M83
Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
(Mute)
In an age of diminishing attention spans, it’s refreshing to hear an old-fashioned double album. Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming wears its ambitions smartly, splitting 22 songs into two carefully sequenced discs totalling about 80 minutes. M83 mastermind Anthony Gonzalez has created a controlled sprawl that alternates between engaging pop tunes, evocative instrumental interludes and epic blow-outs. Hurry Up isn’t as singlemindedly immersive as his early recordings or as catchy as his ’80s-influenced album, but it demonstrates how the different sides of his music can cross-pollinate. The album sports new moves, replacing seductive, whispery vocals with full-throated singing on some tracks. It’s tempting to focus on highlights like the sax-fueled “Midnight City,” but the album’s most lasting pleasures come from its expert ebb and flow, its mastery of the almost lost art of the total statement. —Jeff Jackson
*
Stephen Barber
Astral Viny
(Navona)
With 12 tracks that include works written for and performed by string (The Tosca Strings) and horn (The Meridian Arts Ensemble) quartets and ensembles (The Boiler Makers and the American Repertory Ensemble), and with titles like “String Quartet No. 1,” pianist/composer Stephen Barber’s Astral Vinyl has the trappings of traditional classical music. Closer investigation reveals an experimental streak that makes Barber’s chamber music quite eclectic. “Elvis and Annabelle” includes three movements and “is somewhat of an homage to the late Frank Zappa,” explains Barber, noting that it “harbors some rather wicked polyrhythmic whirlwinds.” “Marbles,” which features operatic soprano Lucy Schaufer singing about playing with marbles, sounds as if its lyrics might have been written by They Might Be Giants, when in fact they came from a poem that was penned by Laura Lush. —Pete Redington
*
The True Jacqueline
Things Under Water
(independent)
Though this five-song EP of loosely structured noise-pop occasionally devolves into a seizure of guitar downstrokes and distorted, overdriven cymbals, it’s actually better than you might think. Whatever kind of guitar/amp combo they use on the recording, its pure overdriven crunch tone and surfy, reverb-drenched clean tones are, like the beloved breakfast cereal Lucky Charms, magically delicious. Perhaps kin to punk/post-punk phenomena like Firehose or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (with both male and female vocals), the band also delves into extended instrumentals. The songs on the CD are indeed all about underwater things, the coolest of which is “Dana,” a town that was submerged (and is here personified as a girl who drowned) in the planned flooding of Massachusetts’ Swift River Valley during the creation of the Quabbin Reservoir. —Tom Sturm
