Photo of Sudan Archives courtesy of the artist’s Bandcamp page
First Thought Fridays is a (mostly) weekly column offering quick-hit takes on some of the albums released this week, serving up first impressions, favorite or least favorite songs, and whether or not they’re worth a second listen. Check back for more each Friday night or Saturday morning.
Well, last week, I told you this column might be a little late and a little short. It’s way later than I anticipated—not only were my kids off school last Friday but I was at SLICE all day Saturday and needed Sunday to recover. But shorter? No way! Here’s our longest First Thought Fridays column yet, featuring a whopping eight new reviews of releases from Friday October 17, in the order in which I listened to ‘em! (When will the October 24 column go up? We shall see!)
Rachel Bobbitt, Swimming Towards the Sand (Fantasy Records): I learned a very incongruous fact when reading Rachel Bobbitt’s artist bio: as a teenager, she sang covers on late, lamented micro-video app Vine to a big enough audience to make Buzzfeed’s “13 Amazing Singers You Should Follow on Vine” list. This strikes me as strange because one listen to Bobbitt’s impressively strong debut solo album (which follows 11 years and college studies in Jazz and Vocal Pedagogy after the above honor) and you’d think she comes from the kind of place that the internet can’t reach.
For me, Bobbitt’s work scratches the same itch as Soccer Mommy, even though their music doesn’t sound all that similar—more like Sophie Allison’s take on bedroom pop transported from a Nashville bedroom to a remote cottage on a cold, fog-covered lake in Bobbitt’s native Nova Scotia. Like Soccer Mommy, the songs often start quiet before building to massive, cathartic choruses—take the stellar “Hands Hands Hands,” where Bobbitt sings in a murmur over quietly chugging fuzzed-up guitars on the verses before the guitars surge on the chorus as her voice soars up to its upper register. “Light,” by contrast, switches to just gently plucked acoustic guitar and Bobbitt’s lilting vibrato. Other songs reminded me of Blondshell (“I Want It All”) and even fellow Nova Scotia native Sarah McLachlan (“Furthest Limb”) but there’s a strong enough authorial voice here that Bobbitt, despite her start singing covers, doesn’t come off as an imitation of anybody. “Nothing” closes the record as gentle as a lullaby until it explodes in the bridge, Bobbitt’s voice multi-tracked into a heavenly choir. Simply a gorgeous listening experience. Will I Listen Again?: Yes.
Skullcrusher, And Your Song Is Like a Circle (Dirty Hit): Skullcrusher has a seasonally appropriate name for an October release, but despite the brutality that name implies, And Your Song Is Like a Circle isn’t filled with massive metal riffs—it’s more spectral, ethereal, ghostly. Everything is drenched in reverb, from Helen Ballentine’s whispered vocals to the slowly played piano chords to the guitars, to the point where the sound of her fingers scraping across the strings to switch chords constitutes the closest thing to percussion. At their heart, these compositions are folk songs, but the languorous pacing and reverb transform them into ambient mood music, a score to a movie yet to be made. Will I Listen Again?: Maybe.
Sparkle Carcass, Maraschino Chevy (Acid Cowboy Press): There’s not a lot of “alternative” in the alt-country of Chicago quartet Sparkle Carcass. They are, however, way out of step with the pop country that gets radio play these days, instead sticking to the good-time-country-meets-heartland-rock style that would have probably made them stars in the ‘70s, and that bands like the Bottle Rockets (the Pride of Festus!) kept alive in the intervening years.
The impeccably titled Maraschino Chevy offers up an even mix of odes to the good life (“Sippin’ on a Cool One,” “Not Ever”) and ol’ fashioned cry-into-your-beer heartbreakers (“New Year, No You,” “Single Again”), with all of the songs built on the same ear-pleasing elements of gallopin’ country beats, quick-pickin’ electric guitar leads, pedal steel, and twangy vocals. Singer Cody Palmer has his way with a couplet, too: favorite lines include “Sippin’ beer and eatin’ on edibles/ Don’t know if my handwritin’s legible/ But I got a couple two things to get off my chest” (“Not Ever”) and “Single again/ The only thing I’m runnin’ from is the alimony man” (“Single Again”). The band even stretches out a bit on the 7-minute album closer “Caldwell County,” which echoes early Ryan Adams or the countrier side of the Rolling Stones. Nothing revolutionary here, but it is a good time, start to finish. Will I Listen Again?: Definitely.
Sudan Archives, The BPM (Stones Throw Records): Sudan Archives’ last release, Natural Brown Prom Queen, was in the running for my top 25 albums of 2022 list but ended up just missing the cut. It’s very good, and more richly varied than any album that did make the list, but its genre- and world-hopping sound were so eclectic and wide-ranging that it borders on too much to take in and wrap your head around. On The BPM, her third full-length under the Sudan Archives moniker, Brittney Parks tightens her musical focus to all the various shadings of electronica, and the resulting album is all the better for it.
That isn’t to say the album isn’t also eclectic because it absolutely is: not only are there pop-friendly dancefloor-worth bangers (“My Type”), there’s also house anthems (“A Bug’s Life”), chill-out (“Come and Find You”), trance (“The Nature of Power”), and other songs that go beyond my rudimentary knowledge of electronica subgenres. Parks’ vocal styles are just as varied as the music, from flat and hypnotic to soaring house diva runs to rapid-fire raps (the latter probably being my favorite of her many modes). Pretty much every song hits for me except “Ms. Pac Man,” which is maybe a little too horny, but that’s probably just the prude in me talking. A huge level up from her last album and a great variety pack of stellar electronica dance grooves. Will I Listen Again?: Definitely.
C.Y.M., self-titled (ADA): C.Y.M. stands for “Chris y Michael,” “Chris” being Vampire Weekend bassist Chris Baio and “Michael” being Michael Greene, a.k.a. the British producer/DJ who performs under the name Fort Romeau. (And “Y” meaning “and,” if you forgot your high school Spanish.) The duo’s debut album is meant to be a “producer-helmed record”; the PR compares it to Air’s Moon Safari but it reminded me more of Broken Bells, the collaboration between producer Danger Mouse and the Shins’ James Mercer. C.Y.M. has a similar space rock sound, albeit the pace and energy level is kicked up several notches.
There’s a nice sonic consistency even as the pair explores disparate genres alongside widely varying collaborators, like the shoegaze pop of the Day Wave collab “Life of Mine” or the burbling bass and insistent drums of the Cherry Glazerr-assisted “Give Me One Night.” (“Catch Me If You Can” with Ghanaian-born, Germany-based rapper Nana is the one odd duck, shifting fully to a haunted house hip-hop sound unlike anything else on the record, but the song is good enough you likely won’t mind.) Baio is one of my absolute favorite bassists in indie rock and he really gets to stretch into new melodic territory here, particularly on the three instrumental tracks that conjure up thoughts of the Sea and Cake and DIIV. For being “just” a side project, this is an exceptionally strong album, light years away from the sound of Baio’s work in Vampire Weekend but just as appealing. Will I Listen Again?: Yes.
Paz Lenchantin, Triste (Hideous Human Records): Argentinian-born musician Paz Lenchantin has an impressively varied career, starting out as bassist in the alt-metal supergroup A Perfect Circle, which led to stints in Billy Corgan’s Smashing Pumpkins sequel band Zwan, psych-/stoner-rock trio The Entrance Band, and, for a full decade, as Kim Deal’s replacement in the Pixies.
With a résumé that eclectic, it’s probably no surprise that Lenchantin’s first solo album is similarly diverse, even if it all fits loosely under the alt-rock umbrella. The instrumentation is rich and impeccably played throughout; Lenchantin’s voice (singing mostly in English, though in Spanish on a few tracks as well) is a little slight by comparison, fitting better into the more atmospheric numbers than the straightforward rock ones. Favorite tracks include the PJ Harveyesque whispering menace of “Woman of Nazareth,” the heavily Pixies-ish “Wish I Was There,” the trippy story song “In the Garden with the Devil,” the insistent beat and fluttering saxophone of “Lucia,” and the Abbey Road-esque album closing title track. Will I Listen Again?: Probably.
Tame Impala, Deadbeat (Columbia): It’s been five years since the last Tame Impala album, but the collaborations that mastermind Kevin Parker has done in the interim—like Dua Lipa’s excellent last album and a pair of phenomenal tracks on last year’s Justice LP Hyperdrama—set expectations for Deadbeat high.
It at least opens with a strong trio of songs: “My Old Ways” rides a pulsing beat and an endlessly repeating jazzy piano figure, the synths go spacy for “No Reply” as Parker drops down into his rarely used lower vocal register (and ends up sounding a little Ringo Starr-ish?) before breaking down into a neat little toy piano bit on the bridge, and “Dracula” is equal parts The Weeknd and Daft Punk funky. Penultimate track “Afterthought” is good too, like a chillwave dream riding on the bassline from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” But the album really sags in the middle, with a bunch of songs that don’t go anywhere that musically interesting while Parker’s voice is stuck in his one standard falsetto mode until it really starts to wear down one’s patience. Tame Impala’s best songs (“Let It Happen,” “The Less I Know the Better,” “Borderline”) are where Parker settles into a hypnotic groove, with his vocals floating above as more a melodic element than a lyric delivery device. A few songs manage to achieve liftoff, but unfortunately much more of the time, this album is stuck on the ground. Will I Listen Again?: Probably not.
Militarie Gun, God Save the Gun (Loma Vista): No less an authority than Bob Mould told me to check out the new Militarie Gun, and who am I to say no? This was my first exposure to the band, and I liked what I heard: elements of post-hardcore (particularly in singer Ian Shelton’s bellow) but with music that was more melodic, and downright emo in a lot of places. The album gets off to a pretty strong start, especially with the big single “B A D I D E A,” but then scattered throughout the album are a few slower songs that didn’t do much for me: the acoustic guitar-and-strings “Daydream” is a snoozer, “I Won’t Murder Your Friend” starts off similarly blah but gets a little better when the heavier guitars kick in, and the penultimate track “Thought You Were Waving” blends Midwest emo style with more than a smidge of Modest Mouse—that band’s Isaac Brock even guests on the intro. (Its lyrics reminded me of late-’90s STL band Not Waving But Drowning, who I hadn’t thought about in forever. Remember those guys? Their stuff is on streaming!) On balance, the album was fine, but up against as much stiff competition as it has this week/month/year, I don’t know how often I’d ever return to it. I’ll definitely crank “B A D I D E A” when it comes on the radio, though. Will I Listen Again?: Probably not in its entirety. | Jason Green
