On this album, he’s pared down the Howling Hex lineup to just guitar, bass and his voice (though I swear there’s about two seconds of brushed snare and maybe a secret keyboard here and there). And while he keeps a bit of the border vibe, especially on the closer “A Game of Dice,” this thing sounds a lot like what a stoned cowboy might have recorded in that burned-out house near Albuquerque where Tuco got killed in Breaking Bad.

No iMac here—this lo-fi assemblage of beats around looped vocal clips feels put together with twine, and reminds me of one of the best eras of hip-hop, when groups like EPMD really got out the scratchy vinyl and put together smart, evocative new songs that respected their source material while standing on its shoulders to achieve something utterly new. Except, you know, EPMD had rappers, and here there are none, except maybe the loops of Ned Flanders saying “Son of a gun-diddley-un!”

Gonzalez may be a broken record, but the record broke at just the right place. This album could easily set an intimate mood for a night in with someone you’re laying some smooches on. Nite Jewel brings her usual frutopiatic groove, and it works as well as it ever has for her. By the time she wraps up with “Clive,” a slow and dreamy track, there is no question that Nite Jewel has a real talent for making the familiar just as enjoyable as it’s always been.

The singing, plot twists, arrangements and wistfulness of this wonderfully inventive five-song revelation prove that Sam McGarrigle, the one-man band behind the project, could go in any direction he wants. And in fact, some of these songs do evoke the Pixies, Flaming Lips, Suede, Ween, even John Lennon. But there is no DOUBT that Barry Blue’s “Hot Shot” and the hits of the Velvet Tinmine soundtrack loom even larger in McGarrigle’s consciousness, and the title track alone could out-glitter anything thrown at a Republican during this rough primary season.

… for some reason she’s let her solo career be dictated by her love of cabaret and torch songs. That made a bit of sense in the mid-noughties during the reign of cabarets, Club Bricktops, and her own Mata Hari nights at Tangier, but it didn’t work at all when opening for her buddies in bands like Celebrity Skin, where her gentle ballad-pop simply got drowned out by its lack of sheer might. With this album, she hasn’t lost the narrative lyrics or the chord changes, but now her voice doesn’t stand alone in a field of schmaltz—she’s finally brave enough to let her lovely voice (it really sounds better than ever) compete with the big guns of bass, guitar and drums.

Once upon time, codeine cough syrup sold over the counter, Quaaludes on the black market. Kids like me stared at our bedroom ceilings with “Cherub Rock” on the tape deck to match the apocalyptic grandeur of our emotions. Psychedelic pop met industrial noise and gave us the romantic nihilism of Loveless. Rick Rubin’s American Recordings hosted Sir Mix-a-Lot, but also JAMC, Skinny Puppy, Pram and Love and Rockets – and those most American of dark dreamers, LA’s own Medicine.

This isn’t 99% stuff, it’s the injustice found everywhere, in the personal rather than the political, which is why the marginal and oppressed are such good entertainers. “Artie Lange” takes aim at this extreme, its subject being the Howard Stern comic who stabbed himself in the stomach eighteen times, and survived! If that sad fuck wasn’t passed out, Teardrop reveals, he’d have told his caregivers not to revive his damn self. “Don’t waste your time,” the singer bleeds out like a Southern California strain of romanticism. “I don’t wanna die at Cedars Sinai/breathe my last breaths by the Hollywood sign.”

Buzzcocks founder Pete Shelley has always surprised his public. Just think of the overt craziness of “Orgasm Addict,” or the hinted gay innuendoes of “Ever Fallen in Love (with Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)” that exploded later into righteously electronic gay anthems such as the BBC-banned “Homosapien.” Yet even I was floored by the revelations on this Drag City box set, which contains the entire catalog of his short-lived, spaced-out noise, late 70s label Groovy Records—even the name hints at a secret life behind the backs of his punk brethren.

Theirs is not “another stupid summer” in the parlance of 50 Foot Wave, but one of soft-serve, cartwheels and tranquil afternoons in a hammock. The production on their self-titled debut is refreshingly clean and the instrumentation minimal, in contrast to both current indie pop bands and the original Wall of Sound. They bring to mind 90s Brit acts like Helen Love or Talulah Gosh—you got it, twee!

This is a super-group made up of members from some already awesome bands: Jail Weddings, Death Hymn Number 9, the Red Onions, the Commotions, even This Moment in Black History!?! And maybe I’m just a sucker for the simplicity and the dueling female lead singers, but White Murder might just turn out to be better than all of them.