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Even though Canadian bands Wolf Parade and the Handsome Furs share Dan Boeckner’s instantly recognizable vocals, the latter have gone to great lengths to make a name for themselves. With Plague Park (2007) and Face Control (2008), Boeckner and his wife, keyboardist Alexei Perry, grew into more than just a side project to Wolf Parade. Throughout their history as a band, however, you could always hear the harder, grungy synthesizers yearning to break free from the New Wave-y, almost Strokesian guitar lines. Their latest release, Sound Kapital, fuses the couple’s impressive but disparate talents by eliminating the guitar altogether. Boeckner wanted to “challenge” himself by playing keyboards, and it’s safe to say he rises to the test. Sound Kapital initially sounds like a departure from the band’s earlier efforts, but after repeated listens it’s actually a logical progression. The album hews closely to ‘80s electronic and industrial music of Eastern Europe, which is the primary influence for the new record. This gives them a solid musical platform on which to explore their socialist advocacy and nostalgic denial. – Consequence Of Sound

OTHER NEW VINYL RELEASE:

Avi Buffalo How Come
13 & God Own Your Ghost
Bread Best of Bread
Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. It’s a Corporate World
Iron Maiden From Fear to Erernity
Left Banke Walk Away Renee
National Cherry Tree Ep
Set Your Goals Burning at Both Ends
Jonsi Go Out Ep
Venetian Snares Cubist Reggae

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Once Adam Yauch discovered he had cancer in 2009, the Beastie Boys shelved their forthcoming The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 1 and its companion volume, gradually reviving and revising the project once Yauch went into remission. At this point, they scrapped their convoluted plans to release concurrent complementary volumes of THSC and simply went forth with The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2, which retained the bulk of the track list from Pt 1. All this hurly-burly camouflages the essential truth of The Hot Sauce Committee: that the Beasties could sit on an album for two years to no ill effect to their reputation or the record’s quality. This doesn’t suggest they’re out of step so much as they’re out of time, existing in a world of their own making, beholden to no other standard but their own. Certainly, the Beasties stitch together sounds and rhymes from their past throughout The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2, laying down grooves à la Check Your Head but weaving samples through these rhythms, thickly layering the album with analog synths out of Hello Nasty, all the while pledging allegiance to old-school rap in their rhymes. Nothing here is exactly unexpected — even the presence of Santogold on “Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win” isn’t new, it’s new wave — yet The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2 feels fresh because there is such kinetic joy propelling this music. Last time around, the Beasties weighed themselves down by creating retro-tribute to N.Y.C., taking everything just a little bit too seriously, but here they’re free of any expectations and are back to doing what they do best: cracking wise and acting so stupid they camouflage how kinetic, inventive, and rich their music is. And, make no mistake, The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2 does find the Beastie Boys at their best. Perhaps they’re no longer setting the style, but it takes master musicians to continually find new wrinkles within a signature sound, which is precisely what the Beasties do here. – All Music

OTHER NEW VINYL RELEASES:

Roberta Flack Killing Me Softly
Ed Gein Bad Luck
Givers In Light
Levon Helm Ramble At The Ryman
Sarah Jarosz Follow Me Down
Origin Entity
Ty Segall Goodbye Bread
Tallest Man On Earth Tallest Man On Earth
Neil Young Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Neil Young Neil Young

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Owl City’s new album, All Things Bright and Beautiful, is somewhat mistitled. The tracks are bright, to be sure, but more so in emo-pop, acid-bright tone than in any sense of actual joy. And the beauty here is (arguably) in the repetition of that tone; if you’re a diehard Owl City fan, then you’re going to love this disc.

The 12 tracks here are mostly three to four minutes long, a pretty standard setup on a pretty standard pop album. The one exception is “January 12, 1986”, a 38-second clip of Reagan’s speech after the Challenger disaster, played rather inexplicably in the middle of the album over a quiet track of synth and open-vowel vocals. This probably has some significance for Owl City’s Adam Young (and appears to lead into next track “Galaxies”), but some insight might be helpful. As is, the interlude feels like a distraction (albeit a welcome one). – Consequence of Sound

OTHER NEW VINYL RELEASES:

Candy Golde Candy Golde
Dodos All Night
Elvis Costello Delivery Man
Dear Hunter Color Spectrum
Deftones Adrenaline
Go Sailor Go Sailor
Junior Boys It’s All True
Robert Earl Keen Gravitational Forces
Paul McCartney McCartney
Radiohead Supercollider/The Butcher

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What do you do if you lose your lead singer? If you’re Iron Maiden or New Order you just batter on with a quickly recruited new singer, then just revel in waves of acclaim. If you’re INXS you audition a random idiot on reality TV – then sack him. After Tyondai Braxton left Battles to pursue his solo career, the remaining trio decided to not replace him altogether – a tactic that’s working out beautifully for Battles, since ‘Gloss Drop’ is sublime.

Their robotic, metallic guitars romp around, teasing out a baroque space opera that’s both seemingly measured in nano-bars and obsessed with pushing beyond the outer limits of our sonic understanding. Yet despite ‘Gloss Drop’ often sounding so like androids deep in a mercurial orgy, they manage to shake us from this delirium by a few key vocal guests. Gary Numan sings on the frenetic ‘My Machines’, whilst Kazu Makino of Blonde Redhead and Yamantaka Eye from The Boredoms swing by to stitch some guttural reality into the proceedings. But Kompakt’s Matias Aguero probably steals the show on ‘Ice Cream’ – a trippy, fleshy wriggle that is packed with funk and processed riffs that is as guaranteed to induce synesthesia as make you dance. – Clash

OTHER NEW VINYL RELEASES:

Airborne Toxic Event Vinyl Collection
Appleseed Cast Middle States EP
Arctic Monkeys Suck it & See
Black Lips Arabia Mountain
Black Moth Super Rainbow Dandelion Gum (Reissue)
Cults Cults
Dawes Nothing is Wrong
Fucked Up David Comes to Life
Lady Gaga Born This Way
Tedeschi Trucks Band Revelator

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