Car Seat Headrest - Twin Fantasy (Face to Face) (Matador, 2018)

I've been vaguely aware of Car Seat Headrest for a while but always ignored them because I assumed they were some crappy indie rock band and indie rock is usually crappy. The impetus to check this out was actually Pitchfork's Best New Music review. Figured there might be more to the group than I was flippantly dismissing and I'm glad I did. This is a re-recorded version of CSH's (basically the nom de plume of Will Toledo) 2011 album only with a full band and it's an absolute gem, anchored by two huge tracks, "Beach Life-in-Death" and "Famous Prophets (Stars)". Toledo is a brilliant songwriter and a great lyricist. I have to go back and check out the original "bedroom lofi version" but I liked this one way more than I expected. Like the War on Drugs last year it's a refreshing rock album in a mostly shitty and dead rock genre, but even better. It reminds me a lot of Sonic Youth, but less sneer-y and more soul-baringly honest. I dunno. It clicked!

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Playboi Carti - Die Lit (AWGE/Interscope, 2018)

Playboi Carti has never really been on my radar too much, but then Pfork gave this one a rave review, and I figured I was sleeping...but man, this album didn't do anything for me. Barely any song made any kind of impact. The production is interesting at times but Carti himself gets lost in both that and the whole mass of features all over the album. Nothing gelled for me, so I guess for me I wasn't missing much after all. Oh well.

Eartheater - IRISIRI (Pan, 2018)

Eartheater first came on my radar (and many others) with 2 Hausu Mountain tapes in 2015. She makes glitchy, disorienting music, combining electronics and synthesized percussion with voice, guitars and who knows what else. The whole thing is a confusing stew, kind of reminiscent of Inga Copeland but I would say even more detached from "song". Didn't do much for me.

Abstracter - Cinerous Incarnate (I, Voidhanger, 2018)

I was not aware of these guys, who formed in 2010 as a noise duo, and slowly evolved and added more members and turned into a kind of death/blackened doom metal project. They've got ties to other noise acts I don't know (Sutekh Hexen) and other industrial acts I don't know (Only Now). Quite a stew and the band pulls of something that sounds truly different. It's got a tentacle in each of the aforementioned genres but blends them really well. It's quite hard to pin them down in fact. Big, heavy riffs with a production level along the lines of a sludge/black metal record but sharp instrumentation and just a dirty atmosphere...ambient noise passages separate a couple tracks as a nice diversion...very cool

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