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Monday, May 13, 2024 
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+ Donato Wharton - Body Isolations
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+ Jarvis Cocker - The Jarvis Cocker Record
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+ Brad Mehldau - Live in Japan
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+ Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out of This Country
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+ Various Artists - Tibetan And Bhutanese Instrumental And Folk Music, Volume 2
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+ Cex - Actual Fucking
+ Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche
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+ Peaches - Impeach My Bush
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+ Klee - Honeysuckle
+ The Court & Spark - Hearts
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+ The Moore Brothers - Murdered By The Moore Brothers
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+ Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped
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+ Glissandro 70 - Glissandro 70
+ Calexico - Garden Ruin (Review #2)
+ Calexico - Garden Ruin (Review #1)
+ The Flaming Lips - At War With The Mystics
+ The Glass Family - Sleep Inside This Wheel
+ Various Artists - Songs For Sixty Five Roses
+ The Fiery Furnaces - Bitter Tea
+ Motorpsycho - Black Hole/Blank Canvas
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+ Sondre Lerche And The Faces Down Quartet - Duper Sessions
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Pretty Girls Make Graves
recording
Élan Vital
Matador
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Dear class: Who are Pretty Girls Make Graves? Discuss. No, like, really. Hate to get all first-year here, but the question does beg. And does beg more questions. Like: What does this rockband stand for? What does their discography amount to? And: Do they actually have any "like, any" true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool, name-on-their-pencil-case, every-lyric-pored-over, chosen-song-on-their-myspace-profile, soundtrack-to-my-life fans? Would anyone lay their heart on the line for this band? Lay down and die for this band? And, if not: Does that really matter? Is that the only validation we have for the rock bands?

See, the reason Pretty Girls Make Graves are hard to define, hard to love, and hard to care about is that they are a rock band as committee: five voices, all with opinions. The members confessedly lack any sort of musical taste in common, but still, as band, they seek to find common ground. As they've struggled to do so, PGMG have cooked up a confusing discography. It, of course, only really begs more questions, but, basically, it reads, rote: made a rough-as-guts lo-fi punk-rock record for Steve Aoki's cool-chasing Dim Mak; made a Rainer-Maria-esque set of dynamic, screamy boy/girl emo for punk grandaddies Lookout!; made a dressed-up/drossed-out new-wave disappointment for Matador. And, now, they're back with their latest installment of look-how-we-keep-changing: Élan Vital, an album issued only after they scrapped all the original sessions for it.

After the stylized hollowness of The New Romance, the record marks a major improvement, there being a definite sense of urgency in "Selling the Wind," there being a hit single in the union anthem "Parade," there being a currency of unto-themselves experimentalism in both major arrangements and incident details. But, still, it's hard to love as a whole. Because, basically, it rarely feels whole. It is, at one time or another, twee reggae, hipster rock-ism, synth-pop balladry, post-Interpol gothickry. It's an inconsistency that's both noble and annoying. And you get the feeling that Pretty Girls Make Graves — whoever they are, and whatever that means — wouldn't have it any other way.


by Anthony Carew




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