Jimi Hendrix - People, Hell and Angels
If you're skeptical of yet another posthumous Hendrix release, you should be; the list of "archival" stuff that's been pinched off in the 43 years since Hendrix' death is littered with shoddy quality bootleg material and inessential, often redundant crap, the sheer quantity of which greatly outpaces the (occasionally transcendent) worthwhile stuff by a large margin. Sure, I'm definitely a sucker for unreleased / archival stuff, but this release works surprisingly well on its own as a cohesive album. Comprised mostly of material Hendrix was working on as a follow up to Electric Ladyland, People, Hell and Angels allows the listener a rare glimpse at what might have been had the allure of heroin and pills been less fiendish.
Grade: B+
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Dead Mellotron - (is it) EP
"The student has become... the teacher." Well, not exactly, but I definitely prefer this EP of hazy, Loveless-indebted shoegaze to this year's actual MBV album.
Grade: B-
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The Sunflower Logic - Clouds on the Polar Landscape EP
An off-the-cuff Robert Pollard side project featuring GbV bassist Greg Demos on drums and Bob's brother Jim on guitar, this sounds as though it was entirely improvised on the spot during a drunken jam session. Unfortunately, nary a moment of memorable music results. If you're familiar with Bob's 2005 Moping Swans project, this is somewhat similar, but way worse. Uncle Bob has often been paraphrased as boasting he "could write five songs while sitting on the toilet, and three of them will be good," although this is a project that should've been flushed in its entirety.
Grade: F
