Best New Tracks

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The Incredible String Band / The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion / The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter / Wee Tam and the Big Huge

Incredible String Band
Incredible String Band / The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion / The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter / Wee Tam & The Big Huge

[Fledg'ling; 2010]

5.2 / 7.3 / 9.0 / 8.1
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The UK avant-garde folk group's pivotal first four albums have been reissued, and they are rarely anything less than brave, inspired, and profoundly weird. Of the four, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter is where they earn their name, with a record of complex songs full of dulcimers, gimbris, ouds, and harps. Hangman's is their best album, and everything from the pop gems ("Mercy I Cry City") to the true oddities ("The Minotaur's Song", in which the narrator bellows, "Porridge for my porridge bowl!" and a chorus echoes him, "Porridge for his porridge bowl!") are richer, weirder, and more fun than anything else in their catalog.

Black Tambourine

Black Tambourine
Black Tambourine

[Slumberland; 2010]

8.3
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Black Tambourine's sound is all over the contemporary lo-fi scene, and this reissue shows why it has endured. If the 20-year-old songs compiled on Black Tambourine still sound strikingly contemporary, it probably has less to do with the band's own foresight and more to do with modern indie's retreat into lo-fi insularity. But so long as timid young rock bands choose to hide their innermost emotions behind a foggy veil of feedback, these songs will stand as paragons of the form. An essential acquisition for current In the Red, Woodsist, and Slumberland loyalists.

Today / On Fire / This Is Our Music

Galaxie 500
Today / On Fire / This Is Our Music

[Domino / 20-20-20; 2010]

9.5 / 10.0 / 8.3
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The brilliant dream-pop band's three studio albums have been reissued again, this time in 2xCD sets. The original LPs have been smartly paired with extra discs that gather all extant material: 1988 debut Today with the covers/demos/B-sides set Uncollected, 1989's On Fire with Peel Sessions, and 1990's This Is Our Music with the live album Copenhagen. There's no new information or previously unheard music in these sets, but there is a lot of remarkable music. They never made it big, but during their short run, Galaxie 500's often quiet and always beautifully rendered music had a profound impact; it needs to stay out there and available, where it has a chance of finding a few more.

This Is Still It

The Method Actors
This Is Still It

[Acute; 2010]

8.3
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The Method Actors thrived in the 1980s in Athens, Ga., in the same scene that gave rise to R.E.M., the B-52's, Pylon, Love Tractor, and many more. And with the release of the collection of their early material, This Is Still It, they still sound as thrilling as they did 30 years ago. Hints of other sounds from before and after drift in-- DNA, Polvo, Gang of Four, Captain Beefheart-- but the Method Actors sound too wound up in their mania to get distracted by anything from the outside. Here really is a total find from what would almost have to be an empty post-punk vault at this point.

Quarantine the Past

Pavement
Quarantine the Past

[Matador / Domino; 2010]

10.0
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The first career-spanning Pavement comp contains their best-known songs as well as concert staples, fan favorites, and at least a couple of curveballs. Listening to it, it's clear that, a decade after their dissolution, Pavement's music has been proven itself to have an evergreen quality. To be sure, it's all very much of its time and no band aside from perhaps Guided By Voices better epitomizes the sound and style of 1990s indie rock, but the material transcends its era as much as it defines it. Unlike other cross-generational legacy bands like the Pixies, Sonic Youth, and Talking Heads, Pavement's songs fit together comfortably as a jukebox-friendly hit parade.

Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating in Space [Collector's Editon]

Spiritualized
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space [Collector's Edition]

[ATP; 2009]

10.0
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This new deluxe, limited edition version of Spiritualized's landmark 1997 LP is only for hardcore fans; the music, however-- both the original album and this record's extras-- is timeless. The set has been issued in an edition of 1,000 numbered box sets. Inside, each song comes on an individual black three-inch CD, the discs sealed inside black blister packaging, like the single tablets of a treatment regimen. Two discs of demos and isolated elements from the finished tunes-- those lonesome, blue horns blaring through "No God Only Religion", for instance-- get their own package, too, as does a personalized prescription signed by the doctor Jason Pierce himself. Even if you can't afford this version of the record, you should at the very least have the original. One day, it'll come in handy.

The Minimal Wave Tapes: Vol. 1

Various Artists
The Minimal Wave Tapes: Vol. 1

[Stones Throw; 2009]

8.0
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Stones Throw offers an expertly crafted introduction to Minimal Wave, a label that focuses on unearthing electronic DIY music from the late 1970s and 80s. Painstakingly and lovingly built by Veronica Vasicka, Minimal Wave locates the underground response-- from punk-funk to early techno to goth-- to the well-selling synth-pop of the Second British Invasion.

Francophonic, Vol. 2: 1980-1989

Franco & le Tout Puissant OK Jazz
Francophonic Vol. 2: 1980-1989

[Sterns Africa; 2009]

8.7
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The second volume of the Stearns label's anthology of the Congolese bandleader's recordings is thunderbolts and fireworks, start to finish. Maybe it's just canny song selection by compiler/annotator Ken Braun, who boiled down the dozens of albums Franco released in the 1980s to these 13 songs, but it sure sounds like the final quarter of Franco's group's career was its best, which would make them close to unique in pop history. The prettiness of the band's records was often threaded with rage and indignation, and the last couple of songs in this set understandably address mortality face-on, but even in his darkest moments Franco treated moving the crowd as a sweet responsibility.

Neil Young / Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere / After the Gold Rush / Harvest

Neil Young
Neil Young / Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere / After the Gold Rush / Harvest

[Reprise; 1968/2009 / Reprise; 1969/2009 / Reprise; 1970/2009 / Reprise; 1972/2009]

7.8 / 10.0 / 10.0 / 9.3
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Neil Young's first four albums were remastered earlier this year and they've been gathered together in a pricey (but impressive) box set. The CD version is pressed on 24-karat gold discs, and the packaging is new; the vinyl is pressed on 180-gram records and packaged in extra-heavy gatefold sleeves with full-size reproductions of the original inserts. While his solo debut is an impressive and rewarding listen, the three records that followed are all bona fide classics, launching one of modern music's most fascinating careers.

Elvis 75: Good Rockin' Tonight

Elvis Presley
Elvis 75: Good Rockin' Tonight

[Legacy / RCA; 2009]

9.0
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To mark his 75th birthday, Legacy issues a new 4xCD, 100-song box set drawing from Elvis' entire career. Where previous boxes focused on specific decades and tended to omit his gospel albums and extremely spotty film soundtrack work, Good Rockin' Tonight strives with some success to pull the best of the full breadth of his recorded output into one place, and it serves as a fine overview for a prospective fan wanting to dig a little deeper.

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