World Standard's Country Gazette is currently tagged as progressive country and avant-prog but uh both guesses are misses - it's like... you know how Rogerio Duprat released a chintzy library record that doesn't sound much of anything like his work with the tropicalia vanguard? Country Gazette is what would have happened if Van Dyke Parks had made a chintzy ambient library record, only it does sound sort of like Smile refracted through a prism with doses of everything from bossa nova to exotica, which actually might not be all that far apart, stylistically, and lord knows Stereolab connected them dots - speaking of which, maybe a better metaphor would be a High Llamas record melted down and poured like syrup over pancakes. post-rock pancakes. yeah. actually I've got it - take the Smile Down Upon Us record and strip it of vocals and hooks and then streeeeeetch and mellow it out. maybe? and yet it's still all more country than any of that - it's supposed to be influenced by Fahey but nah, bro, don't hear it. it would almost be a driving record, but it's so sleepy that driving in the same mood the album is in would likely result in somebody's death, so maybe it's an example of the driving record's rare cousin, the riding-in-the-backseat-watching-the-world-go-by-while-you-nod-off-to-sleep-on-a-childhood-vacation record. all that to say that it's actually not very good at all! it's a bit cute but utterly unsubstantial. it also needs more banjo, but then so do most things. 

I had started Calexico's the Black Light and was enjoying it vaguely but then got aggravated at myself once the vocals started for listening to ~white people~ playing Mexican-inspired music so I looked up Selena's Amor Prohibido to vindicate myself and I'm kind of aghast at just how like treacly and sugary and just plain sickly and shitty-sounding it is... it's like 2Pac or Whitney Houston all over again - a stark reminder that, yes, very often the Masses that we vacillate between fetishizing and demeaning do happen to have particularly atrocious taste and canonize/lionize musicians that exemplify everything that can go wrong within an era or genre and yes just because said masses are POC doesn't mean they're exempt from it. I guess it's a "you had to be there" sort of deal. Sort of like Morrissey, 'mirite? Or Kurt Cobain, except I was there for that one, sort of, and, yeah, I still get more of a nostalgic thrill from the bassline to "Come As You Are" than I will ever fully admit and at least Selena a.) never raped a developmentally disabled girl, b.) never wrote "Rape Me" and c.) didn't spawn Nickleback. So yay for those things! But let's be honest, this is like listening to a Britney Spears album, except she was a latina who died tragically and therefore I can almost convince myself I get some sort of perverse cred for sitting through it and smiling? This album even manages to make cumbia detestable. How is that even possible?! 

okay back to ME MUSICKtm, Merkabah's Moloch is both named after my favorite high school in-joke of a pagan deity and described as "Soft Machine gone horror" and, dipping further back into elementary school slang, tight. It's in that weird zone, though, usually occupied by follow-ups to loved debuts (not that I've heard any Merkabah beforehand, ftr), where I'm both enjoying the hell out of it and also a touch underwhelmed - if it stays at this level it'll be an easy four stars but it feels, somehow, given the ingredients, that it should be more than that. Still they can't all be 4.5 stars and it's not miles away from the jazz-rock revisionism I've been dreaming of creating lately.

M'Lumbo's Sacrifices to the Neon Gods is very Residential - it's dream-logic deconstructions of TV themes with an emphasis on neon exotica and unswung swing - it's not breathtaking and I'm not sure what point is being made, if any, but it's solid entertainment. actually, there's maybe not a point, but there is a concept, which is explicated in the album's full title but it's a little racist and not integral to enjoyment.