"I think the drum machine is one of the worst inventions of the 21st century." Nevermind the flatly ironic contradiction, nevermind the fact we know what's coming - Sleeper delivers with "Condition or Effect," a relentlessly sinking ship in a sea of overdrive. The drum loop leads this distorted dirge, while static piles on itself to impossible heights in the background. If you took the haze of a busted antenna from an analogue TV set and threw the resulting haze over the top of post-rock conventions, you'd get something like this: hypnotic and churning, slow and wild.

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It’s always a happy day when snappy-dressed French 80’s inspired garage-popsters Phoenix grace the world with new music. Their latest dish is far from disappointing with distorted fuzzy dance beats, equally fast guitars & vocal melodies so catchy this ditty will be stuck in your head for days. When lead singer Thomas Mars croons “fallin’…fallin’…’” I do just that while simultaneously melting in a big pile of goo. Does anyone else find them incredibly hard not to swoon over? "1901" is a good sign that Phoenix is heading in a better direction, & that Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, in addition to having a ridiculously awesome album title, will surely kick some major ass. I’m ready to hop back on the Phoenix bandwagon, why not feel like you’re back in middle school & come along with? Come on, I dare ya!

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I'm sure at some point you've been sitting around with your friends and someone brings up a totally killer old song that you'd inevitably forgotten about for the past decade up until that point, and all of a sudden you're swept up in the nostalgia of trying to remember how that song went - what the lyrics were, where the breaks came, and holy shit why don't that play that song on the radio anymore? "It's The..." is Charles Trees' recreation of that moment, the beat as alive and hazy as a fond memory, the beginnings of lines never finishing, elements all jumbled around and jumping in and out because he didn't quite know where they fit. This song's as warm as it is disorienting, quite a pleasant sensation once you catch your balance.

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