The skinny:

It’s possible that over the past several weeks you’ve noticed the reviews slow to a trickle around these parts. We had our reasons! Cookies weren’t involved! Okay, maybe they were! All of us at Tripwire HQ are pleased to introduce to you today a new chapter in our “take” on music criticism—by handing over the keys. Starting this week and every Tuesday hereafter, we’ll be posting a full album stream through our friends over at LaLa. What we’d like you to do is lend us your brainwaves and tweet whatever crosses your mind while listening. Maybe there’s a riff you can’t get out of your head. A lyric? A moment? An image? If you’re feeling ambitious, spend your 124 characters reviewing the record as a whole. Just toss those tweets over to us at @thetripwire and by the end of the week, we’ll cobble together and share the beautiful mess of a madlib it creates. Or, if you’re a complete Luddite/TwitterHater, you can just leave a review in the comments section. We’re flexible. You’re the boss now.

This week’s album up for review is The Flaming Lips’ Embryonic, a psychedelic comeback if we’ve ever heard one.

First, a small game plan reminder for newcomers or stragglers:

It’s possible that over the past several weeks you’ve noticed the reviews slow to a trickle around these parts. We had our reasons! Cookies weren’t involved! Okay, maybe they were! All of us at Tripwire HQ are pleased to introduce to you today a new chapter in our “take” on music criticism—by handing over the keys. Starting this week and every Tuesday hereafter, we’ll be posting a full album stream through our friends over at LaLa. What we’d like you to do is lend us your brainwaves and tweet whatever crosses your mind while listening. Maybe there’s a riff you can’t get out of your head. A lyric? A moment? An image? If you’re feeling ambitious, spend your 124 characters reviewing the record as a whole. Just toss those tweets over to us at @thetripwire and by the end of the week, we’ll cobble together and share the beautiful mess of a madlib it creates. Or, if you’re a complete Luddite/TwitterHater, you can just leave a review in the comments section. We’re flexible. You’re the boss now.

This week’s album up for review is Built to Spill’s There Is No Enemy, the Boise outfit’s seventh and we think, finest this decade.

It’s possible that over the past several weeks you’ve noticed the reviews slow to a trickle around these parts. We had our reasons! Cookies weren’t involved! Okay, maybe they were! All of us at Tripwire HQ are pleased to introduce to you today a new chapter in our “take” on music criticism—by handing over the keys. Starting this week and every Tuesday hereafter, we’ll be posting a full album to stream through our friends over at LaLa. What we’d like you to do is lend us your brainwaves and tweet us whatever crosses your mind while listening. Maybe there’s a riff you can’t get out of your head. A lyric? A moment? An image? If you’re feeling ambitious, spend your 124 characters reviewing the record as a whole. Just toss those tweets over to us at @thetripwire and by the end of the week, we’ll cobble together and share the beautiful mess of a madlib it creates. Or, if you’re a complete Luddite, you can just leave a review in the comments section. You’re the boss now. So without further adieu, we give you… Tweet Release.

This week’s album is Unmap, full-length debut from Volcano Choir, a gnarly new collaboration between Justin Vernon of Bon Iver and Collection of Colonies of Bees.

I got off the plane 34 hours ago. Beaches immersed in sunlight surrounded me. People drank from the moment they woke up, each body bathed in a golden hue. Sun would set late, maybe around 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. We’d all go to dinner before buying liters of wine to be entertained by whatever discotheque the night chose. It’s not the real world, sure, but I’ll be damned if we didn’t live those nights like it was.  Arriving back home, where daily concerns amount to more than say, unripe peaches at a fruit-stand, was expected and predictable. Sure, there’s sun back home. But it hides somewhere beneath a legion of dark clouds intent on bleakness. Yet I was unfazed. I got home finding myself strangely impervious to the gloom outside the window. Maybe it was partly due to the post-euphoric state that a tropical climate can induce, or maybe it was the Ayrton Senna E.P. by Barcelona electro-pop quartet Delorean.

The five-song E.P. begins with the insistent “Deli” and iterates a simple thesis: “I like the time I spend with you girl.” The beautiful simplicity of such a statement serves as the album’s manifesto, both thematically and sonically: find happiness in simple pleasures. It’s this dedication to positivity that allows Ayrton Senna to shimmer and glisten without being cloying, to push their tracks relentlessly forward without ever losing our attention.

A perfect summer record, indeed; as much to please an intimate group of friends on a camping trip as an amphetamine-charged dance floor. But awarding Delorean with only the title of an excellent summer record denigrates what is a multifaceted musical accomplishment. Ayrton Senna will please the Cut Copy and Tough Alliance fan alike, along with house DJ’s inclined to Delorean because of the involvement of Barcelona DJ John Talabot. But ultimately, where Delorean transcends particular niches is their innate charm that reaches out to audiences of all types. The most obvious example being the sun-soaked anthem “Seasun”, a track so immediately entrancing that its touchstone crescendo and release almost convinced me summer would never end. The formula is not necessarily surprising, it’s just remarkably effective: chattering synth noises, serene vocals swooning and mixing, electric hand-claps and percussion refusing to sit still until an almost-comprehensible vocal loop hits. I can decipher the word “sun” and that’s about it, but this reticence only opens the doors for personal interpretation further.

I’m utterly impressed. Delorean have clearly mastered their composition leaving us only wanting more. The Ayrton Senna E.P. is infectiously positive, affording your mind the chance to transport itself somewhere placid, and whether that may be home or on a beach, Delorean are happy to take you there.

—Michael Cranston

“The Rocky Road to Dublin” is an old Irish folk song about a man’s trip from his hometown of Tuam, Ireland to, you guessed it – Dublin. Along the way, he encounters dogs and lasses, has his belongings stolen, and eventually ditches the city of Dublin to hop ship to Liverpool, where he whacks some contentious Englishmen in the head with his shillelagh for taking the piss out of him.

Brian Kelly, another man out of Tuam, sings under the moniker of So Cow. He turns out songs that bristle with a charming, jittery angst – concise, yet twee at times. Not the check-out-my-cutesy-Belle & Sebastian-plush-dolls twee, but more of the check-out-my-Television Personalities-vinyl-and-the-cigarette-burn-in-my-cardigan ilk. Though if the “t-word” is deemed dirty in your vernacular, perhaps this record isn’t for you. This release collects 18 tracks that show Kelly is studied in both the classic British Invasion song structure as well as C81 and C86, both of which gave several nods to the past themselves. Most of the songs were recorded in Ireland and South Korea, a regional blur which could explain some of the lyrics’ tendencies towards that ever-so-fond feeling of being lost. I’m not sure whether it’s the words themselves or Kelly’s inflection, but tracks like “Halcyon Days” and “Shackleton” make me wince like I just saw the girl of my dreams walk out of the dance with that dick who drives a lifted Jeep Wrangler, as I’m left standing near the bleachers in the gym holding the mixtape I made for her like a hopeless romantic dunce. Because let’s be honest – love is never as pure as it is in adolescence, and Kelly captures that notion beautifully. The Irishman in love is a rocky road indeed.

—Joseph Tirabassi