Talker

Rock music seemed to reach an inscrutable endpoint with Talker, the third full-length by U.S. Maple. The group always embodied a shadowy insularity, but here, an increased sense of space threw their highly peculiar language — marked by limping, lurching rhythms, disembodied riffs and the disquieting rasp of vocalist Al Johnson — into stark relief. A quarter century on, the pieces here feel no less mysterious or strangely alluring. Songs like “Go to Bruises” and “Apollo, Don’t You Crust” are master classes in avant-rock composition, disguising a huge amount of intent beneath a stream-of-consciousness facade.