Pontiak "Dialectic Of Ignorance (Thrill Jockey)"
Since the last time Pontiak recorded an album, the brothers Carney started a brewery. Because they are splitting their time now, they spent far more time recording Dialectic Of Ignorance (Thrill Jockey) then any of their previous albums. Each day they would get to work fermenting soda beans (i’m not super clear on how beer is made, just how it’s consumed) and listen to what they recorded the day before. They’d spend the day mulling over ideas, talking things out, and then head back into the studio later that night. This slowed down process gave them the ability to lovingly craft these songs. Stretched out, and full of good ideas, this is what a Roger Waters-less Pink Floyd SHOULD have sounded like. Psychedelic, with a hard edge, and sophisticated while still retaining experimentally.
Anders Parker "The Man Who Fell From Earth"
So besides the internet removing the lines between musicians and fans with things like kickstarter and pledgemusic, it also removes the line between musician and person who has to write things about musician. So while I’m trying to come up with the perfect way to describe Anders Parker’s 17th album The Man Who Fell From Earth he goes and does it perfectly. “The album is me singing and playing acoustic guitar accompanied by a string trio and a pedal steel.The songs…. there’s dirt in there, a dog, a baby, wind, mountains, divorce, stars, travel, regret, drunkenness, snow, dead trees, luck, agony, longing, despair, hope, helplessness, interstellar transmutation, naked women, rocks, books, breakdowns, and love.” So besides thanking Anders for the gorgeous album, I also have to thank him for the writeup time he saved me! Check out the pastoral beauty of “I Don’t Do That Anymore.”
SNST "Turn Out The Lights"
Look, no one needs to know what I was up to when I was 16 (it wasn’t pretty), but suffice it to say, I certainly wasn’t a member of influential indie band Braid (I was, however, a member of the highly un-influential Francis Nietzsche’s All-Star Groove Extravaganza). Chris Broach, however, was a member of Braid. He’s also spent 2 decades releasing music as The Firebird Band. In 2015, Chris started a Kickstarter campaign with his longtime collaborator Steve Znavor. Deciding that the whole thing needed a new name, they settled on SNST. Turn Out The Lights is the fruit of that labor. Combining electronic music, organic instrumentation, and a pop-punk frankness to the vocals, the whole affair sounds like a stadium sized update of the Death Cab/The Postal Service vibe. Check out the U2 guitars of “Running From the Girl.”
Olivier Alary "Fiction/Non-Fiction"
Recently, uber-talented post-classical composer Olivier Alary signed to Fat Cat’s classical imprint 130701. Before he releases a new album for them, however, they have compiled some of his fine film composing work on Fiction/Non-Fiction. In 2007, after gaining notoriety with his work with Björk, director Young Chang asked him to score his film ‘Up the Yangtze.’ That gorgeous quickly made him an in-demand film composer, and this carefully sequenced compilation is likely only going to make him even busier. Somewhere between Jóhann Jóhannsson and Philip Glass, we have the gorgeous work of Mr. Alary. Check out the strained beauty of “Canon.”