Spine Hits is like a 45-minute moment where you think the drugs’ll kick in any second now.  There’s nothing explicitly trippy in sight, but there are these shadows zipping around the corners of your eyes, making make you wonder, is that it?  You swear the sun’s been hovering at the horizon for way too long- why won’t it set already?

It’s the middle of an early-90s Lollapallooza show I was too young to attend.  I don’t need to nap, I just need to lie on the grass in the shade for a spell.  It’s just, being out in the sun all day, the brightness, the heat, the humidity, all that, plus I’ve never taken this much before.  Pieces of Jane’s Addiction’s chilled-out space bubbles keep bouncing off the jagged jangle of Pavement, with lengthy flashes of Manchester ecstasy.  The raspy yet tender singer sounds like he’s growing up much faster than he’d like.  Shiny major-key hooks tango with gray minor-key angst.

I’d never heard of Sleepy Sun before I heard Spine Hits.  I simply saw the phrase “stoner rock” nearby, and some mannequin arms reaching out of a trash can, and I figured sure, why not? And at this point I don’t know when I’m going to check out more Sleepy Sun records.  I probably will, but there’s no rush.  I like Spine Hits enough to’ve given it 10 listens’ worth of my time over the past 6 weeks, and next week, when I’m drinking lots of beer on the beach, I’ll play it a few more times, whenever I’m not spinning the new Japandroids or Guided By Voices.

The nasal, wise-ass tones of Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz and Michael “Mike D” Diamond dominated the Beastie Boys’ high-chemistry Globetrotter flows, but the raspy growl of Adam “MCA” Yauch grounded everything, and added a half-ton of menace.  Ad-Rock and Mike D were a couple of hip-hop Joe Pescis, and MCA was their DeNiro.  No wonder that when the band picked up instruments, it was MCA who laid down those thick, groovy basslines.  (So many great ones to choose from, but my favorite’s gotta be the breakdown of “Sabotage:” Right after you think the song’s just napalmed itself into ash and rubble, MCA slides in and lays the foundation for one more round of punk-rap fury.)

When I was 6 years old, I bought my first cassette: Once I heard “Paul Revere,” I had to own Licensed To Ill. “Paul Revere” may be a violent tale of thuggery, but for at least 2/3 of its running time, it’s obviously goofy posturing.  Ad-Rock and Mike D, as slick and funny as they may be, sound more crazy and deluded than tough.  The track only sounds remotely dangerous when MCA grabs the mic (”My name is MCA, I got a license to kill/ I think you know what time it is, it’s time to get ill“).

The band’s early objectification of women never felt genuine to me- even at my more tender ages, “Girls” sounded way more like parody than philosophy.  Still, the Beasties were kind enough to atone for their youthful frat-boy antics, and managed to evolve into more enlightened musicians without sacrificing their edge or irreverence.  In 1994, when grotesque misogyny was really starting to plague mainstream hip-hop, MCA devoted a couple lines during the first track of the hotly-anticipated Ill Communication to call out the chauvinists:

I want to say a little something that’s long overdue
the disrespect to women has got to be through
to all the mothers and sisters and the wives and friends
I want to offer my love and respect to the end

Yet MCA remained just as much the jester as his bandmates, directing many of the band’s super-fun, silly-loving videos. Fittingly, his last directorial effort is arguably his cinematic masterpiece: 2011’s hilarious, star-studded short film “Fight For Your Right Revisited.”

Along with Run-D.M.C., the Beastie Boys were largely responsible for blasting rap music into American suburbs.  With Paul’s Boutique, the Beasties (with plenty of help from the Dust Brothers) drastically expanded hip-hop’s horizons.  For over 25 years, they’ve been one of the most respected and reliably amusing bands in pop music.  All three Beasties deserve props for what they’ve accomplished.  But Adam Yauch was the group’s heart and their rock-solid center.

For as long as he’s been a rock star, Jack White’s been a curious web of contradiction.  He slathered The White Stripes in gimmicks to get people to focus more on their music.  (But hey, it worked like gangbusters.)  He claimed 2003’s Elephant lamented the “death of the sweetheart” in American culture, then a few months after that album dropped, he pled guilty to pounding Jason Stollsteimer’s face.  Now, as he’s releasing Blunderbuss, his first solo album, he says this to NPR:

“When you put something out there into the world, there’s all these words you don’t want to hear, that you hope people don’t say…anything that starts with ‘re’ — like retro, reinvent, recreate — I hate that. It’s always like living in the past — copying, emulating.“

Which is funny, because while Jack makes vibrant, fresh-sounding music, he’s always had one foot firmly entangled in the extremely retro roots of American blues, folk, country, rock, punk, and R&B.  And on Blunderbuss, he’s arguably more old-timey than ever.  His 21st Century guitar fuzz barges in only sporadically.  It’s all over the very White Stripes-like garage stomper “Sixteen Saltines,” as well as the very Dead Weather-like mad science of “Freedom At 21.”  But elsewhere, aside from a riff here or a solo there, that’s about it.  No, despite the fact that its title refers to a kind of rifle, Blunderbuss is not generally loud or explosive.  It rocks hardest in “Sixteen Saltines,” which is track 2, then it spends most of its time jazzing, waltzing, and boogeying.

Sure,  it’s a little disappointing to hear Jack spend most of his time not rocking the hell out, but Blunderbuss is no disappointment.  It just takes a while to pick up steam.  It opens with “Missing Pieces,” which doesn’t exactly grab you the way opening tracks like “Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground” or “Seven Nation Army” or “Icky Thump” do, but at the very least, it’s a fine tone-setter. Musically, it tells us Jack’s in a mellower, jazzier mood, and thematically, its love-as-leprosy lyrics tell us his usual bitterness now comes with an extra dash of danse macabre.  Alas, the song also foreshadows how middling much of the album’s first half is (except for “Sixteen Saltines” and “Love Interruption,” two pretty good tracks that also happen to be the album’s first two singles).

Then with “Weep Themselves To Sleep,” Blunderbuss finally starts living up to the lofty expectations.  The melody’s mostly monotonous, but Jack pumps it with gallons of swagger.  The drums would make Meg White proud, the way they sucker-punch the groove.  Jack’s solo slaughters, especially on headphones, since actually it’s two solos played simultaneously in separate channels, which sound like a couple of Tesla coils deciding whether they should fuck.  The real hero here though is Brooke Waggoner’s piano lines, which thrust the track from the stratosphere all the way up to the thermosphere.  In fact, I’d say Brooke’s the undisputed breakout star of Blunderbuss.  I mean, we already knew Jack was pretty good.  Sweet-and-salty back-up singer Ruby Amanfu’s also pretty good, and I wouldn’t mind hearing her solo stuff.  But Brooke is something else throughout this album, knitting together classical, goth, honky-tonk, Dixieland, Nina Simone thunder, and Vince Guaraldi Peanuts jazz.

The second-side hot streak continues with “I’m Shakin’,” which aims to be  “All Shook Up” for 2012, and it’s thrice as fun as that sounds.  I’m gonna play this jam at my wedding and watch all the boomers twist with the millennials.  The slinky-piano-blues of “Trash Tongue Talker” is just as familiar and almost as fun.  “Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy” must be a gentle jab at Meg- a song to a girl who just wants to sit around while he continues to take over the world, singin’ the blues (”I’ll be using your name…let the stripes unfurl“).  But the track’s bouncy Kinks-via-New Orleans vibe suggests it comes from a playful, good-natured place one could only share with your ex-drummer/ex-wife/psuedo-big-sister.

Blunderbuss begins easing to a close with the good ol’ simplicity of “I Guess I Should Go To Sleep” and the breeze-blown confusion of “On And On And On.”  Then just when you think the last track “Take Me With You When You Go” is about to shuffle out the door like “Take Five,” out of nowhere Jack brings the rock back for one last encore.  And at the end of the day, behind all the bile and swagger and funky Zeppelin, there’s still a scared little boy in there.  He bitches about not wanting to be labelled “retro,” even though he so obviously is retro, so maybe he’s masking some deeper fear.  Like the fact that he hates being alone, and now he’s got to make it out there just as “Jack White.”

But whatever yo, I’m no psychologist.  Just a dude who’s been following Jack White for over a decade now.  All I know for sure is that I really like Blunderbuss, and this kid oughtta do just fine by himself.

Maps & Atlases took a giant leap toward the mainstream with Perch Patchwork, their excellent full-length debut.  The band’s early EPs were thick with sinewy, mathematical grooves that were also excellent, just harder to listen to for more than an EP’s worth of time.  But such grooves were thinned out significantly to make room for bigger hooks, deeper emotions, and poppier structures on Patchwork.  For their second LP, Beware And Be Grateful, Maps & Atlases take a small step closer to the mainstream with one foot as the other foot steps back toward their dense, intricate roots. It’s pleasing to hear the band widen their stance, and only in one spot does the delicate balance start to wobble.

As always, Dave Davison leads with his strangled, soulful voice; guitarist Erin Elders fires off riffs that show off his fleet fingers as well as his sharp hook-sense; and bassist Shiraz Dada & drummer Chris Hainey remain one of the best rhythm sections in America.  The textures on Beware are cleaner and sleeker than usual, but the structures are looser and jammier again.  The meat of the album, as with Patchwork, sounds like lean-muscled, Cat Stevens-fronted Tropicália (”Winter,” “Silver Self,” “Be Three Years Old,” “Bugs,” “Old Ash”).  The vibe may be familiar, though there’s plenty of dazzling novelty scattered in there, like the deliciously squiggly riffs of “Winter,” the hyper-doodle solo sprawling across the second half of “Silver Self,” and Davison’s throat-scratching passion in “Old Ash.”

Most of my favorite tracks happen to be the ones where the band steps further out of their comfort zone.  Opener “Old & Gray” is a real bewitcher.  Davison gazes wistfully at a relationship that came oh so close to beating the odds (“The writing on the wall is under three coats of paint/ in an apartment we don’t live in anymore“) as the tune drifts idly in a gently throbbing stream of multi-multi-tracked Kid A machine-ghosts.  Despite the apparent meandering, there’s no shortage of hooks pulling us toward the highly cathartic climax where Davison exorcises his pain through gratuitous melisma.  “Old & Gray” then slides sexily into “Fever,” a slab of arena-friendly pop that hang-glides on hope and chillwaves (”When the fever passes/ and we’re all back in our nests/ we’ll be extravagant hosts instead of imposing guests“).

Interestingly enough, Beware And Be Grateful’s best song is “Vampires,” perhaps the simplest song the band’s ever recorded.  Armed with a joyriding one-TWO!-three-FOUR! beat, the album’s best hooks, and a spirit of joyful defiance (”I don’t know if the vampires in this town/ just expect us to lay down and roll over…no, we won’t roll over!“), “Vampires” is a lock to make my Best Of 2012 mixtape.   The only flop on Beware is “Remote And Dark Years,” which, for my taste, is too fluffy with Bon Iver’s soft-rock twinkle-haze- albeit with more righteous drum fills.

Something about Beware And Be Grateful makes me think someone may have suffered a near-death experience before the album’s production.  Maybe it’s all those mortality-flavored song titles.  Or maybe it’s the cover, black and yellow like a warning sign, a tombstone etched with warm yet ominous advice.  And just like someone who’s come back from the edge of death, Maps & Atlases sound wiser, more rejuvenated, and eager to greet life’s next chapter.

Maps & Atlases became one of my new favorite bands in 2010, when their full-length debut Perch Patchwork floored me with its blend of intricate virtuosity and accessible pop songcraft.  So I’ve been awaiting new music from this band the way comics geeks have been awaiting The Dark Knight Rises. “Winter” is the first single from Maps & Atlases’ forthcoming album Beware And Be Grateful, and to me, it feels like a nice teaser more than an exciting trailer.  It’s got me a bit more hyped to hear the new LP, though I can’t help but hope they’re just saving the real fireworks for later.

Singer Dave Davison’s vocals and melodies aren’t quite as soulful or venturesome as most of the ones I fell for on Perch Patchwork, but I’m OK with that.  They’re catchy enough to keep me humming along, and besides, the instruments pick up more than enough slack here.  Bassist Shiraz Dada and drummer Chris Hainey are as springy, propulsive, and lockstep-tight as they’ve ever been, while Erin Elders’ guitars fill in the blanks with plenty of squiggly hooks.  If “Winter” proves to be one of the stronger tracks on Beware And Be Grateful, it should still be a solid and satisfying album.  But I’m crossing my fingers that “Winter” is merely a hint of what’s to come, and that it turns out Maps & Atlases have pushed themselves to greater heights yet again.

The Occupy movement isn’t in the news nearly as much as it was before Zuccotti Park allegedly became a health hazard, and Mayor Billionaire’s Brute Squad evicted the protestors in the dead of night without any of those pesky journalists getting in the way.  But Occupy is still a thing, and it could still come roaring back any day now.  Especially with the weather getting warmer, and with the distribution of wealth remaining ridiculously and unfairly lopsided.  And if Occupy does come roaring back, it’s gonna need some kick-ass protest anthems if it really wants to take this shit to the next level.

“Call To Arms” isn’t just Latyrx’s first official single in the 15 years since their excellent debut album, it’s also an eager attempt to be one of those sorely-needed Occupy anthems.  Or an athem for whatever protest movement that may rise up in Occupy’s place, should it fail to carry on, since “Call To Arms” doesn’t explicitly name-check any particular organization.  Nor does the song have a very specific agenda.  It basically asks, “Are you angry about all this bullshit?  OK cool, let’s march” (albeit in much more lyrical ways).  The chorus has Karyn Paige screaming “What do we want?”, and she doesn’t sound angry as much as she sounds like she’s just trying to be heard above the clamor.  Lateef and Lyrics Born, along with special guest Boots Riley of political hip-hop veterans The Coup, respond with “Anybody, everybody, everything.”  When Karyn screams “When do we want it?“, the answer is “Right the fuck now.”

Occupy caught some criticism for not having enough focus or offering enough solutions, and the same could certainly be said of “Call To Arms.”  (It also offers a dubious philosophy or two, such as “Long as we show up/ we’ve already won.”  If only.)  Of course, protest songs don’t necessarily need 10-point plans for correcting the wealth gap and reducing unemployment, they just need to inspire revolution.  In that respect, “Call To Arms” succeeds modestly.  It’s also noteworthy because it adopts an unusual tone for the kind of song it wants to be.  Protest music usually comes in the form of quiet Dylan-esque folk or raging Public Enemy-style noise.  But since Latyrx is always about positivity and throwing all-inclusive parties, “Call To Arms” takes the form of a reasonable, mid-tempo party jam with some decent hooks and a hot bassline.  It aims for the chip on your shoulder, and the fury in your heart, but mostly it aims for your cerebral cortex and your booty.  It may not be the musical Molotov Cocktail the 99% needs, but at least it’s a spark.

“Keep It In Motion” feels much longer than it should be, and yet not nearly long enough.  Longer than it should be because Guided By Voices (especially in their current Toxic Alien Blood lineup) typically don’t let a song go on for 2+ minutes if it only has about 30 seconds’ worth of ideas.  The simple structure of “Keep It In Motion” makes “Blitzkrieg Bop” sound like “Paranoid Android.”  Bob Pollard nestles with a beautifully easy melody and sings, “Keep it in motion/ keep it in line/ keep it in motion/ keep it on time/ walk it down the line/ walk it all the time/ keep it in line.” Then Tobin Sprout joins the next couple go-rounds basically to echo what Pollard’s singing.

Despite how much it milks itself, “Keep It In Motion” makes me want to listen to it dozens of times in a row, or however long until I get my fill for the foreseeable future.  It’s uncannily comforting.  The driving beat, the floating guitar, Pollard & Sprout’s awful bliss, the strings or synths or string-like synths: together it all rolls along like “Don’t Panic” in skywritten calligraphy.  It doesn’t rock very hard, but it somehow reassures me that rock n’ roll will never die.  Sometimes I wish it went on for like 20 minutes, but ultimately I’m glad it ends every 2:17.  That’s about how often I need the one electric guitar chord at the end, boinging in out of nowhere and giving the track that big “yeah!” it quietly wishes for the whole time.

“Keep It In Motion” is the first single from Guided By Voices’ forthcoming album Class Clown Spots A UFO, due to drop in about 3 months.  Yes, Guided By Voices dropped a new album less than 3 months ago, and it was pretty good.

The Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt is always eager to prove there are infinite realms of love waiting to be revealed by pop music; that, if written well enough, love songs will never lose their power to touch us and tickle us and break our hearts in totally new ways.

As the title of Love At The Bottom Of The Sea implies, Merritt has set out this time to explore some of love’s murkier, slimier habitats.  In past songs, he’s stabbed lovers and fantasized about pushing them off cliffs, but now he’s a bit more twisted than that.  The narrator of “Your Girlfriend’s Face,” for example, hires a hitman to shoot her cheating man’s girlfriend in the face, and then that woman scorned is gonna bury the guy alive while he’s tweaking on crystal meth.  Another cuckquean in “My Husband’s Pied-a-Tierre” also wishes deadly revenge on her unfaithful man, only this time she’s singing from a loony bin after discovering her spouse’s “bachelor pad.”  As is often the case in Magnetic Fields songs, the results are much more charming on record than on paper: the delivery is always delightfully deadpan, and the melodies are a fine mix of familiar and novel.

Then there’s the synths.  The synths are a big deal here.  This is partly because synths were such a big deal for The Magnetic Fields early in their career, up through their utterly-essential masterpiece 69 Love Songs.  But 69 Love Songs was over 12 years ago, and the 3 very good albums the band released between then and now (i, Distortion, Realism) deliberately offered zero synths.  Now Love At The Bottom Of The Sea is all about synths, and playing with lots of cool new synth toys that have become available in the past 12+ years.  The “bottom of the sea” isn’t just a metaphor for the depths of love we’re navigating; it also describes all the whooshes and waves and blurps we’re scuba-diving within.

The fun that Merritt & company have jumping back in the synth pool is palpable and contagious.  It makes “Your Girlfriend’s Face” a death threat you can wiggle your butt to.  It makes religious-mandated abstinence sound as sexy as actual sex in “God Wants Us To Wait.”  All that synthesizing is such a diversion it can even distract from how much substance there is.  During the first listen or two, Love At The Bottom Of The Sea might seem more superficial than the typical Magnetic Fields album, without any songs as beautiful as past gems like, say, “The Book Of Love” or “It’s Only Time.”  However, more than a few songs reveal some serious poignancy after repeated listens.

“Andrew In Drag” initially comes off like an amusing farce, with its ladies’ man narrator falling madly for a cross-dresser.  But it becomes awfully heart-breaking the more you hear it and think about it.  This guy isn’t just falling for Andrew in drag, he’s practically ruined by Andrew in drag.  He’s unable to fall for any man or woman anymore.  And not only that- Andrew’s not even into drag. It was a one-time thing: “I’ll never see that girl again/ he did it as a gag.”  There’s no hope of our humble narrator ever fulfilling his burning desire.  This is some fucking Shakespearean tragedy right here.

In “The Only Boy In Town,” a woman could totally fall for the boy she’s singing to, if only it weren’t for every other boy alive striking her fancy.  In “Machine In Your Hand,” a guy wishes he could be the iPhone-like gizmo for a tech-obsessed crush (”I don’t know why I love you/ you’re not really a person/ more a gadget with meat stuck to it“).  The fact that both of these songs feel genuinely romantic is borderline miraculous, and a testament to Merritt’s genius.

Yet there a few tracks where Merritt’s genius takes a smoke break, and not even a boatload of cool synths can rescue them.  A particularly disappointing stretch follows the excellent opening sequence of “God Wants Us To Wait,” “Andrew In Drag,” and “Your Girlfriend’s Face.”  The sluggish “Born To Love” isn’t helped any by the generic hopeless romantic behind the microphone.  “I’d Go Anywhere With Hugh” doesn’t go anywhere beyond it’s blandly punny unrequited love triangle (”I love Hugh/ and Hugh loves you/ you love me/ and he does not/ I don’t love you/ you don’t love Hugh…“).  “Infatuation (With Your Gyration)” is barely more inventive than The Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps.”  Fortunately, there aren’t any more stinkers until the last track, “All She Cares About Is Mariachi,” which seems to exist merely to rhyme “mariachi” with words like “hibachi” and “Liberace.”  (Though I must admit I giggled at the lyric “So go ahead and hire Saatchi & Saatchi/ to advertise the sausage in your pants.”)  Any of these tracks could have been redeemed by a great Stephin Merritt melody, but alas, their tunes are as half-assed as their premises.

One of the best things about Love At The Bottom Of The Sea, though, is its brevity- of 15 songs, only 3 go past 2 and a half minutes.  So the few weak tracks zip by relatively painlessly.  As for the many good-to-great tracks, they pack worlds of luster into their tiny spheres- just like little pearls.

There’s masochism, and then there’s whatever the hell “Love Interruption” is.  He wants love to stab him, bite him, betray him, kill his mother and send her wherever, he doesn’t seem to care.  If love hurts like a mother-killer, then it must be the real deal.  The chorus is where things get a little hazy: “I won’t let love disrupt/ corrupt or interrupt me/ anymore.”  Is he finally starting to outgrow his masochism?  Or is it the opposite: what if love has been so painless, innocent, and acquiescent for so long that it has, in fact, become disruptive, corruptive, and interruptive- which is what’s driving him toward pain and humiliation in the first place?

I’m not looking for answers here.  There’s much beauty in such stark ambiguity.  Jack’s and Ruby Amanfu’s vocals get it just right, too: fearful and fragile, yet curious and bold.

The song works just fine without drums, yet sometimes I feel like it begs for drums, and Jack adamantly refuses to give it any drums.  It’s Jack’s first solo single now that he and Meg have officially disbanded, and there’s a big, gaping, percussion-less hole inside.  Coincidence?

If you ask me, a worthwhile trip should have plenty of kaleidoscopic whimsy, but also a sense of menace lurking in the shadows.  A trip that’s all rainbow butterflies and pinwheel treetops is nice and all, but where’s the challenge in that?  If, on the other hand, you can skip through cotton candy meadows and marvel at the cosmic beauty in a single dandelion spore for hours on end, while at the same time courageously swatting every mischievous imp that periodically tries to pounce on you from the abyss of your subconsciousness, well then you’ve exercised a tremendously valuable real-life skill, haven’t you?

Django Django’s frequently great, extremely promising self-titled album knows how to balance the light and the dark in the realm of psychedelia.  The boomba-boom drums sound like dancefloors quaking beneath the feet of 1,000 candy-flippers at the rave of the century, yet they also sound like ancient hunters chasing you through a midnight forest.  The melodies are jaunty as London fops, yet squirmy as easily-agitated eels.  The guitars bubble and groove when they’re not plotting your demise.  The synths propel neon trails across the sky, right before they charm pits of venomous cobras.  The lyrics blend the idyllic (”Look at the hills/ they look so green/ the horizon is the place that you always dream“) with perilous interstellar overdrive (”Stars shine in the night sky/ you light up like a solar flare/ watch us burn up on contact/ as we enter the atmosphere”).

Django Django is generally more potent when swallowed whole as a 48-minute odyssey, though it does have its fair share of single-worthy tracks.  The best of those is “Default,” a bitter, block-busting dance-rock jam with an irresistible glitch-throb hook.  “Firewater” shimmies and snaps along to a friendly acoustic guitar lick over a drinker’s lament (”My liver’s up and left me/ the devil thinks I’m great“).   And there’s a particularly strong string in the middle of the album’s second half, starting with “Wor,” which gallops astride a rockabilly-surf riff that recalls PJ Harvey’s “50 Foot Queenie.”  “Storm” features some of the album’s most enticing melodies, as well as a groove that’s simultaneously sleek and herky-jerky, right before “Life’s A Beach” keeps the shindig rolling with Beach Boys harmonies and sinister breakdowns.

Only a couple tracks border on uninspired.  “Skies Over Cairo” takes on a hookah-smoking Middle Eastern vibe we’ve heard many times before, only it doesn’t add much aside from some video game sound effects.  And centerpiece “Zumm Zumm” defies practically everything that works on Django Django: where all the other tracks are tight and lean, “Zumm Zumm” pads itself out to nearly 5 and a half minutes; instead of inducing any kind of trance, the repetitive hooks turn annoying real quick; and it’s pure silliness, with none of the darkness we talked about earlier to balance things out.

But Django Django’s missteps are minor and totally forgivable compared to its triumphs.  Wherever Syd Barrett is, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s looking down on this band, smiling his childlike smile, and wondering where they’ll journey next.