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Los Angeles punk band Off! accomplishes an impressive feat on its self-titled debut album (after last year’s collection of EPs): Sixteen songs in under 16 minutes, each a compact, sonic rampage via scream, electric guitar, bass and drum, by four men who understand compressed aggression: Keith Morris (Circle Jerks, Black Flag), Dimitri Coats (Burning Brides, lead villain in the film “Suck”), Steven McDonald (Redd Kross), and drummer Mario Rubalcaba (Rocket from the Crypt, Hot Snakes).

In Los Angeles terms, that’s about the span it takes to drive from Vine to Alvarado streets down Sunset Boulevard, with Morris barking out bursts of verses about apocalyptic toxic boxes, false foundations, confusion piling up like trash, Darby Crash, chumps, drones, stone hearts, the Crenshaw strip, the King Kong Brigade (“sprinkling glass on their Happy Meals!”) and the Torrance jail. By the last lines of the album, during the song “I Want One (I Need One),” Morris has declared in all-caps that “I AM THEE HAPPENING” while acknowledging that “inside there’s nothing left, looking down from the 13th floor.”

This is Los Angeles hard-core. Long may it rule. — Los Angeles Times

OTHER NEW VINYL RELEASES:

Silversun Pickups Neck of the Woods
Train California 37
Dropkick Murphys Live at Fenway
The Frames In Via
Keane Strangeland
Carole King The Legendary Demos
ALO Sounds Like This
Donald Fagen Nightfly
Horseback Half Blood
The Residents Third Reich ‘n’ Roll

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In 2000, Fevers and Mirrors put Conor Oberst at the center of concentric, radioactive areas anticipating their impending “moment”: oversharing culture, emo, Omaha, Saddle Creek, Bright Eyes. It’s here where the weight of being essentially synonymous with Bright Eyes starts to dawn on Oberst, and fortunately for the listener, there was no separation between where he was an artist and as a person. Yes, it’s a record about breaking up (that is, if your affections are requited in the first place), unfulfilled dreams, real nightmares, the burden of talent, and the encroaching dread of a future where nothing substantial ever changes within you. All of the things that get judged as #whitepeopleproblems by other white people who apparently had their shit together before they could legally drink. Play Fevers and Mirrors for someone who served in a war or underwent a serious medical procedure, and they’d probably tell Oberst to snap out of it. Indeed, you learn later in your years that, as Morrissey put it, “there are worse things in life than never being someone’s sweetie,” but in the thrall of Fevers, sometimes these are the kind of things that do feel like the end of the world for at least an hour. — Pitchfork

OTHER NEW VINYL RELEASES:

Norah Jones Little Broken Hearts
George Harrison Early Takes Vol. 1
The Lumineers The Lumineers
Blockhead Interludes After Midnight
Jeremy Spencer Jeremy Spencer
Pennywise All Or Nothing
Slightly Stoopid Everything You Need
UFO Lights Out
Charles Walker and Bettye Lavette Yours & Mine/Serendipity

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Of all the artists saddled with the chillwave genre tag, none have been more prolific or adventurous than Toro Y Moi’s Chaz Bundick. On last year’s sophomore album, Underneath The Pine, he touched on yearning, Todd Rundgren-style soft-rock (“How I Know”) and vintage synth-disco (“New Beat”). Then he followed it up with the wild Freaking Out EP, a five-track set which found him chopping up original material with Hype Machine dance-remix aesthetics. The broad influences of his 2010 debut, Causers Of This, included J. Dilla and the Balearic pop championed by Sweden’s Service Records. Moments of Causers, however, did contain the signature slow-motion strobing of chillwave’s ur-text, Washed Out’s “Feel It All Around,” and following that thread leads back to the embryonic June 2009.

Before signing to Carpark, Bundick casually self-released a pair of unofficial full-lengths: the high-energy dance collection My Touch, and the tour CD-R June 2009, which sees its mainstream release as a vinyl singles box (and standard CD/digital editions). The collection is suited for the medium: Its warped, lo-fi pop sounds genuinely sun-melted, or at least subject to a giggly few minutes in Ariel Pink’s microwave. — A.V. Club

MORE NEW VINYL RELEASES:

Jack White Blunderbuss
Jimi Hendrix Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?
Various Artists Mercury Living Presence Box Set
The Dandy Warhols This Machine
Electric Guest Mondo
Cate Le Bon Cyrk
Bob Marley and the Wailers Marley Soundtrack
Ministry Relapse
Neon Trees Picture Show
Townes Van Zandt For the Sake of the Song

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An extraordinary debut from Dry the River, a new British-based band who combine a gipsy swagger with tremulous sensitivity and gothic rock drama. They are not particularly fresh-faced and fashionable: five scruffy, tattooed veterans of hardcore and emo bands fronted by a 25-year-old anthropologist and medical school dropout, but they have the stamp of greatness about them.

They are a big canvas band making folk rock; a fusion of the accessible pastoral pop of Mumford & Sons with the epic electric soundscapes of Radiohead. But when he drops to the fragile intimacy of an acoustic guitar, singer Peter Liddle’s choirboy tenor evokes the tender melancholy of Nick Drake while the group harmonies swell with the sacred hush and precision of 16th-century madrigals. The multi-instrumental band can gently rock or pitch in with the messianic melodrama of Arcade Fire.

All these musical riches are naturally connected to the songs, which unwind with flowing melodies and poetic lyrics, shifting and twisting in unusual ways but never straying too far from the kind of chorus that would have Chris Martin humming all the way to the charts. — The Telegraph

OTHER NEW VINYL RELEASES:

Hank Williams III Long Gone Daddy
Grinderman Grinderman 2 Rmx
Jack Johnson and Friends Best of Kokua Festival 2012
Maps & Atlases Beware and Be Grateful
311 Soundsystem
Operation Ivy Hectic
Operation Ivy Energy
Pinetop Perkins Heaven
Sleeper Agent Celabrasion

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In about every way that it possibly could, Miike Snow’s second album, Happy to You, improves on its predecessor, building considerably on their already expansive sound, while honing said sound into an effort that’s much more nuanced and cohesive, much more a proper album than Miike Snow’s rather disparate, though very enjoyable, collection of songs. Nearly all of the songs here are far less immediate than anything on Miike Snow, perhaps due in part to the amount of time on the road they had to develop them.

What’s most notable about the album is the glaring absence of a monolithic, earth-rending banger from a team of guys who’ve made a career of cranking them out by the truckload. While it’s still brimming with more indelible hooks and infectious dance grooves than most acts manage to write over the course of several albums, Happy to You is defined by its willful introversion, the sort of rare pop record that acts completely on its own terms. While Karlsson and Winnberg continue to assert themselves as two of the most accomplished producers in contemporary music, Happy to You does well to prove they’re just as good on the other side of the mixing console, showcasing the furthest extents of their own considerable talents for the second straight album. — Consequence of Sound

OTHER NEW VINYL RELEASES:

Justin Townes Earle Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now
Big Brother and the Holding Company Live at the Carousel Ballroom
Jefferson Airplane Crown of Creation
Jefferson Airplane Volunteers
Andrew Bird Break It Yourself Super Deluxe Vinyl Box
Grateful Dead Wake of the Flood
Meshuggah Koloss
The Used Vulnerable
The Real McKenzies Westwinds
Various Artists Cool Aid Benefit Album
Behemoth Evangelia Heretika
Drudkh Eternal Turn of the Wheel