Baths is the moniker of outer-LA native Will Wiesenfeld. At all of 21 years, Wiesenfeld has made his name as a producer, musician and remix master on the LA scene. That may be over-stating it just a little bit, but what he’s doing is certainly impressive. Even more impressive is Cerulean, his first album under the name Baths out on Anticon Records now.

Cerulean is lush electro-pop, dense or floating in all the right places, sometimes all at once. It is wonderfully conceived and spans several genres and scenes, from the cosmic glitch-hop of Flying Lotus, to the ambient to the  straight-forward electronic pop of Passion Pit’s Chunk of Change. The record flows and is a joy to listen to from beginning to end. I feel like I’m writing his mid-semester high school report or grading a paper, but if Cerulean was a final essay, and I was Wiesenfeld’s teacher, it would be the one I’d keep to show new students how to do it right.

Lower Dens - Twin Hand Movements
Somehow freak folk singer-songwriter Jana Hunter has put out an album with her new band on Gnomonsong, Andy Cabic (of Vetiver) and Devendra Banhart’s new label, and come up with something pretty unexpected: drone pop that combines shoegaze and post-punk. The Baltimore band also eschews the Technicolor, sugar rushed bliss of Wham City contemporaries like Dan Deacon or Ponytail in favor of a more subtle, dreamy kind of pleasure. The nocturnal music of Lower Dens sounds most like Yo La Tengo’s And Then Everything Turns Itself Inside Out or a Joy Division wrapped in a warm blanket.

Jana Hunter’s almost whispered vocals nicely accompany the nocturnal atmosphere of Twin Hand Movements. The album’s strength is in its subtlety – every track builds slowly but never reaches an epic guitar solo or repetitive chorus, and neither do they become a twenty minute post-rock marathon. Despite the music’s slow building, the band wraps most tracks up in just three minutes. Lower Dens’ understated pop leaves the listener just unsatiated enough to listen again.

So when driving on a warm, California summer night, I suggest grooving to the layered guitars of “Tea Lights,” or the tender churn of “I Get Nervous.”

Ty Segall - Melted

Ty Segall has got to be one of the most prolific musicians recording and performing right now. The kid has been in something like 10 different bands (Epsilons, Party Fowl, Sic Alps, and Traditional Fools to name a few) and released a plethora of songs on 7″ splits, compilations and more. Not to mention the 3 full-length albums he has released in the last two years. What is most impressive about Ty Segall (like the bird) is that almost everything he releases is solid. He’s working at a success rate of about 95% which is damn good. Melted is his latest full-length release  put out by the legendary Goner Records and it is nothing to scoff at.

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