(Alternative/Indie/Folk) Imaad Wasif with Two Part Beast - Strange Hexes - 2008, MP3, V0

At the time of this writing, Imaad Wasif is probably a new name to you. That is, unless you: a) were into his former bands Lowercase and Alaska; b) saw him playing with/opening for Yeah Yeah Yeahs on their Show Your Bones tour; or c) live in LA and chanced upon a show. His resume isn’t extensive, but it’s worth noting that he joined the bigger-name bands he’s played with (YYYs and the Folk Implosion) slightly after their zeitgeist-nabbing moment. Strange Hexes is a very good album, and it’s a shame that this album won’t see wider distribution because it is self-released, but it’s also slightly out of step: it has either missed its moment by about four years, or needs to wait another four for that moment to come. Perhaps this is because the album, with its high symbolism, tunefulness and muscle, feels like a missing link between Jeff Buckley and Unwound’s mid-’90s output; this is hardly in step with our decade’s nostalgia for the ’90s, which tends to cant (at least ostensibly) toward rave and techno, not towards alt-. Yet Strange Hexes is too fully realized – and more to the point, too apocalyptic – to be anything but contemporary. Hexes is a more substantial album than Wasif’s acoustic debut. This change is only indirectly the result of bringing on Two-Part Beast, a full-fledged and unusually competent indie ensemble. The songs here are ambitiously constructed, complete with willful, drastic shifts in tone.