Legendary founder of legendary Velvet Underground brings epic rock, “modern rock”(?), all the soaring drama of a 70’s era Bowie release, but nothing “retro”, nothing pandering. Just good new music from an artist who obviously isn’t ready to rest on his laurels and fame and make a boob of himself playing old shit in front of adoring crowds at Coachella. Really excellent “slick” production. An example where “highly produced” doesn’t have to mean “over produced”. Shit, theres even autotuned songs in here (!!!). Fans of Bowie, Fripp, Roxie Music, late 70’s-80’s London hipster art rock. Good songwriting, a la Leonard Cohen when it comes to it.

1) (3:33) upbeat, urgent pound feel to it
2) (4:59) a taste of 80’s in the electro beat and swirling chorused guitar, cool
3) (3:58) slower swing to it, cool dissonant keys
4) (4:58) upbeat, kinda cheesy overall
5) (4:05) slower funky weird beat, percussiveness
6) (4:25) electrobeat, techno feel with autotune/vocoder, eesh!
7) (5:39) mid, somber, kinda sweet how it turns to a major key, great songwriting
8) (5:47) interesting beat, percussiveness, treated vocals, cool and dark
9) (3:30) more autotuned stuff, weird, maybe the only recent use of the gimmick that doesn’t make me want to throw up, pretty cool and appropriate in this somewhat electro driving dark tune
10) (4:03) lovely soaring feel, lilting, epic, best track?
11) (5:00) finally I can see the nick cave reference: deep walking bass, twangy guitar, cool
12) (3:44) near downtempo feel, gets pretty epic with choral vocals and feel