Star of hope

New this week: Pink Silence by Cloth is a quiet revolution of their minimal pop - sleek, skeletal and hushed. William Tyler’s Time Indefinite is widescreen instrumental reverie—tracing memory, and melancholy, a record less about destination than the quiet revelations found in motion. Maria Somerville’s Luster drifts between shadowy ballads and spectral soundscapes—ambient, intimate, and unplaceable. Jimi Tenor & Cold Diamond & Mink’s July Blue Skies is all off-kilter psychedelic soul with playful woozy grooves and lounge surrealism all dialed in. Viagra Boys is the band’s most feral, funniest, and most unhinged release yet—a punk-funk bender that lurches and swaggers with abandon. And Burnin’ The Ice, the cult collaboration between Die Haut and Nick Cave - recorded in 1983, just as his Bad Seeds were getting it together in the squats - is all wiry tension and gothic menace—Berlin grit at its most elemental. A couple of notable re-stocks arrived back in the shop yesterday; Cindy Lee’s acclaimed Diamond Jubilee, a cracked-glam masterwork of lo-fi torch songs and haunted pop, and Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica, still one of the strangest, most vital transmissions ever committed to tape.