White Reaper, S/T EP, Polyvinyl
With song titles like, “Funn” and “Cool,” Louisville’s White Reaper telegraph their intensions pretty plainly — they want to rock, they want to have a good time and they want to do so in 3 minutes or less. In that effort they succeed on all fronts. The self-titled debut EP packs an album’s worth of energy and barely a fist full of chords. There are plenty of solid hooks amid the fuzzed out guitars and shouting, particularly on “Half Bad” which could stand with Ty Segall’s best, and the hand-clapingly catchy “Cool.” There isn’t a lot of nuance to be found here, White Reaper pretty much blast through these barely 17 minutes of shred like they’re late for dinner, but as fans of The Reatards, The Ramones or The Oh Sees know, sometimes you just want to have fun until your ears hurt. In those instances, White Reaper will satisfy.
- Cool
- Funn
- Half Bad
Mix Tape Side A
- Twice As Hard, Jay Reatard
- Duh, White Fang
- The Dream, Thee Oh Sees
- Girlfriend, Ty Segall
Mix Tape Side B
- No Pun Intended, The Hives
- Not That Good, Nobunny
- She’s The One, The Ramones
- Young Pros, Bass Drum of Death
David Kilgour & The Heavy Eights, End Times Undone, Merge
Coinciding nicely with the 4-LP vinyl reissue of The Clean's epic Anthology, David Kilgour has released another album of his own, that like his solo output to date, follows along the template set by the later Clean records. Plenty of jangle, a hint of fuzz and a voice that is somehow slight yet assured. The slow jams like “Light Headed” or “Christopher Columbus” are calmer and more contemplative than anything The Clean might have released but are perfectly at home in Kilgour’s solo catalog, and probably more age-appropriate than the frenetic fuzz of his early output. End Times Undone is a cleanly-crafted, at times almost lush album of satisfying indie pop without any of the boring connotations that suggests — largely due to the always engaging sound of Kilgour’s voice and the meandering, sometimes drone-y, even Galaxie 500-like structure of his songs (see “Down the Tubes” or the Brian Jonestown Massacre sound of “Dropper”). Kilgour enjoys Springsteen-like acclaim in his native New Zealand, and with 3 decades of consistently great pop music under his belt, he shows no signs of fading away.
- Like Rain
- Lose Myself in Sound
- Comin’ On
- Dropper
- Down the Tubes
Mix Tape Side A
- Parking Lot, Galaxie 500
- Gotta Get Back, The Mad Scene
- Mad On You, The Bats
Mix Tape Side B
- Billy Two, The Clean
- Through the Day, The Twerps
- Moscow Nights, The Feelies
The Raveonettes, Pe'ahi, Beat Dies
The Raveonettes have been making new records out of the same engaging, yet limited array of ingredients since nearly the turn of the century (their first record was composed entirely in B-Flat-Minor). If you ever liked them, you probably still do—and I do. Their records don’t sound alike necessarily — their previous release, Observator, was a dark, sexy affair compared to the relatively lively songs on Pe’ahi— but they all sound very much like Raveonettes records — hushed, breathy vocals and dramatic, emotional arrangements. They tend to make songs that feel cinematic. For a band that has existed adjacent to the spotlight for a decade plus, they’ve quietly put out very solid releases that keep to the formula while occasionally drawing influence from the prevailing tastes of the day to varying degrees of success (the Suicide-like “Endless Sleeper” is raw and exciting, while the trip-hop/Chemical Brothers-styled “Kill!” dares you to ask “does anyone besides the people who make car commercials actually miss that sound?”) Overall, Pe’ahi is one more in a predictably satisfying and satisfyingly predictable series of records from a band that prefers slow evolution to radical reinvention.
- Endless Sleeper
- Sisters
- Killer in the Streets
- A Hell Below
- Kill!
Mix Tape Side A
- Never Say Goodbye, My Bloody Valentine
- Super Powerless, The Kills
- Shine a Light, Cults