A couple of EPs downloaded from Bandcamp, highlighted by Dalen & later put out on his JUKBOXR label.


Glass Vaults - Glass EP

Glass Vaults make dark and moody - yet mostly pretty - atmospheric pieces, occasionally moving into more rhythmic territory. Even on this brief EP, their aesthetic is a little hard to pin down. It's kind of spacey, ethereal, and somewhat modest, but it's not without a little drama and dynamic variation. It's not the most striking thing, but I've found it interesting enough that I'd be willing to hear more from them in the future.

Rating: 7.5/10



Bon Accord - Honeydew EP

This veers unfortunately close to chillwave for me, but it's not without its merits. Although it mostly seems about as unremarkable as I've come think Toro Y Moi and Washed Out are, it does manage to pull off that hazy, twilit nostalgia feeling just as well or better than they have. It's nice, warm, feel-good music that leaves little lasting impression. It's fine for what it is, but as a sampler of what Bon Accord is capable of, this doesn't have me particularly interested in hearing more.

Rating: 6.5/10

Hot Chip - One Life Stand

Whenever I first put this record on, I always wonder what it is I dislike so much about it. It starts off really strong, opener "Thieves in the Night" being far and away the best track on the whole thing. The production is wonderfully sharp and nuanced and reminiscent of some of the very best electro-pop. "Hand Me Down Your Love" takes a bit of a dip - that piano riff reminding me of C + C Music Factory or some other cheesy early-'90s pop - but it's still plenty enjoyable. "I Feel Better" is where it really starts to take a dive. Annoying AutoTune-like vocal effects and obvious, cheesy dance music production. The title track is somehow worse. "Brothers" is so bad... I just... I don't know. "Slush" is a slow, polite piano ballad, which certainly isn't a bad thing per se, but this is 100% schmaltz. Maybe that's part of Hot Chip's appeal that I'm not getting? Intentionally cheesy? "Alley Cats" is kind of like "Brothers". "We Have Love" brings things back up at least to the level of "I Feel Better". "Keep Quiet" plods along barely noticeably. Closing track "Take It In" teases with a lightly sinister synth line in the verses, but overall it maintains the same sentimental, mushy vibe that dominates most of the record. If I were to describe the whole thing in one word, it would be "limp".

Rating: 5.5/10

Here's another one I'm calling it quits on a little early:


Robyn - Body Talk

Obviously she isn't putting on the same kind of visual spectacle, but I guess Robyn makes for a better pseudo-Madonna than Lady Gaga, musically speaking. Hell, I'd probably rather listen to Robyn than Madonna any day. That doesn't mean I really like this. As an album, I find Body Talk tolerable - even borderline enjoyable - for a whole two tracks, opener "Dancing on My Own" and the pretty solid single "Fembots". The latter is the closest Robyn ever comes to having an interesting personality and unique musical expression, as far as I can tell. The rest of this collection I could do without, and I kind of hate that I wasted so much time with it already. As pop goes, I'm sure most of this is well above average, but that doesn't really make it above average in the larger scheme. I don't see why some pop stars are hailed as brilliant when their lyrics aren't completely juvenile and stupid and the music isn't completely canned. Robyn is a competent, intelligent adult, but her music is still pretty empty.

Rating: 5/10

are you gonna review that owen pallett album?

Yeah, but it's going to be one of the last ones I do because it's one of the last 2010 releases that I got. I still need to listen to it more.

cool. i enjoy reading these.

Thanks, man.


Les Savy Fav - Root for Ruin

Somehow at this point in Les Savy Fav's career, three years since their last album seems like a pretty small gap. It's become their standard, apparently, but I still wasn't really expecting this when it came out. It seems to have just been sort of quietly slipped out there, without much fanfare. It isn't a disappointing follow-up to the great Let's Stay Friends, but it isn't the step forward or development that that album was. It's more or less treading water, but one could argue that LSF has earned the right to do that at this point. They've got a formula that works, and it still works perfectly well here.

They definitely sound like confident professionals now. "Sleepless in Silverlake", one of the albums highlights, is actually fairly relaxed and relaxing. It isn't coasting, necessarily, and all the songs on this album are fairly worthy additions to their catalog. The fact remains that Les Savy Fav is one of the best bands out there - live, definitely, and on record as well - so even a subpar album from them is more enjoyable than a lot of other stuff I listen to. But if they're going to keep putting out records, they may need to change things up a little more.

Rating: 7/10

Vijay Iyer - Solo

I first became aware of Vijay Iyer through his collaborations with Mike Ladd, 2003's In What Language? and 2007's mostly-ignored sequel Still Life with Commentator. I was really taken with the complexity and sophistication that Iyer added to Ladd's production and lyrics, often sounding more like a cyborg version of modern classical than the far more common "jazzy" hip-hop. A lot of things have fallen out of fashion since In What Language?, mostly indie/underground/"backpacker" hip-hop and also the sort of paranoid/anti-US-militarism politics that were the center of that record's themes. Railing against Bush and Fox news plants those records firmly in the time in which they were made, and yet there was really a lot more to them than just that and plenty that still sounds relevant and rings true today. But I digress. While Mike Ladd may have more or less faded away, modern jazz is in basically the same place it was a decade ago, and so Vijay Iyer continues on as before, carving out his own very respectable career.

As the title suggests, this is a solo album. Just Iyer alone on piano, offering interpretations of other people's compositions as well as some of his own. The record starts off with "Human Nature" (yep, the Michael Jackson song) which frankly comes off a little New Age for my tastes. Then he moves on to some older and fairly familiar jazz compositions - "Epistrophy" by Monk, Ellington's "Black & Tan Fantasy", and "Darn that Dream" by Jimmy Van Heusen which is included on Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool comp - before entering into a string of his own compositions. All of these are pretty successful at showing off Iyer's unique sense of texture and melody and remind me a lot of what I like about his Mike Ladd collaborations. He closes the record out with a couple more covers and another of his own pieces, all of which are equally strong. It's a good record, but I don't know if I picked the best Vijay Iyer album to finally dive into with this one (my first outside of the Mike Ladd stuff). Overall it isn't very dynamic - due in large part, I'm sure, to the fact that it's all solo piano - or very memorable. Iyer doesn't carry a solo piano album quite as well as, say, Bill Evans, but you can't really hold that against him. He does have a fairly distinctive style, though (as far as I know), and his playing is consistently interesting and enjoyable.

Rating: 7/10