na: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Asobi Seksu

Pretty light day today. But that doesn’t mean that what’s here isn’t fascinating/weird/awesome/etc. Let’s get to it:

Omar Rodriguez Lopez, Xenophanes – Omar from At the Drive-In and The Mars Volta has a new project. You might want to sit down for this: it’s a CONCEPT ALBUM. I kid. The Mars Volta ain’t my cup of tea, though I gotta respect the sheer lunatic abandon with which they plunge over the brink. There is no other band out there more unafraid of wretched excess. This one sounds both melodically fairly straightforward — Omar more or less veers clear of the twelve-sided-die tempo changes, too — and surprisingly gauzy and pretty. He collaborates with his wife Ximena Sarinana. Here’s eMusic’s Frank Neuman with more:

Most of the tracks feature the pair singing together, one voice laid over the other to create a sweeping, breathy sound that serves as a kind of unifier. That’s good, since this is Rodriguez-Lopez’s first solo attempt at a prog-rock staple: the concept album. Xenophanes tells the story of a man and a woman who are reborn over and over again throughout time. The woman remains unaware of the specifics of their relationship until their eleventh and final iteraton, when she discovers that the man, her companion through time, is both her lover and her father. The album is sonically beautiful in any language, though listeners who don’t have either a working understanding of Spanish or a bilingual dictionary on hand might miss the album’s various vocal leitmotifs.

Asobi Seksu, Rewolf – Acoustic Asobi! You might not think this works as well as it does, but stripped of all that shoegazey reverb Asobi Seksu basically turn into Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions. And, hey, whaddya know, they even cover the silky, disappearing “Suzanne,” from Sandoval’s 2001 record Bavarian Fruit Bread. Bonus!

X Ray Spex, Live @ the Roundhouse 2008 – Man, Poly Styrene’s unhinged, blood-spattered cheerleader routine seems not to have dimmed one iota over the years. She still sounds like a little baby Valkyrie come to party with you and/or possibly eat your babies. This is from last year! Surprisingly clear sound for a live punk record. Still rules.

Wu-Tang, Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture, Vol. 2: Enter the Dubstep – This might be the most mystifying new release of the day. This series, in fact, is one of the biggest “WTFs” imaginable, and I love the awkward U.N.-summit nature of the title “Wu-Tang Meets The Indie Culture.” It basically makes me think of the RZA and Ed Droste alone in a room, uncomfortably trying to make conversation. Vol. 2 in this one is even more confusing: it’s called Enter the Dubstep, which, okay, so that makes me envision, like, Raekwon verses laid over some spooky Burial-type beats. In my head, that sounds pretty good. I can even imagine a mush-mouthed Bobby Digital performance over some Skream shit being pretty entertaining. But 1)I recognize almost none of these verses, and 2)the curators seem to have gone with only the most hammering, queasy, and evil of dubstep sounds, to the point it basically just sounds like an Anticon blend. What the fuck is Busta Rhymes doing on here? Weiiiiiiiiiird shit.

Pants Yell! Received Pronunciation – My Pick of the Day! Slumberland has put out more records this year than can be considered sane or reasonable, and as listeners, we should only be thankful for this — they have fantastic taste. Also, Pants Yell! is great — diffidently shuffling indie-pop with pillow-soft distortion, ’sup!

Lissie, Why You Runnin’ – Yup, this is the kind of voice — smoky, thrilling, mysterious, full of dark notes — that you give a record deal to. If I were, say, Frankie Sharp from Sharp records, I would turn my white limo around and introduce myself pronto. New Fat Possum signee, and it sounds they still know what they are doing.

Andy Cotton, Last Stand at the Havemeyer – I am not a very knowledgeable guide, but I recognize some illustrious names on here, chief among them Avishai Cohen, and this sounds like a really great modern jazz record.

Krallice, Dimensional Bleedthrough – Maniacally intricate and martially precise double-time riffage and massive math-rock epics that have been bronzed in black-metal hellfire. I know there’s at least one of you out there that wants this. It’s good.

Grant Lee Buffalo, Ladies Love Oracle – They also love Cool James, but I digress. First solo record from Grant Lee Philips in the wake of the dissolution of the beloved Grant Lee Buffalo. I’m going to go ahead and quote Andy Kellman’s review for Allmusic, since it’s already here and it’s great; I hope he doesn’t mind:

Ladies’ Love Oracle is an intimate, candle-lit coming-out party for Grant Lee Phillips, who continues to prove himself as one of the finest songwriters of the last 20 years. Recorded over a three-day span during October 1999 in Jon Brion’s basement studio, the brief, nine-song collection is a one-man show in the raw. As stated by the man himself, “Sometimes a sketch says more than a mural.” Indeed — there’s an even greater sense of immediacy and warmth here than in the work of his prior band. Though the chiefly acoustic guitar-based record is skeletal in nature when compared to Grant Lee Buffalo’s studio work, some of these pearls are lushly draped with harmonica, piano, and other refinements without ever sounding extraneous. Here, Phillips joins the gilded ranks of Bob Mould, Mark Eitzel, and Kristin Hersh — songwriters who have flourished alone in the wakes of their respective bands. If Grant Lee Buffalo’s best work is like admiring a vast flower garden from afar, Phillips’ first solo release is akin to picking a rose from that garden, putting your nose to it and admiring the folds of the petals. Lovely.

Echo and the Bunnymen, The Fountain – Latest from seminal gloomy post-punk Liverpudlians continue their concerts efforts to rebottle their 80s magic. I haven’t spent any time with this yet — skimming through it now, it sounds recognizably Echo-ish, though without giving me any chills — but I’ve heard one or two good things. Any thoughts from the crew?

Gaza, He Is Never Coming Back – Titanically evil, psychotic sludge metal. Like the Melvins if they were twice as menacing, way less goofy, and way into Satan. This sounds amazing and fucking terrifying.

Katatonia, Night is the New Day – Notable because it is new Katatonia, I sadly have to concur with Joe when he says that “this is a shell of the band that recorded ‘Brave Murder Day.’ ” Or, as Maris more pithily put it: “I’m more metal than this.” Bravo, Maris: Ask Amishi would be proud.

Brim Liski, Brim Liski – Don’t know what to make of this — soft-focus, electronica-tinged dour post-punk stuff, all of it in a cavern of reverb and softened by layers of gauzy filters. Pretty? Anonymous? Both?

Gentlemen, ladies, I cede the floor.