of Balearic funk duo Studio, Rasmus Hägg, there’s an elegiac strand running throughout bolstered by Hägg’s specific, keystroking textures. But this is Assbring’s show, as she covers Lou Reed’s devastating “Heavenly Arms” amidst six equally crushing and soulful originals. Stick around for the three bonus remixes.

White Denim, Fits – There is no easy way to describe this band. They move like frightened kittens crossing a busy intersection. Each move is a frantic and urgent leap to a new place, though not necessarily safety. I couldn’t think of a better album title than Fits. It’s hard to imagine how exactly a trio can write songs with so many shifts in tempo, time signature, instrumentation and attitude. They are sad, they are prog, they are drunk, they are garage rock, they are kinetic, they are swooning, they are Lynyrd Skynrd. This isn’t contradiction, it’s schizophrenia. And yet, when they’re at their best, they recall the Minutemen’s knowing sprawl; a contained mess.

Miles Anthony Benjamin Robinson, Summer of Fear – I’m new to Mister Robinson, who was another in a long line of anonymous-and-then-not Fader cover stars some years ago. I ignored his touted folk rock debut then for reasons that are now lost on me and realize I’ve made a grave mistake. The Dylan comparisons will be raining like so much acid rain, but really why shouldn’t they? Robinson isn’t half the lyricist or storyteller, but he sure does have a sense of the drama that Robert Zimmerman was mining on those curious, occasionally masterful mid-70s albums. MABR is signed to Saddle Creek now, so soon we’ll see what he can do for The House That Oberst Built.

Sufjan Stevens, The BQE - What on Earth has gotten into Sufjan these days? His epic multimedia work dedicated to the BQE Expressway — basically, an old-fashioned orchestral suite festooned with dancers, hula hoops, video projections, and inflatable gorillas — is seeing release as a boxed set including the DVD of the live performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2008, a comic book, and a fucking VIEWMASTER. That is in addition to the upcoming “reinterpretation” of 2001′s Enjoy Your Rabbit, an album of electronic miniatures Sufjan released before Greetings from Michigan blew up that almost no one knows about, by the string quartet Osso. Oh, and that’s in addition to the album of instrumental ambient music he recently announced he’d be recording with his stepdad. Oh, and also he’s been performing some wildly ambitious, jazz-inflected new pop tunes in his live sets. Never let it be said that this man doesn’t follow his muse.

Down The Road
Julian Casablancas, Phrazes of the Young – Lord only knows what Tron-inspired madness Julian Casablancas is on the verge of releasing into the world with his first solo album, but if it is anywhere near as good as his first single, “11th Dimension,” or this mind-obliteratingly weird promo video, then he’s going for some kind of Terry Gilliam-meets-Baraka-meets-a-70s-high-school-physics-instructional video sort of thing. Just be prepared, is all we’re saying.

So what are you looking forward to?