a thick, post-punk muscularity that’s new to the duo. In opener “Arrow,” Sara sings about “the feathers of an arrow,” but there’s nothing wispy about the track’s juddering synth pattern. “Don’t Rush” rides a grimy bass line Trent Reznor could admire, while “Alligator” sports a bottom-heavy, blue-eyed soul groove. “Northshore,” in which Tegan admits that her “misery’s so addictive,” is two minutes of choppy fuzz-guitar freak-out.

Grown-up is a good look for the sisters, who write about romantic obsession much more compellingly than the majority of their peers; the tougher textures here lend weight to their descriptions of searching and not finding (or of searching and finding, and then wondering if the search was really worth all the trouble). In an interesting parallel to that thematic narrative, Sainthood marks the first time in their decade as a band that Tegan and Sara attempted to write with each other, instead of toiling separately and then fleshing out the results together. Apparently, the experiment didn’t yield much; none of the 13 songs here came from a collaborative songwriting trip they took to New Orleans last year.

Yet listening to Sainthood—to its odd structural disjunctions and shi;ting lyrical uncertainties—it’s difficult to imagine that the sisters would make records as powerful if they continued to try to work in that way. Tegan and Sara’s music may no longer be the stuff of teens, but its strength remains in how much it feels like two people talking.

BASEMENT JAXX

Order. Sumner still has a knack for making dopey lyrics (“Hey, bad man, where are you gonna go?”) sound profound atop guileless Brit-rock jangle and electronic moodiness. There’s no “Blue Monday” or “True Faith” here, but a record that sounds like a cross between Doves and New Order? Not worth complaining about at all. JOSH MODELL

Basement Jaxx Scars

••••••••••

Anti-Pop Consortium Fluorescent Black

••••••••••

instruments, while engineer
Earl Blaize compiles key-
boards, drums, and software
blips into an Afro-surrealist
space opera. On their fourth
studio album, Priest warns
of corporations inserting
chips in newborn babies
(“The Solution”), while
the title track satirizes the
depravity of modern youth.
Pessimistic omens from
an outfit that, as M. Sayyid
asserts on “End Game,”
“designs programming
language.” MOSI REEVES

Bad Lieutenant Never Cry Another Tear

••••••••••

Hyper-verbal bomb squad crafts an ominous opus Anti-Pop Consortium’s obsession with sound, be it analog, digital, or vocal, makes them unique among hip-hop artists; they’re like a postmillennial Public Enemy, minus the political oratory. The MC trio rhyme with distinct cadences tuned like

Manchester legend and protégé mope and moon Bernard Sumner throws one curveball with his new band, letting unknown Mancunian Jake Evans take a few turns on the mic. Those tracks—particularly “These Changes”— heavily echo Doves’ forceful melancholy, while the others echo, well, New

Where are their heads at? Thankfully, lost in the stars For three studio albums, this London DJ duo asserted their dance-floor eclecticism with a wallop every bit as combustive as it was ornate. While 2006’s Crazy Itch Radio blunted that intensity and immediacy, Scars is a return to form: “Feelings

 

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Beautiful Loser

Brooklyn’s Mr. Lonelyhearts places devastating personal ad

A cardigan won’t keep you warm in the romantic wild.

ON HIS SELF;TI TLED 2008 debut, singer-songwriter Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson sounded like it was all he could do to hold himself together long enough to sing about falling apart. Though that album’s postaddiction, confessional howl was one of the year’s most darkly magnetic listens, it was also cause for artistic concern. The idea of this man making optimistic music seemed silly, and songs even more heartsick were hard to fathom. Where was he going to go?

Robinson’s solution, arrived at with production help from TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone (replacing Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor, who worked on the debut) was to redecorate his hellhole. The gripping, gorgeous Summer of Fear trades fractured gray folk for multihued and ambitiously arranged Americana. To hear the swooping strings on “Summer of

Fear pt. 1” or the stately horns parading across the 11-minute “Losing 4 Winners” is to witness catharsis cra;ted with both passion and smarts. Each of the album’s tracks is graced with a carefully calibrated vocal, cunning melody, and clever structure.

Lyrically, Robinson still seesaws between accusation and pity (“I don’t know anybody who couldn’t let me down,” from “The 100th of March,” passes for a worldview), so it remains to be seen if he’s capable of doing more than excavating his pain. I think so. I hope so. DAVID MARCHESE

MILES
BENJAMIN
ANTHONY
ROBINSON

Summer of Fear

••••••••••

FROM TOP: ANDRE W WI T TON; ALICIA ROSE

72 NOVEMBER 2009 ; SPIN.COM: I T’S MAGICALLY DELICIOUS!