Short Cuts (2009): Part 3

White Rabbits - It's Frightening

Driven by backbeats and floor tom pounding, It’s Frightening finds White Rabbits with a pummeling sonic onslaught of percussion behind a heap of fractured indie rock and gloomily stilted vocals. This doesn’t always work as well as White Rabbits would like, though. The offshoot of this formula that they found for themselves, is that things can become too… formulaic. Still, this is mostly successful, and even marginally impressive. B- (read the full review here)

Magik Markers - Balf Quarry

Like any Magik Markers album, Balf Quarry is hardly an easy listen. It’s mostly in the way that their noise rock posturing can some times get in the way of the more traditional song writing tropes—which are evident, despite the band’s best efforts—and produce varying results. Just no-wave enough to be completely frustrating and invigorating. C+ (read the full review here)

Japandroids - Post-Nothing

Post-Nothing’s two basic speeds: thrashing pop and reflective noise. Fortunately, the two sides come together in a far less predictable way than would be usually expected, making large portions of the LP thoroughly compelling, if not truly authentic. Filled with bounce, bite and surprising cohesion, Post-Nothing is a deceptive little piece that is as much fun as it is subversive. The stepson of a real punk album. B+ (read the full review here)

Spinnerette - Spinnerette

Complete with anti-pop facades, Spinnerette acts as a weird time capsule that has been unearthed just a bit too soon. It’s a curious throwback that gets more curious as it trudges along through all of its digitized breakdowns and fuzzed up grunge guitars. It mostly comes off like some long abandoned Butch Vig production that he was only half invested in and would rather not talk about anyway. C- (read the full review here)

Mission of Burma - The Sound, The Speed, The Light

Oh, yes. The loudest fracking album of the year, once again. Completely vintage Burma with such little deviation from what has always made them so great. And it's not the dissonance, the noise, or those discordant rhythms that keep a band like this compelling at this point. Those are all part of it, yes, but mainly it's how easily those elements are crafted into a force so refreshing yet still so jolting. A-