Dope Body- Natural History

Baltimore's Dope Body deliver a crab pot's worth of dude rock to feast on. They rant like Henry Rollins with a slightly higher self-opinion. They shun cloying political slogans as they Rage Against the Machine. They extol the time signatures of NYC band Battles and prance at the primal pace of Primus.  This is testosterone music for experimental jocks or art school flunkies looking to subvert Led Zeppelin's blues by filtering guitar licks through various effect pedals and laptop programs. Dope Body wears its influences on every groove of Natural History, a prehistoric walk through the halls of near-distant musical relatives.

Buy this record if you're looking for a teen version of Sweating To the Oldies.

dopebody.tumblr.com

The Beach Boys- That's Why God Made the Radio

The endless summer keeps rolling along for these timeless music icons. They lost two-thirds of the Wilson brothers (Dennis and Carl, R.I.P), as well as a good amount of respectability ("Kokomo", John Stamos serving as the band's drummer, the realization that Mike Love is a big dick) along the way, but with Brian Wilson back at the helm the Beach Boys seem to have righted their ship. The course has been reset for more vocal harmony and pop awesomeness. Most of the album is culled from previously written songs, sounding like a cross between the Sunflower and  Love You records with a decidedly nostalgic vibe, and all the surviving original members are on board. There's no doubt that this record sounds like what you'd expect to hear from a crew of 60 year old musicians, but for Beach Boys fans like me, songs like "That's Why God Made the Radio", "Spring Vacation", Isn't It Time", and "The Private Life of Bill and Sue" with the awesome, yet typical Brian Wilson-type opening refrain, "The private life of Bill and Sue/ Can you dig what I'm telling you?", really hit the spot. A lot of musicians talk about making mellow, AOR records, as if it's an act of kitsch, but the Beach Boys live it, and continue to perfect it.

Buy this record if you dig what they're telling you.

www.thebeachboys.com

Ariel Pink & R. Stevie Moore - Ku Klux Glam

A pretty frustrating exercise in recording techniques from two of pop's lo-fi record-making experts. Moore has released over 400 tapes of recorded material over the span of his 40 year career. Pink has been recording experimental pop music for ten years and has often utilized mouth sounds as drum tracks (a fact that emphasizes his lo-fi-ness). Moore has become more experimental as the years pass while Pink's music has become more accessible, yet still quirky.
Before it devolves into a whirlpool of banal banter, song idea snippets, and vocal wankerings, Ku Klux Glam has a handful of fully rewarding moments: the Hedwig's Angry Inch glam of "No Zipper", the haunting "Dutch Me", with Pink's trademark ghostly vocal chorus and casio synth notes, and a little slab of Americana, via the breezy pop of "Come My Way". The rest of Ku Klux Glam is mostly fodder for hard-core fans.

Buy this record if you're trying to eat the icing off a cinnamon bun.

www.rsteviemoore.com
www.arielpink.com

oOoOO- Our Love Is Hurting Us EP

Another taster from Newark, NJ/ San Franciscan Chris Dexter Greenspan that expands on his self-titled debut EP. On that release oOoOO (pronounced "oh") introduced a dark & woozy version of atmospheric electronic music with some Middle Eastern influences, accentuated by ghostly vocals that hovered around the songs, often trailing off into the ether. Keyboard notes, akin to what you'd hear as the heroine unwittingly relaxes while a deranged killer stalks her in a horror movie, provided the signature sound for what critics dubbed "witch-house" electronica. Greenspan has a finely tuned ear and a real gift for off-kilter hooks and tempered beats. In short, his music is very rewarding for the patient listener. The latest EP, Our Love Is Hurting Us, moves slightly more toward traditional R&B territory while maintaining a down-tempo, effects-laden vibe. The question now is when is this guy going to release a proper full-length?

Buy this record while you wait to see how the kitchen renovations will turn out.

www.facebook.com/oOoOOsounds

Daughn Gibson- All Hell

Is Daughn Gibson the next Lana Del Rey? The answer is yes. Will he be performing on SNL within 6 months? The answer is yes. Will he fade into obscurity? We'll see...
The internet hype machine has reached into its bag of absurdity and pulled out another glow stick. Now we have a truck-driving cross between James Blake and any guy who tries to sing Johnny Cash songs in the shower? Granted, Gibson, real name Josh Martin, did play drums in a middling sludge-metal act in Northampton County, PA called Pearls & Brass so he does, at least, have a musical pedigree, but this release says more about the power of Pitchfork Media, and the media's compulsion to define new cross-genres of music, than it does the artist's actual work.

Buy this record if you wanna say, "I knew about them" before everyone else forgot about them.

www.daughngibson.com

Aaron Freeman- Marvelous Clouds

I have a lot of respect for Ween, their punk ethos i.e. determination not to sell out, their sincere take on assorted musical genres, their musicianship, and their song-writing skill. But this is not a Ween record. This is a solo record by Ween's singer/songwriter Gene Ween (dropping the pseudonym for his real name here). And it's not really a solo record because all the material consists of Rod McKuen covers. It's adult oriented fare, kind of like a Bread record without the yeast. Not that this isn't a pleasant record, it is, I just can't figure out why it was made (McKuen is not a Lee Hazlewood or Harry Nilsson waiting to be unearthed) or what audience it was made for ( I don't see this appealing to the typical Ween fan). I remember Gener once saying, "I want to sound like Christopher Cross in ten years, and be totally proud of it". I wish he had made a record of Christopher Cross covers instead.

Buy this record if you're hanging out in the waiting room of a dentist's office.

www.partisanrecords.com/artists/aaron-freeman/catalog/marvelous-clouds

Coke Weed- Nice Dreams

For recreational and hard-core drug users alike, as well as those nostalgic for the drug-fueled binges of their youth, this band name is one of the more satisfying out there. And like all debauched drug flings this music is sloppy, predictable, derivative, boozy and bluesy, but in the most endearing way possible. It's like a Sunday morning hangover after downing two Advil with a Bloody Mary. Think Sticky Fingers-era Rolling Stones melded with any number of 1960's psychedelic garage bands, vocal duties are shared between a guy and a girl. It's got that sense of detached indifference that I would expect from Mainers, or "Downeasters" as they're sometimes called.

Buy this record when you've forgotten what the good times sound like.

www.cokeweed.com