Consumer Guide Album

Dan Ex Machina: All Is Ours, Nothing Is Theirs [self-released, 2022]
This is hardly the first album from Dan Weiss's outer-Philly band. But few if any of their previous songs promised anything approaching the female-male opener's indelible sendoff--"We're gonna die in this house/Baby I know that you always said it/We're gonna die in this house/Baby I know that it's so pathetic"--or essay adulthood's varying alt-rock narratives, sonics, and points of view they nail again and again on an album that maintains for 19 tracks. Sample pickup fantasy: "Please send a gorgeous woman to knife me in the throat/It's better than feigning interest in architecture." Sample sex fantasy: "I want you to plunder my insides/I want you to put me at risk/I want to cave in where I've never been bitten/I want you balled up in my fist." Solid tunes impart cred to unlikely stories in which the singer runs disconsolately for prom king or a couple cheat on each other with each other via accidentally matched Ashley Madison accounts. "The kids love torture porn and candy corn you've been warned" I'll take under advisement. A-