[Mike, ever the contrarian, had to get his two cents in about Yeezus after our review yesterday. Mac asked him why he wanted to do it and all he did was scream "BECAUSE NO ONE REVIEW SHOULD HAVE ALL THAT POWER"]

Regardless of your opinion of Kanye West's public persona, the rapper constantly backs it up with compelling music. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy sounds like a greatest hits collection upon re-listen and his previous output demonstrates that he is in almost full control of his vision, steering the discussion of himself and his work. What gets lost in the discussion of his ego though is the equal component of self-loathing and of shame and contempt that comes through on albums like My Beautiful Dark Twisted Family. Yes, West often boasts of how great he is, his prowess with women, etc., but it is always equally countered by statements like "Bitch, I'm a Monster" (to be fair, Rick Ross says it first but the sentiment is echoed throughout). It is hard to hear the anger behind his boasts and the tone of disgust that pervades his delivery without sensing an equally powerful superego behind all that id.

So, we have the ultimately abrubtly released Yeezus, an album very different from previous releases. Yeezus signals that despite being decidedly successful and on the brink of fatherhood, West is far from settled, far from content. And while this is not a party record, leaning towards the thorny and difficult, it is a sometimes unsettling journey through the often contradictory positions engendered by fame.

As I said, it is hard not to hear West's ego-drenched lyrics without hearing his anger-drenched delivery. Certainly you would expect someone eagerly awaiting his flaky pastry to be a little happier (that was a joke, voila!). If anything, this album is a culmination of West's emotional landscape from the beginning, the conflicted nature of his lyrics finally boiling over into anger and wounded ego that was evident as early Late Registration. On tracks like "Black Skinhead" and "New Slaves," West himself wrestles with this fundamental question of why shouldn't he be happy. Yet, in those same songs, West proves himself equally aware of the vicissitudes of American racism and his potential to be framed as a menace as long as he keeps bringing up points about private prisons and miscegenation no matter how successful he becomes. This album deals in contradiction and discordance.

What further makes Yeezus so compelling is its production, itself reflective of the lyrical content. West could not and should not repeat the style of his initial albums, sample laden and fun and still write these lyrics. And, to West's credit again, he is well aware of the current pop and electronic landscape, working with producers like Hudson Mohawke and sounding obviously influenced by groups like Death Grips. These songs may not contain a fun hook but, in a certain sense, we have ultimately exhausted any interesting potential that could be drawn from those kinds of songs. It is to West's credit that he seems equally capable of working in this new mode as he was on College Dropout and Late Registration. These beats (and they are definitely beats) are gritty and echo the lyrics quite well.

Yeezus is not perfect, if anything West appears too unfocused throughout and the material he is wrestling with never quite comes together coherently. "Blood on the Leaves" is especially indicative of this, the haunting sample from a song about lynching  not entirely matched by lyrics about a failing relationship. Yet, you have to admire West for his failings as for his successes because at each point they point to a deeply unsettled artist trying to honestly assess his situation.

Grade: A-

It is tempting, when reviewing Tomorrow’s Harvest, the latest from Boards of Canada, to begin comparing them to Daft Punk if only because the two modern hallmark electronic acts suddenly returned after having been absent for so long. However, because they occupy such different ends of the spectrum and because their aims are so vastly and obviously different, any direct comparison promptly ends after discussing their canny manipulation of modern hype mechanics. That said, I found the decidedly weirder publicity campaign more appealing and relevant to our always paranoid moment. This is an apt point to make about Tomorrow’s Harvest in general, Boards of Canada are deeply in conversation with a world outside of musical history (unlike Daft Punk's exercise in pop navel gazing), and, because of this engagement, the album opens onto a tense, desolate, environmentally destroyed and paranoid space.

The record begins with a horn flourish reminiscent of the opening to an old movie or educational documentary. This is, of course, in line with the aesthetic the duo has cultivated throughout their career, excavating half remembered associations alongside nostalgia for movies and documentaries you might catch on a particularly dreary Saturday afternoon. Yet, since there is no direct media artifact to tie these sounds to, you are left with the haunted feeling of nostalgia lacking referent. Boards of Canada evoke specters with no real origin, ghosts who were never alive in the first place.

Where Boards of Canada possessed an additional element of lightness (a gentler touch, something more bright and optimistic) in the past, Tomorrrow’s Harvest is much darker project. This is a bleak album with a constant paranoid tension, never resulting in any form of catharsis. There are brief flashes of this optimism, specifically on "Nothing is Real," but they seem present only to point to their impossibility. For the most part, these tracks feel sparse and quiet, a tension pervading them throughout. Boards of Canada channels Godspeed! You Black Emperor within this atmosphere, but lacking in the collective’s climactic release. Tomorrow’s Harvest remains at a constant level, never boiling over into something larger.

Spatial metaphors seem especially apt for this record; Tomorrow’s Harvest is open, calling to mind a sort of vast emptiness. It was appropriate (and deliberate) for the band’s early publicity campaign to make use of desert images; this album generates a desolate area, one marked only by scant signs of life. Those signs of life are most evident in the garbled vocal samples that pop up from time to time, and which are always especially jarring. There is no way to make any sense of these vocal clips; they are jumbled messages with no discernible point of origin and nothing to actually tell us. We are lost in the desert with only a vague sense of someone or something watching us.

Tomorrow’s Harvest does something rare in that talking about it and what it seems to be attempting requires a discussion less in terms of what particular songs do musically and more about a larger theme. I could actually write and research quite deeply into the processes the Scottish brothers used to create these songs (degraded tape samples, live instrumentation warped to something unrecognizable, etc). Surely, BoC superfans have much to dig into with this record solely on a technical level. Still, it is first important to cite that this is a coherent whole which cannot be separated into individual songs. And in that vein, this is a solid album that doesn’t really falter in putting forward its worldview.  It is a strong return fitting for a historical moment where political and environmental catastrophes leave one feeling slightly out in a desert with a vague, neverending, sense of unease.

Grade: A 

Wild Nothing, aka Jack Tatum, has released a solid catalog of material by consistently building building upon his specific style of dreamy, wistful, and lush indie pop. Nocturne, his 2nd LP, was one of 2012's better releases, and it is somewhat of a surprise to see an EP of new material, titled The Empty Estate, so soon after. More interestingly, it is apparent from the first single, "Dancing Shell," that this new EP marks a shift in style away from the consistency of his earlier releases. The Empty Estate signals a departure, and in that vein, this EP seems more about sketching out what a shift in style might sound like, making the record somewhat noncommittal. Yet, as loosely defined as this record may be, The Empty Estate is a promising introduction to the next phase of Tatum's work.

The Empty Estate opens with "The Body in Rainfall," a familiar sounding Wild Nothing song that also falls completely flat. This track is decidedly weak, as if to purposely establish that maybe Tatum's previous sound has been exhausted of ideas and creative potential. Now, I doubt that was the intent (and if so represents a level of mind games I almost admire), but, when the record is already so short, this opening track substantially weakens the whole. Thankfully following "The Body in Rainfall," The Empty Estate completely shifts direction to something more interesting.

With "Ocean Repeating (Big-eyed Girl)," Tatum drastically changes gears. The reference points are still the same, there is a fixation with 80's and 90's sounds but where the dream pop angle was more pronounced, this new material is more electronic with fuzziness giving way to a sort of machine like clarity. These songs open onto something more luxurious and sprawling and are decidedly more rhythmic and fluid than previous output. It still sounds distinctly like Wild Nothing but this sound has been successfully taken somewhere else.

Following from this is a series of even further departures in the form of mostly synth instrumental pieces featuring minimal, if any, vocal parts. These middle songs are even more of a departure, electronic instrumentals more akin of to the soundtrack of an undetermined science fiction TV show. Here, Tatum seems to be provisionally sketching out his new direction. And while these work, they sound more like library music and less like a series of distinct pop songs. These middle tracks are well done, but they do not come together in any sort of meaningful way beyond a series of experiments.

The record culminates in "A Dancing Shell," a track whose rhythm pops up at various points throughout the middle section. "A Dancing Shell is the point where these new style crystallizes the most and actually is one of the stronger songs across Tatum's work to date. It is a large song, featuring blaring, phasing synth and a conversational vocal style. The single meshes well with the video, a animated short featuring a geometric character wandering the landscape of something you might see hanging in your dentists office circa 1986 (which is a strangely apt metaphor for the whole record's visual style). From there though, the album seems to exhaust itself and the last song is a gently fading, barely there instrumental.

Whether this EP is merely a brief experiment or the first hint of a new direction, it is a welcome change all the same. The Empty Estate suggests that Wild Nothing is capable of doing something more rhythmic, blending his usual soft focus wistfulness in with a discernible beat. Ignoring the lackluster opening track, this EP is a welcome experiment.

Grade: B