Joel Michael Howard "5th Grade Part B (Ernest Jenning)"
With 5th Grade Part B (Ernest Jenning), the second solo LP from Joel Michael Howard, he has taken his lush pop sounds and added some frazzled edges to it. His ear for beautiful melodies and arrangements is augmented here with some jittery, stressed percussion a la Radiohead and stressed out synth sounds. The effect leaves the whole record just as simultaneously comfortable and paranoid as real life leaves us. Check out the angular, War On Drugs meets XTC dance-punk groove of “Lies.”