Picks For The Week of November 7, 2011

Weekly music picks from the DJs at Graffiti Radio!

Cass McCombs – Humor Risk (Domino)

It’s not too commonplace now that an artist releases two albums in the same year, but Cass McCombs isn’t exactly commonplace. He’s the type who pens knotty, oblique lyrics accompanied by music that sounds like it was dug out of a vault from the 50’s. His newest album Humor Risk follows his still-new album from April, WIT’S END; a slow, drumless, and meditative work. While WIT’S END was a good album, it’s nice to hear McCombs pick up the pace and mood on Humor Risk, offering legitimate rockers on tracks like “Love Thine Enemy” and “Mystery Mail”. However, despite their surface differences, the albums are more like two halves of the same whole, woven intricately together by McCombs’ unique voice and vision. – Mike Nigro

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Atlas Sound – Parallax (4AD)

It should be of no surprise that Bradford Cox’s Atlas Sound project has followed such a similar sonic progression to that of his main focus, Deerhunter. After all, Cox still writes the vast majority of that band’s songs, and just as Deerhunter’s last two releases, 2008′s Microcastle and 2010′s Halcyon Digest, display more focus and maturity than their predecessor, 2005′s Cryptograms, Atlas Sound’s 2009 release, Logos, emphasizes song craft and attention to detail over the hazy ruminations of 2007′s Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel. As evidenced by Parallax’s cover (an image of Cox posing introspectively with a vintage microphone), Cox has settled into a near croon on his most recent work, allowing his voice to dominate layered acoustics that may have in the past been nearly exclusively electronic sounds. Cox sings in Parallax’s first single “Terra Incognita,” “these ancient technologies strengthen my bones,” and perhaps Cox’s approach has moved in that direction, using sounds that recall the past to create a music that is, in fact, very much of the times. Just as he has done on every release over the past three years, Cox makes a case for his inclusion in the pantheon of our best and most important songwriters on Parallax, justly bringing him to the attention of more and more listeners one song at a time. – J.J. Booker