Album Picks
 
Purity Ring – Shrines
 
To say Purity Ring’s debut record has been anticipated would be an understatement. Anything signed to the 4AD label generates drool from indie music fans, let alone bands who tease brilliantly formed singles with Cocteau Twins-ish poetic gibberish titles like “Belispeak” and a sound that calls to mind the skewed electro-pop of fellow recent 4AD signee Grimes and the menacing witch house sound of bands like Salem and Unison. Though a newish genre, witch house wants for personality, and it has gotten it in the form of Purity Ring, whose Megan James offers clear, girlishly breathy vocals over Corin Roddick’s paranormal beatwork. Even through murky sounds, the duo knows how to write songs that would sound great even out of context. James sings creepy, culty lyrics that like “Dust off my necklace, familiar…to the culminated piles of bones” in “Ungirthed” — their zombie apocalypse quality may seem over the top, but it gives the song its necessary character and are pretty fun, coolness be damned. Shrines reaches its peak on “Grandloves,” maybe the most convincing combination yet of house beats, hip-hop delivery, courtesy of Young Magic, and shoegaze sonics that help define the nebulous genre Purity Ring occupies. Every time Shrines seems to settle, its brilliant pacing picks it up, like the way “Belispeak’s” horror-movie pop beats cut through the din in the album’s final quarter. It’s a highly successful debut record that promises Purity Ring, and seemingly silly genres like witch house, are nothing to dismiss.
 
Jeremiah Jae – Raw Money Raps
 
The latest protégé on Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label unleashes an impressive debut of record of psychedelic lo-fi beats and rhymes. Jeremiah Jae’s spaced out delivery over a stuttering, skipping beat on “Guns Go Off” give lyrics like “all these things get lost in time” a scary acceptance more effective than any heavy-handedness would have. The more instrumental tracks call to mind the head-spinning brevity of Madvillain or Flying Lotus at his most hip-hop, while the catchier bits, like the irresistible posturing and druggy synths of “Money and Food,” are strong enough to appeal to fans of more mainstream (but likeminded) acts The-Dream, Drake and Frank Ocean. Raw Money Raps is indeed pretty raw, but it also holds together nicely over its 19 tracks, and points for big things to come from Jeremiah Jae. (Catch him LIVE at Amoeba Hollywood July 29 at 3 p.m.!)
 
Heavenly Beat – Talent
 
Apparently Beach Fossils’ skeletal guitar-pop perfection extends to side projects, as well — first we got BF member Zachary Cole Smith’s dreamy Diiv record, now bassist John Peña releases divine guitar pop as Heavenly Beat. Peña’s soft jazz chords and lightly melancholic melodies feel like a perfect cocktail in the dead heat of summer. The “beat” part of Heavenly Beat comes in light electronic drums that feel like Balearic beats without the deep pulse, staying crisp and fizzy on “Messiah” in an otherwise cathedral-like song. The steel drums and female backup vocals of “Presence” up the laid-back, island feel, but the melodies are all Sarah Records-style British mope, with nods to Aztec Camera in its spindly acoustic riffs. Just listening to Talent feels like an exotic vacation in and of itself.
 
Also out today:
 
Micachu and the Shapes – Never
 
The second album from Micachu & the Shapes is even more chaotic and messy than 2009’s Jewellry — and that’s a good thing. Whereas that album still concerned itself with being presentable once in a while, Never is truly unhinged. Even at their catchiest, on a trio of songs at the album’s core, “OK,” “Low Dogg” and “Holiday,” Micachu and her cohorts couch the hooks with electronic squelches, strange time signatures and breaks, bits of found sound and other madness. Still, “Holiday” will have you tapping to its weirdo beat.
 

Sweet Valley and Heaven
 
There’s a new Sweet Valley track out. Who’s that, you ask? It’s Nathan Williams of Wavves, along with his brother, Kynan. “Total Carnage,” from their upcoming debut record, Stay Calm, is warped, instrumental surf rock that makes its looping riff sound like an endless summer. You want to just put it on, lay at the beach and never have that moment end. Stay Calm is out Aug. 7 from Fool’s Gold.
 

 
And speaking of Wavves, Wavves drummer Jacob Safari debuted songs from his new project Heaven via Vice’s blog this week. “Hanging Out” is kind of industrial and cool, with a foreboding beat and spacey vocals, while “Can’t Grow Up With Poison” is more of a straight-up shoegazer with a driving beat and a more melodic bent. I’m really digging this, obviously. An EP is due soon!
 
 
Wild Eyes – Blue Haze
 
New band crush: Wild Eyes, a So. Cal. shoegaze band with heart-and-brain-melting tracks that recall the best of the genre — Ride, Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine. Found this one over at Buzzbands.la, where I learned they recorded their Blue Haze EP in a garage and rehearsal space. For such humble beginnings, the thing approaches Creation status. Gotta love those garage-gaze bands!
 

Album Picks:

Frank Ocean’s music touches such a raw nerve because it’s the rare album that fully appeals on a here-and-now pop level while referencing classic pop — in this case, pop and soul maestros like Stevie Wonder and Elton John — and offering something else entirely. This something else is that human, overexposed, heart-and-mind-on-sleeve content that firmly roots Channel Orange in the social network era. I was late to the game; the first time I heard “Thinkin Bout You” was the day before Ocean very publicly came out of the closet. That happenstance was strange for me — the thing that first struck me about the song, aside from its obvious craft, the kind of instantly memorable hit that combines a suave, easy to follow melody and arrangement with dagger-in-the-heart lyrics, was an indescribable “third” quality beyond music and lyrics that I usually find with my favorite music, whether it’s The Smashing Pumpkins, The Beatles or, perhaps more relatedly, morose ’90s/'00s R&B hits like PM Dawn’s “Die Without You,” Fabolous & Tamia’s “So Into You,” Lauryn Hill’s “Ex Factor” and so on. It’s that sort of feeling that hits you immediately and reminds you of all the stupid unrequited crushes, moments of indirection, and fleeting feelings of serenity in youth. That Ocean possibly wrote the song about his own unrequited same-sex love made sense to me, since that’s pretty much what the song reminded me of. But beyond any personal affiliation with the song, the ability to communicate such universal but difficult to pin down feelings so instantly is quite rare, and so thus should be treasured in the way rave reviews have been pouring in for Channel Orange. Indeed, I think “Thinkin Bout You” is the best song anyone will release this year, and Channel Orange likely will be the album of the year. Beyond that opening instant classic, Channel Orange brims with power. Take the lush Marvin Gaye-meets-How to Dress Well-meets-Kanye West depiction of new parenthood in “Sierra Leone,” its lyrics offering a welcome balance of vagueness and detail devoid of judgment, communicating feelings of joy and trepidation. He celebrates and also exposes the lives of privileged black youth in a seemingly realistic way, beyond the bling-style fantasies of much of hip-hop, in songs like “Sweet Life” and the brilliant “Super Rich Kids,” which sounds like a hip-hop “Benny and the Jets” playing over an episode of the similarly revelatory reality show “Baldwin Hills.” He creates an sprawling, Kanye-style centerpiece with “Pyramids,” an epic track buoyed by raunchy synth riffs that turn glittering in the song’s sweetly disintegrating second half. And he continues to explore his evolving sexuality on a trio of closing ballads, in which he sounds as comfortable and natural singing about love between men, and between men and women. Though that doesn’t at all overshadow the rest of the album, which has more merits in spades to stand on its own, it can’t be ignored, either, as a huge moment for hip-hop — for all music — as a knocking down of barriers in music, sexuality and male image through some of the most dazzling, yet thoughtful pop music being made today.

Milo Greene is British. He’s well-dressed — three-piece suit and the like. He’s incredibly confident and charming, he’s well-spoken, he’s an intellectual, but also a man’s man. He’s exactly six feet tall to the millimeter, and if he were a dad, he’d be the No. 1 dad.
 
Milo Greene the man also isn’t real — they are a band, not a dude. He’s a fictional character band member Robbie Arnett invented when forming the band with Andrew Heringer. When contacting venues, Milo Greene would send the requests, and Arnett and Heringer saw their fortunes rise accordingly, getting better shows.
 
Now a five-piece who’ve taken the moniker Milo Greene as their own, in a bit of Belle & Sebastian-style alluring bewilderment, is set to release its debut, self-titled record July 17. The band plays Amoeba Hollywood the same day, at 7 p.m. with a live webcast.
 
The L.A.-based band’s debut record, Milo Greene, offers the same sort of intimate harmonies and natural harmonies of a Fleet Foxes or, further back, Fleetwood Mac just as Stevie and Lindsay joined the band. Written in part in a cabin in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and recorded with co-producer Ryan Hadlock (Ra Ra Riot, Blonde Redhead, The Gossip, The Lumineers) at Bear Creek Studio, a converted early 1900s barn in the country outside of Seattle, it’s a beautifully crafted set of songs that makes the most the band’s five-person set-up. They offer lush harmonies on songs like “Don’t You Give Up On Me,” which sounds like a gorgeous gospel intervention. Lone girl Greener Marlana Sheetz in particular stands out on songs like “Perfectly Aligned,” in which Sheetz’s testimonial vocals are wrapped in just the right amount of gauzy reverb while the boys (who include Graham Fink and Curtis Marrero, in addition to Arnett and Heringer) back her up with swaying folk-rock, along with electric swells of sound and strident harmonies when necessary. The whole thing’s, you know, perfectly aligned.
 
I sat down to talk with Fink about what it’s like to be in a folk band in L.A. in 2012, and what records and songs are doing it for him these days (Hint: Lots of ’90s R&B).
 
Me: Truthfully it was a bit hard to find out more about you guys, and along with the whole “Milo Greene” concept, it seems to me sort of an early Belle & Sebastian situation where you want the music to stand for itself and not for any member of the collective to stand out. Is that fair to say?
 
Fink: Absolutely. This is a very collective group, and the music has always stood at the forefront. We liked the idea of just releasing some live videos early, so people could see the five of us in a room, making music. No lead singer, no gloss, music first and foremost. That being said, I'm really trying to get famous so I can be gifted courtside Clippers tickets.

So much West Coast goodness coming our way this week, I’ll just get right into it …
 
New Ariel Pink – “Only In My Dreams”
 
Ariel Pink debuted a new song this week from his upcoming Mature Themes, the regal-sounding “Only In My Dreams.” Loved the “Baby” cover, but it’s great to hear that his new originals are great, too. Mature Themes is due Aug. 17 on 4AD.
 

 
New Ty Segall Coming — Again
 
Won’t I ever shut up abou this guy? Not when he’s making such great music so consistently. On the heels of his White Fence collab Hair and his searing Ty Segall Band’s Slaughterhouse comes a new album just credited to the king of SF garage himself, called Twins. It’s out Oct. 9 on Drag City. The next time he’s close to this neck of the woods is Oct. 14, at the Treasure Island Festival.
 
New Puro Instinct – “Dream Lover”
 
Speaking of Mr. Pink, his friends in dreamy duo Puro Instinct have a new song, “Dream Lover.” It’s not a Mariah Carey cover, although I bet that would sound amazing. This song finds them branching out, getting bigger than the sound they debuted on Headbangers in Ecstasy. Sounds like My Bloody Valentine by the pool. It’ll be on an EP later this year.
 

 
LOL Boys – “Changes” [ft. Heart Streets]
 
Originally hailing from Montreal, these guys make sort of lo-fi jazzy house music. And they are called LOL Boys, which is pretty good, although I feel like it should have been LOL Boyz. I’m pretty bewildered by the whole thing in a good way. Their debut Changes is out July 17.