Albums of the Month: April 2012

Albums of the Month - April 2012

With festival season underway, and the full spring and summer catalog of new material getting coming out, April was another solid month. My #1 album may not be a surprise to you guys right now, but you shouldn't be surprised if it's one of the year's best overall. Here's my favorite three albums from last month.

3.) Lotus Plaza - Spooky Action At a Distance
It should be noted before hand that not only Spooky Action At a Distance (Insound), but every album on this month's list ended up beating out the #1 contender coming in; Jack White's Blunderbuss. And while the album was all-in-all, good, it failed to capture my attention and eagerness to replay quite like this and the other two albums did.

The second official album in Lockett Pundt's, Deerhunter guitarist, solo catalog, Spooky Action At a Distance often sounds in line with the best off the latter band. Pundt, who does his fair share of sonic experimentation with the Bradford Cox-led outfit, leads a more subtle guitar-driven set of tracks paired with minimal atmospheric playback; short echoes, underlying noise interference, and the like. But rarely does the 10 track album veer into unreasonable territory. Lotus Plaza, as a whole, plays with captivating, if not simplified elements, creating material that comes off as both outwardly catchy and demanding.

2.) BADBADNOTGOOD - BBNG2
The frequency of jazz albums - modern or retro - making any noise on this site is below the bare minimum. I stick, usually, to what I like, finding a comfortable niche to fill in the daily articles and pieces on Twitter and Facebook. Maybe that's why BADBADNOTGOOD's BBNG2 comes off as so invigorating and new for me. The hip-hop jazz trio, on this completely free album, rework a selection of notable tracks, including Kanye West's "Flashing Lights" and the James Blake-inspired cover of Feist's "Limit To Your Love," adding lively extended flair to each piece. The band, all relatively young, blast through their tracks with a calculated fury, bass and drums heavy. It's a brash, fitting reputation for a band that continues to gain recognition through the hip hop community, and earning more of a spotlight for their inspiring live performances. BBNG2 may not launch the group into a pantheon of modern hit makers (and more than likely, won't), but it gives modern music fans a much fairer and more palatable introduction into something that often gets brushes off.

1.) Death Grips - The Money Store
There's a visceral shock that comes from the first beat drop in "Get Got," the opener to Death Grips' second album The Money Store (Insound). Its chaotic mashing, only further intensified by the glorified tenacity of MC Ride, an unconventional rapper in the most plaintive sense. From then on, the rest of the album blows by you on a stretch of blistering, nerve-wracking tracks that bounce off of rap's comfortable norms. The beats are nauseously heavy, dripping with altered effects that give Death Grips their "punk rap" title. But The Money Store fails to fit anywhere, cruising in a flurry of creative blending and mashing of punk, rap, and electronica. It stands out, convincingly, not only among the crowd of records released so far in 2012, but among much of what rap has seen in the past few years. The unhinged fury of tracks like "The Fever (Aye Aye)" and "Hustle Bones" are almost obscene at times, and still eye opening on repeat. It's, without question, the best thing I've heard all year.