New Releases Tuesday - 8/22

Jason Molina - Let Me Go, Let Me Go, Let Me Go (Secretly Canadian) I wanted badly to revisit the type of songs I did on my more experimental albums The Pyramid, The Ghost, and Protection Spells. I put this project together in the last days before I began what was a long and harrowing move back to Chicago. I wrote these songs as well as the half dozen or so that did not make it over the course of 3 mornings in Bloomington, Indiana and recorded them one after the other in the order they were written. -Jason Molina Download: Jason Molina - "Get Out Get Out Get Out" (MP3) Mountain Goats - Get Lonely (4AD) While Get Lonely takes the mood (read: professionalism) of Sunset Tree as a starting point, it's a much less compelling record. Note the title's jokey take on Elvis Costello's Get Happy!!!; is Darnielle distancing himself from the sincerity of the autobiographical Sunset Tree? Sort of, but not really. Darnielle maintains his mastery of the mundane—can anyone else compare a choir of angels to "marbles being thrown against a mirror" quite so convincingly?—but the poetics are lost on some truly forgettable melodies...Get Lonely is by no means the disaster that Lou Reed's spin on Poe, The Raven, was, but it's similar in that both records' lackluster songs do disservice to the overt literary quality of the lyrics. -Slant Magazine Watch: The Mountain Goats - "Woke Up New" (YouTube) Primal Scream - Riot City Blues (Sony) Damn, the press push for this record just keeps getting worse (which I guess is appropriate for this one). With Riot City Blues getting its domestic release this week, I found this genius piece of promotion on MySpace yesterday. If you buy their album via Filter Magazine you get a free "Country Girl" wife beater!?! Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one? And what's up with that wacky band photo? Are they acting out a scene for improv or something? Ratatat - Classics (XL) Not really sure why these guys are getting so much buzz. That "Wildcat" song was kind of amusing the first time I heard it, but after like the 3rd listen it becomes annoying as fuck. I think I'm refusing to like this band because I'm just so tired of this brand of ironic new wave electro dance rock. It's just so overdone and uninspiring. Granted this music is supposed to be light-hearted and fun, but there just doesn't seem to be a shred of depth, originality, or real emotion here...to me it just seems fueled almost entirely on ironic posturing. For example, remember Daft Punk's "Celebrate?" That song was totally cheesy and very retro-tastic, but it actually did make you want to celebrate, you know? It was complete ear candy to the dance floor, but there was some real emotion and energy packed in that song that could even make a jaded music junkie like myself smile (at least for the first 100 some times I heard it). I don't get anything remotely close to that with Ratatat. All their music does is make me vaguely tap my finger on the can of PBR that I'm vaguely enjoying. New Releases Tuesday returns with a vengeance! Lots more new releases out this week... Eric Bachman - To The Races (Saddle Creek) Broadcast - Future Crayon [B-sides and rarities collection] (Warp) Crooked Still - Shaken By A Low (Signature Sounds) Cursive - Happy Hollow (Saddle Creek) J Dilla - The Shining (Stones Throw) Judah Johnson - Be Where I Be (Flameshovel) Electrelane - Singles, B-Sides & Live M. Ward - Post-War (Merge) Amy Millan - Honey From the Tombs (Arts & Crafts) Miss Derringer - Lullabies (Sympathy For The Record Industry) My Brightest Diamond - Bring Me The Workhorse (Asthmatic Kitty) Nouvelle Vague - Brande A Part [domestic release](Luaka Bop) Jennifer O'Connor - Over the Mountain, Across the Valley, and Back to the Stars (Matador) OutKast - Idlewild (Arista) Pajo - 1968 (Drag City) Razorlight - S/T [domestic release] (Universal) Snowden - Anti-Anti (Jade Tree) Starsailor - On The Outside [domestic release](EMI) The Thermals - The Body, The Blood, The Machine (Sub Pop) Uzeda - Stella (Touch and Go) Chad VanGaalen - Skelliconnection (Sub Pop)