Mini-reviews: The week of Sunday, May 24-Sunday, May 31!

'Dem's the stats.

Hey-ho, kids!  For lack of any better ideas, I've decided that I'm going to give you the lowdown on all the albums I've listened to in the last week.  Many of these are first listens to begin with and I don't think I've listened to any album more than once this week, so many of these opinions will be pretty half-baked.  Of course, first impressions are pretty significant as is and normal people who don't write record reviews, and therefore don't listen to entire albums they may not even like at length, can and generally will base their entire outlook on certain artists based on first impressions (hell, normal people don't even listen to albums to begin with!)

But enough bullshit justifications, here are the reviews!

AC/DC - Highway to Hell and Back in Black: Alright, so the chart only has 11 tracks scrobbled for the week, but I did listen to 20 AC/DC tracks in just over the past week, so there.  At the recommendation of fellow blogger Sean Rose, I finally dug these gems out of the library and gave 'em a spin (for the first time in complete length, whoah!).  Goddamn they're good.  It'll probably take another few listens to really distinguish each tune, cause they're all similarly heavy, good-timesey rock 'n' roll (which is a fantastic thing).  Although I've always enjoyed Bon Scott's voice more, I may take Back in Black as the better of the two, for now at least, probably just because it had more of the radio hits I knew (and was able to sing along to), but I'll be damned if I wasn't rockin' out to "You Shook Me All Night Long," a song which typically kinda annoys me but felt perfect in context.  Maybe I was just in a good mood.  Then again, it's tough to feel like shit in the presence of AC/DC.

The War on Drugs - Wagonwheel Blues:  Another one per mention by Sean, although word came to him from Mark Prindle, who gave the band a rare boldface recommendation via his "Hip New Bands That the Kids Dig" mini-reviews.  I wouldn't say it's unjustified but frankly, the album didn't do all that much here.  It's got a nice psych-folk atmosphere but isn't particularly memorable.  Alas, you may disagree (especially if you are Mark Prindle).

The Dictators - Go Girl Crazy:  And speaking of good-times rock 'n' roll, here's another bona-fide, yet lesser known record that seems to stay in the shadows of the New York Dolls' debut album, but in actuality might better it.  It's proto-punk that thrives not only on musical lunkheadedness and snotty attitude like its peers, but adds the extra joy of ultra-stupid lyrics like, "Oh weekend / Soon he threw up in the store (a McDonalds) / But if he does it anymore / I'll make him eat it off the floor" and "I drink Coca Cola for breakfast / I've got Jackie Onassis in my pants."  Poetry comes not in finer forms.  They've got some ridiculous covers of "I Got You Babe" and "California Sun," and tunes like "The Next Big Thing" and "(I Live For) Cars and Girls" are just thoroughly enjoyable.  Highly recommended, and honestly I feel like stopping here and re-listening to it... but alas, I must press on!

King Missile - They:  Last.fm kept tossing these guys at the top of my "Recommended" section, comparing them to Ween and the Dead Milkmen.  If you don't know (probably not), they're the guys who do "Detachable Penis" (collective "Ohhhhhhh!").  But they do much more.  Much, much more.  In fact, something like ten albums more, each with at least fifteen songs.  I started myself on the Prindle-commended They, which seemed daunting at first due to its twenty-two song length.  By the end of the first song though, it became clear that it would be a highly enjoyable trip through mostly jangly, early lo-fi indie rock with some truly bizarre lyrics, in the vein of (guess who!) Ween and the Dead Milkmen.  "He Needed" is a list of things some guy needs.  "If Only" explains the woes of the inhuman ability to turn one's head into a food item.  "Hemophiliac of Love" is self-explanatory, and for some reason I remember "As I Walked Thru Queens" to be downright hilarious.  And that's only what I explicitly remember almost a week after listening to it once!  Naturally, this sprawling mess of off-kilter humor requires some more listens, and I look forward to when I get around to tackling this again.

Wilco - Summerteeth and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot:  Re-listened to both of these for the billionth time after hearing the news of Jay Bennett's passing.  They are still really great.  Not that that surprises anyone.

Jarvis Cocker - "Further Complications":  Nope, not again.  Scroll down.

Guillemots - Through the Windowpane:  I accidentally found this on the ol' hub back at Case sometime during my freshman year (about a year and a half ago) and forgot it was there.  I finally decided to check it out and I subsequently discovered an album full of indie pop goodness, sadsack balladry and best of all, huge, bombastic, sweeping orchestral passages.  Now, it all may seem pretty overblown yet simultaneously run-of-the-mill, but Guillemots manage to pull off the bombast with a great deal of eloquence, space and restraint, and it helps that the singer has the sort of tuneful, almost Jeff Buckley-esque voice that justifies the grandiose heights the band hopes to scale.  Some of the slower stuff has a real somnolent quality to it, but songs like "São Paulo," the nearly twelve-minute long showstopping closer, pull no stops.  A massive orchestra, songs-within-a-song, an adrenaline, climactic finish - I loves me that stuff.  Modern day ELO maybe, but even more exaggerated and a little less corny?  Recommended.

Shearwater - Rook:  Very similar, mood-wise to Guillemots, just much more subdued, and the singer's voice is a lot more ethereal.  Consequently, it's also a lot more dull, but still has enough moments of beauty for it to be worth listening.  "The Snow Leopard" is gorgeous, "On the Death of the Waters" is quite startling and I think I remember liking "Home Life" a lot.

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix:  A jolly good funtimes pop record full of synths and clean electric guitars and tight drums and what-have-you.  It'll probably take a few listens to develop itself fully, although it's not the sort of record I'm jumping at the chance to listen to again.  Still enjoyable through its duration!

Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest:  One of the most anticipated records of the year in the indie realm turns out to be basically what it's been cracked up to be.  Lush harmonies, dense instrumentation, very reminiscent of Pet Sounds (although obviously not quite as good, maybe more on par with Surf's Up?).  I'll certainly head on back to this one as it seems like the sort of record that not only fleshes itself out and distinguishes itself with each listen, but also the one where new details pop up.  On a related note, I'll also mention that in the twitterverse, of all the musicians I'm following, @EdwardDroste seems like the nicest and most genuine.  It shows in the music.

Pixies - Trompe le Monde:  Felt the need to reacquaint myself with this classic for some reason, and it certainly gets better.  Never realized how nasty "Planet of Sound" is or just how pretty "Motorway to Rosewell" is.  And of course, "U-Mass," "Space (I Believe In)," "Alec Eiffel," etc are still great.

Motörhead - Ace of Spades:  I'd recently developed an affinity for this album's title track (ashamedly due to its deserved inclusion in Rock Band 2, but it was bound to happen sometime), so I decided to (belatedly) check out the rest of the record.  Goddamn, whattan album.  These guys are just relentless, pounding out riff after riff of fast-paced, trashy, insane rock and roll.  You can smell the whiskey on Lemmy's breath.  So "The Hammer" may be a rewrite of "Ace of Spades," but few songs deserve to be rewritten more than that on.  And "Love Me Like a Reptile," "Fast and Loose," "The Chase is Better Than the Catch" and the charming "Jailbait" simply destroy.  Take this one for a drive now.  It's nice out.

Unwound - Leaves Turn Inside You:  Is this one a challenge or what?  I've heard Repetition before, which sounds a lot like Fugazi, and I was expecting the same here, except just 75 minutes of it and two songs that go on longer than 9 minutes.  Much to my surprise, I got something much more subdued, a few kinda poppy tunes ("December," "Demons Sing Love Songs," if I remember correctly) and it ended with some really creepy, lengthy instrumentals (actually, I don't think they were instrumentals but it was certainly the case where the vocals were subservient to the music) and the album just ends cold with a completely out-of-place old-timesy trombone solo that, in context, is quite frightening.  This is an interesting one.

Elvis Costello - Secret, Profane and Sugarcane:  Who ever thought that a 54-year old, British new waver could pull-off such an excellent and consistent Americana-country record?  Then again, with his relentlessly clever wordplay and rhyme schemes, Costello could pull off any genre that relies so heavily on lyrical content, and although the album contains some excellent performances from expert bluegrass and country musicians (and his old friend Emmylou Harris sings backup on "The Crooked Line"), it's those lyrics that yet again keep Costello moving beyond his third decade in the business.  Highlights include murder ballad "Complicated Shadows," the desperate "She Handed Me a Mirror" and the album's centerpiece, the jaunty "Sulfur to Sugarcane," which marks a roadmap of women with great lines like "Down in Bridgeport / The women will kill you for sport / The women in Poughkeepsie / Take their clothes off when they're tipsy."  Good stuff, and much livelier and more entertaining than Beware, Bonnie "Prince" Billy's similarly countrified offering from earlier this year.

Boris - Pink:  I saw some live footage of this Japanese "stoner/sludge/drone metal" group a while ago and was very much humored and awed by their translucent pink drum kit and what I recall was a double-necked guitar.  It seemed quite ridiculous and I moved on with my life, but the sheer audacity of that look more than anything else stayed with me until I spontaneously decided to give this album a listen yesterday.  I got hold of the vinyl edition, which is much longer than any CD version (probably for the worse) and sort of expected something I wouldn't go farther than three tracks into.  I'm not much of a metalhead.  However, after the album's title track, and the two songs that follow it, which all sounds like Motörhead meets Queens of the Stone Age, but heavier and in Japanese (without the obnoxious METAL vocals that bug me), I was completely floored.  What followed those tracks, then much more suited the descriptions of Boris I'd heard, although the extremely heavy production helped maintain interest while the tempos slowed down and even dropped out.  One recalled The Melvins, while a few others were even dirgier.  A couple songs are actually quite pretty, "Farewell" and "My Machine" inclusive (although the latter goes on, on this version of the album, a bit too long at over ten minutes in lentgh).  Perhaps most absurd, and why the shorter versions of the album might be a bit better, is that at least 14 minutes of the 72 minute long album is just ungodly noise.  Now, I wouldn't be the first to complain about this, but that might be a little excessive.  At least eight of these minutes though, follow the propulsive, violent ten minutes known as "Just Abandoned Myself," which closes the album and harkens back to the album's first three tracks.  So, this is really a diverse, fascinating and LOUD record.  In Japanese.  Highly recommended.

Alright, I'm done.  Happy hunting.  Can you guess where I stopped writing last night and picked up again this morning?