Words and Photo by Aaron Richter
As we all know by now, new releases hit record-store shelves and digital-download services each Tuesday. That’s why self-titled presents the following every week: a new release you’d be stupid not to own (Buy It), one worth checking out if you’re the curious type (Burn It) and something you might have heard about but probably should avoid (Skip It). Simple, ain’t it?
Buy It
Ty Segall: Lemons (Goner)
Bay Area guy Ty Segall got props for performing live as a one-man band, nailing both guitar and drums simultaneously. Cool trick. But Lemons—Segall’s second full-length—proves he’s more than just a spectacle. Slow-strutting gutter blues, sun-kissed surf tunes, renegade garage darts and a Captain Beefheart cover. Killer. Lemons takes all the guitar-and-reverb debauchery you’d expect from a Goner disc and gives it life past sputtering sloppiness, letting melodies twinkle (“Lovely One”) and hooks burn (“Die Tonight”) with a pacing that never aims to exhaust despite Segall’s frantic tendencies.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
–
Burn It
The Dead Weather: Horehound (Third Man)
Great idea. Mediocre execution. Big sound. Ordinary kicks. Even if the Dead Weather—composed of Jack White, the Kills’ Alison Mosshart, Queens of the Stone Age’s Dean Fertita and the Raconteurs’ Jack Lawrence—classifies as a supergroup, White’s without a doubt the man steering, even if he’s planted behind the drum set, and Mosshart’s the one on the cover and Fertita’s the one whose guitar and organ absolutely steal the show and Lawrence is the one everyone confuses with a roadie. Despite some shivery vocal bite (“So Far From Your Weapon,” “Bone House”) and instrumental thrills (“3 Birds”), we’re sorta bummed that Mosshart seems to have been treated as an afterthought, her voice molding into the White Stripe’s recognizable tone and cadence, losing the soul, grit and depth she drags out of the Kills. Here, it’s as if she’s playing a character, who just so happens to be Jack White’s female (or androgynous, whatever) version of himself. The two come so close that when they’re harmonizing, it sounds like a multitrack. Forget the lofty expectations. Rock music doesn’t get much more standard than Horehound.
–
Skip It
Discovery: LP (XL)
If Jay didn’t murk Auto-Tune, these indie wads certainly will with their debut as Discovery. This collabo between Vampire Weekend keyboardist/producer Rostam Batmanglij and Ra Ra Riot singer Wes Miles—featuring guest spots by VW’s Ezra Koenig (so lame) and the Dirty Projectors’ Angel Deradoorian (so cute)—plays at first like a joke (a pinched, squelchy cover of “I Want You Back” for instance), some sort of R&B goof-off rife with enough sure-to-be-denied irony to keep the uncomfortable seat-shifting at bay. The dudes are having fun with it, definitely, letting their voices peel all sweet and robotic atop dime-store, Dan Deacon-pleasing beats. But LP is awfully flimsy—especially beside a logical didn’t-expect-us-to-be-doin’-R&B touchstone like the Dirtys (which aren’t worth all the hype to begin with)—and the novelty wears thin once you realize it’s essentially the same smirky gag song after song. Joke’s on who?
