Mordecai - Seeds From the Furthest Vine

Sixth LP from the beautifully shambling Mordecai, a once-of-Montana, now geographically diffuse three piece that are equal parts Messthetics clatter and Flying Nun sideways jangle and could be nothing other than a product of the great absurd American underground. This is music constantly playing bull-and-matador with collapse, yet somehow refuses to concede defeat. Jim Shepherd was great at this kind of thing, songs emerging suddenly from the atonal scree, melodic and addicting and utterly disarming for it. You might also think of Robert Pollard at his most 4-track inclined and there's absolutely a couple of Bilders records circling amidst the band's shared ether. Mostly, though, you can only make this kind of music when you truly commit to radically being yourself, and the three people who make up Mordecai have found a way to do that together for well over a decade now. The accompanying press release states this to be the best record they've made, but it's an immaterial evaluation - that it exists, pushing against the tide, finding its own way to be unique in this relentlessly monocultured world, is success enough. That it's a weirdo low-rent heater is the mere validation it didn't need anyway.