na: Mountain Goats, The Raveonettes, more

Another big, big day for New Arrivals…let’s just dive headfirst. Updated with the Jesus Lizard because I am a total moron.

The Mountain Goats, The Life Of the World to Come: Newest from John Darnielle finds him working within an overarching theme. I’ll let Douglas Wolk take it away:

God has been turning up in the Mountain Goats’ discography since the beginning —John Darnielle’s characters hope for salvation, curse their enemies and pray for divine intervention. This time, though, Darnielle has titled all 12 of his new album’s songs after Bible verses, and a lot of their language is borrowed from the language of religious discourse. Still, this isn’t quite what you’d call a Christian rock album: it’s not an expression of faith, exactly, but an expression of a fascination with faith, the way it manifests itself in people’s lives, and the conditions under which it appears. Many of these songs’ speakers are facing death — their own or other people’s — and they’re all in situations where the concept of existence beyond this life changes the stakes.

The Jesus Lizard, reissues: The remastering of the depraved underground filth-rock legends. Chris Weingarten did one of the greatest Q&As I’ve had the pleasure to html code and put up on the site in awhile. Check it out.

Mission of Burma, The Sound, The Speed, The Light: Another new record from a reunited post-punk band that is beating all the odds, growing mightier and less predictable as they age together. Doug again:

The reunited lineup of Boston legends Mission of Burma has now been together longer than their original incarnation, and they’re —improbably —still getting tighter, heavier and more forceful … Their power comes from their internal chemistry, and the longer they play together, the mightier they become. There aren’t many formal changes in direction on their fourth official studio album, aside from the off-kilter wash of organ that grounds “SSL 83″; everything’s still pretty much built around Roger Miller’s barbed clusters of guitar noise, Peter Prescott howling and battering his drums, Clint Conley’s elliptical hooks and pyrotechnical bass, and the unmistakable patina of texture that comes from Bob Weston’s backwards-and-forwards tape loops. But they’re contributing their wildest ideas to each other’s songs more than ever.

Califone, All My Friends Are Funeral Singers: These guys have never made a bad record. Ever. And that claim still stands with the new one.

Lou Barlow, Goodnight Unknown: New Lou! Post-Sebadoh, post-everything, Lou is still cranking out reliable solo records.

The Clientele, Bonfires on The Heath: Fourth record from the ultimate Village Green Preservation Society worshipper’s band is also their most evocative. Review will be up tomorrow; technical difficulties.

The Raveonettes, In and Out of Control: These guys have always been a quiet little dark-horse fave around here, though sometimes they have been the kind of dark horse you root for out of pure affection. Their latest finds them further living up to its potential, locating their own voice amid all the deafening Phil Spector echoes they summon.

Daniel Johnston, Is And Always Was New music from one of indie’s most inimitable and troubling voices. His voice is a little hoarser and weathered, though that quizzical, boyish lilt of yearning is still there around the edges.

Kurt Vile, Childish Prodigy: The big Matador debut for 17dots and eMusic Fave Kurt Vile, whose 2008 record Constant Hitmaker and limited-edition vinyl followup God Is Saying This To You was some of the most persistently haunting and oddly poignant lo-fi rock of recent years. I intend to devote long hours to this, but my first impressions say that this is less consistently great, a little more stylistically scattered, but also feels like the first step in a massive pulling-together of all the disparate strands this hard-to-pin-down guy has been pursuing over his last burst of records.

Au, Versions More delightfully skewed, oddly ecstatic forest-child psychedelia from Luke Wyland’s band project. Feels like an Iron John-tribal sort of take on the primary-colors fantasias of Merriweather Post Pavilion.

Cerys Matthews, Don’t Look Down The Britpop chanteuse dresses herself up in some cooing 60s-pop duds.

Close Lobsters, Forever Until Victory: Singles collection from criminally overlooked jangle-pop band; Church fans, this is your new catnip. Also please check out the underrated little gem Foxheads Stalk This Land.

The Bats, Don’t You Rise: Speaking of underrated jangle-pop! You like My Teenage Stride, right!? Of course you do: you’re a good 17dots denizen. Well, meet one of Jed Smith’s tunesmith altars. This sounds great.

Kandia Kouyate, Amary Daou: A new compilation of the best from this Malian force of nature.

Carlos Lamartine, Historias de Casa Velha: This sounds fantastic. According to the web sites I trawled in a hasty effort to find context for this wonderful compilation, it is a collection of works recorded in Angola in the early 1970s by Lamartine, who was an important voice in the Angolan resistance to the Portuguese during those years. Now enough phony expertise: this is such rich-sounding music, bubbling with a lazy simmer of anger and a kind of heavy-lidded jackal’s smile. It’s a mixture of samba, an Angolan form of traditional music, and Portuguese samba, which makes it glide with an easy fluidity all its own.

Matias Aguayo, Rollerskate: This sounds exactly like you might expect from the title and the label involved: this is Kompakt’s intriguingly textured, brainy notion of what a “Rollerskate anthem” might sound like to homo sapiens.

Black Uhuru, Sounds of Freedom: Stone-cold classic reggae album; Joe informs me this is about the fourth time it has seen the light of day on eMusic. Grab it!

Brakes brakes brakes, Rock Is Dodelijk: Live Brakes Brakes Brakes album! That wild-eyed punkabilly twang really sizzles here: you can practically hear the spittle flecks leave the guy’s mouth and hit his microphone. In case you needed an inviting image to ponder while downloading.

Immortal, All Shall Fall: The latest from Norwegian death metallers finds them returning to their roots, making grim and sweeping Satanic metal that recalls their epic Battles in the North.

Lord Prosser, Traces of Yesterday: Strummy, downcast mope-rock. Nothing revelatory here, but shimmery and pretty in the right ways.

The Leisure Society, A Product of the Ego Drain: Love you some Yellow House-era Grizzly Bear? So do these guys. A lot.

The Jive Turkeys, <B A Single: Genuinely hot instrumental Memphis funk – skittering guitar sliding over organ beds. We get a steady trickle of this stuff, from the Strut label and others; maybe someday I’ll do a quick roundup for all the breaks-hunting hip hop producers prowling 17 dots. Good stuff.

The Cinematics, Love and Terror: I have never before heard the Cinematics. Maris likes them, though, and I think maybe I do too; very Killers-esque, which in case any fool out there might get it twisted, is a high compliment.

John Coltrane, Side Steps: Hey, it’s eMusic regular mailman, weighing in on the album page! Take it away, mailman, and thanks for the assist:

“Compilation set of Coltrane’s sideman dates for Prestige Records in the 1950s. Solid stuff if you don’t already have these.” [Ed. Note: We concur.]

Harmonia and Eno ‘76, Tracks and Traces Reissue: Gorgeous, rippling, unclassifiable jazz-informed electronic music.

Meshell NDegeocello, Devils Halo: New from the outspoken and defiantly uncategorizable neo-soul bassist and singer/songwriter. Seems nicely freaked-out, like she’s getting her Funkadelic jones all the way out.

Philharmonia Orchestra with Esa Pekka Salonen, Gurrelieder: Great early recording from the iconic Finnish conductor who would later go onto to completely revolutionize the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Esa-Pekka Salonen brings his typically cool, Stravinsky-adoring eye to one of Schoenberg’s final ripely romantic works, right when he was trembling at the brink of the atonalism he would spend the rest of his life forging into bravely.

Rene Jacobs, Haydn: The Creation: Fantastic new recording of Haydn’s ineffably majestic masterwork.

Denizen Kane, Brother Min’s Journey To the West: Backpacker rap over horn-chart-riddled boom-bap beats. This sounds solid, not outside of the comfy little post-Dilla wheelhouse but worth checking for if you dug the recent Oddisee record or the Tanya Morgan or the Finale or some of the other musically solid if unadventurous indie rap seeing release this year.

The Roots, Organix: First Roots album! This has also been playing peek-a-boo with eMusic for awhile; I am getting a strange sense of déjà vu mentioning it in a New Arrivals post.

That isn’t even close to everything; call out stuff in the Comments for us!