First Lines Reviews - August

Like a novel where a really good first line compels you to keep reading, I wondered if I could compel you to check out some discs by just giving you the first line of a review. (In other words, I didn’t have time to write to whole thing, but I’m offering a nugget of what I think about the album).


Forget Cassettes
Salt
Theory 8 Records

Forget cassettes, because you’re liable to stretch out the tape from listening to Forget Cassettes’ Salt over and over again with its indie basement hollering rock that comes out of murky dream intros/interludes. Another album made immediate and enveloping by Jeremy Ferguson’s touch at the recording desk (Battle Tapes Recording).


Sufjan Stevens
The Avalanche: Outtakes and Extras from the Illinois Album
Asthmatic Kitty Records

Sufjan Stevens’ face on a flying superhero replaces the outlawed Superman image on the original, original cover of Illinois; this set of demos, extras, and more prove that Stevens is the Inide Rock man of steel with X-ray vision into our souls.


Fatboy Slim
The Greatest Hits: Why Try Harder
Astralwerks

Fatboy Slim’s The Greatest Hits: Why Try Harder should be endorsed by the American Disabilities Association as it serves beats, samples, dance rhythms, and raps for two differently-abled groups: 1) the Dance Club Challenged—those of us who are either too old, too poor, too angular, too shy, or too rock ‘n’ roll to hear the DJs at a nightclub (this includes those who are too far from a dance club that knows something besides 80’s hits and “Who Let the Dogs Out?”), and 2) the Urban Challenged—those of us who live far from the city pulse but want to find out the common man’s blood pressure.


World/Inferno Friendship Society
Red-Eyed Soul
Chunksaah Records

This is the soundtrack I imagine for a Jam Band Cirque de Solei where instead of trapeze wires everyone is swinging on else.