June 2, 2006

Eugene Mirman En Garde, Society! [4/5] What is with all these slick New York City Jews taking over the comedy business? First Lenny Bruce and Jackie Mason, then Jon Stewart and David Cross, and now Eugene Mirman. Goddamnit, why do they have to be so fucking funny? Why does Mirman have to talk about cheeseburgers...

Espers Espers II [4/5] If there were a hipster club in Middle Earth, Espers would be the house band. The Philadelphia sextet’s sophomore album is a dense exploration of the pastoral end of late-’60s folk that picks up where their druidic, eponymous debut left off. Melodious minor-key vocals waft like incense smoke over lilting guitar...

Dub Trio New Heavy [2/5] Dub Trio’s second album is occasionally quite good, but ultimately, in their attempt to bridge genres with New Heavy, the band members work with too limited a palette, just as their closest audio predecessors, the dub-meets-metal trio Blind Idiot God, did two decades prior. New Heavy’s songs equally comprise gently...

Beans Feat. William Parker And Hamid Drake Only [4/5] As part of the trailblazing rap trio Antipop Consortium, Beans made an album for Thirsty Ear’s equally groundbreaking Blue Series and didn’t like the result. But the series’ commitment to fusing experimental jazz and hip-hop convinced Beans to try again, and with Only, he’s released a...

Alias & Tarsier Brookland/Oaklyn [3/5] It’s reasonable to be leery of any album that arrives with a back-story about some long-distance collaboration between the titular participants; the circumstances of the disc’s creation are usually more interesting than the results. However, this bicoastal, by-e-mail pairing of Anticon beat maker Alias and ambient vocalist Tarsier (a.k.a. Rona...