Mark Reynolds' recent album Merry XXXmas -- which depicts him on the cover in a Santa suit -- has nothing to do with Christmas. On the Reynolds strangeness spectrum, that alone would make nary a blip. With its jump-jazz horns and vintage-phonograph feel, Merry XXXmas sounds like the Amelie soundtrack, albeit with overdubbed narration from some lunatic screaming into the voice distorter that the Strokes singer uses on every damn song. The seven-song cycle then repeats in reverse, with the melodies recoiling in an unsettling fashion and the vocals regressing from disturbed to plain possessed. Now that's a Mark Reynolds album. The ever-prolific oddball simultaneously released Crash, a literally warped acoustic-folk collection that sounds like seriously sun-damaged Jim Croce vinyl. Crash might dominate this set; the backmasked Merry material could be prohibitively difficult to perform. But with Reynolds, you just never know.
