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Hater ” start things off in an off-kilter psych haze , all crunchy winding guitars and Malkmus ’ trademark schoolboy tenor blowing plumes of abstract verbiage over sinister trucker prog . While his last few ventures found him doing genre studies ( the feral freak-folk of Traditional Techniques and the wiggy electronics of Groove Denied ), The Hard Quartet finds Malkmus comfortable leading an alternative rock band again . Sounding teleported from a time when MTV reigned supreme and would relegate Pavement music videos to Sunday nights , The Hard Quartet stretches out over the length of a double album , leaving space for weird experiments and gonzo rockers . Indie-rock utility player Matt Sweeney ( Chavez , Skunk ) shares the spotlight with his set of songs , at times doling out touching reveries like “ Killed By Death ” and sometimes giving us the tipsy barroom singalong of “ Rios Song .” Once a member of Billy Corgan ’ s short-lived but mercurial Zwan , Sweeney now joins forces with Malkmus , who once dragged Corgan and Smashing Pumpkins as “ nature boys ” on Pavement ’ s seminal 1994 pseudo diss track “ Range Life .” Australian drummer Jim White made waves in the 90s with his groundbreaking instrumental post-rock band The Dirty Three , and his work behind the drum kit propels everything forward . Recorded partially at Rick Rubin ’ s Shangri-La Studio in Malibu , these guys have colored outside their lo-fi roots to make an ornery grownfolk rock album that could perhaps reach across generations of psych-rock fans . The album ’ s hardest moment is the 2-minute punk rock detonation of “ Renegade ,” quite possibly the heaviest thing any of these musicians have ever created , and what makes it even more unsettling is that the melody sounds like a twisted distant cousin of “ This Diamond Ring ” by Gary Lewis & The Playboys . Woefully out of step with the current alternative rock landscape , The Hard Quartet is an unabashed love letter to the electric guitar , be it the jangly rush of “ Heel Highway ” or the bluesy crawl of “ Thug Dynasty .” Here ’ s to hoping that The Hard Quartet isn ’ t just a one-album lark and that these guys have merely begun their journey together .
- Andy Derer
WOKE MOUNTAIN BOYS Afraid of Leaving Home ( Self )
Long before earning acclaim as a documentary filmmaker ( notably including 1997 ’ s In Whose Honor ?, examining the use of Native American archetypes in sports ), Jay Rosenstein was a local hero on the University of Illinois campus in Champaign . His band Otis and the Elevators were roots-rockers with jam band-adjacent acumen who sold LP copies of 1986 debut Some Career and 1989 followup Cross the Bridge by the hundreds if not thousands . If you were an Illinois undergrad drawn to the blissful vibe of the Grateful Dead and fascinated by the heady prose of Bob Dylan , you were probably grooving with Otis at Mabel ’ s some night when you should have been working on that midterm paper . Following Otis ’ s run , Rosenstein continued with other worthy projects , including Silverweed . Yet another has been the Woke Mountain Boys , an even rootsier and more reflective outlet drawing from a palette of Americana , folk , and bluegrass . In 2024 , the band makes a surprising return with Afraid of Leaving Home , Rosenstein ’ s first studio effort in 35 years . The album ’ s arrival
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