and somewhere a composer for games and films suddenly assembles an almost indecently impressive rock band.
A good place to start is August Burns Red. The new album sounds maximally professional, dense and confident — exactly the way an August Burns Red album is supposed to sound. The only problem is that sometimes "exactly the way it's supposed to" turns out to be not a compliment but a mild form of diagnosis: they still know how to play with real power, but it seems they no longer particularly want to surprise.
On the neighboring heavy shelf we find Mastodon. Everything here seems to be in place: the guitars work, the prog construction is in motion, the respect for the band isn't going anywhere. But the eternal everyday question remains: how exactly are you supposed to nod your head to this if the music keeps pretending it knows math better than you do.
A special pleasure was Bear McCreary with Slash, Duff McKagan and Chad Smith. In theory such a lineup of names could easily have turned into yet another throwaway supergroup jam for the sake of the guest list, but it actually came out genuinely great. And after the comments to the post it's especially nice to remember once more that McCreary has in fact written plenty of strong soundtracks — it's just that sometimes, apparently, a person needs Slash and a rhythm section on the level of "no further questions" to be convincing.
On the other side of the week, Emma Ruth Rundle delivered really well. If before she could sound like a dark chamber story somewhere between Portishead and PJ Harvey, the new single added electricity, density and late-nineties alternative rock. The title Powerless here is, of course, almost deceptive: the song doesn't sound powerless, but rather like an attempt to resist when you're already nearly crushed.
And the most personal release of the week was Shawn James. His music is hard to confine to a single genre: there's folk, blues, rock, soul, gospel, biblical imagery and a voice that doesn't so much sing as gradually take the listener apart into component pieces. This is the kind of case where you don't want to argue about style, but simply admit: some artists appear in your life not as an item on a playlist, but as something that, at the right moment, helps you keep from falling apart completely.
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