Baltimore’s interesting indie-rockers Lower Dens – who released an excellent album in called Twin-Hand Movement that Bradford Cox liked a lot – have a new one coming out May 1st on Domino imprint Ribbon Music (also where John Maus‘ last album came from). The album’s gonna be called Nootropics and, if you ask me, I think this is the one that’s gonna break ‘em into the indie spotlight…I gotta feeling about these things…

First song “Brains” doesn’t seem to have anything to do with zombies or blow-jobs, but I like it anyways. Got a bit of a krautrock momentum to it. Not a huge break from what’s come before, but it does expand upon it. It’s as sharp and well written as anything that’s come before, though perhaps an odd choice for a first single. But whatever, it’s legits.

What did you think of the song? What do you think the album will be like? Let me know in the comments section or over Facebook or Twitter.

Atlas Sound – Mona Lisa

Chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you have. Bradford Cox and all he touches have now become indie-rock essential-listening. The days when he was just some crazy dude in a dress who played in a band that might be good, might be terrible, might be yesterdays news, etc. are over. Deerhunter and Atlas Sound are now higher-eschelon indie-rock names, and with good reason – they consistently make great, interesting, inventive music. The once must-follow blog and unwavering Pitchfork love have undoubtedly helped foster all this too, but there’s no denying it is definitely the music that’s gotten Cox and crew to where they are now.

Parallax continues Cox’s winning streak, picking up where Logos‘ creaking, acoustic-based vibe left off. Parallax, however, ditches some of the backroom quality in the production department, sounding bright, clean and sharp – at the same time though, the songs feel like cherry-picked demos from numerous late-night solo-jam sessions sculpted into legit songs. Even listening to them in finished form you can imagine Cox making up the lyrics by murmuring words over chord progressions over and over until they took final shape. This is one of the album’s strengths actually, because the songs keep the feeling of sketches.

On the other hand, Parallax doesn’t quite work as well as Logos, even if it wants to work better. The super-clean production detracts a bit from the charm these songs would have if they sounded more homey, and the lack of big highlights and pace-changers like “Walk About”, “Shelia” and “Quick Canal” make the album feel a bit long and overly-consistent. There are definite ‘pop hit’ style songs like “Mona Lisa” and the title track, but their aesthetic isn’t different enough from the rest of the album to really make them pop out.

Parallax is a great album and the farthest thing from a disappointment (something Cox has avoided for an incredibly long time, considering his prolific release schedule over the last couple years), but my main kind of conclusion on it is it’s just not quite as good a front-to-back album as Logos.

What did you think of the album? Let me know in the comments section or over Facebook or Twitter.

Atlas Sound – Terra Incognito

I’m a pretty big Deerhunter/Atlas Sound fan so I was psyched to find out that Bradford Cox will be releasing a new album called Parallax (sounds like a Pokemon, right? It’s actually: “the effect whereby the position or direction of an object appears to differ when viewed from different positions, e.g., through the viewfinder andthe lens of a camera.” -Dictionary on my Mac) on November 8th. Has it leaked yet? Anyone? Oh, well. It will. Soon. In the meantime, here are thoughts on the first track, “Terra Igcognita” (ooooh, Latin…).

Marc: Truth is the song’s a little boring. Just a little. At least as a single. I mean, sure, it’s cool, Cox is always pretty cool and interesting, but last time around we got “Walkabout”, which was more like a fucking knockabout, and then he followed that with “Shelia” a bit later, which was also really cool. Sure, in between were those tracks on the album there were all kinds of chillz little acoustic creepers that tied everything together nicely, but that’s not what gets people (like me, at least) psyched for an album.

Also, it sounds very, very clean. Cleaner than what’s come before, for sure. Not necessarily a bad thing. It’s cool.

The album? How bad could it be? Cox and crew have pretty much been pumping out awesome release after awesome release for the last couple years, I see no reason to think that they’d stop now. Even if this first track is a little boring, maybe when it’s grouped up with a bunch of other cool tracks and given some context it’ll work better. I’m sure it probably will.

Also, the little “bum bum bum” part at the end is kind of neat.

Photo: Mick Rock