This Friday, May 29, you can also find in stores the records by Kurt Vile and Mercuriales.
Boards of Canada Inferno (Warp/Kuroneko)
After thirteen years of silence, the Scottish duo resurfaces from the void with its darkest and most impactful album. Between cryptic promotional campaigns, industrial beats, and references to Dante and Aleister Crowley, the brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin deliver a fifth record that is as beautiful as it is unsettling.
Iceage For Love of Grace & the Hereafter (Mexican Summer/Virgin Records/Universal)
The angelic face and timeless it-boy aesthetic of Elias Rønnenfelt (only 34 on the clock) cannot make us forget that the band he fronts is starting to wear its age a little. Formed in 2008, they are far, very far from the cool, detached post-punk that blew the group beyond Danish borders in 2013 (You’re Nothing). The Copenhagen sextet’s sixth album reaches a form of creative plenitude that is as dizzying as it is joyful.
Paul McCartney The Boys of Dungeon Lane (Capitol Records/Universal)
To say that the gorgeous single Days We Left Behind had whetted our appetite would be an understatement: a stripped-down Paul McCartney telling his relationship to the past (even more distant than pre-Beatles) over a celestial melody. If the promise of reuniting with former bandmate Ringo Starr on the second track (Home to Us) had vaguely disappointed with its autopilot feel, there remained a wild hope for a likely moving autobiographical album. Enter The Boys of Dungeon Lane, which opens by confirming that hoped-for intuition: As You Lie There opens with a delicately crafted verse of the finest quality. But that’s not all, for the Mersey-born troubadour has a trick up his sleeve: the piece dives headfirst into a chorus of heavy guitars in a perfectly executed FM-rock vein. It’s this mischievous sleight of hand that truly sets the tone, and Dungeon Lane will continually play with our expectations to affirm its playful lightness.
Les Mercuriales L’Exil loin des slows (Le Pop Club/Modulor)
The record moves forward like a sleepless night: lucid and feverish at once, threaded with memories. Around novelist-singer Jean-Pierre Montal (Leur Chamade, Les Leçons du Vertige), the Parisian group continues to mine its velvet vein, blending electric dandyism, sentimental songs, and urban digressions in the manner of Lou Reed exiled to Ivry-sur-Seine. Guitars that constantly refuse the pretty, a saxophone that dirtys up the melodic line, and a voice that seems to sing from the depths of a city abandoned like Alain Kan vanished in the concrete maw of a last metro. Here, the style is inspired; modern exhaustion transforms into elegant visions.
Kurt Vile Philadelphia’s Been Good to Me (Verve/Universal)
The eternal slackmeister of Philadelphia returns with a very beautiful, soothing record, where dreamy indie-folk and introspective loops contemplate the passing of time. For Kurt Vile, if Philadelphia’s Been Good To Me is to be his last, then every song should sound as if it will never end. Otherwise, an extra looper may be necessary.
