As with most things in the dog days of summer, the record release schedule slows down a bit in August. But even if there aren’t as many albums from big-name acts this month, there are plenty of under-the-radar efforts that are certainly worth paying attention to, as our picks for August suggest. And that’s not say there aren’t more than a few albums by critical faves due this month, from acclaimed R&B darling The-Dream to cult heroes like Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti and Dan Deacon.
Album: A Thing Called Divine Fits
Label: Merge
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US Release Date: 2012-08-28
UK Release Date: 2012-08-27
Divine Fits
A Thing Called Divine Fits
If you were sad about the break-up of Handsome Furs or have been waiting for Britt Daniel to bring out some new post-Transference material, Divine Fits is a dream come true. Daniel and former Furs and Wolf Parade member Dan Boeckner — along with New Bomb Turks’ Sam Brown — spend A Thing Called Divine Fits doing the ol’ “you’ve got your peanut butter on my chocolate! No, you’ve got your chocolate in my peanut butter!” routine. They split frontman duties here, but their styles bleed over, so while Boekner’s electro-Americana comes out guns-hot on “My Love is Real”, we see Daniel’s brittle soul guitars on “Flaggin’ a Ride”. Then things mesh, from “Salton Sea”, where Daniel’s staccato guitars get transformed into chilly synths, to the low-end thump worked into Broeckner’s skronky mood-pop gem “Baby Get Worse”. This is lean but ambitious, subtly pushing each artist to find new ground, even as it reminds us what we already loved about these guys. The best of the past, the promise of something new and exciting — that’s what Divine Fits offers, and it does so in catchy droves. Matthew Fiander
Divine Fits – “Would That Not Be Nice”
Album: Life Is People
Label: Dead Oceans
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US Release Date: 2012-08-21
UK Release Date: 2012-08-20
Bill Fay
Life Is People
It’s been over 40 years since we’ve heard a proper new full length from British folk troubadour Bill Fay, but once you hear Life Is People, you’ll know it was worth the wait. For all his folk leanings, Fay was never spare, and this record is lush and brilliantly wide open throughout. There are shimmering guitars echoing out around Fay’s hushed vocals on “There Is a Valley”, shadowy organs over spare piano on the expansive “City of Dreams”, and soaring strings and layered vocals on the sunny Jeff Tweedy-assisted “This World”. Fay even does an aching piano take on Wilco’s “Jesus, etc.” and makes it his own. With Life Is People, Fay has provided a perfect follow-up to the cult-classic Time of the Last Persecution. It’s got the same knack for layers and expanse, and sounds both of the present and utterly timeless. Fay puts his keen eye to the world around him and finds details both hopeful and devastating all over this album. With four decades between records, Fay clearly doesn’t always have something to say, but when he does, he’ll make you sit up and listen. Matthew Fiander
Bill Fay – “Be at Peace with Yourself”
Album: Believe You Me
Label: Asthmatic Kitty
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US Release Date: 2012-08-21
UK Release Date: Import
OMBRE
Believe You Me
Considering how intensely and uniquely personal an artist as Julianna Barwick, it can be hard to imagine how easily — and how well — she can work in a full-on collaboration. If her OMBRE project with Helado Negro (a.k.a. Roberto Carlos Lange) is any indication, Barwick can definitely play nice with others. Maybe OMBRE’s initial outing Believe You Me doesn’t shoot for transcendence and the sublime as Barwick’s solo efforts do, but the album brings out other qualities from her, particularly some more laid-back, chilled-out elements from her music. There’s a breezy summertime feel to much of Believe You Me, thanks to the give-and-take between Barwick’s atmospheric arrangements and Lange’s jazzy aesthetic. OMBRE’s low-key electro experimentation shows that revelations don’t have to be expressed in a mystical musical vocabulary, but can come in more easy-listening forms too. Arnold Pan
OMBRE – Cara Falsa from Asthmatic Kitty on Vimeo.
OMBRE – “Cara Falsa”
Album: Ascent
Label: Drag City
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US Release Date: 2012-08-21
UK Release Date: 2012-08-20
Six Organs of Admittance
Ascent
Ben Chasny has made a career and name for himself by exploring the far reaches of psychedelia with Six Organs of Admittance, proving there’s variety and touch to a genre that can feel monolithic and even monotonous. The latest offering in his prolific discography, the aptly titled Ascent explores how broad and deep psych-rock’s styles can be, which Chasny makes clear by decisively breaking from the folkish, pastoral explorations of his recent works with the hyperdriven heavy-rock of the opening track “Waswasa”. Bolstered by working with his long-time cohorts Comets on Fire, the sci-fi-inspired Ascent is as intricate in its composition as it is viscerally overpowering. From the feedback-drenched guitar workouts “Close to the Sky” and “One Thousand Birds” to the sitar-entangled drone of “They Called You Near”, Ascent is all about expanding horizons, be they interstellar journeys or more inner-directed dimensions. Arnold Pan
Six Organs of Admittance – “Waswasa”
Album: Big Inner
Label: Spacebomb/Hometapes
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US Release Date: 2012-08-21
UK Release Date: Import
Matthew E. White
Big Inner
Credit Matthew E. White with the most perfectly descriptive album title of 2012. His first solo record is as expansive as pop records get with countless players filling up horn sections and string sections and choirs around White’s soft-spoken vocals. He gets help from the likes of Karl Blau and Megafaun’s Phil Cool, but make no mistake this is White’s show. This is a moody, soulful record that sways from the faint, swampy guitar work of “One of These Days” to the funked-out jazzy onslaught of “Big Love” to the cascading layers of “Steady Pace”, and so on. In all these hazy layers, nothing gets obscured, though, as the songs latch onto White’s blistering, thorny guitar work and beautiful voice, a voice that is always deep in the mix but never buried. By the time you’re hit with the nine-plus-minute closer “Brazos”, you know you’re in the hands of one of the biggest, most ambitious, and most purely satisfying pop records of the year. It’s an album that does so much without seeming busy, and gets at big ideas, big emotions, and big sounds, without ever sound like it’s working. White feels every note here, and so will you. Matthew Fiander
Matthew E. White – “One of These Days”
Album: Nocturne
Label: Captured Tracks
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US Release Date: 2012-08-28
UK Release Date: 2012-08-27
Wild Nothing
Nocturne
With Nocturne, Wild Nothing has delivered pretty much everything anyone could expect from a sophomore effort. On it, one-man-gang Jack Tatum succeeds where many others have failed, maintaining the profile he developed on his group’s 2010 debut Gemini, while pushing his imagination forward in new directions. You can’t help but notice that Tatum is stretching himself on Nocturne, whether it’s by embellishing Wild Nothing’s signature post-new-wave sound with rich string arrangements on the opener “Shadow” or by deftly mixing-and-matching lush atmospherics and gritty electronic textures on the title track. As a result, Tatum has moved beyond the at times rote ‘80s Anglophilia of his 2010 debut Gemini into creating a vision that’s more his own. Nocturne shows that Tatum is comfortable enough in his own skin to continue to grow as a songwriter. Arnold Pan
Wild Nothing – “Shadow”
Selected Releases for August 2012
August 7
Antibalas, Antibalas (Daptone)
Antony and the Johnsons, Cut the World (live) (Secretly Canadian)
Apache Dropout, Bubblegum Graveyard (Trouble in Mind)
Ape School, Junior Violence (Hometapes)
Archers of Loaf, All the Nation’s Airports (Deluxe Reissue) (Merge)
Archers of Loaf, White Trash Heroes (Deluxe Reissue) (Merge)
Balsam Range, Papertown (Mountain Home)
Blonds, The Bad Ones (Gluck)
DJ Kentaro, Contrast (Ninja Tune)
Colt Ford, Declaration of Independence (Average Joe’s)
Guano Padano, 2 (Ipecac)
Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek, Palle Danielssen, and Jon Christensen, Sleeper: Tokyo, April 16, 1979 (ECM)
Kid Sampl, Escape Pod EP (Hush Hush)
Lianne La Havas, Is Your Love Big Enough? (Nonesuch)
Los Straitjackets, Jet Set (Yep Roc)
Low, The Curtain Hits the Cast (Reissue) (Plain)
David Lynch, Crazy Clown Time (Digital Deluxe Edition) (Sunday Best)
David Lynch, Eraserhead Original Soundtrack (Deluxe Vinyl Reissue) (Sacred Bones)
Branford Marsalis, Four MFs Playin’ Tunes (Marsalis Music)
Marcus Miller, Renaissance (Concord Jazz)
Niki and the Dove, Instinct (Sub Pop)
Nü Sensae, Sundowning (Suicide Squeeze)
Opossom, Electric Hawaii (Fire)
The Orwells, Remember When (Autumn Tone)
Permanent Collection, Nearly Wed Nearly Dead (Loglady)
Redd Kross, Researching the Blues (Merge)
Sixpence None the Richer, Lost in Transition (Sixpence)
Sweet Valley, Stay Calm (Tape) (Fool’s Gold)
Tidelands, We’ve Got a Map (Redgummy)
Turbonegro, Sexual Harrassment (Volcom)
Elle Varner, Perfectly Imperfect (RCA)
Willits + Sakamoto, Ancient Future (Ghostly International)
Rob Zombie, Mondo Sex Head (UME)
August 14
2 Chainz, Based on a T.R.U. Story (Def Jam)
Ash Borer, Cold of Ages (Profound Lore)
Dead Can Dance, Anastasis (PIAS America)
Dignan Porch, Nothing Bad Will Ever Happen (Captured Tracks)
The-Dream, Love IV MMXII (Def Jam)
Fozzy, Sin and Bones (RED)
Global Gangsters, Rhyme or Crime (Act Like It)
Height with Friends, Rock and Roll (Friends/Cold Rhymes)
Kiss, Destroyer and Resurrected (Remixed) (Mercury)
Kottonmouth Kings, Mile High (12th Street)
Kreayshawn, Something ‘Bout Kreay (Sony)
Lorelei, Enterprising Sidewalks (Slumberland)
Master, The New Elite (Pulverised)
Nguzunguzu, Warm Pulse (Hippos in Tanks)
Nude Beach, II (Other Music)
Mike Oldfield, Platinum, Qe2, Two Sides: The Very Best of Mike Oldfield (Hip-O)
Slightly Stoopid, Top of the World (Stoopid)
Spider Bags, Shake My Head (Odessa)
Such Gold, Misadventures (Razor & Tie)
Ben Taylor, Listening (Sun Pedal)
Texas Hippie Coalition, Peacemaker (EMI)
This Is Cinema, Cycles EP (Whistler)
Steve Vai, The Story of Light (Favored Nations)
Various Artists, Just Tell Me That You Want Me Fleetwood Mac tribute (Hear Music/Concord)
Various Artists, The Music City Sessions, Volume 1: Richmond Experience (Omnivore)
Vybz Cartel, Kingston Story: Deluxe Edition (Vice)
WHY?, Sod in the Seed (Anticon)
Robin and Linda Williams, These Old Dark Hills (Red House)
Xibalba, Hasta La Muerte (Southern Lord)
Yellowcard, Southern Air (Hopeless)
August 21
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, Mature Themes (4AD)
Bloc Party, Four (Frenchkiss)
Careful, Because I Am Always Talking (self-released)
Ry Cooder, Election Special (Nonesuch)
The Darkness, Hot Cakes (Wind-Up)
DJ Khaled, Kiss the Ring (Republic)
Dysrhythmia, Test of Submission (Profound Lore)
Four Tet, Pink (Text)
Hallock Hill, The Union / A Hem of Evening (2xLP) (Mie)
Happy New Year, Happy New Year (Crikey!)
The Heavy, The Glorious Dead (Counter/Ninja Tune)
J.T. Hodges, J.T. Hodges (Show Dog/Universal)
JJ Doom, Key to the Kuffs (Lex)
The Kinks, At the BBC Boxset (Sanctuary)
Dylan LeBlanc, Cast the Same Old Shadow (Rough Trade)
Cate Le Bon CYRK II EP (The Control Group)
Dustin Lynch, Dustin Lynch (Broken Bow)
Taj Mahal, The Hidden Treasures of Taj Mahal, 1969-1973 (Legacy)
Mungolian Jet Set, Mungodelics (Smalltown Supersound)
Owl City, The Midsummer Station (Universal)
Gregory Pepper and His Problems, Escape from Crystal Skull Mountain (Fake Four Inc.)
The Prodigy, More Music for the Jilted Generation (Reissue) (XL)
Adrian Sherwood, Survival & Resistance (On-U Sound)
Slim Twig, Sof’ Sike (Paper Bag)
Teengirl Fantasy, Tracer (True Panther)
Trey Songz, Chapter V (Atlantic)
VCMG (Vince Clarke and Martin Gore), EP3/Aftermaths (Mute)
Yeasayer, Fragrant World (Secretly Canadian)
Young Fresh Fellows, Tiempo De Lujo (Yep Roc)
August 28
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, Lawless (Original Soundtrack) (Sony)
Circa Survive, Violent Waves (Circa Survive)
Robert Cray, Nothing But Love (Mascot)
Dan Deacon, America (Domino)
Matthew Dear, Beams (Ghostly International)
Eagle Twin, Feather Tipped the Serpent’s Scale (Southern Lord)
The Flatlanders, The Odessa Tapes (New West)
Flobots, The Circle in the Square (Shanachie)
Gillian & Iommi, Who Cares (Eagle Rock)
Richard Hawley, Standing at Sky’s Edge (Mute)
Holy Other, Held (Tri Angle)
Rickie Lee Jones, The Devil You Know (Concord)
Meek Mill, Dreams and Nightmares (Warner)
Minus the Bear, Infinity Overhead (Dangerbird)
Alanis Morissette, Havoc and Bright Lights (Collective Sounds)
Morning Glory, Poets Were My Heroes (Fat Wreck Chords)
Obey the Brave, Young Blood (Epitaph)
The Orb, featuring Lee Scratch Perry, THE ORBSERVER in the star house (The End)
Poor Moon, Poor Moon (Sub Pop)
David Ramirez, Apologies (Sweetworld)
The Rippingtons, Built to Last (Entertainment One)
Roxy Music, Roxy Music: The Complete Studio Recordings (EMI)
Sean Rowe, The Salesman and the Shark (ANTI-)
Saga, 20/20 (Eagle Rock)
Swans, The Seer (Young God)
TEEN, In Limbo (Carpark)
Jessie Ware, Devotion (Island UK)
Wiz Khalifa, O.N.I.F.C. (Atlantic)