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Feral Children
Brand new Blood
****
People are bringing up Modest Mouse talking about this band, but that’s off the mark. Feral Children are noticeably more textured than that, quieter overall, and certainly challenging to pin down in terms of having a specific sound besides “4 a.m. come-down dreamy.” If anything, the nerdy un-self-consciousness these outsiders bring to us from Maple Valley, Washington, (a city of less than 20,000,) reminds a brother of nothing so much as a belonging to all worthy, lively underground music, from Modern Lovers to Wolf Parade to, my favourite track, an off-tune rocker called “Conveyor.”
This doll in particular sounds like some fucked-up abandoned child of a tramp who slept with — and was simultaneously fertilized by — every single song on the Repo Man soundtrack. You know, like Freddy Krueger! Here are some lyrics to mull that over with: “Me and her in the summertime, singing like retarded angels — with tilted halos and our clipped wings flappin’ like a motherfucker.” In a word, yes.
Besides this queer rocker, the album is a maze of personas. Some are fey, others a little dangerous, but usually with some almost pixie-like willingness to be pretty in harmony, if often meaner in lyric.
“These people are evil,” singer Jeff Keenan tells in one place, “You’ll probably die in a living room, just holding your breath waiting for something to sneak up on you,” in another. And for all the pillowy soft ones, there’s still a discordant CBGB freakout like the final track, complete with David Lynch saxophones.
The single best thing about Brand New Blood is this: originality.

Pterodactyl Plains
RAVEN
***1/2
On Now that only marketers are “selling” music to radio stations these days, a truly wonderful thing has happened: the artistic range of released albums is spreading to the edge of the creative universe, uninhibited by the concerns responsible for tricking you into seeing the douchebag haircuts of Hedley on buses. But artists now have the freedom to follow their hearts and take time with a motif. So a pretty and compelling experimental folk album like this, which in the old days might’ve been seen as “weird,” can be appreciated for its real value, which is aesthetic. It’s a soothing collection of songs with a little electronica and very lovely voices — Jessica Kilroy and Kier Atherton, who does a breathy Leonard Cohen. We’ve come around to an earlier age! Another reason to love the Great Recession.
Which is not to say, as a collection, Raven doesn’t contain snappier songs like “Clean” or the space-tribal “Red Umbrella,” which might fit on the FM dial. But it honestly didn’t need them, as the feeling of isolation is what makes it so delightfully alien.

Old School
Gowan
Strange animal (1985)
****
On the other hand, issues-based prog rock is something I miss a little; it’s all so internal these days. But leave it to Larry Gowan to sympathize with runway models, anti-American guerillas, hopeless criminals and, of course, strange animals, all on one album. The fact he’s in Styx and now sings Mr. Roboto nightly is almost too much for me to take. But I do think of “Guerilla Soldier” every time another Ewok gets taken out by Robocop somewhere out there in the night.