I'm starting to convince myself that the new Low album is as good as it is because they've never sounded so much like Drugstore. Songs that might have been 100% quiet and hazy on past Low albums are suddenly breaking loose midway through with squalls of feedback. Low records are highly controlled affairs, you always got the feeling that no notes were wasted and every last particle of sound was carefully mapped out in advance. Sure, the reverb would thicken (and perhaps randomize) the band's sound, but these embellishments never threatened to deviate the proceedings from the script at hand. But on tracks such as "When I Go Deaf", the guitars come screaming in halfway through, the sound is raw, unrestrained, and I keep expecting to hear Alan Sparhawk completely break down and start yelling his face off. Drugstore have always been so good at that -- bringing their songs up to the brink of losing control of them, and then abruptly returning them back to a safer haven (and the lyrical subject matter often mirrors the music, "Nectarine" and "The Party Is Over" being the first examples to come to mind).

From the Magnetic Fields "69 Love Songs" NYC performance in 2000, they play a version of "Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side" that kills the version on the record. Goodbye bouncy beat -- hello piano driven show-tune, accompanied by guitar and cello. It's a version I can imagine Drugstore doing. It must be the cello. Maybe the semi-joyous, semi-emasculating lyrics too. Unfortunately, there hasn't been any news about the 'Store in months -- who knows if they actually got around to starting a new album last year like they were supposed to.

-----------------------------------------

Jake Fairley's wonderful new album, "Touch Not the Cat", reminds me of Peaches. Sure, both are Toronto ex-pats now living in Berlin, but it's more than that. It's mainly the beats -- dirty, sloppy, and grungy -- all compliments, of course. But in Peaches' case, the beats are there to adorn her voice. They're a backdrop to her sexual fantasies/demands, they're something to clog up the speakers while she (loudly) speaks her piece -- similar to house records by Screamin' Rachel in the 80's. Fairley has pulled off something very different, he's made a minimal techno (read: NOT microhouse, there's not nearly enough empty space for this to be microhouse, this is not Matthew Dear's "Leave Luck to Heaven" revisited) record with vocals. I'm not even certain the album needs the vocals, because the music is strong enough to hold up on its own. But they're there, adding another instrument on top of the rest of the pounding.