30 Her Parents - Physical Release
Punk pathetique, they used to call it. Coming in at under seventeen minutes, the conglomeration of one of Dananananaykroyd, one of Internet Forever, the one of Stairs To Korea and one other blast through a set of songs that on top of a rush of obtuse hardcore punk quasi-thrash pull in some remarkable lyrical conceits. Silly as you like, then, but there's a malevolence about some of those concepts and some of the riffola, hell for leather with no sense of wanting a career out of this. Plus, a tribute to Justin Vernon's achievements incorporating "he autotuned an owl!"
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29 Clinic - Free Reign
Clinic literally let the masks slip on Bubblegum; this time around it's a slight return, not as far as wired garage nuggets but into a dronier area. There's still some typically Clinician signifiers - vocal reverb, clarinet, fuzz pedal - but the wild-eyed thrashes have been replaced by a greater reliance on heightened tension, meandering spacey explorations and deceptively simple underpinning melodies as textured, ethereal while still sonically open rhythms glide just under the surface. Sinister and shivery, full of unresolved tension, it's the sound of a band who've finally realised the sonic map they've created for themselves and want to really test the boundaries.
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28 Beach House - Bloom
Some say Bloom saw Alex and Victoria evolve rather than... revolve. That's as maybe, but when you've created a persona so exact yet flexible you're entitled to dwell for as long as you can pinprick at the surface. For all the extra details inherent they're still minimal constructors at heart, pre-programmed percussion existing beneath guitars and synths that alternately, sometimes simultaneously, drift over blissful dreampop fields and force the pace so it feels fuller, Victoria Legrand doing the dusky spadework in helping the heightened emotiveness properly take flight. Music to drift away to as long as you're prepared not to be too comfortable.
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27 Minotaur Shock - Orchard
David Edwards' project has been riding along under cover of folktronica for a good decade but it's never been as fully realised as this. It's an album that takes influence from English pastoral eccentricity and then attempts to glitch it up, armed with an armoury of woody instruments and effects in an attempt to craft a pastoral motorik, electronic grooves overlaid with acoustic picking and Eastern string arrangements, ambient textures treated with underlying jazz-influenced tuned percussion and found sounds. The journey it takes through organic fields and bassy club beats treated just the same or as something to mix between is kaleidoscopic.
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26 Andrew Paul Regan - The Signal And The Noise
He may have relinquished his Pagan Wanderer Lu soubriquet but Regan's command of forcing the pint pot of intelligent, barbed singer-songwriting into the quart of laptop electronica remains undiminished. Songs about destroying a chess playing computer, fractious meetings with a step-sister and being the voice behind a number station recording are not typical fare but they go towards a bigger picture of the nature of free will (and should we read much into all the references to babies and families?), set to a palette ranging from electro-swing to glitch to Beatles anthemry. A particular talent deviates in a new direction and keeps picking at particular nits.
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