it's been too long

A seemingly eternal amount of time has passed since I've graced you, my readers with some reviews. Now that fall is more or less upon us, I have to clear my plate to make way for the myriad of new releases expected in the coming months. So here goes:

sean lennon - Friendly Fire: John's hipster son is back with this overcast followup to his sunny 1998 debut, lamenting away at his break up with bijou phillips, who incidentally does some backing vocals. Has it's moments, but I'll take the old grand royal release over this one any day.

easy dub all stars - radiodread: You've likely all heard of this by now. It is what implies, reggae covers of the ok computron album. Some work better than others, my fave is 'fitter happier'.

the panic channel - ONe: Hmmm, what do you get when you take dave navarro, stephen perkins, and the new bassist guy from jane's addiction, and get some lame asshole to sing instead of perry farrel? A lackluster glam metal album.

marble valley - Wild Yams: This is tasty. The welcome return of former pavement drummer, steve westie's new project. You may remember the first release brought us the magnum opus, 'pneumonia', which I absolutely loved sneaking into my sets. Think Beat Happening bumps into Can on a crowded new york sidewalk and decide to share a cab. 'Fag & ah Light' is key. Bum one now.

kasabian - Empire: These guys saw a lot of success in the way of licensing out the two more 'rocking' tunes on their debut to the likes of tv shows and adverts. So it comes as no surprise, but still a bit of a disappointment, that this new release focuses on material in that vein, as opposed to their more laid back groovy tunes. Oh well.

robert pollard - Normal Happiness: Bob just keeps churning 'em out. Hot on the heels of his 3 other collaborative efforts earlier this year, we have the next solo effort, at least in name, from the former GBV frontman. Clocking in at half the time as his Matador debut, this is much easier to wrap your head around, and is in turn, a more focused affair. As always there are some clunkers, but they serve the purpose of making the stand-outs, well, stand out.

joanna newsome - Ys: Who knew anyone would ever get this worked up about harp music? Well, I was sure excited to pick up this new release after falling under the spell of the milk-eyed mender. But where that release was cute and quirky, this one is pretentious and meandering. Makes you want to put a gun to your head.

tortoise - A Lazurus Taxon: Hoo rah for these three discs! The first two are various re-workings, remixes, and b-sides, largely culled from hard-to-find imports and EP's. The third disc is a re-issue of their long out-of-print debut LP, Rhythms, Resolutions, and Clusters. If you're not familiar with the tortose sound, it is an instrumental affair in a indie-jam-post rock-IDMish kind of tip. A cherry of a box set.

blowoff - s/t: What do you get when you pair up bob mould and rich morel? This. And let me tell you, it comes off as awkward as it sounds. The first track is kind of rocky á la bob mould, but I think Morel might be the singer, and he's singing about what I can make out to be homo love. Fair enough. We go through another rocker or two before the disc starts to morph into Morel's tell tale proggy house sound with Mould as the 'diva' vocalist. It's really worth tracking down so you can hear first hand what I'm yammering on about. It wouldn't surprise me one bit, however, if one of the more 'epic' tracks found itself sandwiched seamlessly in the middle of a deep dish set.