We’re past the point where pop steeped in intentional fuzz or frayed to fashionable tatters feels transportive. After all, there’s nothing more now than the freshly forgotten past, and that other N-word (nostalgia) has become a tricky filter used to impart art where it might otherwise be lacking. (Call it the Instagram effect.) Let this preface not implicate Bibio (a.k.a. Stephen Wilkinson) as artless — if anything, the British singer-songwriter-producer has shown over seven albums that toying with texture is as instrumental to his craft as lonely noodling on his guitar. “Silver Wilkinson” continues the dovetailing of sun-faded folk and jaggy clip-hop that made “Ambivalence Avenue” and “Mind Bokeh” so uniquely gripping — indeed, the spindly “À tout à l’heure” could be an outtake from either. But the gentle kisses on “Silver” are preferable to its contemporary teeth; the thumpy, funky aphasia of “You” harks back to days when Bibio could have been mistaken for a Prefuse 73 knockoff — it just sounds dated. Meanwhile, divinely diffuse songs like “You Won’t Remember” feel timeless, which is always in style. (Out Tuesday)
ESSENTIAL “You Won’t Remember”
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