Juno Recommends Rock / Indie / Folk / Metal / Punk / 50s / 60s September 2018

Review: Despite their garage-rock and psych-rock roots, Thee Oh Sees have always been a far funkier proposition than many of their contemporaries. In many ways, they're only upholding the traditions of the San Francisco scene, which since the late sixties has consistently blurred the boundaries between blues, funk, soul, psych-rock and harder forms of guitar music. They're at it again on new album Smote Reverser, a set that gleefully charges between funkier fare, revivalist hippy-era garage rock and the kind of intense, guitar-laden workouts that will have mosh pit lunatics jumping for joy.

Review: Co-frontman of The Last Shadow Puppets and former frontman of The Rascals, Miles Kane, presents his third solo full length album and first since 2013. His grace takes cues from Iggy Pop and David Bowie, no doubt and there's a punkish, disco dance appeal to title track "Coup De Grace" which leads fittingly into the post, electro punk of "Silverscreen" and then into the sing along melody of "Wrong Side Of Life". It's a three-part sequence which delivers the album's best moments. The scoundrel-like pretence in Kane's Merseyside music is here to be heard in full, and is his ode to the area's best if every present in the Beatle-dom of "Shavambacu".

Review: Despite a number of significant personnel changes since the release of their previous album (the departure of founder member Chris Walla being the biggest), Death Cab For Cutie still seems to be in rude health. Now two decades into their ongoing career, the American band is still capable of producing glistening indie-pop brilliance, heart-aching torch songs and anthem-like festival sing-alongs. There's plenty of goodness to be found, then, on ninth studio album Thank You For Today, a set bristling with classic Death Cab For Cutie moments - not least the tactile bliss of "When We Drive", boisterous "Gold Rush" and chiming "You Moved Away".

Review: Under the Prins Emanuel alias, Emanuel Sandin has never been particularly prolific, though what he does release tends to be very high quality. He's certainly kept the quality threshold high on sophomore album "Diagonal Musik", a breezy, beautiful and evocative set that's as Balearic as getting a back rub from Jose Padilla while watching the sun go down outside Cafe Del Mar. The album's greatest strength is its stripped-back simplicity, with Sandin offering up eight evocatively produced tracks built around gentle guitar motifs (mostly acoustic, with a little Pat Metheny style electric guitar), the occasional voice or beach-side field recording, a few well-placed effects (primarily delay and reverb) and little else. It may be simple and stripped-back in its construction, but "Diagonal Musik" is rarely less than intensely beautiful.

Review: It's barely been 12 months since the release of Bristol five piece Idles' debut full length, and the band's swift follow up effort is a righteous affair, doing away with any stigma attached to difficult second albums. The heavy post-punkers take another step forward in having the world realise their full potential straight off the bat with album opener "Colossos" that epicly, post apocalypticly, rattles and hums in swathes of drone and rock menace. Cue a quick change up in direction and we're met with what sounds like a lairy Kasabian smashing up the pub. Beer, sweat and tears. Let's 'ave it.

Review: Death metal, sludge to post-rock and synthwave specialists Relapse deliver a third album from the shoegazing Nothing. With artwork to challenge anything conjured up by Aphex Twin or Bjork, Nothing's sound was captured and produced by John Agnello (Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr.) at Dreamland Studio in Woodstock and it's an album that will send you spiralling back towards what the band call "stories of self-loathing, self-destruction, and a general disdain for humanity." Yep, the '90s; time to lose your job, fall out with your friends, get that eviction notice, and listen to this on a bean bag watching Reality Bites on mute. Let it rain.

Review: Dream pop hasn't gone to sleep and Virginian group Wild Nothing, spearheaded by John Alexander Tatum, delivers its fourth album since 2010. For the uninitiated; think The Vampire Weekend meets Cut Copy meets bites of 90s nostalgia, balearic and new age. It's a whimsical journey from start to finish with the chorus of "Flawed Translation" crestfully singing 'let's stay together baby, let's stay together" while album opener "Letting Go" chirps 'I wanna be happy, I wanna be happy'. Pop melancholia with heart, enjoy!

Review: The latest essential missive on San Francisco-based Cumbia label Discos Mas comes from a previously unheard artist: confirmed vintage drum machine and fuzzy psych-guitar lover Pancrudo. The producer's vinyl debut, which has been pressed in limited numbers on gorgeous marbled vinyl, includes two impressively retro-futurist workouts. Check first languid and decidedly psychedelic A-side "Pulsatron", a hip-hop tempo kaleidoscopic dream that sounds like Harry Nillson after a few too many swigs of liquid acid and a fistful of hallucinatory chili peppers. Pancrudo returns to his cumbia roots on flipside "Maestro Del Kiosco", which wraps wonderfully fuzzy, boogaloo-era guitars round a shuffling rhythm track.