Louder Than The Thunder

Letters Letters “Want To” – The beats bubble up like carbonation in soda water, the electronic textures float in and out of the mix like free-associative thoughts, and the woman’s voice whines, moans, and whispers as though no one is listening. At certain moments in the piece, it sounds like the ghost of Arthur Russell producing a Gwen Stefani song without her even knowing about it. (Click here to buy it from Type Records.)

Scout Niblett “Let Thine Heart Be Warned” – It’s kinda hard to deny that Scout Niblett sounds a bit like Chan Marshall — there’s a similarity in vocal timbre and style, and they share a taste for spartan arrangements that keep the listener hanging on their every syllable — but you’re never going to find Niblett making a brunch album like The Greatest. She’s too busy spiking her songs with stark, primitive percussion, bizarre lyrics, and hard rock outbursts that provide a weirdly incongruous feeling of emotional release in songs that almost always revert back to the sound of open-ended frustration. “Let Thine Heart Be Warned” is a perfect example of her Sysiphean brand of indie rock — when that chorus hits, she sounds righteous and victorious, but just a few seconds later, she’s totally crushed. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Future of the Left, Parts and Labor, and A Place To Bury Strangers.

Also: I had no idea that there was so much CGI used in David Fincher’s Zodiac. Really, isn’t that the way it always should be when it comes to these things?