Electric Hour

Sword II's Electric Hour comes howling out of a flooded Atlanta basement with mildew in its eyes and hooks stuck all over its hide. You can hear the house fighting them: damp drywall voltage, eviction-notice glamour, a whole rotten domestic grid made to spit chorus after chorus. It has that scary early-band lift, the sense of Pixies learning in real time how to make sweetness bruise and guitars lurch like bad weather with a pulse. The psych smear and pop powear are there, but the win is how direct it feels without ever getting polite. Crazy addictive, weirdly theatrical, raw as a cable bite. Major record, no caveats.