That Howie Gelb is aight, a little uneven in places.

yeah, I wasn't feeling on first listen. I dug ProVisions

I snagged that yesterday as well. 3 plays and it's one of my faves this year.

the new Wavves sounds a lot like riffs Cobain would have played in the early days of Nirvana.

yeah, definitely. i was expecting to hate this but it was quite enjoyable.

Street Songs of Love is the most raucous, rawest, and finest album Escovedo's yet released. In crafting this song cycle, he pulled out all the stops and reveals -- at last -- all his talent at once; it's a portrait of the artist at his zenith. Escovedo can take his place among the greats he's admired all his life; he's earned it, and at this juncture, there are few even in his league.

Might be hyperbole, I haven't listened to it yet.

Orgone's second full length for Ubiquity and it's a monster -- taking a rough, rugged, and uber soulful live funk vibe into a deeper and even livelier realm! The group's sound is more finely honed from a couple of years of hard touring -- and it's paid off wonderfully. The sound is more sharply focused, but with swagger to spare on both the funky instrumental workouts and showpieces for soulful singer Fanny Franklin. From sun toasted Cali funk & soul to strains of classic Afrobeat, boogaloo and and funk rock (the guitar sound is terrific on this one) -- they nail everything their shooting for, and pull it all together in tight package that's ultimately all their own. A total win for Orgone and Ubiquity Records. Titles include "The Last Fool", "Crazy Queen", "Give It Up", "Cali Fever", "Overtime", "Mantana", "The Only One", "Doing Me Wrong", "The Cleaner", "It's Time Tonight" and "Sandstorm".

J Roddy Walston's debut due out July 27

Baltimore rock madmen J Roddy Walston and the Business are all set to release a self-titled debut album July 27 on Fairfax Recordings/Vagrant, the label announced yesterday.

Technically, it's the band's second album ("Hail Mega Boys" came out a few years ago), but their first label release.

The album was recorded at a breakneck pace -- all 10 songs were cut in less than two weeks, using vintage studio equipment and few overdubs ...

One song from "Hail Mega Boys" makes an appearance on the new album: "Used to Did." The others are new, but anchored by Roddy's hammering piano chords and guitarist Billy Gordon's blistering riffage.

I got a sneak peek of the new album, and let me tell you -- it's going to pop a few eardrums. Walston's primal shrieks can peel the paint off walls, and they're in full force here. This is American music down to its deliciously dirty core. The Hold Steady might not be America's best bar band anymore.

Stay tuned, folks.

I didn't care for Real Animal, but this new A. Escovedo is really good.

I thought Real Animal could have been decent but it seemed mailed in and unfinished.

Street Songs of Love, Alejandro Escovedo's tenth studio album, is the first time in his career he has written an album entirely comprised of visceral, aggressive rock & roll love songs. Tony Visconti (who produced The Real Animal) is back in the production seat with Bob Clearmountain mixing. Most of the album was co-written with Chuck Prophet, a partnership that began on The Real Animal, but it's grown into something intensely focused. On these songs, the tempos are faster, the sounds harder.

YESSSSSSIR! Can't Wait to hear this one!

Oh shit:

A few muttered words in Arabic, shrouded in echo. And then it erupts. A day-glo cloudburst of warpspeed Bontempi rhythms and snaking microtonal melodies. Psychedelic invocation to some lascivious simultaneist idol. Urgent glossolalia of electronic thunder and lightning. Amphetamine-powered merengué of dysmorphic frequencies. Notes from between the notes. Beats like the jerry-rigged machine gun fire of exurban guerrila fighters. Cosmopolitan party music from the end times. The death rattle of globalisation, echoing across the scarred plains of bomb-ravaged dreamscapes.

The style of music is called dabke, a Syrian genre popular at weddings and usually accompanied by a sort of fraternal, arms-around-the-shoulders-knees-in-the-air type line dance, but listening to traditional dabke stars like Nasri Shamseddine or Zaki Nassif and then listening to Omar Souleyman is like switching from Max Bygraves and the New Seekers to Public Enemy and Ruff Sqwad. As the name of his previous collection on Sublime Frequencies, Dabke 2020, suggests, Souleyman's dabke is from (at least) ten years into the future, buzzing through time and boldly heralding the new.

Souleyman was born in the late 60s in the midst of an ill-fated experiment in Syrian radical socialism, shortly before a bloodless coup established the thirty year presidency of Hafez al-Assad (father of current president Bashar al-Assad). Growing up in Tal Tamr, a small rural village in the north-east of Syria close to the borders of Turkey and Iraq, left the young Souleyman exposed to the influence of a wide number of different middle eastern musics throughout his childhood. Living at the interstices of the Arab world, he absorbed a panoply of sounds and styles whilst making time in a series of dead-end jobs. But it was not until the mid-90s that he began performing professionally at weddings and parties, quickly amassing over 500 cassette releases, mostly live recordings, that now dominate every tape stand in Syria.

Onstage, the strutting, gesticulating Souleyman, dressed in trademark shades and keffiyah, is joined by long-term collaborators, Rizan Sa'id and Hassan Hamadi. The latter's role being largely to stand chainsmoking, occasionally whispering poetry into Souleyman's ears to be incorporated into the music, according to the age-old ataba tradition. And what poetry, ranging from the visceral heartbreak of "My liver has rotted from waiting for you" (from the track 'Eih Min Elemkon') to a political broadside such as "The poor live in bitterness and the rich live as they want" ('Kell Il Banat Inkhatban').