New albums we listened to this week
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Sia | DJ Dodger Stadium | Joyce Manor | Riff Raff
Sia | B+
Guess Sia Furler managed to save a song or two for herself after all these years of churning out hits for others. 1000 Forms of Fear (RCA) is more than just a master class in popular songcraft, because Sia’s vocals are recorded so cleanly and rendered so naturally that every strain and scratch and soar, every delightfully mangled enunciation on pop song of the year “Chandelier” adds particularity to already resonant lyrics. This is Top 40 for sentient life forms.
—Dotun Akintoye
DJ Dodger Stadium | B
Jerome LOL and Samo Sound Boy — two L.A. beatsters with terrible taste in monikers — join forces on Friend of Mine (Body High), an understated but emphatically heart-sleeved house record that recalls Moby’s Play in its bubbly accessibility and incessant soulful vocal loops. It also evokes Fatboy Slim’s excitable filter work, gospel predilection and thumping repetition. Such reference points are hardly enticements to modern technophiles, but this stuff’s so pretty it’ll win them over with the rest of us.
—K. Ross Hoffman
Joyce Manor | A-
From a distance, Never Hungover Again (Epitaph) shouldn’t work. The songs feel undercooked. The sequencing seems illogical. The whole thing doesn’t cross the 20-minute mark. Relax; it’s all part of the charm of these SoCal punks. The fat, John Hughes-ian synth that sneaks into “Falling in Love Again” makes sense because it’s the last thing we’d expect, and singer Barry Johnson’s throat shredding on “Catalina Fight Song” wouldn’t be as devastating if the song didn’t end so abruptly.
—Marc Snitzer
Riff Raff | B
Kitchen-sink pop-culture references + Mad Libs rhyme games + sports-nerd free-association + eclectic braggadocio (“I can shoot a BB through a frosted Cheerio”) + absurdly divided Metacritic scores + Rick Ross x Soulja Boy ÷ Big Sean - Vanilla Ice + “the white [insert random black celebrity]” +Swisha House ratchet-trap + hallucinatory autotune gloss-pop + (Diplo-produced, B-52s-esque) surf-rap [why is this not a thing?] + aw-shucks tearjerker hick-hop + dolphin noises … = NEON iCON (Mad Decent).
—K. Ross Hoffman
