The new Black Lips album – produced by Mark Ronson, weirdly – arrived yesterday, and reminded me of a couple of things. First, that I always feel unaccountably guilty for not liking Black Lips records as much as I think I should. And second, I actually have a bunch of good garage records that need writing about. Foremost among them, I reckon, is “Sons Of Stone”, the debut album by The People’s Temple on Hozac. The People’s Temple come from Lansing, Michigan, but their particular strain of garage seems to be derived from further south, rich as it is with allusions to the blasted Texan psych of the 13th Floor Elevators and at least some of the International Artists label. As with so many of these contemporary garage bands, The People’s Temple maintain a peculiar and effective balance between incredible diligence, in their recreation of an antique ‘60s sound, and ramshackle spontaneity. Plenty of “Sons Of Stone” captures the bravura and naivety of a bunch of freshmen who’ve just heard, say, Them (“Where You Gonna Go?”) for the first time, or who’ve dedicated themselves to producing a darker analogue to “Paint It, Black” and then accidentally strayed into “Peter Gunn” in the process (the closing “The Surf”). There are stringy, uncanny echoes of early Love here, too, and, in some of the lysergic twanging lead guitar, surely accidental ones to the first Blur album. On their Myspace, incidentally, The People’s Temple reference The Brian Jonestown Massacre, which I personally find pretty offputting, but “Sons Of Stone” sounds like the most optimistic bits of that band’s rhetoric, rather than the shoey disappointments of their actual music. The People’s Temple have the thrust and the tunes – the title track and “Axe Man”, especially - to carry them through, so that they don’t sound, like a good few garage bands old and new, that they’re still quaintly grappling with the concept of a longplayer. Off the top of my head, it feels like the garage record I’ve most enjoyed since the last Fresh & Onlys and, especially, Ty Segall’s “Melted”. I have the new Segall album here (on Drag City), to listen to some more, and also a record by the Cosmonauts that I really should do something on. In the meantime, check out The People’s Temple on the cursed Myspace and let me know what you think.

As with Metronomy on Monday, I’m going to have to confess general ignorance of the Danish band WhoMadeWho. Along with “The English Riviera”, though, I’ve been playing this one a lot for the past week or so. Not least because, in a world without LCD Soundsystem, “Knee Deep” works as a pretty useful substitute. I think I said something similar with regard to last year’s Shit Robot record, but WhoMadeWho seem to be tapping into a slightly darker side of LCD: great arpeggiating waves recur again and again, as if extrapolated, perhaps, from “Someone Great”. It’s a curious album, in that just after halfway it becomes a series of remixes of one track, “Every Minute Alone”, but there’s a driving intensity and cohesion throughout which makes it all hang together, however implausibly. The LCD optimal point occurs around the middle of “Knee Deep”, with “All That I Am” (that arch, gruff male vulnerability, as well as the pulsating music), and “Nothing Has Changed” which, from memory, clicks off a little like “On Repeat”. And while I’m aware that relying on Wikipedia for facts is a risky game, the claim there that Queens Of The Stone Age have covered a WhoMadeWho song in the past has a certain logic to it. In fact, it made me think of Josh Homme and James Murphy as very similar figures: bright, obsessive, self-aware alphamales of a certain age, capable of streamlining a wealth of musical knowledge into immensely focused, drilled jams. WhoMadeWho might notionally orient themselves closer to techno than rock (“Knee Deep” comes on Kompakt, traditional home of clean lines and aesthetically-elevated electronic minimalism). But if Homme often strives to give rock a robotic imperative, WhoMadeWho seem to be heading towards the same place, more or less, from the opposite direction. That’s most apparent on the original mix of “Every Minute Alone”, insidious enough as it is, without being worked through four more versions before the end of the record. Best of all, though, is “Two Feet Off Ground”, which ramps up the steely arpeggios even more (early Underworld, maybe?), and adds a lead vocal from Tomas Hoffding which recalls both Murphy and also David Gahan. Can’t say I’ve ever been much of a fan of Depeche Mode, but “Two Feet Off Ground” is more or less how I always hoped some of their deeper tracks might sound: crisp and forceful, with a little gothic set-dressing, and with a nagging tune beneath the synth waves that betrays a muscular pop upgrade. If anyone knows their way around the first two WhoMadeWho albums, let me know; pretty intrigued right now.

As some of you have probably deduced, I’ve had a copy of Bill Callahan’s excellent “Apocalypse” for a couple of months or so now. It’s a lovely perk of the job, getting an album like this so early, compromised a little by Drag City insisting I didn’t mention its existence on the blog for what seemed like an age. To be honest, negotiations about when I could or couldn’t write about “Apocalypse” became so complicated that I ended up forgetting to blog about it at all. I was reminded yesterday, though, when I noticed that Michael had posted Graeme Thomson’s Uncut review of “Apocalypse” on the website. Given Graeme’s thorough job, I’m not going to spend too much time here. “Apocalypse” is presented by Callahan, gnomically of course, as a kind of concept album, though musically it feels less tightly defined than 2009’s wonderful “Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle”. Unlike the scattershot “Woke On A Whaleheart”, though, it still finds Callahan playing to his mature strengths: “Riding For The Feeling” and “One Fine Morning” have the rueful, elegaic, understated grandeur of songs from “A River Ain’t Too Much To Love”, which I increasingly suspect might be my favourite Callahan/Smog record. Elsewhere, the opening “Drover” expands on the trick of producing widescreen imagery with subtly deployed tools; a touch of Scarlet Rivera-ish fiddle makes me think of Rolling Thunder, too, while the jazz flute on “Free’s” points up the playfulness and lightness of touch which preconceptions about Callahan’s lugubriousness - or worse - can sometimes obscure. Graeme writes plenty and wisely about “America!”, which I initially thought may be kin to “Natural Decline” from “Rain On Lens”, though I’m now wondering whether it might be closer to something on “Dongs Of Sevotion”. Anyhow; edgier and harsher than most else here, it still fits into “Apocalypse”, which generally showcases a real master with a complete confidence in his vision. There’s an eye for detail, too – the ravishing cover, the sung catalogue number at close (a schtick that reminds me distantly of Marvin Gaye reciting the credits at the end of “Midnight Love”) – which betrays a loving, craftsmanlike aesthetic. Undermining, again, the chill Callahan stereotype. Great record.