Daniel Ouellette
Monsterland—
The Revenge of Daniel
(independent)
Daniel Ouellette is an example of why the proliferation of home recording studios may not necessarily be a good thing. Over a bed of staticky techno beats and what sound like keyboard demo loops, Ouellette spews his heavily-reverbed vocals off-key in an attempt to emulate someone between Robert Smith and '80s Bowie. The dude is so bizarre that I can only classify him as a total alien—comparable only to hopeless fringe lunatics of the media like Borat or "El Duce" from The Mentors (immortalized in the film Kurt & Courtney). I'll give him this: his lyrics are so freakin' weird that they're actually pretty cool: "I want to kiss Superman in his red cape," or "Mothra will save me."
—Tom Sturm
Crooked Still
Still Crooked
(Signature Sounds)
Purists probably lament it, but Crooked Still infuses new life into old bluegrass, replacing clich?d instrumental breakdowns with jazz phrasing, chucking the banjo in favor of two fiddlers, and busting out unexpected turns on cello and glockenspiel. Lead vocalist Aoife O'Donovan grew up in eastern Massachusetts in the 1990s, not Tennessee in the 1940s, so she wisely foregoes affected nasality in favor of pure tones. But listen to "Undone in Sorrow" to hear the prettiness of her voice countered by edgy cello with hues so dark it's tempting to dump the "blue" and label this "indigo grass." You'll want to check out fiddle sensation Brittany Haas (younger sister of cellist Natalie Haas) who's still in her teens but plays with the confidence of a veteran.
—Rob Weir
Matmos
Supreme Balloon
(Matador)
The latest from the Baltimore duo foregoes high-concept hijinks in favor of sunny cosmic pop constructed completely from antique synthesizers. While only tech fetishists will care about the specifics of Korgs and Arps, what's important is how this vintage gear gives the compositions an otherworldly quality. Matmos invokes such past electronic masters as Wendy Carlos, Vangelis and Cluster. A suite of compact tunes play prelude to the 20-minute title track, which mixes Terry Riley drones and a tabla drum machine into minimalist pop magic. This hyper-buoyant epic slowly expands like a brilliantly-hued gaseous cloud—a sprightly, fascinating exercise in retro-futurism. It's yesterday's tomorrow today.
—Jeff Jackson
Nico Muhly
Mothertongue
(Brassland)
Steve Reich and Philip Glass are both in their 70s. The notable young American composer Nico Muhly is in his 20s. He's been profiled in magazines, received many commissions, and worked with Bjork. Mothertongue, Muhly's second record, begins with a beautiful babel of strange, murmuring voices, like a blankets of insect twittering. Hypnotic patterns evoke Glass in places. Elsewhere, the accretions of vocal fragments in "The Only Tune" bring Reich's landmark 1966 "Come Out" to mind.
—John Adamian
