Quite an interesting list this week. A little glossing necessary, maybe. Maximum Balloon is the David Sitek side project, which I must confess to having been pretty sceptical about (much love for TV On The Radio notwithstanding), but which, on the basic of the five tracks I’ve heard, sounds terrific. Not unlike TV On The Radio, especially when the guys from TV On The Radio sing.
Coil Sea, meanwhile, is a deep psychedelic jamming unit fronted by Dave Heumann from the excellent Arbouretum. The two Drag City things are immensely worthy, not a little obscure reissues, Spur being a cool country/garage/psych thing made in the dust of The Byrds, and Matthew Young being a kind of ethereal folk/electronic beats private press job from the ‘80s which reminds me in places a little of Arthur Russell.
Good stuff elsewhere here, too, which I should get round to writing about in the next fortnight. As ever, though, the obligatory stern caveat: inclusion in the playlist means we’ve played it in the past couple of days, not necessarily that I’ve liked it.
1 Maximum Balloon – Five-Track Sampler (Fiction)
2 Spur – Spur Of The Moments (Drag City)
3 Interpol – Interpol (Soft Limit)
4 Los Lobos – Tin Can Trust (Proper)
5 Best Coast – Crazy For You (Wichita)
6 Junip – Fields (City Slang)
7 David Westlake – Play Dusty For Me (Angular)
8 Beggin’ Your Pardon Miss Joan – Edges (Blackest Rainbow)
9 Queens Of The Stone Age – Rated R: Deluxe Edition (Polydor)
10 Peter Bellamy – Both Sides Then (Topic)
11 Tricky – Mixed Race (Domino)
12 Art Of Noise – Influence: Hits, Singles, Moments, Treasures (Salvo)
13 Freelance Whales – Weathervanes (Mom & Pop/Columbia)
14 Janelle Monae – The Archandroid (Atlantic)
15 Various Artists – Afro-Beat Airways: West African Shock Waves; Ghana & Togo 1972-1978 (Analog Africa)
16 Matthew Young – Traveler’s Advisory (Thrill Jockey)
17 Coil Sea – Coil Sea (Thrill Jockey)
18 The Flaming Lips & Stardeath And White Dwarfs – Dark Side Of The Moon (Warner Bros)