Album Review: Barbarossa - Bloodlines

It's rare for an album to knock you for six on the first spin, let alone from the outset. Bloodlines, the second from Barbarossa – aka James Mathe, part of Jose Gonzales's touring cohort – snags you in this manner, its lush, reverb-drenched title track diffusing its feel-good, cultivated alt-pop. Butterfly Plague both transports and jars, the latter more so thanks to Mathe's finely-tuned ear for engaging lines and chordal shifts, plus his pedigree vocal. Gonzales's influential less-is-more stamp is distinctly heard and felt (especially on The Load) and Mathe explores this inherited trait throughout Bloodlines.