J Mascis: Tied to a Star [SUB POP]

Why you'll love it

This Sub Pop LP comes with a download code and a full-colour poster of the cover art, plus a colour-printed inner sleeve. Metacritic scores the album 77, and NME gave it 8 out of 10.

This edition

• Download card included
• Poster included
• Printed inner sleeve

About the album

J Mascis is famous for playing guitar at a volume that rearranges furniture, so his solo records come as a lovely surprise. Tied to a Star is mostly acoustic, warm and unhurried, with that unmistakable cracked drawl front and centre and the odd electric solo sneaking in like a cat through a door left ajar.

Mascis produced it himself and plays almost everything: guitar, bass, keyboards and drums. Ken Maiuri adds piano, Pall Jenkins of Black Heart Procession brings guitar and harmonies, and Mark Mulcahy sings on two songs. Chan Marshall, better known as Cat Power, joins him on the hushed "Wide Awake," while "Every Morning" and "Me Again" show how much melody he packs into a simple strum. Sterling Sound in New York did the mastering, and the whole thing was recorded and mixed close to home in Amherst, Massachusetts.

It's a record for late nights and early mornings, and a reminder that the riffs were always built on songs. It is also, for the record, a remarkably quiet album from a man whose amplifiers have their own postcode.

Also at Kops: more J Mascis on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Sub Pop (cat# SP 1083), the 2014 album.