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.
The Menzingers | Damon Albarn | Fennez | Amanda Martinez
The Menzingers | B+
Every well-worn formula gets a swift kick in the gut on this Philly band’s new Rented World (Epitaph). There’s still tons of juvenile histrionics (“I pushed my emotions off a bridge/ After taking them hostage with a shotgun”) but singer Greg Barnett sounds far more confident in validating his existential crises than he was on 2012’s On the Impossible Past. The band, filtered through Jonathan Low’s minimalist production, sounds richer and more nuanced than ever.
—Sameer Rao
Damon Albarn | B+
Rock star, cartoon character, opera composer, pan-global musical collaborator and instigator Damon Albarn now hunkers down in arguably his fondest guise for his de facto solo debut Everyday Robots (Warner Bros.): Call him the Country Sad Ballad Man. The country in question being, of course, England, though this album of tender, wistfully resigned songs downplays the Anglocentrism of kissing-cousin The Good, the Bad and the Queen, while retaining its lush, downcast electronic/acoustic moodscapes.
—K. Ross Hoffman
Fennesz | B
Bécs (Editions Mego) is the Austrian sound-sculptor’s first full-length in five years and only his third since 2001’s landmark Endless Summer, whose absorbing flirtations with warmly approachable harmonic and textural sensibilities he revisits here. Not that it’s anyone’s idea of “pop,” exactly, but it’s just the sort of expansive ambient abstraction that’s guaranteed to raise a smile as the days grow longer, dominated and defined by shimmering and surprisingly muscular guitar, blissed-out organ drones and (heavily distorted) piano. Surf’s up!
—K. Ross Hoffman
Amanda Martinez | A
Amanda Martinez fans her musical roots across Mañana (CEN) like a ballet folklorico dancer’s skirt, and the result is broad, handsome and colorful. With a mother from South Africa, a father from Mexico and a lifetime in Toronto, this gently powerful singer ranges across the Americas for inspiration, writing with equal piquance in English, Spanish and French. Martinez’ childhood love of nueva canción and its celebration of life shines through.
—Mary Armstrong
