White Hills
White Hills
(Thrill Jockey)

White Hills blast big psychedelic blues-rock that expands and expands and expands and expands, surfing the ever-rippling and rising wake of the silver machine, cresting up over Monster Magnet and rolling up into a tsunami, seven songs, sixty minutes, sprawling guitar riffs and treading bass, drumbeats collecting fill after fill upon fill and fill, one wave of song ebbing only long enough for the next to crash down upon it. Plus, on “Let the Right One In”, church bells. Listen loud.

Double Dagger
“Pillow Talk”
from Masks
(Thrill Jockey Records)

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Pit Er Pat
“Water”
from The Flexible Entertainer
(Thrill Jockey Records)

Release Date: January 26, 2010

Javelin
Javelin
(Thrill Jockey)


Javelin is two cousins and a lot of samples, and it will give some idea of what’s happening here if I repeat the part of their press material that notes they’ve played a gig in the children’s branch of the Olneyville Public Library in Rhode Island. If you have children and Javelin perform a show near you, and you don’t take them, you will be arrested; it’s abuse, dude, not to let your kids get jiggy to this stuff. If you don’t have children, then you should take your nephew or niece or neighbor or grandkids or whatever. If you hate children, then you can go just to make yourself happy.

This is a short little record of five songs and sixteen minutes, and allow me to list the titles: “Lindsey Brohan”, “Unforgettable Super Lady”, “Soda Popinski”, “Radio”, “Twice”. You could buy this limited editon 12” record for the song titles alone. Sometimes it’s a little hip-hoppish, sometimes it’s a little soulish, or funkish, or latinish. It’s always a whole bunch of fun (no –ish).

People who don’t smile listening to this music need to check for a heartbeat; the beats and melodies jab at the corners of your mouth and push them upwards. “Soda Popinksi” is a little gem of genius that begins and ends with a little kid telling a rhyme about George Washington and works that little kid’s voice into a goofy mmmmmmmm while the rest of the song doodley-doos and soda popinskis.

The best thing about this short little record is that it manages to be joyful and fun and interesting and utterly devoid of cynicism without being obnoxiously saccharine or twee. You can dance to it, you can sit and head-bob to it, you can take your kids to the library to hear it performed.

You’d better go and buy “Javelin”, because one day you’re going to find yourself having gotten up on the wrong side of the bed, and you’re going to put this album on, and you’re going to feel better. And if that isn’t enough for you, well, it should be.

They’re releasing another 12” on Thrill Jockey next year, and a full length album on Luaka Bop sometime thereafter, and I suggest you keep your ears open for them. Hooray!

Pontiak
Sea Voids
(Thrill Jockey)


In my review of their album Maker earlier this year I pointed out that listening on headphones on an underground train had befuddled me on first listen, but that once I’d thrown it on using real speakers I’d found an earsplitting hunk of wonder.

Good news, everybody!

They’ve done it again. This album is less of a sea and more of an ocean, from the big and deep and slow and menacing blues stomp that gives into altogether more swaggery one at the opening, to the dripping guitar chords that roll into one another across most of the other tracks, and including the little islands of acoustic-guitar that pop up a couple times. There are nine tracks in just over half an hour of music here, but the album has such a coherence and intensity of sound that listening to it seems epic—in a good way. An engine of tight, steady drumming punctuates the whole album. Pontiak have found a way to energize psychedelic/stoner rock without—as I said in the last review of their music—ever seeming to do anything spectacular. Which is a kind of spectacularness itself.