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THE NEW YEAR: The New Year [Touch And Go]

Matt and Bubba Kadane have never been in much of a hurry to do anything, neither with their beloved ’90s outfit Bedhead nor with their current gig, the New Year. So it’s no surprise that the follow-up to 2004’s The End Is Near took the brothers more than four years. “Folios” unfolds at the same snail-on-muscle-relaxants pace that made Bedhead so maddening and sneakily rewarding—little more than a repeated guitar chord and a tapped snare—before one of the interchangeably low-singing Kadanes ends the song with an amusing confession: “I don’t think the good years I’ve got can wait.” With that, they get right to it. This self-titled third album is, by these guys’ standards, quite the rush. Thanks to a typically front-and-center drum mix by engineer Steve Albini, walkabout pacesetters “X Off Days” and “The Door Opens” feel more like a mad dash. The unrushed songs are equally appealing, gussied up with elegant guitar and piano accents and spiked with disarming lines (“camping and orgies” are whispered among other soon-to-be-unmissed pleasures on deathbed missive “MMV”). If it takes the Kadanes another half-decade to match this half-hour of sublime music, the waiting will be the hardest part, indeed. [www.touchandgorecords.com]

—Noah Bonaparte Pais