STEPHEN MALKMUS Groove Denied

DOMINO

While last year’s Sparkle Hard was Malkmus’s most accessible effort to date, here the songwriter explored his more outré interests with this basement electronic album. Despite a troubled gestation, Groove Denied turned out to be a laidback triumph: its laptop production was hazily vintage, reminiscent of early Cabaret Voltaire and Human League, while its inspired tracklisting gradually took the listener from machine-tooled abstraction to more traditional, guitar-based songs.