Rock

Efterklang
Things We Have In Common
City Slang SLANG50581; LP: SLANG50581LP

Since 2004, the Danish collective’s songs have been characterised by a dazzling mix of electronics, guitars, keyboards and winds. But whereas they used to unfold in a procession of musical ideas, here they have more orthodox structures, but are still full of unusual texture and colour. On the opening ‘Balancing Stones’ Casper Clausen’s falsetto vocals are backed by drums, programmed rhythms, bass synth growls and exultant brass lines. Pianist Rune Mølgaard left after their 2007 breakthrough album Parades to join the Mormon Church, but has now come back into the fold and his sparse lines help shape ‘Sentiment’, a ballad sweetly sung by Clausen, and he plays brisk arpeggios on the rhythmically twitchy ‘Shelfbreak’. MB

Sound Quality: 90%

Chrystabell & David Lynch
Cellophane Memories
Sacred Bones SBR344CD; LP: SBR344LP

David Lynch has always had an input into the soundtracks and sound design of his films and TV shows, and the songs he wrote with Angelo Badalamenti for Julee Cruise to sing in Twin Peaks amplified the on-screen strangeness by mixing a warm feeling of nostalgia with a sense of the uncanny. Lynch’s second full album with Texan-born singer and actor Chrystabell was inspired by a mysterious vision of light during a nocturnal forest walk, and while there are twangy guitars and perambulating drums, the focus is on her overlapped vocal lines, which hover over dolorous minor key drones, or glowing keyboard sunrises, as on the single, ‘Sublime Eternal Love’. MB

Sound Quality: 85%

White Hills
Beyond This Fiction
Heads On Fire Industries HOFCD02; LP: HOF1202

Here the Brooklyn-based duo are inspired by writer and philosopher Joseph Campbell’s exploration of mythology and identity. Ego Sensation on bass guitar, drums and vocals, and Dave W. on guitar, keys and vocals, boil these ideas down and imbue them with plenty of rock ’n’ roll attitude. On ‘Fiend’ they journey towards mortality via a stuttering groove of gnashing bass, cosmic synths and double-tracked psychedelic guitar with the hook line ‘Every day, speed up’. ‘Killing Crimson’, an homage to Killing Joke and King Crimson, is as abrasive and exciting as that combination suggests, and they reach for a state of transcendence on the majestic title track. MB

Sound Quality: 85%

Melt-Banana
3+5
AZAP AZ11CD; LP: AZ11

Since the early ’90s, Tokyo’s Melt-Banana have pushed hardcore punk and noise rock to the extreme with Ichiro Agata’s superfast guitar work and Yasuko Onuki’s frantic yapping vocal style. Now older and wiser, the duo’s music is, if anything, even more manic. Driven on by relentless programmed drums and electronics, it’s extraordinarily tight. On ‘Flipside’ they hit dragster speed, do some juddering emergency stops and then shoot off in another direction. Agata cites video games as an influence on their music and this feels like being trapped inside one. After nine songs in 25 exhilarating, draining minutes, even the hardiest of souls will need a rest. MB

Sound Quality: 80%