New Music Reviews (9/30)

Each week, KEXP’s Music Director Don Yates (joined this week by DJ Alex) shares brief insights on new and upcoming releases. See what's coming up this week below, including reviews for new releases from Sault, The New Pornographers, Sturgill Simpson, and more.

Sault – 7 (Forever Living Originals)
This still-anonymous band quickly follows up their debut album 5 with another intoxicating blend of post-punk, funk, soul, dub, Afro-pop and more, combining rhythm-driven grooves and addictive song hooks with a variety of mystery vocalists. — DY

The New Pornographers – In the Morse Code of Brake Lights (Concord)
The eighth album from this Vancouver, BC band led by A.C. Newman is a typically well-crafted set ranging from soaring orchestral power-pop and bouncy New Wave to keyboard-driven psych-pop, with many of the songs juxtaposing often-bright melodies with dark lyrics reflecting these troubled times. And while Dan Bejar is absent for the second album in a row, Neko Case is featured more prominently than ever. — DY

Sturgill Simpson – Sound & Fury (Elektra)
This Kentucky-bred, Nashville-based artist’s fourth album takes a dramatic sonic shift towards hard-edged psych-rock inflected with glam-rock, disco-boogie, grunge, prog and more. Densely layered and unrelenting, the album combines buzzing guitar riffs, fiery solos and grimy sci-fi synths with his processed vocals and dark lyrics often aimed at the music industry. — DY

Moon Duo – Stars Are The Light (Sacred Bones)
This Portland duo’s seventh album features a lighter, warmer and more dance-friendly take on the band’s hypnotic psych-rock. Produced by Sonic Boom (aka Peter Kember) of Spacemen 3, the album combines shimmering synths, atmospheric guitars and propulsive, occasionally disco-influenced rhythms with soothing vocals and dreamy melodies. — DY

Cataldo – Literally Main Street (self-released)
The sixth Cataldo album from Moscow, ID-raised, Seattle-based artist Eric Anderson is an impressive set of sharply crafted set ranging from driving, hook-filled power pop to atmospheric, keyboard-driven ballads. Produced by John Vanderslice, the album combines a tactile, fairly diverse sound with Anderson’s evocative lyrics reflecting on characters and scenes from his old hometown of Moscow. — DY

Temples – Hot Motion (ATO)
This British band’s third album is a somewhat darker and heavier take on the band’s glam-tinged psych-pop, combining an intricately textured, often-grandiose sound with soaring song hooks. — DY

Girl Band – The Talkies (Rough Trade)
This Dublin band’s second album is another bracing set of adventurous noise-rock combining a woozy, dynamic, tension-filled and often-unsettling sound with disjointed lyrics revolving around mental illness. — DY

Sui Zhen – Losing, Linda (Cascine)
This Melbourne, Australia-based artist’s third album is a well-crafted set of dreamy electro-pop with gauzy synths, hypnotic rhythms, ethereal, occasionally robotic vocals and lyrics revolving around identity and memory in the digital age. — DY

The Garifuna Collective – Aban (Stonetree)
This veteran Belize-based band’s latest album is a potent set of traditional Garifuna music inflected with reggaeton, dub and other styles, combining electric and acoustic guitars and some subtle electronic textures with a variety of traditional percussion and call-and-response vocals. — DY

Moonchild – Little Ghost (Tru Thoughts/Entertainment One Music)
The 4th album from this Los Angeles trio is another solid set of dreamy neo-soul and lush R&B with front-woman Amber Navran's hushed vocals continuing to mesh wonderfully with the group's smooth jazzy downtempo beats. — AR

Tegan and Sara – Hey, I’m Just Like You (Sire)
This Canadian sister duo’s ninth album is being released in tandem with the sisters’ memoir about high school. While writing the memoir, they discovered a couple of lost cassettes containing songs they’d recorded in high school. They revisited and reworked those angsty teenage songs for their new album, which ranges from widescreen synth-pop to muscular power pop. — DY

Automatic – Signal (Stones Throw)
This LA trio’s debut album is a solid set of minimalist post-punk with buzzing synths, propulsive, often-motorik rhythms, hypnotic song hooks and lyrics of anxiety and alienation. — DY

Trentemøller – Obverse (In My Room)
This Danish producer/multi-instrumentalist’s latest album alternates between atmospheric dream-pop featuring various women vocalists and a variety of brooding instrumental soundscapes. — DY

Fly Pan Am – C'est ça (Constellation)
This reunited Montreal band’s fourth album (and first in 15 years) is an adventurous blend of fuzzy shoegazer ambience, various electronic manipulations, driving, often-motorik rhythms and occasional half-obscured vocals. — DY

HTRK – Venus In Leo (Ghostly International)
The fourth album (and first in five years) from this Australian duo is a solid set of atmospheric dream-pop and post-punk featuring a spare, gloomy sound with gently shimmering guitars, mournful keyboards and skeletal drum-machine rhythms accompanying Jonnine’s Standish’s hushed vocals and dread-filled lyrics of lost love and ruined dreams. — DY

Four Tet – Anna Painting (Text)
The latest EP from influential British electronic producer Kieran Hebden (aka Four Tet) is the result of collaboration with British painter and childhood friend Anna Liber Lewis. The first two tracks are classic Four Tet rhythm tracks – spry, melodic, sophisticated, dynamic – while the closing track is a lovely ambient piece. Four Tet aptly breaks down the process behind the EP: "I made music and Anna responded to it with drawings and paintings, apart from the last track, which I made after having seen her work." — AR

Telefon Tel Aviv – Dreams Are Not Enough (Ghostly International)
The first album from this New Orleans-bred, LA-based project led by Josh Eustis since the 2009 death of founding member Charlie Cooper is an evocative blend of spectral post-rock and ambient electronic music, with a dark, melancholy-steeped sound featuring eerie ambient textures, occasional mournful vocals and haunting melodies. — DY

FAMITSU – Mind Software (Hyperboloid)
The second album from this St. Petersburg-based electronic producer is an expansive set of forward-thinking club rhythms that impressively bounces between smooth garage, atmospheric post-dubstep, dreamy post-rave, kinetic jungle, dusty breaks, and euphoric rave/trance rhythms. — AR

Barker – Utility (Ostgut Ton)
The debut full-length album from Berlin-based electronic producer Sam Barker (also one-half of Ostgut Ton duo Barker & Baumecker) finds the revered techno artist continuing to explore a unique sonic path informed heavily by a cerebral weightless aesthetic that removes the kick drum entirely and twists dreamy arpeggio-led synths through a progressive sound design distinguished by lush ambient atmospherics and futuristic free-floating synth melodies. — AR

Academy Garden – Little Trip, Big World (Secret Songs)
The third full-length album from Oklahoma City-based electronic producer and composer Ethan Strange (aka Academy Garden, formerly known as Celadon City) is another warm, welcoming, and colorful set of kinetic electronic grooves and dynamic miniature symphonies that fuse cinematic elements of IDM, post-rock, neo-classical, downtempo, hip-hop, and video game soundtracks into an absorbing emotional whole. — AR

Sofi Tukker – Dancing On The People EP (Ultra)
This New York-bred duo’s latest EP is a colorful blend of playful electro-pop with cumbia and other dance styles. — DY