Spotify continues to complete discombobulate my normal music listening patterns and policies, leaving me few full albums to review. This may change soon because the upcoming release schedule is so hot (Wooden Shjips, M83, Neutral Milk Hotel), and some recent stuff hasn't crossed my transom just yet even though it is in hand. Anyhoo, it is a bit scattershot, but here's what there'iz:

Wild Flag - Wild Flag: I was late to the Sleater-Kinney party, but was early enough to regret not having been aboard in time to see them when they were at full fire. I saw them on The Woods tour, which was an excellent show, but from what I read, by then, they were tired and not necessarily getting along. I understand that SK might get together again one day, and I hope they do. They never made a bad record, and over their career have shown themselves to be able to fire in many gears. Wild Flag is half of the final SK lineup (though I will cop to liking Janet Weiss' work in Quasi at least as much as SK), and as such, the comparisons are tough to avoid totally. The good news is, this Wild Flag album compares favorably with the output of late SK and Quasi, and I like it a ton. I heard a few cuts from it over the summer (plus this smokin' Patti Smith cover http://youtu.be/qDo3eNVIOok) and knew I was gonna be happy with it. In a way, this album is a bit out of its time. Music isn't really like this right now. The female punk aesthetic seems to be manifesting itself more in spirit (DIY folkie stuff) or more about the lo-fi/DIY than the power of the form. This album isn't really hard either (The Woods was more so), but it has an edge that too few modern albums are, no matter the band's gender. The retro keyboard takes a little of the heat off of the album, and there is some jangle in the guitars here and there, but even in those moments, it has an anger-energy to it that should be everywhere, but just isn't. Even the relationship stuff feels propelled as much as played, and that is an energy I would describe as being punk. One wouldn't expect these ladies to be on about the same stuff they were when they were 22 - and they aren't - but they (like anyone with a pulse) understand is that the planet we currently inhabit has long lost its way; and generally speaking, that makes it impossible to be too nicey nice about anything for too long. They aren't. There are some pop songs here, but even though they aren't trying to be nostalgic in particular I think, the edge on things doesn't feel like here-and-now. I am all for borrowing from the past and reliving a particularly exciting aesthetic, but part of me wishes this album didn't. They can play, they can write, and they can emote with the best of them, and my hunch is that this band could make an album of import to a much bigger audience than will ever care about this one. This sounds NW. It sounds like its ingredients. I love the ingredients, but I am not sure they mean the same thing to those who don't feel the same. Again, the elements of this album that make it not of this time work for me as an aesthetic, but I worry it will limit its audience. That doesn't mean I want them doing breathy folk covers of Burnin' For You on YouTube, but I do wish there was something here that would get this music in front of the youngins. It doesn't change my enjoyment of the album that it won't but it does highlight another woulda coulda shoulda, and those are piling up. (B-)

Marine Girls - Lazy Ways/Beach Party: I am doing something I don't like in others, mainly, buying up genre records I didn't care about in their time. Some people like garage rock of the 60s, and will buy any reissue of any group from any town just because it is of the right genre and vintage. This has always felt reactionary to me - and I suppose it is. The fact that I am now doing it isn't a source of pride for me, but I am too far down that road with certain types of music to go back. In this case, Marine Girls make a decidedly low-fidelity (not lo-fi, particularly), minimalist, post-punk bedroom-style music. It reminds me of stuff like Young Marble Giants, Trio, and even the first Raincoats album. I am a sucker for this stuff, and when I hear of one I didn't know of I pick it up whether I have heard it or not. In this case, it is much more like Young Marble Giants than trio. It isn't quite like pure post-punk female stuff like Kleenex or ESG or what have you - it is arranged too minimally. What bothers me is that this album does exactly what I thought it would - validate genre buying. It lacks any one killer song, but end to end, it is very very comfortable listening for me. It is exactly the sort of cultural stasis I want to avoid for myself, but the results of indulging in it proved too successful to make a credible case against it. Now, for the uninitiated, I am not sure what to say. This sounds like a proto-drum machine, a guitar student, and an emotional young woman with emotional courage making a humble record about their lives without any money. If you can't hang with that, I understand. I don't expect this to mean anything to anyone who didn't like the post-punk stuff of the time which sorta came at things that way ("why not just make it ourselves?") If you like early 80s stuff of that ilk, you can't miss with this. (B-)

St. Vincent - Strange Mercy: She's alt.gorgeous, and I am guessing she is as taken with photos of her as others (rightfully) are. It is interesting when attractive women make their emotions and inner-selves public for lots of reasons - some of them good. Unfortunately, it is the alt.attractive women who seem to do it most often, and so getting a glimpse behind the curtain of another lacks, for me anyway, the pop it might have to the younger men in her audience. Without question, her albums should be judged for their musical content above all, but it is impossible to not take the total package in. As such, to find a bit of kink under the hood when all of her photos seem to be posed and shot to be cropped at the neckline gives some hints that she is the perfect enigma for the younger alt.male to decode by going over this album over and over and over again. I certainly would have done so at a different stage of my life. I myself will listen to it because it actually, purely as music, delivers on the promise of the albums leading up to this. This isn't the great album she is capable of, but it is proof that it is there to be made if she wanted to. The good news is she won't have to get there solely by milking the dark side of the Prince-Kate Bush-Liz Phair axis I worried she wouldn't escape. There is more to her than anyone has yet seen and heard and when it reaches its full expression, it is going to be something. Of course, if she doesn't ever get there, this album would be seen as her peak. That wouldn't be all bad, but it would reflect a loss of opportunity. This album begs for a release of the tension being cranked into her catalog much bigger than the naughty wink here. I also hope she never covers Day Tripper.

Neil Young - A Treasure: Neil's studio output in the Geffen era really wasn't much like the rest of his catalog. He was experimenting for quite awhile, and after the first few, I used to think anyone who kept buying his new discs had no right to expect anything but more of the experimental stuff. Now that I have heard this stuff from concerts of that era, I am not so sure. I don't think he changed anything in his music but the arrangements. To hear the arrangements he played here with the International Harvesters don't sound excessively country. If anything, these arrangements sound like what most people would say non-Crazy Horse NY sounds like often enough. Because I prefer his organic stuff to his harder stuff, I really like this album. I don't go nuts for all his vault stuff, but so far, I have really enjoyed the live sets from his early solo career, and now I have to say I really like this. Some of the songs are slight and just nice, but some of them deserved better than an odds-n-ends period collection 30 years later. If you like "classic" Neil Young, I can't imagine not liking this. Even non-diehards might like some of this as some of these songs are near-classics (Flying On The Ground Is Wrong isn't the only one either.) That said, if you only just kinda-like him, this is probably not the best place to go next. (B-)

REM - Songs For A Green World: The three albums that define my freshman year of college (particularly the first semester) were REM's Green, the Cocktail Soundtrack, and Guns-n-Roses Appetite For Destruction. I could not walk the befouled corridors of Burge Hall without hearing at least one of those albums at full blast, bleating its way out of a cheap boom box (at least some of them, off of cassettes) with some proto-Beavis "letting off steam" air guitaring, fist pumping, or doing the thousand yard stare (this to the side 2 of Green - lots of high school girlfriend "Dear Chad" letters seem to arrive during the first semester of freshman year.) For me, seeing all the little frat pledges rocking REM felt like a betrayal. REM wasn't for them dammit, it was for - well - me and us! They were alt-rock royalty - College Rock defined! They jumped to Warner Brothers records (the man), and now were making the classic rock of tomorrow! How could they?!? Like a dummy, I let the politics of Green keep me from going to see them when they came to Iowa City on that tour. Big mistake. I really wish I had seen that show. Finally, there is now a live album from that tour, and it is very good, making me doubly wish I had seen that show. What makes this particularly a big deal is that this album includes their cover of Mission Of Burma's Academy Fight Song. This REM actually released at the time on some obscure flexi disc which I never owned, but more importantly, made me curious about Mission Of Burma (a band I now listen to more than I listen to REM - and now that I hear the cover, it is good, but my guess is Michael Stipe didn't come up with the idea of covering it.) Long story short, REM's Green is one of the best albums of the 80s - certainly top 5 for the late 80s. This is a document of that band at the literal peak of their power. They made a few more really excellent songs, and 2 more very good albums, but they never had more expected of them, nor delivered more, than when Green came out. This live album does indicate the band knew they nailed it and it has the effect of making this feel like a victory lap at times (the cover alone indicates they were being a bit self-indulgent - plus, I know they told the Iowa City audience that they don't do requests!) On the other hand, this album has more than a few "hey, look what we can do" moments, and they are awesome. I can't give this album an A. I give few of those, and I give Green one. This isn't really essential to those without the nostalgia for it I have, so I am not sure how to grade it. I like it a lot, and I am pleased as punch that it exists, but for those who don't remember REM when they were for college kids only, or who think that they are best known for Man On The Moon (a song I love, btw), I don't see what meaning there would be in this album. I will split the difference then, and give it a B.

http://www.svs.com/rem/discog/mag-i.php