RECENT LISTENING #8

Home Blitz, Cassandra Wilson, the Shangri-La's, Hound Dog Taylor's Hand, Circle Pit, Pink Reason, Beautiful Swimmers, Decimus, Spiral Wave Nomads

HOME BLITZ All Through the Year 12” EP (SOPHOMORE LOUNGE) Goddamn this is a great record. Perfect followup to Foremost & Fair, possibly even better. Granted, you might already have to love Home Blitz to agree, which is to say that you already love unprecedentedly fey power pop that is equally influenced by both Game Theory (the band) and ren-faire folk (the genre), constantly spiraling at you with the speed of HC punk, fully filtered through the even more singular vision of one Daniel DiMaggio, our young aesthete from the periphery of Princeton, New Jersey, America. For example “Final Decay,” the breezy power pop masterpiece in the center of Side A, in which DiMaggio temporarily abandons the song for a spoken-word breakdown/tangent over four-on-the-floor house beat, before coming back for the big rousing chorus ending. Or side A closer “What I Say I Mean,” which just might be a one-man “Black Angel’s Death Song” for the 21st Century, but with more Bach and would-be harpsichord, which …