Releasing a front-to-back remix album seems almost conceited, like paying tribute to yourself. But many tracks on Bloc Party's Silent Alarm, with their twisty, insistent rhythms and chant-along choruses, practically cry out for inspired tinkering. It helps that some interesting names—not just faceless DJs—put their marks on Silent Alarm Remixed (Vice), including Mogwai, Ladytron, and M83, whose Anthony Gonzalez turns "The Pioneers" into an almost unrecognizable swarm of orchestral swoop and swoon. Elsewhere, Four Tet stretches the emotional core of "So Here We Are" into atmospheric glitch-pop with a beautiful payoff, and Nick Zinner (of Yeah Yeah Yeahs) goths up "Compliments." Naturally, Remixed lacks the consistency of its source material, but it works just the same…
Speaking of remixes, Prefuse 73 Reads The Books E.P. (Warp) does justice to its source material by treating it with reverence—but not too much reverence. Underground hip-hop icon Scott Herren (a.k.a. Prefuse 73, among many other aliases) brings loping kicks to The Books' already-glitchy pastiche of bedroom beats and samples. The bridge between their two worlds seems awfully short after leafing through these pleasant, soundtrack-like pages…
There's trouble when the most entertaining bit of an album is a joke, and while an introduction by A&E anchor Bill Curtis may not be the best part of The Dandy Warhols' new Odditorium Or Warlords Of Mars (Capitol), it may be the most memorable. It doesn't help that the first two songs, at 9:36 and 7:32 minutes, respectively, stretch well beyond their usefulness, or that even the pop songs ("Down Like Disco," "Smoke It") fail to snap or crackle much. Maybe there's a brilliant album deep down in here, but there's far too much murk to wade through…
America's—the world's?—favorite punk-porn website, suicidegirls.com, has made the Internet safe for naked girls with pierced nipples, star tattoos, and hairspray, and with The Suicide Girls' cross-promoted Black Heart Retrospective (Epitaph), they give direct approval to a bunch of goth-pop crossover hits that probably didn't need the extra push. Nevertheless, the disc—which collects biggish tracks from the likes of Siouxsie, The Cure, The Cult, Bauhaus, and more—serves as a fun run-through of 120 Minutes circa 1987. Strangely, two modern names also appear: Alkaline Trio contributes a Sisters Of Mercy cover (which makes sense, in context), and Atmosphere contributes a crackly original (which makes no sense, but ain't half bad either)…
Australian songsmith Mark Mitchell uses a weird, unwieldy alias and records for a label known for underground hip-hop, but those two strikes don't knock Clue To Kalo's new disc out: One Way, It's Every Way (Mush) lovingly integrates minimal electronics with sad melodies and Byrds-y guitars, tinkering with organic and inorganic sounds until they make perfect sense together. "Nine Thousand Nautical Miles" reads like a Postal Service song, but it's never that urgent, choosing instead to stretch and meander…
On The Last Beautiful Day (Arts & Crafts), another Australian solo player—Sally Seltmann, a.k.a. New Buffalo—playfully introduces samples into tough-yet-tender compositions that might sound underdone without their scratchy sax and atmospheric electronic bits. It should find welcoming arms in fans of Björk's more direct pop shots or Broken Social Scene's best, girliest moments—New Buffalo even shares a record label with the latter…
Azure Ray principals Maria Taylor and Orenda Fink spaced their debut solo releases a few months apart, probably hoping to avoid those almost-inevitable comparisons and popularity contests. Here goes anyway: Fink loses. Invisible Ones (Saddle Creek), in trying to stretch beyond Azure Ray's whispery sadness, accidentally wanders into the overwrought mainstream. The rocking "Bloodline" will surprise fans of Fink's main band, but probably not pleasantly.