The Lacking Details

When you make pop psychedelia with an exotic yet indeterminate element, you end up with the musical soundtrack to a children’s television show from an alternate reality.

Sunny, loose-limbed, and grinning from ear to ear, this collection of infectious and sometimes intricate funk sounds like the songs that play in your head as your foot touches the sidewalk on the first day of spring.

A fully synthesized version of Cronin’s previous album, this retake offers the same moody melodies as “Seeker”, this time filled to the brim with the warble and saw of old-tyme synthes.

The Texas trio returns with their very specific blend of surf, psychedelia, and exotic spice, but this time around they’ve dropped the “instrumental” part by adding gloriously subdued vocalizations to some of the tracks.

The name should be enough to tune you in, but a more descriptive review would be to say this is deconstructed chiptune jungle dub, all your favorite riddims as DJ’d by the Mario Brothers.

“Fearless” is a good word to use for this fully-formed funk outfit, as are “fierce,” “fiery,” “finessed,” “futuristic,” and so many effing others. A blend of precision and groove that does well on repeat.

A fluid mixture of influences and identity, with tropical flavors and delicate pop sensibilities layering up with street-tough attitude for some songs, like a leather-jacketed hoodlum holding a bouquet of roses.

No topic is too esoteric for John Darnielle to base an entire Mountain Goats album on, not even the persecution of pagans as a wave of Christianity moved through Europe in the middle ages.

Nailing the indie guitar sound is one thing, but Born Ruffians have become so adept at it that it’s more like lathering it in epoxy, then bolting it down, and adding some rivets for good measure.

Sultry, measured vocals are set off against an array of spiky arrangements and instrumental bursts, song parts constantly evolving and mutating, so that little finishes the way it started.