The LP marks the first time Vile has seemed utterly unsure of himself.
With efforts like this one, Panda Bear and his coterie have established a genuinely avant-garde movement in America.
While Castlemania lacks the punchy, propulsive crowd-pleasers ("I Was Denied," "Block of Ice") that have lately been the band's stock and trade, the record glows with the unhinged, live-in-studio quality that translates so well to an Oh Sees live show.
While albums like Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea and To Bring You My Love found her looking inward — Let England Shake sees her peeking beyond her inner observations into the complicated web of English politics.
Besides adhering to his familiar sonic longings and rather than dampening the message, Far Side Virtual succeeds in exciting the collective memory of that generation now so conjoined to its technological appendages.
These tape-worn tunes are like alternate takes from an alternate universe.
This album demands your open-minded attention on its own terms, and it ends up teaching you how to listen to it in a new way.
Kaputt is a rare work of historical interpretation and pop artistry, full of beauty and wonder.
Pitiless Censors is a sparkling album, a lo-fi synth pop masterpiece that manages to give endless aural delights while still being intellectually engaging, and despite having been caught at the center of a whirlpool of current movements, all of which reflect some aspect of Maus’ style, he has only cemented his identity as a singular, unimpeachable figure.
For each person, the resulting resonance is unique, so I do not feel comfortable asserting much about this process for another. But for myself, this sound/synapse transposition is as haunting as it is beautiful — surely Grouper’s best.
It’s a desperately lonely set of songs that will certainly take time to settle, but there could be no better time to start doing so than the dead of winter.