REVIEWS [ALBUMS]
Bat for Lashes
Two Suns

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MYSPACE AMAZON
Ex-nursery-school teacher
weeps over book of love
Is sultry English multi-
instrumentalist Natasha
Khan more than just the
latest Sarah McLachlan
for indie snobs? Her
mezzo-soprano is so damn
beautiful that it initially
upstages all else on her
second album, and her
cosmic love poetry blurs
into abstraction without a
lyric sheet. But after
repeated plays, you
become mesmerized by
the loopy details: Conjur-
ing ancient tribal vibes
from ominous synths
and galloping tom-toms,
this art-rock Joan of Arc
gushes duality motifs
that thwart narrative but
overflow with moonstruck
sensuality. Two Suns is the
rare concept album that’s
better for the bedroom
than for bong hits.
BARRY WALTERS

inscrutable, agorapho-bic, undeniably brilliant but just as undeniably demented. All descriptions apply to their fifth album, with each track bursting at the seams with warped sounds. The trio whip through all manner of rubber-band noise on “La Cucaracha,” screw down otherwise danceable breaks for “Ultra Vomit Craze,” and mix alien choirs with punk shouts (“Glazin”). Now, if they could only get off the couch. ANDY BE TA

Bill Callahan Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle

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MYSPACE AMAZON
Poet of lo-fi bum-out gives
newfound levity a rest
Bill Callahan spent his first
post-Smog disc—2007’s
Woke on a Whaleheart—
kicking too gaily against his
downcast past, exploring
looser sounds that didn’t
take. On this follow-up,
he finds steadier, more
familiar footing while still
allowing for evolution:
“Eid Ma Clack Shaw”
cracks funnier and jauntier
than Smog’s early years
would’ve allowed, but
like most of Eagle, it’s a
natural progression rather
than change for its own
sake. More important,
on bookends “Jim Cain”
and the string-enhanced
“Faith/Void,” Callahan
allows simple, graceful
melancholy—his strongest
suit—back into the mix.
JOSH MODELL

Can’t watch Ladette to Lady because it hits too close to home.

Black Dice
Repo

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MYSPACE AMAZON
Whimsical noiseniks
lock the door and wail
If their sonic brethren
Animal Collective are
the Robert Crumb of the
Brooklyn noise family, able
to convert their peculiar
sonics into something
populist and generational,
then Black Dice are the
perpetually esoteric older
Crumb brother Charles:

Ron Browz
Etherboy

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MYSPACE
Champagne-popping
beatmaker parties hard
This New York–based
producer/singer/rapper,
who was responsible for
Nas’ classic 2001 dis track
“Ether,” is like a hip-hop/
R&B Andrew W.K. Take
all the immediate feel-
good stuff, forget the
rest. On his debut album,
he kicks off this happy
hour with a simple, highly
effective cocktail: Add
video-game beats that
ape Daft Punk (“Pantiez
in the Microwave”) and
the Neptunes (“I Prom-
ise”), lyrics that pose eter-
nal questions like “Who
drank all the Hennessy?”
and “Where the girls at?”
and copious amounts
of T-Pain-esque Auto-Tune.
Then shake, and watch
the dance floor do like-
wise. CHRIS RYAN

Crystal Antlers
Tentacles

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MYSPACE AMAZON
Riff-roiling psych crew
takes circuitous route
In 2008, this SoCal
stoner-rock sextet joined
the troika of excellent
Crystal bands (Castles,
Stilts) on the strength
of a self-released EP
(produced by Mars Volta
keyboardist Ikey Owens)
and a relentless touring
ethic. The group’s first
full-length channels their

Geez Louise!
Ex-prodigy spits like an around-the-way gal

I n three-plus years, beginning with her 2005 ep Vertically
Challenged, sporty u.K. grime-pop shortie lady sovereign has
released three collections totaling 24 discrete titles. In this age
of overproduction, that hardly makes her the most prolific MC
around, and a few of the ten—just ten—cuts on her new Jigsaw
barely feel like songs at all. “I Got you Dancing” is your token
vacant auto-tune toss-off; “Food play,” a half-sexy, half-funny
overextended comedy routine about getting kinky with hamburgers
and häagen-Dazs. the album’s more emo moments are sung as
often as rapped, and mundane enough in
their finance-and-romance concerns to

convince you the erstwhile louise harman is a typically manic-depressive 23-year-old all the way down to her writer’s block.

they’ll also convince early supporters that she’s gone even more lightweight than on 2006’s underpraised Public Warning. But sov’s ’iccupping and frog-croak toasting bounce and lunge even when her words fall flat, and when they don’t, she’s still a hoot: propositioning a fellow herbed-up weirdo of unstated gender in “let’s Be Mates,” trolling

Facebook in her ill-fitting jeans in “I Got the Goods,” ch-chinging in “pennies,” igniting class warfare as a high-school dropout among uni snobs in “student union.” sov lets her ponytail down as beats skip from electroclash to ska to grime to dancehall, proving herself one hungry midget indeed. CHUCK EDDY

LADY SOVEREIGN Jigsaw

•••••••••• MYSPACE AMAZON

CRYSTAL AN TLERS

FROM TOP: BEN RAYNER; DAN MONICK

76 APRIL 2009 / SEE THE AR TIST OF THE DAY AT SPIN.COM