20 Best Albums of 2008

Around this time of the year, for the last few years, I've had the privilege of writing an end-of-year best-of list for mX newspaper. Usually this consists of ten albums ranked in order (though this year it's five albums and five songs), but this year I thought I'd try something different, and lay down my favourite albums, songs, album covers, and bands, all in no particular order. Enjoy!

20 Best Albums of 2008 (in no particular order)

A heap of people I've spoken to have whinged about 2008 being a shit year for music, but I would have to disagree - I guess they were just looking in the wrong places. These albums impressed me in 2008 ...

You & Me
The Walkmen
Fuck this guy can sing. I didn't really get into their last album, or the strange Pussycats cover thing they did, but You & Me is great. And In The New Year is probably the most exciting thing these guys've done, like, ever.

Kes Band
Kes Band
I loved Kes' last album, but I'll admit it: it was a little hard to get into it. This one, however, is pure pop. Rock, folk and experimental influences, strange vocal styles, and a real Aussie bush aesthetic. Ripper.

Love Is Overtaking Me
Arthur Russell
If Arthur Russell made an album of spoken-word reflections on Chinese democracy (who knows, he might've) I would probably buy it - I'm an unashamed fanatic. But this album, a collection of country-tinged and folk tracks, is really, really good. This was a good year for Arthur Russell fans, with the doco Wild Combination coming out too (well worth hunting down for the archival footage alone).

Lost Wisdom
Mount Eerie
Alone, Phil Elverum is a one-man folk-machine. Together with a couple of mates, he's ... a three-man (or, two-man, one-woman) folk machine! Get out!

Devotion
Beach House
These guys came to Melbourne this year and blew my mind. I don't know how to explain it properly, but it's like make-out music for tropical shellfish ... Sorry, that's all I've got.

Paradise
My Disco
It was getting too easy to love My Disco after debut Cancer, stories of the band members' personal struggles, and their constant, ever-reliable live shows, so the Melbourne three-piece decided to shake things up, by removing most of the melodies from their new album. Surprise surprise, it still rocked.

Rook
Shearwater
Shearwater must be the classiest bunch of hippies going around. Rook is a masterpiece, and for me to try an describe it beyond the word 'masterpiece' would be embarrasing.

Skeleton
Abe Vigoda
In the middle of the year I was listening to this album (and No Age and Times New Viking) a lot -as, I asume, was the rest of the Pitchfork-reading world. These guys have their guitars strung so tight they sound like Casio keys.

Nouns
No Age
As I said, this album spent a lot of time in the player this year. No doubt you've read all about them already, and it's all true - Nouns is a great, noisy, mess of an album. If you don't own it, or just have it as twelve MP3s on your iPod, get out and buy a copy now - it's worth it for the album artwork alone.

For Emma, Forever Ago
Bon Iver
This might qualify as a Best Of 2007, but who cares - it was a staple in my after-hours musical diet in 2008. Prince playing folk songs, who knew it would work.

Microcastle / Weird Era Cont.
Deerhunter
I gave this the No.1 spot in my mX best-of, and deservedly so. Bradford Cox had a tough year, but when you come out of it with an album (well, two albums really) this polished and full of fantastic noisy pop songs, it must feel like it was all worth it ...

Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
Atlas Sound
... But before Microcastle stole the spotlight, Cox had already wowed us with this, his Atlas Sound debut LP. It seems like it was released so long ago now (he's even recorded and subsequently binned a follow-up since), but Let The Blind (...) was, and is, a great atmospheric trip.

Fleet Foxes
Fleet Foxes
Everyone was talking about this album a couple of months ago ... that was, until the tall poppy backlash kicked in. Thing is, the reason everyone likes it is because - stop the press - it's actually a really, really good album! Amazing, I know!

Limbo, Panto
Wild Beasts
Easily the strangest album I listened to this year (apart from that re-released New Kids On The Block Christmas album), but it totally grew on me. From listening to his vocals you'd assume the singer was a 45-year-old trans-sexual cabaret artist, but no - he's a young, normal-looking white dude.

The Chemistry Of Common Life
Fucked Up
It's loud, it's fast, and it has those gruff Cookie Monster vocals. Yes, in the name of musical diversity, it's a metal record! But hang on, no, this is different - underneath the tough exterior it's actually just a bunch of really good rock songs.

High Places
High Places
One of the many neo-psych groups to emerge in 2008, these guys are better than most, and their debut LP is a winner. Sweet vocals, trippy samples and instrumentation, and a beat you can dance (awkwardly) to.

Death
Grand Salvo
This album is based around a sad, fable-like children's story about a bunch of animals, but don't let that put you off - it's really beautiful, and quite stunning in parts, such as my favourite track, Death. One of those albums that you need to lie down with and concentrate on for a good 45 minutes, but it's well worth the investment.

Make The Road By Walking
Menahan Street Band
I'm in New York! Actually, no, I'm in Melbourne. But listening to this I might as well be John Shaft, it's that fuckin' cool.

All The Way
Growing
Patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns. I like patterns. I like this album.

Bad Vibrations
Panel Of Judges
Melbourne is going nuts for these guys at the moment, and rightly so - Bad Vibrations is an awesome fuzzy slacker-pop record.

Kicking Back

Bad Vibrations
Panel of Judges
Mistletone, 2008
4 stars

Slacker rock had its heyday back in the early ’90s, when Lou Barlow and J Mascis were still young men, networking actually meant “talking”, and kids scribbled on each other’s pencil cases and not their Facebook walls. Bad Vibrations, by Melbourne low-fi three-piece Panel of Judges, takes us right back to those heady days, with 10 short, sweet, and loose guitar-pop tunes. Paul Williams’ steady percussion forms the basic frame for the songs, with Dion Nania and Alison Bolger’s jangly, melodic guitar chords wrapping themselves around and around like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Vocal duties skip between Nania and Bolger, who also plays in local guitar-girl supergroup Beaches. Bolger sings on the more upbeat, kraut-ish tracks, while Nania’s laconic musings litter the laid-back, poppier tunes, such as the brilliant Perk Me Up, and sarcastic opener All This Could Be Yours, the album’s hazy high-point and a song for underdogs (with excellent musical taste) everywhere. These guys have been keeping a low profile for near on a decade now, all the while gathering a string of positive reviews - Bad Vibrations proves it’s still not too late to get on the band-wagon.

Artwork: B
I like the cover artwork - witches and palm trees, what a combo - and the band photo on the inside cover is a ripper.

Published in mX, Thursday December 11, 2008.

Dazed

Motion To Rejoin
Brightblack Morning Light
Matador, 2008
3 stars

Could this album be any more chilled-out? This Californian duo have taken their unique brand of trippy, blues-infused stoner folk and, somehow, made it sound even more laid-back with this album. True hippies, Nathan ‘Nabob’ Shineywater and Rachael ‘Rabob’ Hughes recorded the album in the Mexican desert using only solar power, but they were clearly getting their energy from somewhere “higher’”. An arsenal of vintage instruments, including a Rhodes Piano and Silvertone guitar, and the duo’s slow, breathy chants give Brightblack their distinct sound – a sound that hasn’t changed much over the years (except slowed down), and doesn’t seem like it’s going to either. The thing is, though consistent, Motion to Rejoin isn’t half as engaging as their self-titled 2006 effort. It’s more like slow-pulsing, hypnotic background music than pop music. That said, it’s still enough to make you want to quit your desk job, grow your hair long and live in the bush under a sheet of corrugated iron.

Artwork: C
Like, woah man. Trippy. I think we need some more feathers and shit ... And while you're at it, get some Doritos.

Published in mX, Thursday December 11, 2008.

A Book By Its Cover

The Chemistry of Common Life
Fucked Up
Matador, 2008
4.5 stars

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Nope, it's a post-hardcore record with punk, traditional rock, shoegaze, classical and experimental elements. Seriously, this album bends all of the rules. Lead singer Pink Eyes sounds like he's been gargling razorblades, but far from being harsh or overly 'tough'-sounding (I don't know - how else do you describe hardcore music?) his screamed rants compliment the band's meticulously layered electric/acoustic guitars and rapid-fire percussion perfectly, creating a thoroughly-listenable, blatantly intelligent, fist-pumping wall of sound. With a band name like Fucked Up these guys clearly aren't chasing commercial success, though behind the 'hardcore' rep, the growls and the heavy guitars lie some genuinely catchy songs. Don't judge this book by its cover.

Artwork: A
Far from the post-hippy artwork of their last LP Hidden World, Common Life takes a more straight-forward approach, with neat photography and some tidy serif type. It's simple, but it doesn't need to be anything else - the record itself does the shouting.

Published in mX, Thursday December 4, 2008.

Saltwater Sounds

Ron & Val Taylor's Inner Space
(Original TV Series Soundtrack)
Sven Libaek
Aztec, 2008 (Votary Disk, 2006)
4 stars

Anchorman may have done its best to take the piss out of ‘jazz flute’, but in the early ‘70s Norwegian-born Sydney-based composer Sven Libaek was making it sound genuinely cool. Originally produced as the soundtrack to Inner Space, a 13-part TV series filmed in 1972-73 by Australia’s original shark-chasing film couple Ron and Valerie Taylor, this set of amazing, watery jazz tracks was dipped into for Wes Anderson’s 2004 film The Life Aquatic, generating a whole new swell of interest in Libaek’s already legendary body of work. Brimming with soulful guitars, soft horns, distant keys and gentle percussion, this Votary reissue has been carefully restored from vinyl and is as crystal clear as the waters which – to this day – Ron and Val have call home. It’s an easy listen, but it has to be - when you’re trying to get up close and personal with a Great White, sans cage, you don’t exactly want to be whipping up a frenzy.

Artwork: A+
Votary haven't left a post-'70s mark on the original artwork, accompanying it with some interesting liner notes and undeniably cool file photos of Ron and Val.

Published in mX, Thursday December 4, 2008.

Reatarded

Matador Singles '08
Jay Reatard
Matador, 2008
4 stars

The incredibly inventively-titled Matador Singles '08 compiles a bunch of 7" singles that this prolific Memphis punk-rocker put out earlier this year. At the time most of these sold out quick-smart, so this compilation is a great way for those of us who don't fetishize vinyl to score the lot of them at once. Reatard is a genuine talent - with his debut LP Blood Visions he showed a real knack for combining raw garage aesthetic and pop smarts, and with this collection of songs he shows that his pool of ideas is faring well. As well as his own terrific singles (opening track See Saw is a standout) he covers Deerhunter's Fluorescent Grey - a nice pairing, as Reatard and Deerhunter brainchild (and fellow Blogger) Bradford Cox seem to share an inability to not make and continually release great music. Reatard (actual name Jay Lindsey) plans to record his new album in January next year, and if this is anything to go by it's going to be a ripper.

Artwork: B+
Dudes (I think they're the other band-members) piss-farting around with a bunch of Jay Reatard singles. That in itself is punk - those things are worth a fucking mint!

Published in mX, Thursday November 27, 2008.

The Review That Is

The Week That Was
The Week That Was
Memphis Industries, 2008
3.5 stars

So far the disbanding of Field Music has produced two impressive offshoots - School of Language and now The Week That Was - and that's only two-thirds of the original line-up accounted for. Field Music had a knack for crafting impeccably tidy, impossibly clever tunes, the main credit for which clearly goes to the two Brewis brothers Peter and David. While David’s School of Language debut was like a third Field Music album, Peter’s The Week That Was, a concept-album of sorts, takes that band’s intricate, artful and almost mechanical approach to pop music and pushes it toward ... musical theatre. While Field Music’s songs would often change direction three or four times in three or four minutes, they always seemed to make it out of their musical maze in the same shape in which they went in. This time around that’s not the case. Combined with that unmistakeable Sunderland accent, the schizophrenic Yesterday’s Paper might as well be the score to Paddington Bear: The Musical. And listening to tracks such as the kinetic The Airport and album standout The Good Life you’d swear Brewis must plot his music on big sheets of graph paper, it’s that mathematically complicated. But even if The Week That Was isn’t everyone’s cup of earl grey, it definitely bodes well for the future of the Field Music team, both together and independently.

Artwork: C
A photo of a bunch of neat looking Brits staring at a TV with some Helvetica Neue over the top. Groundbreaking. It's neat (the inside photo pinpointing all of the contributors is quite nice) but, I don't know. Maybe a little too neat for my liking.

Published in mX, Thursday November 20, 2008.

The Search Continues

Surfing
Megapuss
Vapor, 2008
4 stars

In the lead up to Surfing's release, industry chatter has mainly revolved around the shot of bandmates Devendra Banhart and Greg Rogove's tackle that graces the duo's debut album liner notes. It's fair enough - not every day do a couple of well-respected musicians 'put themselves out there' in such blatant fashion - but in a way it's also a shame, because Surfing's music is just as worthy of our attention. With contributions from Strokes' Fab Moretti and other long-time Banhart comrades, it's a seriously catchy set of '60s-inspired stoner-pop songs. It's summery as all hell (Surfing is the perfect title), but with a bit of a gritty edge - kind of like eating a sandy rainbow Paddle Pop at the beach. Opener Crop Circle Jerk '94 is the kind of jangly beach-pop that Jack Johnson and Ben Harper would sell their acoustic guitars to claim as their own. And the washy, comatose strings of the album's title track evoke old pro surfing videos, with surfers dipping in and out of perfect tubes (yeah, I'm not really up with current surfing lingo), finally belting out the end as the wave falls apart behind them. It's good. It would be a shame if this album became known better as an elaborate dick joke than the solid pop album that it is.

Artwork: F
I'm really sorry, but I really didn't want to see that. It's not that I'm a prude or a square or anything - and overall it's actually a really well designed and produced package - but the front-on shot of the boys' droopy appendages just put me off my lunch.

Published in mX, Thursday November 20, 2008.

Not Exactly Alarming

Car Alarm
The Sea and Cake
Popfrenzy/Thrill Jockey, 2008
4 stars

Car Alarm is like a straight continuation of last year’s excellent Everybody. The band put it together over three months after returning from Australia earlier this year – anyone that saw their mid-day Sunday set at Golden Plains will attest to just how tight these guys are live, and on record they’re no different. Over the course of eight albums the band haven’t changed their sound as much as honed it in; if anything Sam Prekop’s vocals have become more and more breathy, and hints of electronica have slowly pushed their way higher in the mix with Prekop and Archer Prewitt’s tangling guitars. Anyway, it all makes for a(nother) great spring/summer backyard barbecue record – if the music’s this good, “more of the same” isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Artwork: B
It's pink! This is the brightest, most playful – and most youthful-looking – Sea and Cake album cover since their self-titled debut. I like it!

Published in mX, Thursday November 13, 2008.

Another Deerhunter review

Microcastle
/ Weird Era Cont.
Deerhunter
4AD / Kranky, 2008
5 stars

It’s been a bitter-sweet year for Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox. In May, Microcastle leaked on the internet - a full five months before its official release. Then, about a month ago, as he was preparing for the album’s physical release, Cox accidentally leaked the album’s ‘secret’ second disc Weird Era Cont., as well as an unfinished Atlas Sound (his solo side-project) album slated for release in 2009. Oops. Well, whether you’re hearing it for the first time now, or you listened to it too much in May and are only re-discovering it now (like yours truly), there’s no denying that Microcastle is a cut above. Not just a fine indie-pop album with experimental rock, shoegaze, ambient and doo-wop elements - it’s actually two of them. The upbeat, three-in-one rocker Nothing Ever Happened is the most obvious ‘single’, but surrounding it are so many other great tracks (Agoraphobia is a gorgeous – if somewhat disturbing - guitar lullaby, and closer Twilight at Carbon Lake is like an Everly Brothers song drowned in reverb) that you’re best off playing the whole lot in order. And that’s just the first disc. These guys could have easily held onto Weird Era Cont. for a few months and released it as an album in its own right – and a bloody good one at that - but Cox and co have that much output that you imagine they’ll probably have another album ready by then anyway. This will be very, very hard to top for album of the year.

Artwork: A
This album, and its artwork, is so hard to fault that it kind of pisses me off.

Published in mX, Thursday November 13, 2008.

Well And Truly Overtaken

Love Is Overtaking Me
Arthur Russell
Audika, 2008
4.5 stars

By the time the credits rolled on Matt Wolf's wonderful documentary Wild Combination, my appetite was well and truly whet for this album. There's two particular bits from the film that I can't get out of my head. One features Arthur sitting on a stool with his cello playing a song called Eli (part of which features in this promo for the film), and the other is him sitting wearing a parka playing a song on acoustic guitar. Both clips are equally haunting, but the second is particularly stunning, as until seeing this I had only really known Russell as an avant-garde cellist and disco pioneer, and not as a traditional folk guitarist in any sense. Well, to assume that Russell didn't attempt - and excel at - pretty much any and every style of music is a mistake. Enter Love Is Overtaking Me, a collection of Arthur's more traditional folk, soft-rock and pop songs. In a way, it showcases a stranger side of the man than we're used to, because the songs are so ... Accessible. The album starts with Close My Eyes, a gently strummed folk song about corn and cornfields (two of Arthur's favourite subjects) on which Arthur's vocals take on an almost Cat Stevens-like sound. Goodbye Old Paint follows it up, starting off with woodwinds and middle-eastern-sounding vibes and later becoming a plodding ode to an 'old pony'. But just when you think there's a bit of an American back-country theme emerging, along comes Maybe She, a more traditional-sounding song about an awkward relationship with a girl (the nature of which we can only assume is actually platonic) and - my personal favourite - the terrific upbeat alt-country rocker Time Away. We're used to Arthur Russell albums having a '70s underground disco vibe, but later on this album the mood is more '70s pool hall - I can totally imagine lonely truckers sipping whiskey to the horn-driven I Couldn't Say It To Your Face and the wonderful What It's Like with it's talking guitars and spoken-word intro. Eli, the track from Wild Combination that I mentioned earlier, pops up too, one of only a couple of tracks on the entire album to feature Russell's trademark cello. Other highlights include I Forget And I Can't Tell (Ballad Of The Lights Pt.1) and Habit Of You, with lyrics that bring to mind the cute, funny and simple songs of Calling Out Of Context. But perhaps the most affecting song on the album is This Time Dad, You're Wrong. We met Arthur's dad in Wild Combination, a thoroughly normal man who, it seems, had only grasped his son's immense talents after his passing. While it's hard to know know exactly what Russell is singing about, it's also hard to deny the song's eerie poignancy. Russell's star continues to rise, thanks to Audika and an ever-growing an endlessly dedicated fan base. It's just a shamed that he's not around to see it.

Artwork: A
It's our man, in a cowboy hat, standing in a corn field. Perfect. I mean, what else can I say - Audika have handled each and every Russell release they've put out with utmost care and respect, and this is no different. Hats off.

For Real

Where You Go I Go Too
Lindstrøm
Smalltown Supersound, 2008
4 stars

When I was a kid my cousin and I would often listen to my old man’s cassette of the musical version of War Of The Worlds, but that was more for a laugh than anything else. Who would have expected that in the second half of 2008 we’d be listening to the same kind of stuff, let alone actually taking it seriously. ‘Cosmic disco’ is Hans-Peter Lindstrøm’s style – yes, ‘cosmic disco’ - and on this album he pumps it out with the reckless abandon of someone who doesn’t know what’s ‘cool’ and, clearly, doesn’t care. The phrase “so bad it’s good” was written for stuff like this: three epic space disco tracks, clocking in at 28, 10 and 15 minutes respectively, that will (possibly in order) make you laugh, cry, dance like a fool and disappear into a black hole, never to be seen again. Now, where’s that cassette player …

Artwork: B
I actually think this album's cover is one of the reasons people have taken to so seriously - it's just a nice, plain photo of Hans-Peter smiling. But listening to the album I can imagine a really bad Photoshop job, with some nebula, a couple of black holes and some kind of kitsch-looking rainbow-coloured space ship navigating its way through a field of glowing asteroids. Clearly there's a reason why I'm not designing album covers for disco pioneers.

Published in mX, Thursday November 6, 2008.

That Hawk Is Doing Something

The Hawk Is Howling
Mogwai
Matador/Wall Of Sound, 2008
4 stars

After 2006’s hot-and-cold Mr Beast, this album is a return to form for the Scottish post-rock heroes. Once again they’ve tried to combine their ruggedly beautiful slow-burners with flat-out guitar tracks, but this time they’ve got the mix just about right. Batcat shows that these guys haven’t lost their love of insanely loud guitar noise, but the following tracks, the beautiful Danphe And The Brain and Local Authority, also shows their understanding of light and shade - the treatment of which, on this record, is fantastic. The gradual build of opener I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead (which brags one of the finest song titles of the year) shows that this band are back at the top of their game. Mogwai usually work best when they pick a style and stick to it for an entire album - their Zidane soundtrack was a superb example of this - but here they’ve made an album that covers the whole gamut of their sound without sacrificing a thing.

Artwork: B+
The liner notes to this album credit the cover and inside artwork to someone called Yahua's Thinking Studio, citing a couple of old eBay item numbers as reference. Whether this means that they bought the artworks (and, therefore the rights to print thousands and thousands of copies of them) from some unsuspecting Mr Yahua, or something else, I don't know - Google's letting me down on this one. What I do know, however, is that I really like it. That cover image is really good, in a kind of shit way. I love it when people paint or draw really intense things, like pets or landscapes or, here, birds.

Published in mX, Thursday October 30, 2008.

Haunted Castle

I originally posted this review back in June, but seeing as the album was finally released and given a proper album cover this week, I thought I'd update it.

Microcastle
/ Weird Era Cont.
Deerhunter
Kranky, 2008
4.5 stars

The second side of last year's excellent Cryptograms (possibly the best 16-and-a-half minutes of music released by any band in 2007) left listeners hanging. The album's tumultuous recording process resulted in contrasting shades of stifling dark and bright light, but thankfully Microcastle picks up where Hazel Street, Cryptograms' dreamy climax, left off. Opening with an Intro that sounds like the Flaming Lips covering Pink Floyd, the distorted guitars and straightforward drumming haven't actually changed much at all, but the band don't spend as much time in a fog of guitar noise stalking their prey - they go straight for the kill with pop-guns blazing. The ambient psych-pop leanings of singer Bradford Cox's Atlas Sound project are all over this album, though the subtle sampling of Let The Blind (...) has been replaced with some beautiful reverb-soaked instrumentation. The driving guitar-rock of Nothing Ever Happened, the spacey blissed-out Green Jacket and self-proclaimed 'doo wop' closerTwilight at Carbon Lake are standouts. Cox is this year's Noah Lennox - his releases both solo and with-band are sure to see him with both feet straddling the top rungs of this year's best-of lists. But let's face it, releasing two great albums in a year is just slack, isn't it. Enter Weird Era Cont., Microcastle's 'secret' second disc. Remember that episode of the X-Files where that guy had a little brother that lived inside him and only came out at night? Yeah, well Weird Era is kind of like that. Kind of. It's not as good as its big brother, but it should certainly not be ignored. To be honest, had these guys hung onto Weird Era for another six months then released it (or uploaded it onto an unsecure file-sharing server) as a set of Microcastle B-sides - or an entirely separate album - it would have stood up just as well.

Artwork: TBA A
Can't wait to see what they come up with for this one. After giving us a couple of different type-based designs and another interesting one combining a castle and some flowers, it seems that the band decided they needed to do something new for their masterpiece's physical release, and so we have this version. I actually really like it. The photo (is that Cox with long hair?) is nice, and really hints to the shoegaze aesthetic of the album. And, thought it probably didn't even need the skull/eye thing, it's a nice subtle touch. Top marks.

Under the radar

Dark Times (Symphony No.2)
Cam Butler
Rocket, 2008
4.5 stars

Silver Ray mastermind Butler has eclipsed his group’s work with his fifth solo outing, Dark Times. A grandiose set in eight parts, it is at once charming and foreboding - the songs build up and gather weight like storm clouds, eventually unloading their full force on the listener in a shower of orchestral strings, jazz-infused percussion and Butler’s trademark guitar. Butler is smart enough to know that words would spoil the mood set here – the entire album is purely instrumental, yet its rich, romantic ebb and flow communicates more than any lyrics could. Musically, you won’t find a finer Australian album in 2008.

Artwork: B
From a distance it looks good, but jesus - did they pull this cover image straight off the internet? Pixels people, pixels!

Published in mX, Thursday October 23, 2008.

Don't Delay

Delays
Mark Barrage
Mistletone, 2008
4 stars

A Barrage show is unpredictable at best – a relatively inoffensive-looking bloke, he’s just as likely to start absently throwing objects into the audience as he is to sit down at an unattended drum kit and ‘air drum’ along to his own loops. That you don’t know what’s coming next is the perfect live treatment for the Melbourne artist’s music – catchy, warped and synthetic pop tunes that crackle and buzz like faulty electricity poles on a rainy night. Hindsight melds low-fi samples with Casio keys to create a reflective digital jam, title track Delays is like the soundtrack to a 22nd-century jail-break and Is Digitalis is like a Roni Size nightmare commited to tape. Delays has a real universal appeal – it’s at once a bedroom dance record and a DIY rock record, and it’ll find a place in garage CD-players and indie club sound-systems alike.

Artwork: B
You can't beat a bit of CMYK action. I've only seen the press mail-out, but I'm assuming the proper one has three Rs, an A and an E inside the cover.

Published in mX, Thursday October 23, 2008.

Lens Flares

Like Pearly Clouds
The Sun Blindness
Sensory Projects, 2008
4 stars

If this album were a day, it would be a stinking-hot Saturday in summer, where the horizon shakes and vibrates, the road burns the soles of your feet and the only place you want to be is at the pub, sitting in the beer garden leaning over a pint. It’s a luxurious, laid-back pot of psychadelia, full of echoey guitars and sweeping synths, with Tor’s smooth vocals washing over the top. Parts of Like Pearly Clouds are like late-sixties pop songs that have been slowed down and drenched in bong water and elsewhere it’s purely experimental, but not once is any of it overly indulgent. This Melbourne duo have nailed the formula here – equal parts sunshine and moonshine – and the result is a concoction you just want to strip down and lie down in.

Published in mX, Thursday October 16, 2008.

Radio On The Internet

Dear Science,
TV On The Radio
4AD, 2008
3.5 stars

This is pop music at its most modern. Political, lyrical and thoroughly musical, Science brims with crystal-clear instrumentation, elegant production and about a million instruments and effects. Its songs cover a number of styles (fuzzy guitar rock, sleazy funk and danceable electronica are covered in the albums first four tracks), making for a bit of a mixed bag - but the mix is pretty good. Tunde Adepimbe and Kyp Malone’s soulful vocals smear themselves across upbeat tracks like Golden Age and album highlight Crying, but sit back on the more subdued numbers like Family Tree – their voices are just as finely tuned to the overall sound as the plethora of instruments they employ. Overall it’s an energizing epic; a hopeful, confident pop album for what are pretty difficult times.

Artwork: C+
It's a pretty boring cover image, but I guess they figured there's enough happening in the music itself. Inside the cover there's nice fold-out liner notes - pretty text-heavy, but it makes a nice change to the stock-standard booklet. And, in the end of the day, I'm a sucker for a nice digipak.

Published in mX, Thursday October 9, 2008.

Happy Places

High Places
High Places
Mistletone, 2008
4.5 stars

Earlier this year this Brooklyn boy/girl duo released a collection of singles titled 03/07 – 09/07, a playful and absorbing set of danceable psychedelic pop songs that sounds like Playschool sing-alongs dipped in honey and rolled in crushed opiates. This early release generated a fair amount of digital hype, and it turns out it was totally warranted, as the group’s self-titled debut LP sees every wax crayon in their arsenal sharpened to point and ready to rip. The influences here are wide-reaching (opener The Storm plays with Middle Eastern instrumentation, The Tree With The Lights In It has an unreal tropicalia beach party vibe and From Stardust to Sentience is like a late night meditation on late-nineties drum-and-bass), but Mary Pearson’s vocals speak a universal language of good vibes and child-like innocence. High Places is a record that will appeal to both a little kid’s sense of fun and an big kid’s sense of adventure.

Artwork: B+
This seriously looks like the track out the back of my family's beach house in Blairgowrie. No joke - have a look here. I must say, I've never seen a giant pink floating head, or a diamond sun, when I've been out there though.

Published in mX, Thursday October 2, 2008.

Gooey Drone

All The Way
Growing
Social Registry, 2008
4 stars

For me, All The Way sounds like a futuristic steam-powered locomotive being swallowed and digested by a huge, gelatinous space beast. It sounds like a thousand gyroscopes spinning on their axis' in perfect time, the sound of their moving parts reverbirating and warping and creating a noise audible only to dogs and visible to bats and mosquitos. Like '90s dance anthems forced through a filter of Black Dice and Boards of Canada, then slowly drizzled all over an electric guitar's fretboard. It's drone, but exciting, frightening and thoroughly electric drone, and I'm totally fucken hooked.

Artwork: A+
I like it, a lot. But after writing those last few sentences my brain hurts. Squares. I like squares. Squares are good. See? This just isn't good to read.

Gang Vibe

Something For All Of Us
Broken Social Scene presents: Brendan Canning
Arts & Crafts, 2008
3.5 stars

Kevin Drew’s BSS Presents solo album sounded like … yep, another BSS album. It wasn’t a bad thing, but those expecting something different were left looking elsewhere. Brendan Canning’s effort is much the same, but his vocals make a nice change from Drew’s and his subject matter is more indebted to late ‘80s and early ‘90s indie acts like Dinosar Jr and Sonic Youth. Something For All Of Us is still a unashamed pop album, its wide range of styles on par with that of BSS’ wonderful and far-reaching breakout album You Forgot It In People. Fans of the collective will lap up the textbook anthemic numbers though, full of horns and wall-of-sound guitars. All in all, this is a solid album – now that Brendan has found his voice, let’s hope we hear a bit more of it on further BSS records.

Artwork: B
If you ask me, Arts & Crafts have kind of shot themselves in the foot with their design template. Every digipak they release has the same 'spine' design, just with different colours and textures, and though it might form a strong brand, it's meaning that the album covers themselves aren't as strong. This cover, with its sketchy hand-coloured illustration style, would've looked waaay better without the strip of yellow running down the left-hand side (and for that reason I've left the spine off my crap hand-drawn version, above).

Published in mX, Thursday September 18, 2008.

Exhausting Trip

Remember
The Fiery Furnaces
Longtime Listener, 2008
3 stars

A Fiery Furnaces album can be a lot to take in at the best of times. The Friedberger siblings have forged a reputation for the unexpected, their songs skipping between genres, time signatures and instruments in schizophrenic fashion. Remember, a two-disc collection of live recordings, is accompanied by a warning “please do not attempt to listen to all at once”, and this should be strictly adhered to. The songs on Remember have been ‘reinterpreted’ (often beyond recognition) and mixed together into a series of exhausting mega-mixes that will challenge even the most die-hard of fans’ patience. One disc’s worth of this would have been enough – two of them is just way too much of a good thing. And if two hours of Fiery Furnaces isn’t enough, fear not – you can jump on the net and download special ‘bonus songs’! Sheesh. I’m spent.

Artwork: A
Not sure why, but I really like this. It's simple, vector-based cut-paper looking stuff, similar to the Bitter Tea cover. Maybe it's the colours. I think they probably figured there was enough happening on the discs themselves - and there is - so they didn't need to overcook the artwork too.

Published in mX, Thursday September 11, 2008.

Off & On

You & Me
The Walkmen
Gigantic, 2008
4.5 stars

The Walkmen’s early albums were brilliant. Choc-full of bright guitars, twinkling piano keys and crooning vocals, their echoing sepia tones exuded an old-world charm that hit all the right notes. The years that followed saw the New Yorkers veer ever so slightly off course though, resulting in a couple of albums that, while still good, didn’t quite hit the mark. But You & Me puts these guys right back up there, matching the free-spiritedness of the group’s early Recoys days with the urgency of Bows+Arrows, all the while maintaining the steady, modest swagger of a band that know they’re good and don’t particularly mind if you don’t agree. Well, for what it’s worth, I do – You & Me is a major contender for album of the year.

Artwork: B
Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone had the most amazing photo on it's cover. It was a bunch of '20s-era kids loitering on the street smoking cigarettes, all sepia tones and schoolyard tough-guy attitude. I'll say now, I'm a proud non-smoker - and I think smoking is a stupid, dirty, outdated habit. I mean, if you want an addiction get a Playstation or - fuck - a Blogger account. But, that said, this photo truly made smoking look cool as shit. Anyway, I'm wandering away from the point - the photo on the cover of You & Me has the same old-world feel to it, but it's more sophisticated and less angsty - kind of like the album itself.

Published in mX, Thursday September 11, 2008

Little Play

Playtime for John Mountain
The Rectifiers
Sensory Projects, 2008
4 stars

With the eclectic pop sensibility of the Flaming Lips and the sun-drenched harmonies of the Beach Boys, the third album from this Melbourne band is a gem. It’s anyone’s guess who John Mountain is, but Playtime is a great title for the twelve chapters of dreamy, impeccably-produced modern psychedelia on this disc. Don’t let the strange song titles scare you off though, this is as warm and inviting as music gets, with washy synths, layered vocals and an arsenal of instrumentation, physical and otherwise (it would seem hippies in 2008 are as comfortable with a computer mouse as their forefathers were with a tambourine). Apparently this is the first in a series of albums too, so let’s hope Mr Mountain and co. can back it up.

Published in mX, Thursday September 4, 2008

Value

The Bake Sale
The Cool Kids
Chocolate Industries, 2008
3.5 stars

As a kid of the eighties and nineties, I go to sleep when I hear people rapping about Rolexes and Bentleighs. But hearing two guys rhyming about hot BMX bikes and MacGuyver – you know, real items of value – really gets my attention. The Bake Sale is apparently an EP, but forget that – this is as solid as any hip hop album you’ll hear in 2008. Flat-brim baseball caps are tipped toward artists of the late eighties and early nineties such as the Beastie Boys and Eric B and Rakim, with blatantly-looped synths, rude vocoder effects and old drum samples making the perfect backing for Mikey and Chuck’s smooth, tongue-in-cheek rhymes. The Bake Sale is a lot of fun, and with a full-length LP coming later this year, The Cool Kids are about to take off - lets hope success doesn’t go to their heads.

Published in mX, Thursday September 4, 2008

Playing Country

Ode to Sunshine
Delta Spirit
Rounder, 2008
3.5 stars

Named after the taxidermy business of the band’s bass player’s uncle (his mug graces the album’s cover), this Californian 5-piece’s major label debut strives to sound like ‘the good old days’, and for the most part succeeds. Ode to Sunshine sees these reformed emos half-way across the bridge between inner-city indie rock and alt country - their bindles are stocked with acoustic guitar, twinkling piano keys and wavering harmonica, but their Chuck Taylors are still grubby with club floor grime. Songs such as People Turn Around have a real '60s feel, though others are more of-the-moment – it’s easy to cringe at the flannelette-wearing city kids ‘playing country’ on a bush festival weekend, but there’s nothing wrong with wanting a slice of the simple life.

Artwork: B+
If I was 'Uncle Red', I'd be stoked with this tribute. It's been tastefully put together, and combined with some nice studio shots from the band it makes for a nice all-round package. The photos on the front and back of the booklet are like a cross-generation 'cheers', the photos probably taken decades apart.

Published in mX, Thursday August 28, 2008.

Black Forest

No Flashlight - Songs of the Fulfilled Night
Mount Eerie
Artschool Dropout, 2004
8.6/10

I'm new to all things Phil Elvrum. I've never heard of The Microphones, and No Flashlight is my first trek up Mount Eerie, but listening to No Flashlight I imagine it to be something similar to the place on the album's cover - cold, dark and haunted, but not that far away from the city and all it's trappings.

The first thing that struck me about this album is how quiet it is. Much of the album is made up of softly strummed guitar and a steady, gentle beat, with waves of synth washing over but never overpowering. Elvrum's vocals are fragile and unforced - it's as if we're listening to his thoughts as he walks into the forest, away from ... well, whatever the hell it is he's walking away from. And there's definitely something out there, as it catches up to him at the start of the beautiful I Hold Nothing, then disappears, returning in the form of the abraisive The Moan.

But the best bits of No Flashlight aren't necessarily individual tracks (though, for the sake of this review, I Know No One, What I Actually Am and the (2 Lakes)/(2 Mountains) suite are worth skipping to), but the gentle, dreamlike fade between them.

I think Mount Eerie has released a couple of EPs since No Flashlight (there was one earlier this year, Black Wooden Ceiling Opening - a bit heavier than this, but well worth checking out) and he has an album coming out later in 2008. Should be good.

UPDATE: Hindsight

I've decided to revisit some of my past reviews and, where necessary, issue a revised mark. Every now and then I just don't give an album the time it needs, and other times I get a bit carried away and write a glowing review before I've even taken the plastic off the digi-pack, so this gives me a chance to right some past wrongs!

Hindsight marks will appear in red.

O'Doyle Rules

Bits
Oxford Collapse
Sub Pop, 2008
3.5 stars

Over three albums these New York natives all but wrote the book on college-boy indie rock, but with Bits they put pen to the next volume: College-Boy Indie Rock Interspersed With Moments Of Melodic Pop And Instrumental Balladry. It’s a strange mix – there’s plenty of the angular guitar sing-along fare that made up 2006’s tidy Remember The Night Parties, but then a track like A Wedding comes along and throws a cello and a violin into the mix, and the result is a album of, well, Bits and pieces. The bright, sunny pop of Featherbeds works well, but the loose, stupid-happy rock of album highlights Back of the Yards and Young Love Delivers is this young band's bread and butter.

Published in mX, Thursday August 14, 2008

One in the Oven

Hymns For A Dark Horse
Bowerbirds
Dead Oceans, 2008
4 stars

In 2005 singer/guitarist Phil Moore spent time in a cabin observing birds in the Carolina woods. It’s highly unlikely he would have spotted a bowerbird during this stint (they’re Australian natives), but accompanied by girlfriend Beth Tacular, Moore cut himself off from the world and formed the basis of Bowerbirds the band. Rounded out by Mark Paulson on violin, Bowerbirds produce soft, soulful folk of strummed acoustic guitar, minimal percussion and lines of piano accordion, with Moore’s crooning vocals occasionally mirrored by female backing. It feels as light as a feather (courtesy of a clever lack of amplification), yet as warm and welcoming as a perfectly cooked roast chook (album standout Bur Oak in particular). Hymns is one fowl dinner that only gets better with repeat helpings. [Fuse]

Published in mX, Thursday August 7, 2008

Walking the well-worn road

Conor Oberst
Conor Oberst
Merge, 2008
3.5 stars

Elliot Smith didn’t die – he just skipped the border and started covering Dylan and Springsteen songs. Well, maybe. Recorded in a makeshift studio in the Mexican mountains, Bright Eyes front man Conor Oberst’s eponymous fourth album is his first in thirteen years, and his first ‘solo’ album released on CD. It picks up where Bright Eyes left off, but strips it back to a man-and-his-guitar formula, to great effect on tracks Milk Thistle and album highlight/opener Cape Canaveral. That Oberst grew up in Nebraska is a nice link, as tracks such as I Don’tWant To Die (In The Hospital) have a real Springsteen feel. The Dylan link comes in the form of Get-Well-Cards, a fairly straightforward trip down the well-worn American folk road, and on the bittersweet Lenders In The Temple Oberst’s slightly shaky vocals remind of that of the late, great Elliot Smith. Elsewhere he actually sounds quite like Paul Kelly - strange, considering the different accents. Musicianship and vocals aside though, Oberst’s real skill is good, timeless songwriting – Conor Oberst won’t blow your mind, but it’ll be just as good a listen in ten or twenty years time as it is in 2008.

Published in mX, Thursday August 7, 2008

For The Birds

Rook
Shearwater
Matador, 2008
8.9/10

Boy, has this guy got a voice. Jonathan Meiburg, of Okervill River fame, has a vocal range that would have rivalled Jeff Buckley - wrap it around some delicate, descriptive lyrics and some of the nicest alt-country instrumentation you'll hear anywhere, and you've got yourself one hell of a record. Rook has a cleaner sound than the band's last LP Palo Santo (the first release, in particular), and a shorter playing time, making it a less intimidating listen. Where Okervill River can tend to be a bit theatrical (particularly on recent releases), Shearwater's sound is more elegant and restrained - though, when necessary, the band still aren't afraid to go at it hammer and tong, such as on Century Eyes, where you can literally hear Meiburg taking a step back from the mic, tilting his head back and yelling into the sky. One of the great things about Rook is the contrast between the rockier and softer numbers, an example of which comes with the very next track - the beautiful I Was A Cloud - where the soft strings and shimmering piano keys paint the perfect watercolour backdrop for Meiburg's softer side. The album's finest cut, however, comes in the form of piano-driven rocker The Snow Leopard, a song built around a proud piano and bass combination right out of the seventies. A brilliant album, and one sure to feature in end-of-year top ten lists.

Artwork: B+
Nice idea. If that's a real dude under all those birds I'll bump it up to an A.

Strange Birds

Visiter
Dodos
French Kiss, 2008
3.5 stars

I don’t know whether it’s the boho, art school vibe, or the loose Deerhoof-ish folk instrumentation, but this album has a real San Francisco feel to it. It’s a set of songs you can relax into, like a crusty old couch in a city bar – at first something seems a bit not right, but once you’re in you’re not going anywhere. Banjo strums and drumsticks slapped on chair legs push the songs along and into one another - it all sounds kind of slapped together and hurried, but the pace of songs such as Fools gives it an uplifting energy that Animal Collective would be proud to call their own. Elsewhere there are moments of acoustic funk (Park Song) and ramshackle blues (Winter), making for a real lively affair. It’s easy to forget that it’s just two guys, as they pump out more instrumentation than a three-way battle of the one-man-bands. Quite an effort.

Artwork: B+
I'm a massive fan of kids' artwork - I eat most meals off Picture Plates made when I was a kid myself - so, for me, these guys get runs straight off the bat. The story goes that they performed for a class of LA school kids and afterwards the kids gave them a bunch of drawings they had done, which Meric Long and Logan Kroeber decided to use as their album artwork. The strange spelling of the album's title 'Visiter' came from one of these drawings. Nice touch.

Published in mX Thursday July 24, 2008

Skin and Bones

Skeleton
Abe Vigoda
PPM, 2008
4 stars

Skeleton is so tight and taut it sounds as though it could burst apart at any second. This LA four-piece call their sound 'tropical punk', which is about right, though they have a big math influence too. They've played a bunch of gigs at notorious LA hot spot The Smell, a venue brought to fame by fellow Californians No Age, a band whose sound is echoed in Skeleton's chunks of droney, bright noise. With guitars worn so high they might as well be necklaces (ala Battles), these guys tear through a series of punchy, ecstatically happy tracks littered with coconut percussion, grumbly bass and loose vocals. Songs change three or four times before they run their course, often ending as something quite different to what they began. Considering they have twice the manpower of No Age, it's no surprise that they sound like twice the band, though their sound is much more highly-strung, and they spend less time building up dense layers of sound as they do skipping between complex multi-guitar patterns. Highlights include Cranes (I swear there's a Smiths influence in there somewhere) and opener Dead City/Waste Wilderness, a track that yells 'here we are, now listen'. It's a hard invitation to turn down.

Trivia: These guys are named after the actor of the same name, who featured in the Godfather films and random '70s sitcoms. In the '80s he was referred to as 'the late Abe Vigoda' by a magazine, leading many people to believe that he was, in fact, dead. The publicity didn't hurt his career though - the 87-year-old is still acting today, recently making a cameo in The family Guy. Go old fella!

Artwork: TBA

Wild Pantomime

Limbo, Panto
Wild Beasts
Domino, 2008
4 stars

How, and why, a group of twenty-one year old lads put together an album like this is astounding. When I was twenty-one I was still listening to Wu Tang, but with Limbo, Panto these guys have produced something far more sinister than any of the 36 Chambers - modern British math-tinged dinner-theatre rock. No, that’s not a mis-type. Hayden Thorpe’s falsetto is a weapon – at times he sounds like a wounded drag queen, but accompanied by some great keys and chiming indie guitars it’s a truly unique sound, and surprisingly palatable. Disregarding the vocals for a second (if you can), the instrumentation sounds like a more baroque, theatrical version of the Editors. The band produce some really engaging moments, such as bright opener Vigil For A Fuddy Duddy and the dark playfulness of Woebegone Wanderers - all in all, Limbo, Panto is easily one of the most welcome strangers to emerge in 2008.

Artwork: B
Bands are using old-world serif fonts on their album designs all over the place these days, but this is one band whose sound the look actually fits. The cover photo just looks like (surprise, surprise) a bunch of 21-year-olds goofing around with kitchen utensils and a slow shutter-speed, but the photos and text layouts on the inside of the booklet are nice and elegant, portraying a dark, twisted feel that perfectly compliments their skewed baroque sound.

Published in mX, Thursday July 17, 2008

Island Creatures

Dream Island Laughing Language
Lucky Dragons
Mistletone, 2008
4 stars

Like a friendly cousin to Black Dice, or the difficult offspring resulting from a one-night-stand between Boards of Canada and Panda Bear, Lucky Dragons main man Luke Fischbeck, here with Sarah Rara, have produced an intoxicating blend of digital samples, non-descript vocal chants, handclaps and muted recorder lines. Dream Island's 21 tracks have no real structure, building up and buzzing around the ears like mosquitoes on a hot night, before changing direction or disappearing completely. Despite its digital leanings, Dream Island is a very organic sounding album, almost trance-inducing at times - Wander Birds is a dark electronic track built from light synths, reminiscent of Clark’s Body Riddle, and Wooden Cave Loop is a great acoustic tropical island cave jam. Were you to bury a microphone deep in an anthill, amplify the resulting recording a thousand times and play it through a stack of giant conch shells, and this is probably what you’d hear. Yes, it’s a good thing.

Artwork: TBA
Given, I haven't yet held a proper copy of this album in my hands, but from what I've seen it looks pretty interesting - perhaps as strange as the music itself. I'll have to track one down.

Published in mX, Thursday July 10, 2008

Playing On The Road

I fell in love with Sigur Rós around the time of their third album (). I was totally caught up in the swell of mystery surrounding it - an unnamed album, full of unnamed songs, by a band from some strange country who play their guitars with cello bows. A few months later I found myself in Prato, Italy, sitting in an open air amphitheater watching my first Sigur Rós concert - to this day, that concert remains the most memorable, most affecting musical experience I've ever had. On the same trip I bought my copy of the band's breakthrough album Ágætis Byrjun, and listened to it through laptop speakers in my hotel room. To say I was 'into' this band would have been putting it lightly. When Takk... arrived in 2005 I was overseas again, this time going through a whole different set of emotions. Scotland hadn't turned out to be all that I had hoped, and the melancholy tones of Takk... echoed exactly what I was feeling. It clicked.

Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
Sigur Rós
XL, 2008
3.5 stars

And so, three years on, we come to Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (in English, With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly). The band told us to expect something "more understandable to the public" than past offerings, but nobody would have expected opening track Gobbledigook, a track best described as Sigur Rós impersonating Animal Collective (and well). Gobbledigook sets the bar high for the rest of the album, and the following track Inní mér syngur vitleysingur carries its pace through another poppy, percussion-driven number reminiscent of Takk...'s more uplifting moments. From then on, Með suð plays like a career retrospective, picking up on sounds and styles from the band's last three albums (Góðan daginn is an Ágætis Byrjun-ish slow-cooker, Straumnes is a ()-ish atmospheric instrumental and Með suð í eyrum sounds like a Takk... outtake) and adding the odd acoustic number, such as the lovely Illgresi. Overall it's a solid, if somewhat uneven album, let down by a couple of moments of self-indulgence - namely, the pointless first four-and-a-half minutes of Festival, and the over-the-top orchestration on the otherwise lack-lustre Ára bátur. The most interesting moments come in the album's first ten minutes, but from then on, unfortunately, it's a slow fade in momentum. Then again, I'm no longer travelling - who knows, were I living elsewhere, and in other circumstances, this album too may have hit a nerve.

Artwork: B
Nudie run! Fun.

Published in mX, Thursday July 3, 2008

Climbing Mount Panorama

At Mount Zoomer
Wolf Parade
Sub Pop, 2008
4 stars

Is anyone else really over the word 'wolf' yet? For the past few years it's been popping up in band and song titles all over the place, but while other wolfy acts retreated back into their caves never to be seen again, Quebec's Wolf Parade have emerged from theirs, snarling like the toothy black beast from Neverending Story. Mount Zoomer (named after the studio in which it was recorded) is an exhilarating, cinematic indie rock epic in nine parts, with Spencer Krug's wavering vocals bouncing across sonic landscapes littered with repeated electric guitar chords, energetic piano lines and tasteful space synths. It's hard to single out standout tracks because Mount Zoomer plays so well in its entirity, though the ecstatic Language City and riff-heavy Fine Young Cannibals are fantastic. As a package - artwork included - it's a ripper.

Artwork: A
Sub Pop have done some great work recently (the packaging of No Age's Nouns was spectacular), and they don't buck the trend with Mount Zoomer, tucking a nice poster and decorated CD slip-case inside a nice cardboard pocket. The artwork itself - by Elizabeth Huey and Matt Moroz - is like a mix of Chris Johanson and David Shrigley, with figures and patterns laid over each other in Photoshop to form this great, vastly interesting analogue mess. Ten points.

Published in mX, Thursday June 26, 2008