What 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.
Notwist | Tom Brosseau | Linda Perhacs | Broken Bells
Notwist | A-
Of all the microgenres attributed to unvergänglich German band The Notwist, “plinkerpop” seems like the snuggest fit, especially on the new Close to the Glass (SubPop). The term implies bliss and nicheyness and small dreams made flesh via bleeps and bloops. It’s not all pop on Glass (some parts are trip-hoppy, others are ambient and weird), but “Kong” could be the feel-good hit of our endless winter.
—Patrick Rapa
Tom Brosseau | B-
North Dakota finger-picker Tom Brosseau peppers Grass Punks (Crossbill), his seventh album, with wryly topical numbers — about romance-hindering tech (“Cradle Your Device”), Dairy Queens, swap meets and being stuck on the roof — but they’re too understated to scan as novelty songs, and too flat-out pretty to be anti-folk. He writes some sweet little love songs, too, but the truest, most humbly self-evident is “I Love to Play Guitar.” He clearly does, and he plays it deftly, simply, gorgeously.
—K. Ross Hoffman
Linda Perhacs | B+
Linda Perhacs’ pastoral-psych manifestation Parallelograms sank unheard in 1970, like a stone in the Pacific, sending time-lapse ripples through the 21st-century “freak folk” underground that have lapped back to shore, half a century later, as The Soul of All Natural Things (Asthmatic Kitty) — a second LP that finds the Californian’s moon-dappled spirit very much still with us. Not everyone will embrace Perhacs’ soft-focus mysticism, drum-circle trances and choral tone-poetry this time around either, but those who do will accept a rare, unexpected gift.
—K. Ross Hoffman
Broken Bells | B
Maybe it’s the benefit of recalibrated expectations — neither James Mercer nor Brian Burton (Danger Mouse) is the indie it-kid he once was — but the duo’s follow-up to their resolutely ho-hum 2010 Broken Bells debut is a thoroughly pleasant surprise. A batch of trebly Mercer melodies as gratifying as any recent Shins album, paired with livelier bleep-scapes from Mr. Mouse, After The Disco (Columbia) is a distinctive sequel that readily outshines its predecessor.
—K. Ross Hoffman
