Deerhunter – Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?
Getting ahead on the avalanche of releases coming out mid-January, including most of these, let's begin with the Atlanta band's eighth album. As the title suggests, it ponders on a grim future, with poems and many a profound moment of dark, nihilistic humour by frontman Bradley Cox, including asking what the point of making an album at all in a world without an attention span. And yet it grips you (that's the point) with several wonderful tunes of lo-fi indie, especially the harpsichord sound on Death in Midsummer and an overall style and sound of gritty slowness that perhaps matches where it was recorded – in the sparsely populated Texan desert city of Marf. Dry deliver indeed. Out on 4AD.
Deerhunter - Death In Midsummer
Sharon Van Etten - Remind Me Tomorrow
The New Jersey singer-songwriter returns with a shift in musical style - putting down the guitar and moving more into electronica and keyboards, and this new sound builds slowly, and effectively. Meanwhile the smoky, emotional power of voice is still there, as is the subject matter - post-relationship perspectives, and reflections on childhood. Jupiter 4, for example, sounds like a slow hovering spaceship, but has power too. The single, Seventeen, as echoes of Arcade Fire, and therefore Springsteen about it. Out on Jagjaguwar.
Sharon Van Etten – Seventeen
You Tell Me – You Tell Me
If the sound on this album reminds you of Field Music, that's no coincidence, because it contains the unmistakable work of one of the siblings, Peter Brewis, here teaming up for a new project with Admiral Fallow member Sarah Hayes. A personal but shared form of singer-songwriting in keyboard pop form, this is carefully crafted and clever work, and very beautiful at times, particularly on Clarion Call. Out on Memphis Industries.
You Tell Me – Clarion Call
Jeffrey Lewis and Los Bolts – 13 Fall Songs
The prolifically humorous singer-songwriter's 2018 tour with Los Bolts included the challenge of starting each gig with a different Mark E Smith song, and this album comes on the back of that frantic fun. Lewis is a massive Fall fan, and as a cartoonist, has also drawn an artwork in which more than 100 Fall songs are referenced, looking like some kind of chaotic but detailed work by Richard Scary. Needless to say that if you a fan of Lewis or Smith, then get this. And in the spirit of that artwork, and Fall gigs, there's no setlist, just listen and try to recognise each one, knocked out in slapdash enjoyment. No tracks are available online yet (it is released next week) but here's a sample of Lewis’s love for Smith from another compilation:
Lorelle Meets The Obsolete – De Facto
Looking for some minimal disco pop and fuzz-edge indie guitar shoegaze with a dark melancholy? Then look no further than this from Lorena Quintanilla and Alberto González with their fifth album. Out on Sonic Cathedral.
Lorelle Meets The Obsolete – Líneas En Hojas
Tallies – Tallies
A promising debut for the Toronto indie quartet of vocalist/guitarist/keys player Sarah Cogan, guitarist Dylan Frankland, drummer Cian O’Neill and bassist Stephen Pitman, with something of a retro-80s pop feel to their jangly guitar sound love songs. Out on Kanine / Fear of Missing Out Records.O
Tallies - Easy Enough
The Silver Field – Room
A work of beautiful obscurity and mystery, The Silver Field is British artist Coral Rose with her debut out on Tim Burgess’s label, O Genesis Recordings. Rooms was recorded in her bedroom using the double bass, cello, guitar, mandolin, harmonium and a bagpipe, and the refreshing electronica Rain should be enough to whet the appetite.
The Silver Field - Rain
Don’t forget to also enjoy our voted selection of 50 or more favourite albums of the 2018:
Anna Calvi to Idles: favourite albums of 2018 – part 1
Gazelle Twin to Villagers: favourite albums of 2018 – part 2
This week's selection is by The Landlord.
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