August continues to not overwhelm us with new releases and this week I review four albums: OSEES dabble in Devo-esque new wave on their excellent 27th album; Panda Bear & Sonic Boom enlist Adrian Sherwood for a dub reset of their 2022 collaborative album; subtle songwriter Stephen Steinbrink works magic on Disappearing Coin; and Mo Troper produces another quirky power-pop artist, Diners.
In Notable Releases, Andrew reviews Fiddlehead, Genesis Owusu, Open Mike Eagle and more.
Other Basement-friendly news from this week: Das Damen and Meat Joy are getting back together for their shows in decades; and all four members of Talking Heads have agreed to be in the same room together for a Q&A with Spike Lee about Stop Making Sense. That alone would’ve seemed impossible just a few months ago, and now an actual reunion tour doesn’t seem totally out of the question. What a world!
RIP original Pavement drummer Gary Young. Hope you’re doing headstands in heaven.
Head below for this week’s reviews…
ALBUM OF THE WEEK #1: OSEES – Intercepted Message (In the Red)
OSEES pull out all their synthesizers for one of their most immediate, enjoyable records ever
After 26 years, 26 albums, and numerous name variations, John Dwyer has “at long last” delivered an OSEES album with verse-chorus-verse song construction — “a pop record for tired times.” Like so many have over the last 50 years, Dwyer has done it via synthesizers. Electronics have always been a part of his band’s arsenal — from actual keyboards to the many effects pedals used to warp other instruments and voices — but never have they been such a prominent part of the equation as they are on Intercepted Message, the OSEES’ 27th album that is also one of the most immediate, enjoyable and satisfying in their long and snaking discography.
Intercepted Message is also not that different than OSEES’ other great records. There are still psychedelic wig-outs, demented digressions, and hard-hitting hypnotic grooves (two drummers will do that) and moshable moments, but having big choruses and hooky leads makes everything that much stickier and memorable. Those hooky leads come courtesy of the synths, mostly of the bloopy-bleepy variety found on records in the ’70s and ’80s by everyone from Devo to Tom Petty to The Carpenters. Dwyer and the band’s current keyboard wiz, Tomas Dolas, take a distinct new wave approach, with electronics and real instruments side by side, and all played live, and that avoids slick plasticity. It will also draw a lot of comparisons to early Devo which is not unwarranted on songs like “Blank Chems” and the title track, which have bright and bouncing keyboards that drive and compliment the melodies, but there’s never any doubt these are Dwyer joints.
Dwyer keeps things pretty tight across the whole album; after the extended prog epics on recent albums like Orc and Smote Reverser, songs here are short and punchy, most hovering around the pop single three minute mark. There is some totally new territory on Intercepted Message, too: Penultimate track “Always at Night” is a dreamy ballad you could imagine appearing at the romantic conclusion of a John Hughes movie with Dwyer crooning (yes, crooning) “Take a breath / Floating feeling free / And close your door / Like its 1983.” The album ends with glassine instrumental “Ladwp Hold” that sounds like one of those Nestle “Sweet Dreams” ads. Just when you’re starting to wonder if the algorithm spit you on to a Pure Moods playlist, OSEES throw in a very clever twist that, if you hadn’t already been tipped off by its title, brings you back to messy earth. Thank goodness we’ve got OSEES to snap us out of it, even when they’re the ones who put us in.
Read our Q&A with John Dwyer about the album and pick up our exclusive limited edition vinyl variant of OSEES’ Live at Levitation album.
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ALBUM OF THE WEEK #2: Panda Bear, Sonic Boom & Adrian Sherwood – Reset in Dub (Domino)
Dub guru Adrian Sherwood rebuilds Panda Bear & Sonic Boom’s album Reset from the ground up, making for a record that’s just as good as the original.
Panda Bear & Sonic Boom’s great 2022 collaborative album, Reset, was already pretty trippy, but now it’s even more so as Reset In Dub. For it, they enlisted legendary producer Adrian Sherwood, who has worked with everyone from The Slits and The Pop Group to Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Mikey Dread and recently worked on the dub version of Spoon’s Lucifer on the Sofa. Even more than Hollie Cook’s recent and similar Happy Hour in Dub, this is almost a totally new and awesome album.
Sherwood kept the vocals and harmonies — the melodic core of the album — but then built the songs from the ground up, enlisting his stable of regular ON-U Sound collaborators, including Doug Wimbish & Skip McDonald (Sugarhill Gang, Tackhead), drummer Horseman, Alex White, Mark Bandola, “Crucial” Tony, Ras Badthings, Ivan “Celloman” Hussey, and Matthew Smythe. The Reset originals were all built around samples of intros to ’50s and ’60s rock n’ roll singles, and now Sherwood removes almost all of that, making for another string theory parallel universe record, stemming from similar blocks before taking things in wildly different directions.
“Go On” and “Everyday,” once driven by handclaps, have now been fitted with a syncopated rhythm section and sunny horn charts. “Danger” becomes a rocksteady number, and on “Livin’ in the After,” Sherwood takes cues from the castanets in the original’s sample of The Drifters’ “Save the Last Dance for Me,” and turns it into a full on calypso number ready for tiki torches and rum drinks served in coconut shells. Everything here is stretched out and relaxed (In Dub runs five minute longer than Reset), perfect for the gentle pace of island life and settles in nicely with the Beach Boys vibes that were already there. Reset was a near-perfect album that I’ve grown to like even more, but Reset in Dub is every bit its equal.
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Diners – Domino (Bar/None)
Diners’ seventh album gets a boost from producer Mo Troper
The DIY power pop explosion keeps on exploding. There always seems to be a few groups who are flying the flag previously hoisted by Big Star, Tommy Keene, Matthew Sweet, Teenage Fanclub, Superdrag and others, but lately there seems to be a new one every week, all armed with a barrelful of jangly earworms. Last week we got the new album from Hurry and this week it’s DOMINO, the seventh album from Diners, aka Phoenix, AZ’s Blue Broderick. For it, they enlisted one of the scene’s leading lights, Mo Troper (and bandmate Brenden Ramirez), to produce and bring the songs to harmonious life. These 10 songs were written in the streaming era but feel like they were custom designed for early ’70s portable AM radios shaped like Snoopy. Songs are all just over two minutes but still manage to fit in multiple choruses, middle eighths, and glammy solos, while the purposefully tinny production adds to that vintage feel. (Jack Shirley’s mixing, though, gives a little welcome bite.) The dB’s and Milk N’ Cookies are cool influences, but you can hear echos of bubblegum stars like Tommy Roe and 1910 Fruitgum Co on sugary confections like “From My Pillow” and “I Don’t Think About You The Way I Used To.” Come to think of it, the most perfect vehicle for one of these songs would be a flexidisc you cut out of a cereal box. Diners, part of your complete breakfast!
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Stephen Steinbrink – Disappearing Coin (Western Vinyl)
This underrated Bay Area mainstay’s latest is fully of melody, magic and wonder
The title of singer-songwriter Stephen Steinbrink’s new album comes from a video of David Blaine doing close-up magic on the streets of Barstow, CA in the early ’00s. He makes a quarter disappear off a teenager’s hand who, dumbfounded, can only muster “cool” in response. “I’ve watched it probably a hundred times,” Steinbrink says, noting he relates to the kid and Blaine. “It cracked me up but also blew my mind open— the feeling of wonder I experienced watching this video became a guide as I navigated new ways of staying in the realm of what’s both real and magical.” That sense of wonder is all over Disappearing Coin, an album of dreamy pop that has one one foot in ’70s/’80s boat shoes soft rock and the other in sensitive indie folk. Steinbrink has the perfect voice for this, high but smooth (shades of Christopher Cross), floating alongside the delicately picked acoustic guitars, gently bouncing piano, swooning pedal steel, and brushed drums. Songs like “Cruiser,” “Opalescent Ribbon,” and “Cool and Collected” are the pop equivalent of spending the day under a tree, staring at the clouds.
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