The REVIEWS

A Place to Bury Strangers

Pinned (DEAD OCEANS)

At 3:32 of Pinned’s anthemic opening track, “Never Coming Back,” a single guitar tone with the deceptive appearance of an army decimating any enemy within its radius of destruction ties A Place to Bury Strangers’ past to its present. After four studio albums and numerous EPs, Pinned showcases A Place to Bury Strangers’ latest, and most solid, iteration of a band that specializes in creating sonics that cut through the bone and straight to the marrow, sounding timely, relevant, and groundbreaking.

Since A Place to Bury Strangers released their brilliant self-titled debut album in 2007, and at the same time opened for the legacy industrial act Nine Inch Nails, the promise of greatness loomed large for the band. However, multiple line up changes interrupted the band’s path toward sustained success. Undeterred by the absence of consistency, founding guitarist/ singer Oliver Ackermann marched forward, constructing one solid album after the next.

The addition of bassist Dion Lunadon provided A Place to Bury Strangers with the stability it required to endure, and he crafted a few of the band’s tracks from their previous effort, 2015’s Transfixation . One last measure needed to be taken, as drummer Lia Simone Braswell not only complements the solid rhythm section, but her voice pierces through Ackerman’s thinly veiled delivery, adding melodicism to the band’s abrasive assault on the senses. The best example of their move away from erecting impenetrable walls of sound to more refined songwriting takes place on “Was It Electric,” a romantic ode to an experience that exists in memory only.

The risks A Place to Bury Strangers take pay off more often than the stranger, near-failed experiments found on “Execution” and “Attitude.” “I Know I’ve Done Bad Things” and “Keep Moving On” set the precedent—and distinct hope—for a band that no longer needs to look backward to solidify their legacy within the noise rock canon. (www.aplacetoburystrangers.com)

By Stephen Wyatt

Courtney Barnett

Tell Me How You Really Feel (MOM + POP/MARATHONARTISTS/MILK!)

“I’m not your mother! I’m not your bitch!” drools Courtney Barnett on the opening to the sixth track of Tell Me How You Really Feel . Her voice is devoid of any expression, but, with her distinctive Australian twang, it’s still unmistakably hers.

Once she hits the climax—“It’s all the same/ Never change, never change”—the track (also titled “I’m Not Your Mother, I’m Not Your Bitch”) takes with it the punk inflections which crept in on 2015’s Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit , and runs away with them. As with every Barnett song, her lyrical sincerity lingers. This is Barnett declaring her strength and independence, as she strides towards a raucous guitar strut with just as much brashness as her fans have come to expect.

Tell Me How You Really Feel is everything one would expect from the Sydney-born garage-rocker, following 2013’s The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas , her 2015 debut LP proper, and last year’s Lotta Sea Lice , a collaborative album with Kurt Vile. It’s full of incessantly catchy guitar riffs; a keen, driving rhythm section; and the unparalleled witty lyrics with which Barnett made her name. But it also bursts with more contradictions and a wider variety of personal intimacies than ever before.

“City Looks Pretty” fills a similar space as earlier singles “History Eraser” or “Aqua Profunda!” It blasts along with a warm fuzziness, but there’s also an undercurrent of anxiety, which Barnett approaches with a healthy attitude, attempting to consider life’s upsides too. For every “Friend [who] treats you like a stranger,” there’s a “Stranger [who] treats you like their best friend/Oh well.”

It’s not all fuzzy guitar pedals and burgeoning drums. “Walkin’ on Eggshells” sees Barnett include clunky Wurlitzer piano, a brightness which adds a real contrast to the otherwise questionably sombre track. There’s an undercurrent of melancholy in near everything Barnett sings, her voice an ever-thoughtful response to day-to-day mundanities. Most poignant is “Sunday Roast,” the album’s most delicately-laced track. With it, Barnett combats episodes of self-doubt, speaking as though giving advice to a friend, though it’s just as likely she’s advising herself. “I know you’re doing your best/I think you’re doing just fine” becomes a gorgeous swell of a phrase, reaching out and spreading into a joyful anthem of everyone looking out for each other: “I know all your stories, but I’ll listen to them again.” Now this is honest, kind-hearted intelligence. (www.courtneybarnett.com.au)

By Ellen Peirson-Hagger

Belle and Sebastian

How to Solve Our Human Problems Parts 1, 2, and 3 (MATADOR)

When Belle and Sebastian released their ninth studio album, Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance , in 2015, many fans weren’t expecting the slew of dance-centric tracks that made up the album’s critical success. Now three years later, Belle and Sebastian return to the dancefloor fray with new music, in the form of three connected EPs released over several months and also collected as a compilation CD and in a vinyl box set. Entitled How to Solve Our Human Problems , this EP trilogy takes after their three 1997 EP releases, and sees the band dip back into tracks from their extensive backlog. Each of the three EPs revolves around a “showroom” track, one track that in some way inspires or connects the rest of the songs on that particular EP; a track that the band had, up until now, kept in B-side territory; a track now getting its moment in the sun.

For Part 1 , that focal point is “We Were Beautiful”—an energetic, yet somehow strangely mournful, dance track on an EP that sounds still very much in the disco neighborhood of Peacetime . “Sweet Dew Lee” is a groovy romanticized account of a loner’s longing for an impossible love. Softer song “Fickle Season” is reminiscent of Peacetime’s lighter side, and that classically harmonious and symphonic Belle and Sebastian sound. Part 1 serves as a strong opening of well-put together songs, albeit a little disparate, for a group who are still eager to take new risks.

Part 2 features a slightly more cohesive tracklist. The group displays their maturity with a collection of songs that play more like a mini-album than a swath of singles or studio experiments. This EP’s first two songs seem like a set-up for “I’ll be Your Pilot,” a beautiful and introverted song about the love a father has for his son. Stuart Murdoch sings with aged wisdom, addressing his child, “It’s tough to become a grown-up/Put it off while you can.”

The musical DNA of Part 3 dips back into the dance-pop world of Part 1 . “Poor Boy” is an electro-disco anthem, the likes of which Belle and Sebastian fans might recognize as vastly different from the band’s past work. Part 3 also features the most diverse range of genre, style, and lyricist: in classic Belle and Sebastian fashion, the collaborative arm of the band’s songwriting process and aesthetic is in full force.

How to Solve Our Human Problems is difficult to pin down. In some ways, Belle and Sebastian’s new work represents unexplored territory—yet, the group have been around for so long that one could find elements of nearly every one of their last albums in the 15 collected tracks of this EP trilogy. “Wisdom is the mind at ease,” sings Murdoch on “Everything is Now (Part Two).” How wise this group certainly is.(www.belleandsebastian.com)

By Ben Jardine

The Breeders

All Nerve (4AD)

Returning with their first album in a decade, and this time boasting the classic Last Splash lineup of Kelley and Kim Deal, Josephine Wiggs, and Jim Macpherson for the first recordings since that 1993 album, The Breeders may be laden with the expectations of 40-something, plaid shirted devotees but they approach these 11 songs with both poise and confidence.

Lead single “Wait in the Car” hits early, all chug n’ churn guitar and a cry of “Good morning!” to welcome us back into their bright, bruised world. Later, “Spacewoman” proves to be one of the most haunting and memorable songs of their career—a slow-burn anthem that kills with its chorus as much as it moves with its verses—“I look up/I’m lonely too.” “Archangel’s Thunderbird” shifts gears with an awkward, slanting riff and off-kilter drumline and a series of subtle hooks that grip hard on repeat listens.

Kim Deal’s voice is bell-clear throughout, particularly on “Dawn: Making an Effort,” an all-enveloping ballad brilliantly suited to their dream pop label home. While there may be a few moments where things seem to slip away from the creative and into the slightly stilted—“Skinhead #2” being a prime example—songs such as album closer “Blues at the Acropolis” serve as a tremendous reminder of the Deal sisters’ ear for the dramatic, the uniquely strange and the downright delightful.

All Nerve may suffer by lazy comparison not only to golden age Pixies or The Breeders’ own ’90s gems but it’s a twisted, swirling record of gorgeous harmony set against catapulting rhythms and just the right balance of body-horror lyricism that stands firmly on its’ own. The plaid shirted among us will certainly find much to enjoy here—more adventurous listeners are in for a treat too. (www.thebreedersmusic.com)

By Michael James Hall

Anna Burch

Quit the Curse (POLYVINYL)

Anna Burch’s debut album for Polyvinyl, Quit the Curse , is heavily reminiscent of ’90s singer-songwriter Liz Phair, both honest and confessional. The Detroit-based folkie is no stranger to the Detroit music scene, having released albums both independently and alongside Detroit bands Frontier Ruckus and Failed Flowers since 2010.

Burch sounds to be really enjoying herself on Quit the Curse , immersed in her songwriting that’s both witty and heartfelt. However, there’s a strict dichotomy between these songs: at once gentle, swaying folk ballads, channeling noisy, scratched-out guitar leads.

Burch elicits heavyhearted hometown nostalgia. The saloon door slide-guitar on “Belle Isle,” an ode to a hometown treasure and natural beauty, emits some stylistic changes for Burch, spewing: “Like the night we made out on belle isle,” for most Detroit locals, this is a very common memory from their past.

However, this album, lyrically speaking, at times lacks substance, as Burch falls into the same heart aching tropes as each song finds herself in the exact same position: vulnerable, anxious, and heartbroken. This isn’t to say that Quit the Curse isn’t impressive. Burch has grown immensely as an artist, each song instrumentally richer than the last. Burch’s voice is as confident as ever, but more heartbroken than before. (www.annaburch.bandcamp.com)

By Timothy Michalik

Calexico

The Thread That Keeps Us (ANTI-)

Overconsumption of information has lead to infinite narratives that will never be tied together. A belief in obscurity eliminates anxiety, for relevance is no longer a priority. Calexico lurches toward this new definition of freedom in nothingness on their nineth studio album The Thread That Keeps Us. There is a great irony in this title, best exemplified in their continued stories of despair and overcoming woven into moments of expansive beauty and crippling chaos.

Chief instrumentalist and songwriter Joey Burns sounds steadied in the midst of unsteadied moments mercifully mended in rich melodicism. “Thrown to the Wild” expels its character from the place he once resided in. “Almost waiting like a motherless child” for a bus to lead him away from his hopeless circumstances. Gracefully articulated while surrounded by healthy doses of reverb, subtle flairs of noise, and beautifully crooned harmonies that possesses the song’s outro, it serves as The Thread That Keeps Us’ central focus.

Opening with guitar histrionics reminiscent of U2’s Unforgettable Fire- era, “End of the World with You” prepares the listener for chances taken by Calexico with the express purpose of underscoring the band’s current mood during these tumultuous times. Less poignant than Edge of the Sun , but more pointed and direct in its message of hope embedded in the countless layers of uncertainty, the band reaches past its previous efforts without trepidation. “Eyes Wide Awake” opens discordantly, finding its voice hiding in the haunted confines in ballad-structured brilliance.

The fusion of Tex-Mex and Americana does not entirely disappear on The Thread That Keeps Us . Certainly, “Under the Wheels” begins with an electro beat reminiscent of classic house music; yet, tracks such as “The Town and Miss Lorraine” and “Flores y Tamales” remind those most familiar with the band’s history that they find comfort in their nuanced reputation. And there is comfort for fans of Calexico that their newest effort is not a departure, but an expanded inclusion of musical styles added to their all-too wide palette of sound.(www.casadecalexico.com)

By Stephen Wyatt

Camp Cope

How to Socialise & Make Friends (RUN FOR COVER)

Camp Cope’s second album, How to Socialise & Make Friends , is a sweeping, emotional rollercoaster. The Melbourne trio’s storytelling continues to be stunning and humbled, lead-singer Georgia McDonald’s anxiety so blatant and palpable it’s hard to differentiate their lyrics from diary entries.

Though Camp Cope’s energy is clearly restrained throughout, McDonald’s vitality remains intact, their lyrics as swelling and poignant as ever. It’s an album bleeding sadness and regret, heavily loaded with self-observation and criticisms. Whether it’s the melancholic confessions of “UFO Lighter” or the sincere goodbye to McDonald’s father on “I’ve Got You,” Camp Cope have mastered their breed of outsider indie-rock.

To say that this album is an incredibly intimate listen would be an understatement, safely compared to Mount Eerie’s A Crow Looked at Me . Filled with crippling self-realizations and epiphanies regarding grief and self-renewal, it is truly a special record, heavy and rewarding, like an extremely necessary midnight cry.(www.campcope.bandcamp.com)

By Timothy Michalik

Car Seat Headrest

Twin Fantasy (MATADOR)

The solo project of songwriter and musician Will Toledo, better known as Car Seat Headrest, garnered attention with his two previous releases Teens of Style (2015) and Teens of Denial (2016) for good reason. They’re loaded with energetic fuzz-rock that’s gritty, sassy and honest, and occasionally very catchy.

A lot of the appeal is Toledo’s unique songwriting and vocal delivery. Both are different than anything else out there. And while he’s no honey-throated crooner, he’s neither whiny nor out of tune, but you can make the case that he has those tendencies. His implausible delivery is simultaneously deadpan and heartfelt so his vocal deficiencies can be overlooked. Played with passion and fortitude, the schizophrenic rhythms and fuzzed out quirky guitar bursts can be alluring but are just as often challenging.

Twin Fantasy is no different. In fact it’s a bit more challenging. Resurrected from home recordings originally released in 2011, the 10 tracks have been spit-shined with a new mix and a bigger production. But while it shows flashes of brilliance it also exposes Toledo’s early shortcomings as a songwriter. Filled with angst and the genuine spunk of Toledo’s frantic guitars, Twin Fantasy is also erratic and inconsistent. Regularly shifting gears from soft and slow to loud and fast. Through rambling and sprawling to high and tight, this record is sublime but also dreadful. More conceptual musical ideas than fully formed songs, Toledo packs a lot into a tiny space. Like someone who has a lot to say with not much space or time to say it.

Instead of building off the buzz and promise of and , that show a