Nicholas Altobelli's Without A Home

This one caught my eye, late in the game, because of the guests...John Dufihlo from the Deathray Davies and Salim Nourallah, that Dallas-centered Texas pop mafia still making exquisite power pop without, as far as I can tell, anyone's encouragement. Nicholas Altobelli is, indeed, a member of that scene, a native of Southern California, but a Dallas-ite since fourth grade. Without A Home is his fourth album...a lovely, effortless thing, wistful and softly song, but full of big shimmering hooks.

No Depression may have gotten the best read on this album, in the February "stack" reviewed by Lee Zimmerman (who is also a contributing editor at Blurt):

"What a lovely dissertation! Produced by the great Salim Nourallah, a superb solo artist in his own right and the man behind the boards for the Old 97s, Without a Home boasts a series of sublime, wide-eyed narratives, each powered by subtle refrains, quietly engaging melodies and the sort of sentiments that automatically elevate them to pop perfection. Altobelli may be a newcomer, but his instincts are spot on; with songs like “Glitter,” “I Don’t Think Tonight Is Going To Be a Good Night,” “Never Enough” and “Over My Head” he retraces the same wistful terrain usually trod by Ron Sexsmith, Steve Forbert, Josh Ritter and others who are often found kneeling at the throne of one Ray Davies. That is to say, Altobelli possesses the same self-demurring attitude as those others -- modest, reserved and oftentimes understated, and yet he’s still adept at pulling out brilliant hooks and indelible imagery. Consider Altobelli one brilliant discovery and an artist to look forward to hearing again and again. Spot on!"

Haunted West

Liking this second album from Wooster-Ohio-by-way-of-California based Haunted West, which, as you'd expect from the title is mournful and ghostly and (loosely) tied to Americana styles. it reminds me a lot of R.E.M. and a little of (similarly named) True West...it came out very late last year on what looks like the band's own Haunted West label.

The Soft Hills

Really nice guitar psych from Seattle's Soft Hills...Huffington Post is hung up on a Fleet Foxes comparison, but I think the vibe is more Mercury Rev.

Of the new one, Chromatisms, PopMatters' John Bergstrom says, "What this Seattle band has done is take the languid tempos and ragged, molten, Neil Young & Crazy Horse feedback of classic grunge and applied them to more reflective, golden-hued contemporary indie songwriting. And they have added some of the grandiosity and crushing guitar sweep of what used to be called shoegaze."

I like that "what used to be called shoegaze"...what are they calling it now?

Anyway, totally enjoyable, check it out here:

Jon Hopkins

It appears that Pitchfork liked this one a bit more than I did...I did like it, just not as much.

Immunity
Jon Hopkins
Domino


BY JENNIFER KELLY

Jon Hopkins works in a shifting palette of organic and electronic sounds, building glitch-scratched beats out of jingling keys, stomped piano pedals and breath. “We Disappear” starts in the recognizable sounds of a key turning, a door slamming and footsteps, a mundane set of signifiers which morphs, gradually into an abstract sort of beat. It’s the human dissolving into auditory signal, experience melting into synapse flashes, an idealization that is not quite familiar, but feels as if it ought to be.

Hopkins has worked with Brian Eno, Coldplay and, most recently, with the British folk singer King Creosote on Diamond Mine, one of 2012’s most evocative and lovely albums. His work here is far more austere and cerebral than on Diamond Mine, and, paradoxically, more tethered to rhythm. “Collider”, Immunity’s long centerpiece pulses with jackhammer insistence, yet seems to inhabit an idealization of a dance floor, rather than the sweaty thing itself. That sense of Platonic ideal will be familiar to anyone who spent time with Diamond Mine, where the sound of voices, birds, clinking cutlery conjured not just a seaside town, but the idea of the sea itself.


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Club 8

You've probably caught on that super polished, dance-oriented electro-pop is not my main thing, or really my thing at all. Still, I've been kind of enjoying the new one from Club 8, a long-running Swedish band that shares members with PopRace and Acid House Kings. Their latest, Above the City, has a melancholy shimmer that separates it, somehow, from all the other perky, synthy electro-bands and puts it more in the line of the XX than, say, Razika. (I could do without the super-poppy, thump-thump-thumping "Stop Taking My Time," and lean, instead, towards moodier entries like "Kill Kill Kill" and "You Could Be Anybody"). A lot of it reminds me, naggingly, of bands I really don't like, so this is not the most ringing endorsement and I probably enjoy what I do enjoy for all the wrong reasons, but fuck it...try for yourself.

Woolen Men

We had a little best of 2013 so far discussion a week or two ago on the Dusted board, and one of the albums that came up repeatedly was the self-titled debut from the Woolen Men, out since early March on Woodsist. I'd gotten a promo, but hadn't put it on yet, so I checked it out, and it's excellent...kind of teetering on the edge between super-punky early R.E.M. and the most melodic bits of Mission of Burma. (And if this seems like an odd place to find common ground, you should check out R.E.M.'s cover of "Academy Fight Song".

Anyway, I kind of like early R.E.M. and, if you've been paying attention, you know I LOVE Burma...you can also hear little echoes of Wire and the Buzzcocks in here, all the good stuff as far as I'm concerned.

Check it out

Kid Congo...king of the party ghosts

Hey, happy Monday!

I had a very weird Sunday, first some unexpectedly good news on the college scholarship front, which I cannot talk about in detail but which makes next year look much, much, much more doable. Second, my brother broke up with his girlfriend and she started sending me some very odd, very angry Facebook messages and email messages and so on. Vile stuff, full of f-bombs and not very well spelled or punctuated and, as far as I can tell from talking to my brother and seeing what she was writing about me, completely untrue. But okay, fine, if we were friends maybe it would make sense that she was including me in her meltdown, but we're not. I mean, I've only met her once or twice and have no real relationship with her outside the fact that she sees my brother (ahem, saw my brother), so what the hell? Life...so confusing, so tawdry.

Anyway, and more to the point, I also have a music review up today at Blurt.

Haunted Head
KID CONGO AND THE PINK MONKEY BIRDS
In the Red

BY JENNIFER KELLY

Kid Congo continues his ju-ju spooked, surf-whammied, mystically debauched brand of rock ‘n roll, infusing sawed off, minimalist guitar riffery with a whiff of the supernatural. Haunted Head tends towards the eerily subdued, its grooves blaring in through some trapdoor to the otherworld. Shreds of rockabilly, soul, r&b and punk wind their way through these shrouded tunes, all much to be expected from a founding member of the Gun Club, a sometime Cramp and a guitar slinger for the Bad Seeds.

“Killer Diller” brings all these threads together, in a straight-up rock ‘n roller that is built on pompadour-spiked 4/4 guitar riffs, slurred insinuations and inebriated shouts of “yeah.” It’s a slouchy, slippery, decadent kind of rockabilly, dedicated apparently to Phyllis Diller. You can imagine Elvis breaking in for a verse or two, turning green and vomiting over the side. “I Don’t Like” which follows, is even better, a slanting, ranting, two-chord assault that must surely get the people moving live.

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