The end of the year is coming, and I have lots of albums I haven't really listened to enough to write about. Damn!

Gonna try to squeeze them in before year's end (the long flight to and from Japan will help I think to get some of it done - we shall see.)

This is more a speed round than anything. Hang loose caboose and we'll get through this together!

Beach Boys - The SMILE Sessions: To be a music nerd of any heft, one has to give this album an A. Without doubt, I understand the interest in it based on a bootleg I heard of fragments from it, and I would even say the Brian Wilson solo version was pretty damn good. That said, I actually don't really love this all that much. I would say Good Vibrations is probably the greatest recording of the rock era. I would also say I like this version with the "calm me down" passage ahead of the coda very much. Prayer also has always made my spine tingle. It is literally transcendent, and dare I say, does in a minute what I think Brian Wilson was trying to do over the entire album. I simply cannot diss this album because I think if it had been finished, and had Brian Wilson not had the frat boy wannabes in his band all up in his shit, it would have been the masterpiece many say it is. My thing is: we'll never know. He didn't finish it in that time - and in fact, he never really came back. When the ideas were flowing, and he was living as his heart was inclined, he got a beat down from people who couldn't possibly have cared for him, but had access. It is another loss to the planet one can hang on the frathlete, meathead worldview - and make no mistake, it is lost. Much of the fragmented stuff here is clearly a germ of something awesome, and not done. You can't go back and reclaim it. Hearing a good quality tape source for what was done probably justifies the purchase, but to take it as a whole, get the Brian Wilson solo version. It is an achievement lost, which is sad, but what was achieved is more than 99.99% of talented people are ever going to produce. (B+)

The Smiths - Complete: What has been done with The Smiths back-catalog by their record companies really truly is shameless. They have more compilations at this point than they do albums. It is true they had lots of extras, and were generally prolific, but there really isn't any masterful new curation going on; this is pretty much one simple regurgitation after another. In this case, it is remastering of the original albums, and that is good enough reason for me. Most of my CDs of the albums are early generation, and they sound tinny and shitty. Having cleaned up sound is very helpful in an iPod world, and so this was a good investment. Naturally, going back through and listening to all the original albums, it strikes me just how good they really really were. They were very excellent, and there really ain't a dud in the batch. What is now lost is how British that band was. As one who was a fan in the rural Midwest, I can say that at the time, most of the singles on the compilations (Louder Than Bombs, Hatful Of Hollow, The World Won't Listen) were either impossible to find at the time, were expensive imports, or weren't available in either the 7" or 12" format (meaning you had to buy what you could get.) They might have been a singles band, but unless you were in the UK, you pretty much only had Louder Than Bombs if you wanted to hear the non-album stuff. The other two compilations were UK only, so again, they were either very hard to find, were vinyl only (I needed cassettes since my record player was shitty), or were so expensive they couldn't be had. There really weren't many real Smiths videos then either, so it wasn't like they were on MTV all the time (only at the end did they participate in making videos, and even then, it was just Morrissey; all the other videos were either slapped together by one of their labels or were repurposed from BBC lip-sync performances.) Building love for The Smiths back then was iterative, incomplete, and hard work. That doesn't make it better, but it is the basis for my relationship with them. Having so much of that stuff in one spot and so easy to take in and digest is better than all the hit-n-miss expeditions I had to undertake to simply hear their whole output back in the day. That said, I preferred it when meeting another Smiths fan meant likely meeting someone who had the same experience, and greatly increased the likelihood of meeting a likable person! To that end, I guess I can take some comfort in the fact that this over-priced redundant box set is not at all "Complete". There's tons of stuff out there that hasn't been officially released, reissued, compiled, and/or available forever. Naturally, this makes a box set inevitable; and yes, since I would also like remastered versions of the remaining stuff (Troy Tate, the Peel Sessions not on Hatful, the live extras, etc.) so I will begrudgingly buy that too, and probably love it, and probably have a love-hate thing about it now being so easy to get all that stuff. This band was excellent, and being a fan of them was excellent. Seeing their catalog enjoy the love it gets is great in that it means the people who need this music are finding it; and this makes its exploitation a little more tolerable. It might even add a new wrinkle in that it allows folks who find Smiths fans repulsive the chance to take it in simply on its own terms as albums as that is what is most important. In that, most of this stuff is even better than I recall. (A)

Mood Duo - Mazes: I loved Spacemen 3. I like Spiritualized ok, but my Drug Beatle wasn't Jason Pierce, but rather - the other guy, Sonic Boom. Seeing Spiritualized treated like a UK national treasure while Sonic Boom is all-but forgotten bothers me. The Spectrum albums, plus Sonic Boom's contribution to Spacemen 3 seem to me to be the true spirit of that project, and is much more worthy of revision than anything Spiritualized has done. I feel like, finally, the drony, spacey stuff is finally getting some damn love, and I am happy of it. I think Sonic Boom produced this album; but even if he didn't, they should send him in a check. It is as close a faithful recreation of that sound and that spirit as anything that has come out in many moons. While Sonic Boom has produced MGMT and Panda Bear, and in doing so raised his profile 100x over what this album will do, I actually like this album most of those projects. Again, it is as close to his aesthetic as anyone who isn't actually him gets. I like that. I always have. It lacks all the bombast, 100-person choirs, and for that matter, technical skill that Spiritualized has, and this is its virtue. If you like simple AMEN chords played over and over with drones and drug references, then it may be tough to pick between the two former Spacemen's work unless you REALLY like that stuff and need little more. In that case, you need this (B-)

Moonface - Organ Music: Spencer Krug is annoying as hell. Foppish and ridiculous hysterical little dandy really. At the same time, he is very talented, and frankly, he can't help it - he's Canadian, and they can be confused some times (That he hooked up with other fops and pantywastes like Dan Bejar and the dude from Frog Eyes is not surprising, since they all reek of that sort of poncy sheltered mama's boy syndrome.) This album is pretty good. Better than most stuff he has his hands in, though nothing compared to his best. If you like his music, this is well worth it. If you don't know him, try the first Wolf Parade album and then maybe give this a spin on Spotify to see if you can take its excesses (for the record, I truncated the album name since it is so pretentious, I can't bring myself to type it.) (B-)

M83 - Hurry Up We're Dreaming: This is really quite an epic album. It is so well-written and musically dense, I suspect it will take many more listens than I could possibly have given it by now to truly digest it (it reminds me of The Who's Quadrophenia in that respect - and in its latent reactionary streak methinks, but I digress.) I am inclined to think it is a great album. I have loved most of the last 3 M83 discs, and while I am not hearing THAT ONE SONG on this like I did with Kim & Jesse, this is really the pinnacle of the extended set of ideas I think is operative across these albums. On the one hand, I want to ding it for being so glaringly 80's synth-centric. It does at time become more 80s than the 80s ever were (only a small % of music with these synths were ALL synth like much of the revisiting stuff is.) In part, I chalk that up to the bedroom-with-laptop being to today what the garage and pawn-store guitar was to the past. If you run every instrument out with a USB, there is no way it can't sound like it. I suspect there are other things at play here, though by no means would I guess what the overarching concept is behind this album - that part still remains obscure to me. What doesn't is just how exhilarating this music often is. It feels massive at times - literally immersive. It can also feel like a guy sitting on a bed in a studio apartment. What makes it great is that the range of music here requires both extremes, and the performances make the transitions happen, almost entirely without gimmick or jump-cut - which is saying something across nearly 2 hours of music. Like I said, I expect I will need the whole winter to fully take this in, but I have had it on quite a bit in recent weeks, and far from tiring of it, I am finding my interest in it fanning out across the different parts of the album. So far, it has defied playlisting, and I suspect it always will. That is a sign of quality almost always. Likely going to be my favorite this year. (A-)

High Places - Original Colors: I suppose one can't like the quaintness of their DIY aesthetic and hate on them for having such a low-rent piece of cover art, so I won't. I will say though that the music within comes closer to being real music than the cover does to being real art. I have a soft spot for the little songs High Places makes. It sounds like a bassoon teacher from Kansas trying to replicate the excitement of her first trip abroad or something because it is largely what it is (I can't help but think of the Onion piecefrom the Italian schlub who can't believe his luck with American young lady tourists while I imagine that - so cruel!) Anyway, I think some of the smallness is starting to find its way out of High Places music. This feels a little more standard, a little more four-on-the-floor, and a little less noisy/clunky. I am not sure it bodes well for the future, but it works well enough here. Maybe lacking one killer pop song in favor of bigger, set-piece workouts won't work forever, but here, it mostly does. My favorite HP songs aren't on this album, but it is my favorite album of theirs so far. (B-)

U2 - Achtung Baby (reissue): For me, the U2 I loved ended with Joshua Tree. I thought Rattle & Hum embarrassing for them, and at the time, much of Achtung Baby left me indifferent. I think that is because the first single was The Fly, easily their slightest lead single in their career, and followed with Mysterious Ways, probably the biggest song of theirs I am largely indifferent to. In time, I came to like much of this album on its own terms even if I stopped caring about U2 as a band. Bono has always been a parody of himself in one form or another, but through Joshua Tree, his being so over-the-top was kinda charming - like his mullets. Once the breathy wankfest that is Rattle My Bum was unleashed on an innocent world, any such feelings passed quickly. Bono does sincerity well. He is terrible at the wry smirk. I think this album's lyrics are so poor because he is so far from sincerity - or even sincere feelings about insincerity. Half of his lyrics are overwrought metaphor and/or simile (or bad appropriation of those of others.) Thankfully, he knocked off the whole "Like, As" lyric writing template not too long after. Sadly, he can't seem to be able to get himself out of the shit-eating smirk of betrayal puckering contest he runs neck and neck with Don Henley in, but at this point, I am pretty sure, he couldn't return to form either way. I think this is because he started to sing about the interpersonal, rather than the purely personal, political or social, and simply didn't have his powers of description with him fully. Lyrics aside, this album did bring out some excellent new sounds from the U2s - and while as highly derivative as Public Image Limited (they coulda called this album Silicon Box and been pretty close) as much of their catalog is at points - it was a needed change, and while a little dated at the edges, it has held up nicely. Some of this stuff is still very bracing and pleasing to the ear. For me to be pumping it as often as I have been of late is not something I would have thought possible two singles in to its original release. For a U2 fan of any depth, the b-sides are always a huge draw, and I have to say, they are excellent here. These session's batch has more covers than any of the preceding albums, but even the originals don't feel like they are disposable. They were clearly reinvigorated by the sounds they were making, and this reissue validates that excitement (though they needed to include the version of Until The End Of The World from the soundtrack of the film of the same name - it is better than the U2 album version, and now hard as hell to find.) After this album, I would say U2 has at least another album's worth of excellent material spread out across the 5 or 6 they've released. You can't hate on them for not keeping up as high a standard as very very few have even made ONE album up to the standards of their best. This is the end of the classic U2 era, and is very good as a bookend to their journey to the tippy-top. It has been all downhill since, but you can't blame this album for it. (A-)