Whether the gateway drug function of split seven-inches has been diminished by file-sharing and streaming media is up for debate, but even if it’s no longer the easiest way to encounter a few new bands, the format can still work. Consider this split between Brooklyn’s Me You Us Them and Austin’s Bloody Knives, which has already prompted me to track down their respective 2010 full-lengths.* Both bands have been lumped in with the shoegaze revival, which fits Bloody Knives better than Me You Us Them, but neither band should be discounted as a stock “Fender Jaguar + Boss PN-2 Tremolo Pan Pedal = Shoegaze!” act. That alone should pique your interest, but an interesting bait and switch on the part of Me You Us Them should maintain it.

Bloody Knives pull off a neat trick with “I Was Talking to Your Ghost”—as the drums, guitar fuzz, and especially bass speed along, Preston Maddox’s vocals float calmly overhead, seemingly disinterested by the racing pulse below. It’s not far off from Oliver Ackermann’s approach in A Place to Bury Strangers, but the lack of gothic overtones to Maddox’s vocals is refreshing. Bloody Knives’ 2010 LP Burn It All Down offers a bit more variety, hitting on the drum-machine dream-pop of early Cocteau Twins, the aggression of APTBS, and the 8-bit textures and bright melodies of the sadly departed Depreciation Guild. Burn It All Down is available for free download from Bandcamp right now. Keep an eye out for their upcoming remix album, Burn It All Up, which should be available from Killredrocket Records in the near future.

No shoegaze touchstones are needed for Me You Us Them's "Research." If you’d told me in January that I’d make a positive comparison to ’90s Amphetamine Reptile outfit Calvin Krime in a 2011 review, I’d assume that either Sean Tillman came out with an atypically aggressive Sean Na Na or Har Mar Superstar single, not that an unfamiliar band was mining similar territory. But the combination of abrasive screaming, driving three-piece rock, and a pressure-relieving melodic chorus recalls the Calvin Krime playbook. It’s hard to tell if the melodic lead is treated guitar or fuzzy synth, but either way, it’s been floating through my head the past few days. I don’t mean to sell MYUT short with the Calvin Krime comparison, especially since that band might not have pulled off this song’s bass-driven bridge or the buried vocals of “Will we ever wake up?” building into screams in the outro as deftly, but I appreciate revisiting the sound.

Here’s the real shocker: “Research” is an outlier in Me You Us Them’s catalog. I missed the boat on their 2010 Post-Data full-length, but it offers a striking mix of Polvo’s woozy riffage, Paik’s early guitar textures (especially Hugo Strange), and the Swirlies’ off-kilter melodies with a touch of punk aggression. In other words, it fits into a fine tradition of using shoegaze impulses in more muscular, less ethereal song structures. “As of Now” is a good starting point.

Considering that I’ve checked out both band’s albums and am particularly keen on spending more time with Me You Us Them’s Post-Data, you can easily chalk this split up as a rousing success. You can stream both songs over at Bandcamp and order the 7” from Triple Down Records or Killredrocket Records.

* The ability to quickly follow up on each of these bands is a welcome departure from the old routine of split singles, when I’d hear a great new band only to learn that their only other released tracks are on an out-of-print local compilation, their albums are only available in Denmark, or they’d split up before recording a full-length.

After clearing the decks in 2009 with National Skyline’s first full-length (Bliss & Death) since 2001’s This Equals Everything and two companion EPs (Look into My Eyes and Bloom), Jeff Garber laid low in 2010. His only releases were the digital singles “Ashes” and “Do You.” Garber slinks back into the spotlight with the unannounced Broadcasting, Vol. 1 EP, picking up where Bliss & Death’s more languid tracks left off.

Opening track “When I’m Alone” showcases Broadcasting’s bag of tricks: acoustic guitar, gossamer guitar overdubs, distant drum machines, and Jeff Garber’s weary vocals. It’s lyrically thin, repeating lines like “When I’m alone / I get so lost / When I’m alone / I get so tired of my life” as breadcrumbs to make it out of the instrumental mist.

Here’s the rub: “When I’m Alone” showcases all of Broadcasting’s bag of tricks. Granted, live drums replace the drum machines on the final three songs and “Walk Away” adds simple piano, but Garber seems glued to mellow acoustic balladry. If the songs were compelling, perhaps I could overlook the sonic similarities, but that’s not the case. The lazy song titles (“When I’m Alone,” “I’ll Be Allright” [sic], “Stay with Me,” “Walk Away,” “I’ll Stay with You”), trite lyrics, and numbing lack of energy turns Broadcasting, Vol. 1 into sentimental mush.

Garber’s been here before. The Joy Circuit’s EP1 and National Skyline’s The Last Day EP both suffer from thin lyrics and generic aesthetics. I’ve previously cited the lyric “Hey you / I know you / This is not where you belong” from The Joy Circuit’s “They Know Where You Live” as a painfully a propos reading of Garber’s output since This Equals Everything and his residency in Los Angeles. Yet Bliss & Death revived most of my faith in Garber and National Skyline. There’s a “fooled me twice—shame on me” quality to Broadcasting, Vol. 1, one that I take no pleasure in relaying.

Here’s my theory. Broadcasting, Vol. 1 is a dumping ground EP for Garber’s latest batch of TV placement songs. The soupy melodrama of “The Last Day” wasn’t a great follow-up to “A Million Circles,” but it did appear in a key scene of the third season of Veronica Mars. (An ironically appropriate placement, given that season’s infuriating lack of direction and inspiration.) At least four of National Skyline’s tracks have appeared on MTV’s cultural touchstone Jersey Shore: “Do You,” Bliss & Death’s “Edge of the World” and “Revenge,” and “Look into My Eyes.” If digital single sales are way up and album sales are way down, it’s likely that Garber gains more fans and earns more money by getting those songs on Jersey Shore than releasing an album of them like Bliss & Death.

My issue isn’t with Garber’s decision to monetize his music via MTV reality series. The man has to eat. My issue is that the songs on Broadcasting, Vol. 1 are tailor-made for that purpose. I know Garber can write an affecting lyric—“Five Hours Later,” “Tracking Sounds Alone,” “Miss Atlantic,” “This Is Not a Test,” and “Kandles” all qualify—but the on-the-nose emotions of “I’ll Be Allright” are all surface, no depth. How easy would it be to fit lines like “I’m going to be all right, you’ll see / No need to worry about me” and “I won’t call you anymore / And I won’t be there when you’re alone” into a tender post-break-up scene? Is there any other context for it? It’s admittedly not that far off from the pained semi-yodels of “Tracking Sounds Alone”—“I looked you up in the telephone book / I took my phone off the hook” and “I wish you rang / And I wish I sang”—but there’s a complexity (not to mention a genuineness) to the emotion in “Tracking Sounds Alone” as Garber careens between regret, pride, self-doubt, and optimism. Nothing on Broadcasting offers that complexity or rings so true. (Nor can I imagine “Tracking Sounds Alone” being used as background music.)

Does this mean that the proper follow-up to Bliss & Death will be a similar disappointment? Not necessarily. Only “When I’m Alone” seems like a candidate for inclusion, and it sounds more like a good b-side than a deep album cut. With more energy, more guitar overdubs, and better lyrics—i.e. the things that made Bliss & Death worth hearing—Garber’s back on track. But once you’ve gotten used to the on-the-nose lyrical approach, is it difficult to stop? That’s the big question. If Broadcasting, Vol. 1 is, as I suspect, a dumping ground for Garber’s potential TV placements, let’s hope it doesn’t pollute the groundwater of his main base.

When The Forms first announced that their next release would be a remix EP called Derealization, I was cautiously optimistic. The Forms are great; remix albums typically are not. Still, their track record insisted they could pull it off. The group’s two albums—it’s difficult to call them “full-lengths” when Icarus runs 18 minutes and The Forms runs 30—and stray covers (Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” R.E.M.’s “Ignoreland”) are universally excellent. Beyond their intriguing, off-kilter guitar tones and ear-worm vocal hooks, The Forms’ greatest strength is their ability to revisit and revise the past. Icarus applies the editorial acumen of Wire’s Pink Flag to mid 1990s emo like Sunny Day Real Estate, fragmenting the song structures without losing sight of the emotional charge. The Forms, an album that gets better with every spin, envisions an alternate universe of 1990s indie/emo/math-rock where groups like Polvo could really sing, placing the vocals on top of the mix instead of burying them beneath the shifting guitar patterns. Changing the vocal intonation of and adding a droning, post-punk bass line to “We Didn’t Start the Fire” cleansed decades of its brain-numbing melody. With only an hour of widely available music to date, I was thrilled to hear anything new from the Forms, but opting for a remix EP—and a much delayed one at that—over their first album since 2007 seemed strange.

I’d hoped to pick up a physical copy of Derealization when I saw The Forms play a snow-sabotaged set at T.T. the Bear’s on December 28, only to learn that it wouldn’t be available until February. Nevertheless, I gained a much clearer idea of what “remix” means to the Forms.

I expected to see a four-piece rock band, but I’d missed the announcement that The Forms had been pared down to a two-piece. Alex Tween and Matt Walsh set up their keyboards/midi controllers first, with only Walsh having guitars in tow. They opened with an accordion and steel drum rendition of “Knowledge in Hand,” followed it with a synthesizer and miniature guitar reimagining of “Focus,” then turned “Red Gun” into electro-pop. I knew the melodies and the lyrics, but each had been pushed and pulled to fit their new arrangements, none of which sounded remotely like Sunny Day Real Estate or Polvo. Every song added some new element to the mix—’80s drum pads, dexterous guitar riffs, falsetto vocal runs—and by the end of the set, I got it. The band had been remixed. No wonder why Derealization took so long.

That’s the difference between Derealization and the hit-and-mostly-miss remix compilations I have from other rock bands (Mogwai, Swirlies, Dismemberment Plan, Bloc Party, Isis, Explosions in the Sky, Minus the Bear, etc.): The Forms are actively working with these versions. Remix albums are closed circuits. Groups send their material out to remixers, who rearrange it, add their own touches, and generally apply their own aesthetic to it. Once these remixes have been collected, the respective aesthetics rub against each other awkwardly. Some work, some don’t. But even in the case of a truly successful remix—Justin Broadrick’s take on Pelican’s “Angel Tears,” Kevin Shields’ explosion of “Mogwai Fear Satan”—it’s a static object upon release. Mogwai and Pelican haven’t performed those versions live. The very thought of that—“We’ve been learning how to play this remix of our song and rehearsing it a lot”—sounds comical. Remixes aren’t usually written or treated like original songs.

Then again, Derealization isn’t a traditional remix album. It may have started out as one, but Tween and Walsh did the rearrangements, not outside contractors. Collaborators color the songs, but don’t fully dictate the sound. Derealization is halfway between a remix album and a sharp directional turn, like Bob Mould’s embrace of electronic music on Modulate (except, you know, good). These songs are built on old material, but they stand on their own as new compositions. Guest vocalists The National’s Matt Berninger, Pattern Is Movement’s Andrew Thiboldeaux, and (especially) Shudder to Think’s Craig Wedren excel with The Forms’ material. Tween’s vocals in turn have improved to better fit the pop nature of the new versions. New instrumental choices like strings, acoustic guitar, electronic programming, synth bass, and drum machines never seem out of place. The switch from rock to pop as the dominant genre tag seems all too easy, especially on the Wedren-fronted highlight “Finally.” If only all “remix” albums went through this ringer.

And the remixing—in terms of the band perspective—isn’t over. After seeing The Forms again last night (opening for the Dismemberment Plan), I was amazed by how different the songs are in the live setting: much more electronic, much more dance-oriented. It’s a jarring flip from anyone solely familiar with The Forms’ past work, but Derealization acts as a buffer between the eras. It’s also encouraging that The Forms played at least three new songs, suggesting that a new release might not be four years away.

Derealization is getting a CDEP pressing, but I recommend the stark collision of past and present on the upcoming LP pressing of Derealization, which puts the remix EP on one side and Icarus on the flip. It makes logistical sense—Icarus hits vinyl for the first time—but it also showcases two vastly different eras of the band in the same place. Maybe someday the rock band incarnation of The Forms will open for the electro-pop version.

Rock Action – Matador, 2001

Highlights: “2 Rights Make One Wrong,” “Sine Wave,” “Dial: Revenge,” “You Don’t Know Jesus”

Low Points: “Robot Chant,” “Secret Pint”

Overall: Rock Action marks the start of a new era for Mogwai LPs. Gone are the hour-long runtimes. Rock Action clocks in at a tidy thirty-eight minutes. Its eight songs include a pair of minute-long snippets: the back-masked piano ballad “O I Sleep” and the industrial fuzz of “Robot Chant.” Subtract those and you’ve got six songs, thirty-six minutes. I can’t help but think of other albums in the “six songs, roughly forty minutes” club: Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock, Slint’s Spiderland, Rodan’s Rusty, and Tortoise’s Millions Now Living Will Never Die. You were so close, Mogwai. So close.

Decrease in runtime isn’t the only major change. Of the six full tracks, five of them have vocals of some sort (frequently hidden in a vocoder). Only “You Don’t Know Jesus” qualifies as “rocking.” “Sine Wave” has squelching electronic noise reminiscent of IDM. “2 Rights Make 1 Wrong” has prominent banjo, strings, and brass, and concludes with a four-person choral arrangement. This emphasis on additional instrumentation didn’t happen overnight. Dave Fridmann applied horns and strings to Come on Die Young. These elements became central parts of their songs on the Mogwai EP. But on Rock Action, these decisions steer songs in new directions.

The songs are still Mogwai songs, though. A top-down view of “Sine Wave” shows a gradual crescendo, even if its sonic profile is nothing like “Yes! I Am a Long Way from Home.” The throbbing drums, muffled vocals, and buried melodies of “Sine Wave” may sound little like what came before them, but the effect is still the same. “Take Me Somewhere Nice” revives an atypical Mogwai blueprint—the vocal-driven slow-core of “Cody”—and weaves horns and strings around a regretful Stuart Braithwaite vocal. Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys helms “Dial: Revenge,” layering Welsh vocals around acoustic guitars and yearning strings. If not for the familiar emotional palette, you might wonder which band recorded that song. “You Don’t Know Jesus” reorients the listener back into the world of dimly lit instrumental rock, recalling Come on Die Young’s excellent “Ex-Cowboy.” What it lacks in surprises it makes up for in craftsmanship—few of Mogwai’s dynamic rock songs are this carefully planned and precisely executed.

Those four songs would comprise a very nice EP, but Rock Action becomes a bona-fide full-length with its penultimate song, “2 Rights Make 1 Wrong.” Like “Mogwai Fear Satan” on Young Team, “2 Rights” comprises a quarter of Rock Action’s runtime. I mentioned the song’s instrumental arrangement earlier—banjo, strings, brass, electronics, vocoder, a four-part chorus—but what I didn’t emphasize is the effect of all of these pieces. “2 Rights Make 1 Wrong” hits several awe-inspiring peaks—the rousing brass crescendo in the song’s first half, the quiet mingling of Barry Burns’ vocodered voice and the insistent banjo melody in the song’s introspective valley, and the unexpected beauty of the crossing voices in the choral outro. Here’s the amazing part: none of them are guitar-driven. Credit producer Dave Fridmann for pulling all of these pieces together, but also credit Mogwai for recognizing a simple fact: these moments all sound better with this alternate instrumentation. The song is still fantastic in the guitar-driven live setting, but as a studio recording, it ranks at the very top of Mogwai’s best work.

Rock Action closes with “Secret Pint,” which lingers in the wake of “2 Rights Make 1 Wrong.” Don’t expect guitars to dominate here, either. Stuart Braithwaite’s mumbled vocal, up-front drums, lingering piano, and occasional strings all take precedence over the quietly strummed guitars. My preference would be to close Rock Action with the uplifting finale of “2 Rights Make 1 Wrong,” not give it a reserved coda. It certainly is strange that once I finish praising Fridmann for his superb job elevating “2 Rights Make 1 Wrong” with his production touches, “Secret Pint” feels overwhelmed by them. I greatly prefer the version included on Government Commissions, but I’ll get to that one later.

Rock Action ranks as my second favorite Mogwai full-length behind Young Team. I can certainly understand the logical slights against the album—it’s close to EP length, it doesn’t feature as much guitar rock as their other albums, the emphasis on vocals gets them away from their usual strengths—but for the most part, I view each of those points as a blessing. The last thing I wanted following Come on Die Young was another sprawl-heavy double album. After the excellent Mogwai EP, I recognized Mogwai’s capacity to write music that didn’t require a crescendo into distorted guitar to succeed. Songs like “Cody,” “R U Still in 2 It,” and “Tuner” demonstrated Mogwai’s aplomb for a variety of vocal approaches, so the array of voices on Rock Action isn’t some unforeseen outlier. It certainly doesn’t hurt that one of my two favorite Mogwai songs, “2 Rights Make 1 Wrong,” holds the album together. It’s the start of a new era of shorter, tighter Mogwai albums, but it stands apart from Happy Songs for Happy People and Mr. Beast in quality and approach.

Despite this praise, I have a major qualifier for Rock Action: don’t start here. Know the norms first so you can appreciate how Rock Action deviates from them (precisely what post-rock should do). Check out Young Team, Mogwai EP, and one of the live compilations, then come to Rock Action and it’ll be a breath of fresh air.

My Father My King – Matador, 2001

Overall: Warning: The majority of this entry on Mogwai’s “My Father My King” is a screed against the production values/decisions for the song. Let me not forget to emphasize that “My Father My King” is a completely badass, inspired song that you definitely need to hear in some capacity. If not for those production issues, it would be firmly among “Mogwai Fear Satan” and “2 Rights Make 1 Wrong” in the holy trinity of Mogwai epics. Now let the diatribe begin.

I rarely take issue with Steve Albini’s engineering jobs. He’s done absolutely perfect work on albums like the Jesus Lizard’s Goat, Silkworm’s Firewater, Shellac’s At Action Park and The Forms’ self-titled LP. You know what you’re going to get with Albini: a remarkable replication of what it’s like to be in the room while the band is playing. Whether that result fits a band’s sound, however, is the rub. Two conditions have to be met: first, you have to sound good in the room, i.e. be a “tight” live band; second, it’s best if you don’t use the studio as an instrument, Eno-style. It’s the second condition where My Father My King falls short, which is an ironic turn of events.

An emphasis on the “studio as an instrument” approach is the defining aspect of producer Dave Fridmann’s stint behind the boards for Mogwai’s previous two full-lengths. What works so well for the Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, and the Delgados—an up-front drum sound, space for additional instrumentation like horns and strings, electronic flourishes—has mixed results for Mogwai. Sometimes it excels (“Cody,” “Sine Wave,” especially “2 Rights Make 1 Wrong”), sometimes it overwhelms the song (“Helps Both Ways,” “Secret Pint”). My general feeling is that Mogwai were pushed too close to the orchestral rock of Fridmann’s usual clientele, a movement away from their core identity as a guitar-rock band. “My Father My King” is a response to that, a twenty-minute reassurance that they are, in fact, a guitar-rock band, even if its initial potential looked past that distinction.

I first heard “My Father My King” on a webcast of the group’s All Tomorrow’s Parties performance from 2000 (download the mp3 of that performance here). Bolstered by a string trio, Mogwai added another dynamic, eardrum-crushing epic to their repertoire. Basing the song’s melody on the Jewish prayer Avinu Malkeinu (“Our Father Our King”), Mogwai strayed from their usual melodic progressions and gave the adapted hymn an apocalyptic resonance, especially when those strings picked up. The guitars did much of the heavy lifting, taking over the song for stretches, but it was the presence and prominence of the string section that hooked me, offering counter-melodies that pierced through the thick cloud of distortion. When they picked up the main melody over the rumbling noise of the song’s outro, gradually falling more and more out of tune, I couldn’t help but wonder how jaw-dropping it would sound not coming from RealPlayer. Nevertheless, I played that cached stream on a near-constant loop for months.

The one-track CD single for “My Father My King” (hear the first part on YouTube) came out six months after Rock Action. Most reviews were positive, calling it a perfect companion piece for the atypically reserved Rock Action and the monolith that album was lacking (you know, if “2 Rights Make 1 Wrong” doesn’t count). I took it a different way: Steve Albini sucked the life out of this song.

That’s not a fair statement, since Albini did what Albini does: replicate the sound in the room. The guitars and bass sound downright venomous, undulating in waves of writhing distortion. The drums sound fine, but Martin Bulloch isn’t as forceful as Albini regulars like Silkworm’s Michael Dahlquist (rest in peace), Shellac’s Todd Trainer, or the Jesus Lizard’s Mac McNeilly. The problem is with the string section. Regular Mogwai collaborators Caroline Barber (cello) and Luke Sutherland (violin) must’ve been set up down the hall, since their presence on the track is so greatly diminished from that All Tomorrow’s Parties performance.

Here’s where Albini’s distinction as an engineer, not a producer, comes into play. As an engineer, he sees Barber and Sutherland walk into the studio, mics their instruments, and records their performance. An engineer wouldn’t insist on multi-tracking the strings for added prominence, bringing in an additional string quartet, or contracting a local orchestra. A producer, on the other hand, might suggest those possibilities. A producer like Dave Fridmann, perhaps? I suspect that a Fridmann recording of “My Father My King” would have the opposite problem of Albini’s take. Yes, the strings would be more prominent, but the guitars wouldn’t have the bite of Albini’s recording. “My Father My King” would not work if it sounded anything like the Flaming Lips or Mercury Rev.

The point of releasing “My Father My King” separate from Rock Action was to show a separate side of Mogwai, the dissonant, noisy side, and to their credit, that’s what Albini’s version does. What the All Tomorrow’s Parties performance, out-of-tune strings and all, argues is that showing one side or the other of Mogwai’s aesthetic profile precludes the possibility of showing both sides. I want the nasty guitar noise, but I also want the bombast of a prominent string section. If you’re recording a twenty-minute-long instrumental with apocalyptic overtones, why hold back? Were they afraid of sounding too much like Godspeed You Black Emperor? Maybe I’m spoiled by the resonance of the first version I heard (it wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened with Mogwai), but I find myself going back to that version. The point that shouldn’t be overlooked (hence the preface to this entry) is that I am going back to some version, proving that “My Father My King” remains one of Mogwai’s most impressive compositions.

An interesting postscript to this discussion of Mogwai’s production values. They haven’t gone back to a name producer / engineer since “My Father My King,” choosing to record their next four official LPs and the Zidane soundtrack with fellow Scotsmen Tony Doogan, Andy Miller, and Paul Savage (the former drummer of the Delgados who’s also done excellent work with Aereogramme, Arab Strap, and the Twilight Sad). Miller and Savage handled Young Team and much of the other early Mogwai material. Mogwai also built their own studio, Castle of Doom, and have done recording and/or mixing for their most recent albums in it. While I mostly enjoy the production values that these three men have brought to the more recent Mogwai material, I do wonder what they’d sound like with a more hands-on producer brought into the fold.

First of all, you can view my top twenty of albums of the year over here.

That’s the first and most important feature of New Artillery’s year-end wrap-up, but it’s certainly not the only one. This post also covers the honorable mentions and older breakthrough albums. Some point this week I'll polish off my two CD 2010 mix, my favorite live performance list, and (quite possibly) a rambling post of statistical analysis and meta-commentary on my year of listening. First, let's start with the honorable mentions.

Honorable mentions for 2010

The Acorn’s No Ghost
The Depreciation Guild’s Spirit Youth
Emeralds’ Does It Look Like I’m Here
Four Tet’s There Is Love in You
Hoquiam’s Hoquiam
Damien Jurado’s Saint Bartlett
Killing Joke’s In Excelsis EP and Absolute Dissent
The Radio Dept.’s Clinging to a Scheme
Superchunk’s Majesty Shredding
Team Ghost’s Celebrate What You Can’t See EP
The Twilight Sad’s The Wrong Car EP
Warpaint’s The Fool

You will hear more about a few of those albums as I continue to plug away at full-length reviews.

Older Albums That Hit Me in 2010

The A.V. Club uses the word “discovered” in their similarly themed article, but in many of these cases, I knew about or had even heard these albums prior to this year, but they simply didn’t click until now. Longer reviews linked when available.

Faust’s Faust IV: There’s a larger dialogue to be had in terms of how much 1970s German music I checked out in 2010, but Faust’s Faust IV might be the best of it. These tricksters subvert expectations at every turn, from the noisy drift of “Krautrock” to the weirdo mod strumming of “The Sad Skinhead,” from the weightless dreaming of “Jennifer” to the off-kilter sax of “Giggy Smile.” I picked up Faust So Far a few months later, but kept coming back to Faust IV trying to make sense out of it.

Klaus Schulze’s Trancefer: The stars aligned for Klaus Schulze this year: I got into a few contemporary artists who are influenced by his work (Emeralds, Oneohtrix Point Never), I kept running into his LPs up at Mystery Train, and the tense electronic epics on Trancefer soundtracked a few memorable trips into Boston. Whether Trancefer ranks highly among his stacks of solo albums is beyond me, but it made for a solid introduction.

Sonic Youth’s EVOL and Murray Street: I won’t add to the word count apocalypse that was Sonic Youth Discographied, but these two albums are the ones that I most enjoyed getting to know.

The For Carnation’s The For Carnation: This quietly absorbing dose of post-rock storytelling never strayed far from my turntable, but its best application was during late summer evenings. With the windows open and the sound of crickets filtering in, I’d sit and wonder why Brian McMahan hadn’t recorded anything in a decade when this album is so damned good.

Ornette Coleman’s Science Fiction: I had grand schemes of becoming informed on jazz at the beginning of the year, but soon that took a backseat to my usual diet of guitar rock. The primary exception was Science Fiction, an album full of surprises that pushed against what I expected from Ornette Coleman and yet couldn’t have come from anyone else.

Yo La Tengo’s I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One: Want the reality of The Haul? I bought this album back in March, listened to it immediately, loved it, wondered why I hadn’t spent time with it earlier, tried writing about it, kept listening to it, tried writing about it again, and kept listening to it. The embryonic entry is still sitting at 156 words in my massive .doc for the project (over 41,000 words), but my desire to finish it isn’t quite up to my need to get it right. Too often I just end up listening to “We’re an American Band” over and over, hoping to lose myself in the dreamy fuzz.

Palace Music’s Viva Last Blues: Similar to Yo La Tengo, I’d heard and enjoyed Will Oldham’s music before (especially I See a Darkness), but hadn’t ventured to his Palace-era albums. I corrected that mistake to a certain degree this year, getting Viva Last Blues in the same trip to Mystery Train as I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, but every time I listen to it, I feel like I need another spin to wrap my head around it. I’ve already booked Oldham for Discographied next year.

Frightened Rabbit’s The Midnight Organ Fight: Owing mostly to my wife’s affection for the bearded Scottish indie rockers, I saw Frightened Rabbit twice this year. I’d given their material a cursory spin in years past, but after “The Modern Leper” clicked, I spent more time with The Midnight Organ Fight and learned that it’s one of the finest break-up albums of the last decade, filled with crowd-pleasing stompers, open wounds, and tons of self-deprecating wit.

Burial’s Burial: If you can believe it, I had pretty much missed the boat on dubstep. Grabbing Burial back in January helped clue me in. I’ve even kept going back to it rather than switching to its acclaimed follow-up, Untrue.

Like Pioneers – Piecemeal MP3s – Abandoned Love, 2010

There’s a specific aspect regarding The Narrator’s 2008 break-up that made it more painful than, say, Shiner’s 2003 break-up. Unlike Shiner’s Allen Epley, who resurfaced quickly with The Life and Times, the two frontmen of The Narrator weren’t just giving up on that band, they were giving up on that lifestyle. It came out explicitly in their final song, “So the End” (a MySpace exclusive) in which Sam Axelrod wearily relayed “We’re broke and we’re spent and it’s starting to take its toll” and “The time has come to find a new home” before culminating in a sing-along of “I can’t live on this witch’s salary.” It essentially said, “We may play music again, but our time in a back-breaking touring band is over.” As a fan of said back-breaking touring band, it was a real bummer.

Axelrod moved into the supporting role in at least one band, playing bass in The End of the World, but The Narrator’s other guitarist/singer, Jesse Woghin, was eerily quiet. This extended to the Chicago-based Flameshovel Records, which Woghin helped form and run. In addition to housing The Narrator and other Chicago acts like Chin Up Chin Up, Bound Stems, The Race, and Mannequin Men, Flameshovel expanded its geographic scope with excellent albums from Maritime, Judah Johnson, and Lukestar. It’s been over a year since Mannequin Men’s Use Your Illusion, Too came out, which seems to have signaled the end of a fine label. I suspect that having The Narrator, Chin Up Chin Up, and Bound Stems all break up in 2008 and 2009 sapped a great deal of the friend-driven enthusiasm from Woghin and company.

Like Pioneers’ Piecemeal aims to revive that enthusiasm without carrying its baggage. The group—80% of Bound Stems, Woghin from The Narrator, drummer Matt Holland, and multi-instrumentalist Darren Garvey—started last year with a no-pressure weekend trip to IV Lab Studios in Chicago, where they cranked out ten songs for Piecemeal. (“Paloma” is a late-arriving Bandcamp bonus track.) They’ve played a few shows in Chicago, with the line-up varying with availability, but don’t expect a US-wide tour any time soon. That lifestyle is over, but fortunately the music remains.

Piecemeal could have easily come across as just that—a hodge-podge of styles, vocalists, and energies that never quite congeals. But Like Pioneers find consistency in the proceedings even as those elements push and pull, letting the guitar-centric indie rock of Woghin’s “Crop Circles Plus Legs” coexist with the lonely pump organ of Bobby Gallivan’s “Teakettles No. 1,” situating the polished indie pop of “English Garden” next to the guitar-dueling outro of “Gift from a Holiday,” and bookending the album with the blurred guitar and organ melodies of evocative opener “Some People” and the affecting piano balladry of “Crab Candy.” This range comes hand-in-hand with being a loose collective, since there’s less of a need to get everyone involved in every track, tailor songs for the live settings, or meet expectations.

Like Pioneers’ Piecemeal is a great reminder of what Bound Stems, The Narrator, and Flameshovel had to offer, even as it abandons the trappings of being in those touring bands and running that label. My concern is that those trappings are precisely what led me to this new group in the first place. You won’t find the digital-only release of Piecemeal in your local record store or see Like Pioneers on tour. All I can hope is that people continue to stumble onto Like Pioneers (and The Narrator, Bound Stems, and Chin Up Chin Up), encouraging them to keep making this memorable blend of energetic indie rock and melodic, evocative indie pop.

Tre Orsi – Devices + Emblems LP – Comedy Minus One, 2010

It’s both easy and dangerous to go overboard on the relevance of a group’s influences or reference points (whether acknowledged or perceived), but Tre Orsi’s relationship with Silkworm and Bedhead explains what makes them a compelling band on their own accord. The bullet points of this relationship are clear. Tre Orsi’s first released song was a bravado cover of Silkworm’s “Insomnia” for the 2006 tribute album An Idiot To Not Appreciate Your Time: The Songs of Silkworm, which re-imagined Andy Cohen’s buzzing guitar work as restrained piano. Tre Orsi’s Matthew Barnhart helped record The New Year’s last two albums, a favor which Bubba Kadane returned by producing Devices + Emblems. Barnhart’s done live sound and tour management for both groups. Few recent bands can claim such a symbiotic relationship with their touchstones. It puts Tre Orsi in the unique position of being the descendents of Silkworm and Bedhead and the peers of Bottomless Pit and The New Year.

But does Tre Orsi sound like Silkworm and Bedhead? In a general indie rock sense, sure. Like Silkworm and countless other bands, they have a guitar/bass/drums line-up with an emphasis on replicating their live sound. Vocally, Barnhart can occasionally be mistaken for the lost third Kadane brother, but his band is two guitarists short of Bedhead’s clean, three guitar arrangements. What Tre Orsi picks up from those groups is an emphasis on honest, carefully crafted songwriting that forgoes fashionable, fleeting trends in favor of lasting impact. Granted, the sexiness of now is more immediately satisfying, which led me to sit on particular Silkworm recordings and most of Bedhead’s catalog until the light went on in my head and made wonder how I’d ever not counted Firewater as one of my personal favorites or spent more time with Transaction de Novo. Needless to say, this object lesson in patient listening comes a lot easier for me at 30 than it did at 17.

My immediate reaction to Tre Orsi’s Devices + Emblems was informed by these experiences. The first time I heard it, I wasn’t blown away, but I knew there was something I enjoyed that would continue to grow, so I kept coming back. Every time I’ve listened to it since (especially my first spin of the LP), Devices + Emblems has gotten better. It’s now in regular driving rotation, which is the mark of a strong, long-lasting rock album. Getting to that point shouldn’t happen immediately for an album loaded with enjoyable left-turns. You need to figure out where those turns take you first. Clear starting point “The Engineer” (which previously appeared on Gerard Cosloy’s labor-of-love compilation of Austin-area bands, Casual Victim Pile: Austin 2010) winds its way through a windmill guitar and air-drum friendly intro, a nicely cresting verse, a cathartic pre-chorus (“I hate all these thoughts / I composed in foreign language”), a charging, energetic chorus (“I give to you / Philosophy / Before I die / Right here, stateside”), a ragged solo, and finally a reflective outro that revisits the previous lyrics. I had to understand this topography before I could sing along and air drum as I speed down 93 to the city, but that’s an enjoyable process on its own accord. Other highlights include the stomping drums and buzzing arpeggios of “Toward St. Ambrose,” the head-bobbing chorus of “Tiny Executives,” and the distorted squeals of “Best Kind of Failure,” but there isn’t a disappointing track in the lot.

True to the no-bullshit ethos that runs through every note of Tre Orsi’s music, Devices + Emblems is a tidy nine songs, twenty-seven minutes. Every time the final notes of “Declaring Space” close out the record, I hope a few more songs magically appear, but I’m limited to the equally excellent “The Illustrator” b/w “Faulkner’s Blues” single and that “Insomnia” cover. Now my edict for patience becomes doubly important, since music as carefully crafted as Tre Orsi’s doesn’t write itself overnight, so their now anxiously awaited second album may be a few years away. It’s here where I’d like them to be more Silkworm/Bottomless Pit and less Bedhead/The New Year.

Shipping News – One Less Heartless to Fear LP – Karate Body, 2010

Shipping News’ One Less Heartless to Fear might fool you. If you didn’t know this album was sourced from two live performances (Louisville in 2009, Tokyo in 2006), recognize the two tracks from 2005’s Flies the Fields, or hear the occasional crowd noise, you might initially assume that One Less Heartless to Fear is the product of a flourish-free Bob Weston recording session. Instead it’s a live album of primarily new material, a unique proposition which pays off in spades. That this decision was made out of necessity—Jason Noble’s cancer treatment prevented an elongated studio session—doesn’t detract from its success: One Less Heartless to Fear couples Noble and Mueller’s trademark knotty riffage and elliptical lyrics with a welcome dose of immediacy courtesy of its live setting.

Looking back at their catalog, immediacy has never been Shipping News’ foremost strength. Their 1997 debut LP, Save Everything, marked the highly anticipated reunion of Rodan’s two singer/guitarists (even though Noble played bass until Flies the Fields), but its germination as background music for NPR’s This American Life predicts the album’s penchant for swaying instrumental passages. I appreciate the moody textures of “A True Lover’s Knot,” “All by Electricity,” and “Steerage” quite a bit now, but if you come to the album expecting for the aggressive dynamics of Rodan’s “Everyday World of Bodies” (live video alert) like I did back in 1998, it’ll leave you scratching your head. 2001’s Very Soon, and in Pleasant Company reigns as their most consistent record, but its highlights are introspective slow-burners “Actual Blood,” “Quiet Victories,” “Contents of a Landfill,” and “How to Draw Horses” (the last a marvelous companion piece to Rodan’s “Bible Silver Corner”) not the requisite math-rock instrumental “Nine Bodies, Nine States.” A series of experimental EPs under the RMSN tag (subsequently collected in the Three/Four LP along with a few new tracks) explored unfamiliar terrain, but putting the ghostly visions of “Haunted on Foot,” the throbbing bass of drone-rockers “Paper Lanterns” and “We Start to Drift,” the weary balladry of “Sickening Bridge Versus Horrible Bed,” and the coiled aggression of “You Can’t Hide the Mark Inside” on a single map is a tall order. Flies the Field regains that cohesion by reining in the scope, but in turn loses the spontaneity of Three/Four’s smorgasbord. I ultimately came around to hear each of these releases on its own terms, but in every instance, it took time.

This history is precisely what makes One Less Heartless to Fear such a thrill; it’s not an album that requires months to gestate. With the tight, Shellac-ian rhythms that open “Antebellum,” Shipping News announce that they’re not here to fuck around. Jason Noble’s ragged barks of “Is your heart a frozen river? / Is your heart a frozen lake?” supplies “This Is Not an Exit” with a heavy dose of gravity, but the uncharacteristic humor of “We’ve got cornea scans / E-mail scams / Root Beer Tuesday / Hot Fudge Thursday / Thank God it’s Thursday” cuts that tension in smile-inducing, fist-pumping fashion. The bloodied-knuckled chant of “Calm down!” in Flies the Fields holdover “(Morays or) Demon” fits One Less Heartless to Fear’s up-front nature perfectly. Rave-up rocker “The Delicate” chews on repetition like “She can hear the birds living in the leaves with their fucked up fucked up language” with demonic glee. When Heartless downshifts with the moody instrumental “Half a House,” the tensely introspective “7s,” and Jeff Mueller’s thousand-yard stare on Flies the Fields’s “Axons and Dendrites,” it feels earned, necessary. The balance between blunt force, instrumental dexterity, and haunting memories is spot-on.

Who knows if Shipping News would’ve carried the fervor from their live sets into the recording studio regardless of the scenario, but One Less Heartless to Fear benefits exponentially from its constraints. It exhibits Shipping News as a well-oiled live band with inspired new material and cuts the fat away. For the first time in their history, I can’t ask for more.

Given Jason Noble’s aforementioned battle with cancer (which you can read about in his Caring Bridge journal or this affecting article from his recent stint as a guest editor for Magnet), it would be easy and understandable to plug this album on that basis alone, but the fact that it downright slays removes any sense of charity. (I'm doing you a favor, not Noble.) I probably don’t need to remind you that Noble’s been responsible for a slew of wonderful albums from Shipping News, Rodan, Rachel’s, and other side projects. So if you’re interested in One Less Heartless to Fear, pony up the money for the download, CD, or LP, drop $2 to the Red Cross relief efforts in Pakistan and get the non-album single "Take a Deep Breath," pick up the Young Scamels album (a Rachel’s offshoot that scored a Louisville performance of The Tempest), buy a Shipping News, Rodan, or Endpoint shirt with profits going to Noble’s care, or at the very least, send the man some goodwill. Things seem to be looking up for him lately, which is a huge sigh of relief for both his physical well-being and my hopes that he continues making music as memorable as One Less Heartless to Fear.

Bottomless Pit – Blood Under the Bridge 2LP+CD – Comedy Minus One, 2010 – $20

I decided to go two routes with this review for an obvious reason. The second route is really long.

The short version: Bottomless Pit adds to their flawless track record with another superb release. Expanding on the surging melodies of the 2008 Congress EP, Blood Under the Bridge returns to straightforward Silkworm-esque rock in “Summerwind,” “Late,” and “Is It a Ditch,” explores mellow ground on “Rhinelander” and “Q.E.D.,” and closes with a searing Andy Cohen solo in the towering “38 Souls.” Book this album for the highest reaches of my year-end list, mirroring the positions of Hammer of the Gods and Congress.

The long version: Bottomless Pit is an incomparably personal band. Each release reflects upon the key fact of the group’s existence: without the reckless vehicular homicide that took the life of Michael Dahlquist, Tim Midgett and Andy Cohen would still be releasing new Silkworm albums every two years. Instead they chose to forge ahead with a new outfit, swapping Midgett’s sharp, expressive bass lines and Dahlquist’s thunderous kick drum for Midgett’s new baritone guitar, bassist Brian Orchard’s deep, minimal lines, and former Seam drummer Chris Manfrin’s dexterity and precision. The change in rhythm section character would speak volumes if Midgett and Cohen didn’t actively address Dahlquist’s passing in their lyrics. Midgett is often hauntingly direct: “When you get it in your mind to live again” from “The Cardinal Movements,” “You were a king when you knew what you were worth” from “Human Out of Me,” “People are frightening / When they don’t got a reason to live” in “Pitch.” Cohen opts for veiled storytelling, contributing “Dead Man’s Blues” to Hammer of the Gods and noting how “Nothing is sadder than chasing a ghost” in “Fish Eyes.” Both approaches are gut-punches.

Yet to listening to Bottomless Pit in the sole context of Michael Dahlquist’s death ignores the universality of their lyrical themes. Similar to how Fugazi succeeds at making politically charged rock by avoiding explicit details, Bottomless Pit adds an abstracted level of catharsis to accompany the autobiographical reading. Is a specific song—the astounding “Leave the Light On” from Hammer of the Gods, for example—about Dahlquist, Midgett’s mindset, or just a general feeling? To my ears, all three are present. This ability to translate personal experience into commentary on the human condition is all too rare.

It’s not as if Silkworm lacked this capacity. Midgett’s “Xian Undertaker” from It’ll Be Cool stares death in the face and offers a knowing smirk. Cohen’s “Don’t Make Plans This Friday” from Firewater captures moments of fleeting brilliance in suffocating discontent. I could go on and on. (Seriously: Go get Firewater, Lifestyle, It’ll Be Cool, and Libertine. For starters.) The difference is that Bottomless Pit’s album-to-album development is intertwined with a sense of personal progression that acts as a frame of reference for each song, each album. When the regret and subcutaneous tension of Hammer of the Gods blossomed into the resiliency of Congress, I felt both a profound sense of optimism from the songs (especially “Red Pen”) and a strange pang of relief that Tim Midgett was less consumed by grief within them. This developmental arc points in multiple, often divergent paths on Blood Under the Bridge, which prevents me from coming up with a single-line summary for how it shifts from the thematic base of Congress. That makes Blood harder to nail down, but by no means diminishes the returns.

The first two songs are deceptively nonchalant, starting with the feel-good rhythm and intertwined guitar melodies of the seven-minute-long “Winterwind.” Tim Midgett’s lyrics encourage a fresh start: “Waiting on deliverance is just like waiting on a tree / That you can’t get out from under / Get out from under it now.” A familiar riff trickles in during the song’s lengthy outro: a guitar part from Silkworm’s “Bar Ice.” It still throws me for a loop, a glance back at the past even as the lyrics encourage a step away. You still get that step away with the mellow introspection of the percussion-free “Rhinelander.” Midgett’s line that “There’s no such thing as too much time” makes me long for more time with the idyllic guitar interplay, not regret missed opportunities or time wasted.

Andy Cohen’s “Summerwind” breaks the calm by spinning the elliptical refrain “It’s not nothing I would do again” over jagged chords. “We lost it all and started fresh” stands out from the hypothetical lyric sheet (although “I saw the devil on a commuter train” is classic Cohen), applying just as easily to a failed romantic relationship as his old band. The up-tempo swing continues with “Late,” a brisk rocker that pulls Midgett out of distanced contemplation with a downright angry chorus of “So many fuckers in this world / To line up / And trade for you.” The album’s middle point, “Dixon,” is a Southern rock instrumental, an enjoyable lark that wouldn’t have seemed plausible on either of Blood’s predecessors.

Blood downshifts over its next few songs. Midgett’s mid-tempo “Kiss Them All” ruminates on its refrain, “I’ve been waiting on the real you all along,” then lingers on an extended, drum-focused outro. Cohen’s “Is It a Ditch” fuels his nimble riffing with a twinge of reticence. Midgett’s “Q.E.D.” returns to the dreamy contemplation of “Rhinelander,” ambling through some heady territory with “Always shit to do / When I’m dead I will still have a list / But sometimes things just feel complete.” His wordless coos and Chris Manfrin’s intricate shuffle elevate the song from those idle thoughts.

Blood Under the Bridge closes with Cohen’s “38 Souls,” a howling storm of distorted riffs, spine-chilling vocals, and passionate soloing. The song begins as one of his darkly comic narratives—“I had collected 38 souls / Needed two more to reach my goal / What good are they anyway / Left them stacked up in the foyer”—but ratchets up the intensity with the powerful delivery of “When I woke up they were gone / I had to let them get away.” Turning that couplet into an imperative (“When I wake up they’ll be gone / I have to let them get away”) underscores the desperation in his voice. Cohen has mostly avoided his penchant for ragged, cathartic solos in Bottomless Pit, but the scorched-earth solo he plays on “38 Souls” instantly joins his highlight reel (along with “Don’t Make Plans This Friday” and “Tarnished Angel” from Firewater). “38 Souls” is a visceral, devastating assault, one Bottomless Pit was wise to put at the end of the album.

There isn’t a song on Blood Under the Bridge that I don’t enjoy, but how they fit together is less obvious than it was on Hammer of the Gods or Congress. “Dixon” felt out of place on the first few spins. “Rhinelander” and “Q.E.D.” seemed overly muted, especially in comparison with the blazing intensity of “38 Souls.” As I spent more time with the songs, the path from Congress to Blood became clearer. Blood takes firm steps in new directions, but still looks over its shoulder at the past, which appears in the recall of Silkworm’s “Bar Ice” in “Winterwind,” the fiery solo of “38 Souls,” and lyrical references to Dahlquist both oblique and explicit. The thoughts of both singers wander, but Blood starts with Midgett’s imperative (“Get out from under it now”) and ends with Cohen’s (“I have to let them get away”). “Easier said than done” is the clichéd moral, but as anyone who’s lost a loved one will attest, those memories continue to pop up at unexpected, affecting times. They will certainly pop up when listening to Blood Under the Bridge, a testament to Bottomless Pit’s foremost strength: translating their own experiences into humanistic rumination of the highest order.

If you live in Pittsburgh, Boston, New York, or Columbus, you have a chance to see Bottomless Pit this weekend on an increasingly rare outing from their home base of Chicago. I’m looking forward to catching them on Friday for the first time since an excellent 2008 show with Chris Brokaw and the Kadane Brothers. If not, you can order their three albums direct from the group or from Comedy Minus One. The vinyl pressings are about as nice as it gets—45 rpm LPs, thick gatefold sleeves for the full-lengths—and include a copy of the CD.

Brian Eno, et al – Music for Films III LP – Opal, 1988 – $4 (10/15 Reckless Records, Broadway Avenue)

In my review of David Sheppard’s On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno, I noted the drop in coverage depth starting in the mid 1980s. Prioritizing his output in the 1970s and early 1980s—specifically Roxy Music, No Pussyfooting, his first four solo albums, Discreet Music, the Ambient series, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, David Bowie’s Berlin trilogy, and Talking Heads’ Fear of Music and Remain in Light—dictates that you’ll read more about albums you’ve likely heard instead of those you haven’t. This situation makes perfect sense. Those are touchstone recordings. Comparatively few people would buy a book emphasizing Eno’s generative art experiments, Nerve Net, collaboration with John Cale on Wrong Way Up, and production duties for James and Coldplay. Yet the unfamiliar terrain of Eno’s late ’80s, ’90s, and 2000s output would have benefitted from a clearer guide. Unlike the 1970s, when it seemed Eno could do no wrong, Sheppard’s speedy run-through (and occasional dismissal) of Eno’s later records indicates inconsistent and frequently unrewarding results. I cite Wrong Way Up and Nerve Net because those are the only two albums I was encouraged to track down. Certainly that can’t be it, right?

My standard “leap before you look” move would be to do a deep dive into the back nine of Eno’s catalog, to become that clear guide I wished for, but I’ve been warned by Sheppard and I will heed that warning. The only three post-1985 Eno albums I’ve heard are 1988’s Music for Films III, 2008’s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today with David Byrne, and 2010’s Small Craft on a Milk Sea with Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams (an album Dusted just eviscerated). A conservative estimate of true solo albums and major collaborations puts an additional twenty albums between 1988 and 2008. Yikes. If the sheer number isn’t enough to dissuade you from a deep dive, perhaps the lagging sonics of Music for Films III will do the trick.

I didn’t approach Music for Films III with high expectations. The first Music for Films volume is the rare ’70s Eno LP that underwhelms, since too many of the short, incidental pieces sound inconsequential without the foregrounds of their intended context. Its first sequel came in 1983 as part of the Working Backwards box set, but Music for Films II was mostly a dry run for the superior Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks, containing a few of its tracks and introducing the trio of Brian Eno, Roger Eno, and Daniel Lanois. Music for Films III comes five years later with a change of address—Eno left the sputtering EG label and began his own Warner imprint called Opal. For Opal and Music for Films III, Eno brings in some familiar names: Daniel Lanois, Roger Eno, Harold Budd (from Ambient 2 and The Pearl), and Laraaji (the sole performer of Ambient 3). He supplements them with Michael Brook, Misha Mahlin and Lydia Theremin, and Led Zeppelin’s own John Paul Jones.

A collaboration-heavy Eno album should be no surprise, but Music for Films III is more compilation than collaboration. Of the thirteen tracks on the original vinyl pressing, Eno goes solo on two, collaborates on three, produces three, mixes one, and abstains from involvement on the final four. The results, predictably, are scattershot. Unpredictably, the Enos fare the poorest. Brian’s “Saint Tom” and “Theme from ‘Creation’” suffer from dated synth palettes. Roger’s maudlin “Quixote” would best score a scene of a daytime soap opera in which a main character is exploring a cave. The late-night piano on Roger’s “Fleeting Smile” feels too familiar. Laraaji has the biggest gap in quality, with the modulated vocals of “Zaragoza” sounding thoroughly out of place in a bad way, while the untreated thumb piano on “Kalimba” (heard in the background of “Zaragoza”) stands out with its welcome simplicity. The spooky theremin on Misha Mahlin and Lydia Theremin’s “For Her Atoms” is too identifiable as such, lending an overt ’50s sci-fi air. Harold Budd brings out his usual blurred, new age piano tricks for “Balthus Bemused” with diminishing returns.

Music for Films III isn’t a total wash. Daniel Lanois acquits himself well in his three collaborations with Brian Eno. “Tension Block” is an appropriate name for a dense, bass-driven exploration of Middle Eastern percussion. “White Mustang” is an unnerving callback to Apollo, whereas “Sirens” takes that feeling and shifts it underground. A few contributors also excel. The echoing guitar lines of Michael Brook’s “Err” could stretch out over canyons. The biggest surprise is actually John Paul Jones’ “Four-Minute Warning,” a sound collage of horns that snowballs into cacophony. Did I overlook Led Zeppelin’s free-jazz album?

Beyond the mish-mash of styles and the confounding mix of collaboration and compilation, the biggest problem with Music for Films III is its specificity. Let me explain. The original Music for Films let me down because too many of the incidental pieces weren’t immediately evocative. But for the specific purpose of making music for use in imaginary films, emphasis on the plural, that makes sense. Limiting the contexts for a given piece ultimately limits its utility, and this series is all about utility. Evoking a very particular scene, like the daytime soap opera cave exploration in Roger Eno’s “Quixote,” limits a song’s potential application. It’s not the presence of poor tracks on Music for Films III that lessens my enthusiasm for the twenty years of unexplored Eno albums, since those can be written off as failed experiments from an artist prone to experimentation. It’s the idea that the model is failing that’s truly disconcerting. If I learned anything from On Some Faraway Beach, it’s that Brian Eno loves his models.