The United States of America: The United States of America – The Columbia Recordings
Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti are a living lesson in the rejuvenating power of remaining experimental in art. Their music holds its own alongside the young guns of electronica, who indeed frequently idolise them, and in person they frequently seem as excited about possibilities and open to new ideas as artists just starting out.
Although the trademark aqueous shimmer is still recognisable on Life Among the Savages, the sound of San Francisco’s Papercuts has changed since 2011’s Fading Parade. On his fifth album as Papercuts, Jason Quever has kept arrangements more sparse than ever yet everything has a distance. His world appears to be one of permanent dusk, when melancholy is inescapable. Life Among the Savages is the sound of outside looking in.
Social mores and the nature of what’s taboo change as time passes. The once acceptable or abhorred can become the opposite. The psychedelic-era British film Wonderwall is a case in point. Its storyline is built around a man who finds a hole in the wall between his and his neighbour’s flat. The wall becomes the wonderwall of the title as he looks through it to a naked, or near-naked, woman.
It's hard to countenance sometimes that there was an era where Marc Almond could have been a bona fide, chart-smashing pop star. His ability to parlay the archest of high camp and the most grotesque of low life into something digestible by genuine mass culture was, from the very beginning, quite uncanny.
Michael Bloomfield: From his Head to his Heart to his Hands
The Seeds: Raw & Alive / The Dream Syndicate: The Day Before Wine and Roses
Damien Jurado last surfaced as one of Moby’s collaborators on the Innocents album. From the sound of Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son, Beck might have been a more logical musical partner. Texture-wise, Jurado’s new release sits alongside Sea Change-era Beck as well as the dense, fuggy atmosphere of his own last outing, 2012’s Maraqopa.
Small Faces: Here Comes the Nice - The Immediate Years
Various Artists: Love, Poetry and Revolution