Consequence of Sound's Top 50 Albums of 2013

There are deftly wielded forces of darkness and light at work on Vampire Weekend’s third record. Elegiac, alive with ideas, and coproduced by Ariel Rechtshaid, *Modern Vampires of the City* moves beyond the grabby, backpacking indie of its predecessors. In fact, whether through the hiccuping, distorted storm of “Diane Young” or “Unbelievers”—a sprinting guitar-pop jewel about the notion of afterlife—this is nothing less than the sound of a band making a huge but sure-footed creative leap.

The main feeling that Kevin Shields felt upon the release of *m b v* in 2013 was relief. The process of making his band’s third album—and first since 1991’s era-defining *Loveless*—had begun almost two decades before, and, after a last-minute race to complete it before a planned tour, it was done. “We had a six-month tour in front of us and we literally just finished it in time,” Shields tells Apple Music. Continuing a theme begun by *Loveless* and 1988’s *Isn’t Anything*, Shields compromised nothing on *m b v*. This time, though, it was a totally independent production, all on him. “I spent about £50,000 mastering it,” he says. “If we were with a record company, they would have been going absolutely crazy, but we paid for it ourselves and we put it out ourselves and we made a lot more money than we would’ve made if we’d put it out on a label.” *m b v* began back in 1996. The band’s classic lineup had started to disintegrate, with drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig and bassist Debbie Googe departing. Perhaps in a reflection of this unsettling period, Shields began to approach songwriting in a much more experimental manner. “I went on this process of recording a lot of ideas in a purposely abstract way,” he says. “I wasn’t trying to write a song with a beginning and an end. Instead of writing a part in a song, I’d record it and then record another part. I was doing the writing process and the recording process at the same time but in different ways. It might be weeks between a verse and a chorus…well, I don’t do choruses.” The idea was that eventually these ideas would form a coherent whole that would be a new my bloody valentine record, but the project stalled in 1997 when Shields ran out of money. “And then I started hanging out with Primal Scream and I kind of drifted into that world, which was fun for quite a while.” It wasn’t until Shields was remastering the band’s back catalog in 2006 that he listened back to the unfinished sessions. “I realized it was actually better and more relevant than I thought it was,” he recalls. “I’d kind of forgotten about the more melodic parts of it and realized they were quite strong. I thought, ‘I should finish this and make it into an album.’” It was a freeing process, Shields says, filled with lots of “crazy shit.” At one point, they paid to fly people from England to Japan with proofs of the artwork because they didn’t trust just seeing it on a computer. “We were literally throwing money at it to make sure it was as good as possible,” he says. “Every single penny was justified.” By the end, Shields felt vindicated. “We did it our way and it was perfectly good.” No my bloody valentine record ever sounds of its time—they all sound like the future. But there is something especially reinvigorating about listening to their third album, perhaps because of how unlikely its release seemed at points. To hear Shields still erecting signposts on where guitar music can go on the sensational closer “wonder 2,” which sounds like a rock band playing drum and bass from inside the engine of a 747, or the slo-mo sway of “if i am” is to be reminded that this is a visionary at work. One of the central themes of *m b v*, says Shields, was a strong sense of everything coming to an end. He thinks that’s why it still resonated when he listened back in 2006, the feeling growing as he recommenced work on it in 2011 and even more so now. “We’re in a cycle of the world of things coming to an end and moving into a new phase,” he says. “The record is more relevant as every decade goes by.”

Crisp drums, juicy chords, irresistible hooks—Disclosure’s debut album couldn\'t have sounded fresher. Brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence were just kids when their favorite styles were last in vogue, and they bring the right balance of innocence and insouciance to swinging drums and plunging organ basslines, while vocalists like Sam Smith and AlunaGeorge lend a soulful shine to the impeccably polished productions.

Since The National\'s 2001 debut, the world-weary baritone of frontman and songwriter Matt Berninger has become one of the most compelling voices in Brooklyn’s well-groomed indie scene, begging comparisons to darkly tempered rock outsiders like Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen. The follow-up to 2010’s celebrated *High Violet* is a set of beautifully produced contemplations on shadowy love, self-destruction, and urban ennui. Chipper? Hardly. But songs like “Demons,” “Heavenfaced,” and “I Need My Girl” are impossible to shake.

In January 2012, following a twenty-two month tour to promote the band’s previous record, High Violet, guitarist Aaron Dessner returned home to Brooklyn, where the fitfulness of his newborn daughter threw Aaron into a more or less sustained fugue state—“sleepless and up all the time,” as he puts it. Punch-drunk, he shuffled into the band’s studio (situated in Aaron’s backyard), where he amused himself writing musical fragments that he then sent over to vocalist Matt Berninger. Recalls Matt of Aaron, “He’d be so tired while he was playing his guitar and working on ideas that he wouldn’t intellectualize anything. In the past, he and Aaron’s twin brother, Bryce would be reluctant to send me things that weren’t in their opinion musically interesting—which I respected, but often those would be hard for me to connect to emotionally. This time around, they sent me sketch after sketch that immediately got me on a visceral level." From beginning to end, Trouble Will Find Me possesses the effortless and unself-conscious groove of a downstream swimmer. It’s at times lush and at others austere, suffused with insomniacal preoccupations that skirt despair without succumbing to it. There are alluring melodies, and the murderously deft undercurrent supplied by the Devendorfs. There are songs that seem (for Matt anyway) overtly sentimental—among them, the Simon & Garfunkel-esque 'Fireproof', 'I Need My Girl' (with Matt’s unforgettable if throwaway reference to a party “full of punks and cannonballers”) and 'I Should Live In Salt' (which Aaron composed as a send-up to the Kinks and which Matt wrote about his brother). While a recognition of mortality looms in these numbers, they’re buoyed by a kind of emotional resoluteness—“We’ll all arrive in heaven alive”—that will surprise devotees of Matt’s customary wry fatalism. Then there are the songs that Aaron describes as “songs you could dance to—more fun, or at least The National’s version of fun.” These include 'Demons'—a mordant romp in 7/4, proof that bleakness can actually be rousing—and the haunting 'Humiliation' in which the insistent locomotion of Bryan’s snarebeat is offset by Matt’s semi-detached gallows rumination: “If I die this instant/taken from a distance/they will probably list it down among other things around town.” Finally there are songs—like 'Pink Rabbits' and the lilting 'Slipped' (the latter termed by Aaron “the kind of song we’ve always wanted to write”)—that aspire to be classics, with Orbison-like melodic geometry. In these songs, as well as in 'Heavenfaced', Matt emerges from his self-described “comfort zone of chant-rock” and glides into a sonorous high register of unexpected gorgeousness. The results are simultaneously breakthrough and oddly familiar, the culmination of an artistic journey that has led The National both to a new crest and, somehow, back to their beginnings—when, says Aaron, “our ideas would immediately click with each other. It’s free-wheeling again. The songs on one level are our most complex, and on another they’re our most simple and human. It just feels like we’ve embraced the chemistry we have.”

A few years removed from *Acid Rap*’s 2013 debut as a free mixtape, it’s surprisingly easy to hear impending greatness in Chance the Rapper. This hindsight comes, of course, well after the BET, Soul Train, and NAACP Image awards for best new artist, the Best Rap Album Grammy, hosting *Saturday Night Live*, the noted influence on rap demigod Kanye West’s *The Life of Pablo*, the friendship with the Obama family, the Kit Kat endorsement, and so on. But it’s here, across 13 genre-melding tracks (14, if you count the second half of “Pusha Man”), on the follow-up to 2012\'s debut *10 Day*. In the moment, Chance the Rapper’s aesthetics—a distinct singing voice stretched in all directions over a jazzy confluence of choir melodies, R&B guitar lines, vintage soul samples, trap drums, golden-era hip-hop beats, and Chicago juke music—were something of an outlier within his city\'s emerging drill music scene. “I dropped *10 Day* the same year Chief Keef started blowing up,” Chance told Apple Music’s Nadeska. “All the labels came into Chicago and the drill movement came up and it was a lot of pressure. Also around that time was when Chief Keef worked with Ye, so there was a big question of, \'Yo, you\'re the dude that super loves Ye, you’re quote-unquote “conscious rap.” You should be doing this stuff.\' So I just had a lot of pressure to bring something.” Chance would inevitably link with Kanye, but most who found their way to *Acid Rap* were looking for an alternative to drill. Which is not to say that Chance didn’t acknowledge the plight of his hometown. Topically, the second half of the album’s “Pusha Man” (colloquially known as “Paranoia”) is one of the most affecting songs of the period, with Chance singing, “Everybody dies in the summer/Wanna say goodbye?/Tell \'em while it’s spring.” Elsewhere, he uses his melodic croak to reminisce on the simple joys of childhood (“Cocoa Butter Kisses”), the man he’s becoming (“Lost”), and problems within his relationship (“Acid Rain”). *Acid Rap*’s guests are mostly voices just left of hip-hop center (Childish Gambino, Action Bronson, Ab-Soul), but Chance also made it a point to include Chicago speed-rap legend Twista and to introduce listeners to the young genius of Noname. So who then, by way of this 13-song conflation of sounds and voices, could have have known that Chance the Rapper would go on to become one of the most celebrated voices in hip-hop and a force of pop culture in his own right? The answer, simply enough, is anyone who would have listened.

This talented three-sister act received what felt like years of hype with its advance EPs before finally releasing its debut album, *Days Are Gone*—which sports a title seemingly aware of how much time passed while fans were waiting. With such expectations, *Days Are Gone* delivers on the hype, with self-penned songs so perfectly performed that it feels unfair that Haim has received so many comparisons to Fleetwood Mac, no matter how kind and worthy. A catchy tune like “The Wire” is so immediately likable that it\'d throw the rest of an album by a lesser act off balance. Except Haim is the real deal, and even the very next songs—“If I Could Change Your Mind,” “Honey & I,” “Don’t Save Me”—exhibit fresh excitement of their own propulsion. Producer Ariel Rechtshaid (Usher, Vampire Weekend) helped these songs flow with their identities intact. The album features the best attributes of \'80s pop; while those who lived through that era might feel a sense of untraceable déjà vu, everyone should marvel at the catchy, unforced fun heard throughout this remarkable debut.

Don\'t get the wrong idea—just because Julia Holter has expanded her sound and her scope for her third album, *Loud City Song*, it doesn\'t mean she\'s leaped ill-advisedly into entirely foreign waters. It\'s not like the electronic art-pop auteur has gone country or something—just that after earning attention with the previous year\'s *Ekstasis* and finding herself on a larger label with more ears angled her way, she decided to open things out a bit. Holter\'s hypnotic, blown-glass vocal tones and gracefully angular, electro-minimalist approach to making music are still the defining factors here, but this album feels richer and more varied than its predecessor. Touches like the jazzy acoustic bass of \"In the Green Wild,\" the staccato horn section punctuating the appropriately titled \"Horns Surrounding Me,\" and the late-night piano languor of \"He\'s Running Through My Eyes\" all enhance Holter\'s approach. When she lays into an ambient-pop version of Barbara Lewis\'s \'60s soul hit \"Hello Stranger,\" it seems like there\'s nothing she can\'t do if she sets her mind to it.

Loud City Song is the new studio recording by Los Angeles based artist Julia Holter. The album is her third full length release in as many years – following 2011’s groundbreaking debut Tragedy and last year’s follow-up, the critically lauded Ekstasis. Her first studio album proper, Loud City Song is both a continuation and a furthering of the fiercely singular and focused vision displayed by its predecessors, taking as it does Holter’s rare gift for merging high concept, compositional prowess and experimentation with pop sensibility and applying it to a set of even more daringly beautiful arrangements and emotionally resonant songs. The songs were coaxed out and finessed as demos in Holter’s bedroom studio and then coalesced into one thrillingly cohesive experience by Holter and co-producer Cole Marsden Grief-Neill and an ensemble of Los Angeles musicians. The result is an album of enormous ambition - taking its cues from the likes of Joni Mitchell and the poetry of Frank O’Hara but forging those inspirations into something resolutely unique.

With multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis replacing Mick Harvey as his primary foil, Nick Cave finds his songs developing along the lines of his soundtrack work on *Push the Sky Away*. The mood is subdued, yet intense, as it forces Cave to sing from his deepest register and leads to some of his best work. Nowhere is it more effective than on the haunting “Wide Lovely Eyes,” where Cave and a Fender Rhodes keyboard provide the drama. The album is pure simmering genius, where life occurs in the shadows.

Coming out of Detroit, Danny Brown has gone from blog-friendly mixtape rapper to legitimate star in just a few short years. Now he\'s signed to A-Trak and Nick Catchdub\'s Fool\'s Gold Records, and *Old* is his third full-length (following *The Hybrid* and *XXX*). It\'s his first with major-label backing and officially for sale in stores. One of the most unusual, nontraditional emcees in the game right now, Brown has two distinct vocal styles: one mellow and laid-back, the other high-pitched and hyperactive. The songs here are also of the split-personality type; half are serious, darkly introspective, and thought-provoking (\"The Return\" with Freddie Gibbs, \"Gremlins\"), while the other half are spazzed-out let\'s-get-wasted-and-party anthems that wouldn\'t sound out of place on a LMFAO record (\"Smokin & Drinkin,\" \"Handstand\"). The production—from Oh No, SKYWLKR, Frank Dukes, and BadBadNotGood—is heavy on the freaky electronics, while vocal features come from A$AP Rocky, Schoolboy Q, Ab-Soul, and others. If you\'re already a Danny Brown fan, you\'re gonna love this.

For his debut release on the reputed Warp Records imprint, Daniel Lopatin (a.k.a. Oneohtrix Point Never) draws somewhat on the compositional elements from his previous LP, *Replica*, but pushes them seamlessly to their breaking points—each track is a short film\'s worth of ideas and range. Referencing any number of touchstones from \'90s Internet culture to the subtle ambient works of Aphex Twin, to *Oxygene*-like swells of cinematic synths, the listener is left with almost zero ability to predict where a track will lead. Yet there\'s never the sense of being taken unexpectedly—Oneohtrix turns sound on its head to bring you to the place you\'re meant to go, which is sometimes many places at once.

Get it on CD/LP: www.badabingrecords.com/store/lady-lamb-the-beekeeper-ripely-pine-cdlp More than anything, Aly Spaltro has 20,000 second-hand DVDs to thank for her first album. Despite being recorded at a proper studio in her recently adopted home of Brooklyn, Ripely Pine showcases songs conceived during her tenure at Bart’s & Greg’s DVD Explosion in Brunswick, Maine. Little did customers know, the same store they’d drop off their Transformers movies was providing the ideal four-year cocoon for the development of a major musical talent. Spaltro worked the 3:00 PM to 11:00 PM shift. Each night, after locking up, she’d walk past Drama and Horror, pull out her music gear from behind a wall of movies, and write and record songs until morning broke. She did this every day, drawing strength from the monotony of her routine and testing out multiple techniques, approaches and instrumentation. Anger, confusion, love, happiness and sadness reigned, and the songs ran rampant, with little form or structure. Isolated for those many hours, Spaltro let melodies morph together, break apart and pair up. This is how she taught herself to write music and sing. Taking the name Lady Lamb, Spaltro became one of the most beloved musicians in Portland. Her live shows were unhinged, as melodies followed an internal logic only apparent to Spaltro herself. She sang and played guitar, and the songs offered a vivid yet brief snapshot of her expansive world. At 23, with years of writing and performing music already under her belt, she ventured to the next milestone—recording an album. This would be the first time she did so in a professional studio and the first time she shared the process with anyone else. Luckily, she met Nadim Issa at Let ’Em Music in Brooklyn. He was taken enough by her abilities to dedicate nine full months toward the recording of Ripely Pine, and she with his producing abilities to ease comfortably into making him a part of her recording process. She wrote everything—all the songs, all the arrangements. And the two of them assembled an album that finally fit what existed in Spaltro’s mind. Keeping the songs’ stark rawness, the record is a pure representation of her sound. Ripely Pine shouts the introduction of a new talent from every groove. These recordings come as close as possible to conveying the intense majesty of her live shows, and, much like those performances, a narrative breathes through the record’s progression. The album opens with urgency and anger, settles into reconciliation and reciprocation, and ultimately reaches toward resolution, realizing infatuation leads to a loss of self; instead, embracing one’s own strengths is the most powerful thing of all.

You might call Liz Harris—who performs as Grouper—an ambient artist. And you\'d be half right. On its own, the word \"ambient\" sometimes implies too much distance, a sort of otherworldly sense of atmosphere. Grouper\'s music is ambient, but it\'s also deeply intimate, raw, and personal, even though the lyrics are elusive and the song shapes are as amorphous as water. Harris is a prolific and fascinating artist; the numerous albums in her catalog since 2005 ping-pong between ethereal folk and ambient psychedelia. Her songs don\'t cling to your inner ear due to hooks or melodies; they invade your senses like an incubus or virus. (We mean that in a good way!) Her hazy, delicate vocals float over layers of ambient hiss, sparse piano, and drifting guitar notes or muffled industrial noise. From a downcast, droney strum (from an open-tuned acoustic guitar) on numbers like \"Cloud in Places\" to haunted instrumental interludes like \"Vanishing Point,\" *The Man Who Died* is an artful piece of work that\'s hard to shake. These songs were written around the time of her 2008 album *Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill*, and feel very much apiece of that effort.

The Athens, Ga.–based singer/songwriter Matthew Houck—a.k.a. Phosphorescent—works an alt-country/indie-pop territory occupied by Bonnie \"Prince\" Billy, Shearwater, and many other acts that get weirder the closer they come to turning pro. *Muchacho* plays out like a classic breakup album, with the singing laying claim to angst by shouting the lyrics into the night sky, where they bounce off the studio reverb caught in the stars. \"Song for Zula\" is the album\'s obvious high point: a hazy, lazy melody brought to life by a stuttering rhythm and a clunky bass line that provides the pulse. \"Terror in the Canyons\" evokes a mid-\'70s country tune rewritten by Ryan Adams and performed like Adams being backed by My Morning Jacket. \"Muchacho\'s Tune\" turns in a loose, achy vocal worthy of Will Oldham. \"Sun, Arise!\" and \"Sun\'s Arising\" bracket the album with multitracked vocal weaves; they provide a spiritual vibe that\'s both rustic and modern.

Though Okkervil River hails from Texas, its frontman, Will Sheff, grew up in a small New Hampshire town (Meriden!). His songs probe his real and imagined experiences there for the seventh Okkervil River album, 2013’s *The Silver Gymnasium*. His snapshots aren’t far removed from the \'70s settings of *Freaks and Geeks* or *That ‘70s Show*; despite being born in 1976, Sheff clings closer to the early-\'80s experiences than anything from the latter half of the decade (he claims 1986, though 1983 would suffice). Fortunately, the band doesn’t try to re-create that era but settles into its usual fluid sense, where instruments from keyboards to guitars mess about, with everyone available to chip in on vocals. The rhythms bounce where applicable. Tunes such as “Down Down the Deep River,” “Where the Spirit Left Us,” and “All the Time Every Day” all skitter with the band’s usual nervous energy and tricky melodies—but with a streamlined sense now that the members have grown up and realized what’s really important.

Recorded and mixed by Justin Pizzoferrato at Sonelab, Easthampton, MA Mastered by Carl Saff, Chicago, IL Artwork by Sadie Dupuis July Was Hot Music (c) 2013 Carpark Records CAK97 Get IRL 12", cassette or CD here: store.carparkrecords.com/products/514163-cak97-speedy-ortiz-major-arcana

Colin Stetson established himself as an intensely original solo composer and performer in 2011 with the release of the widely acclaimed New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges, which ended up on countless year-end lists. Anyone who has seen Stetson in solo performance can attest to the stunning physicality of his circular-breathing technique and capacity to produce a seemingly impossible palate of multiple voicings simultaneously in real time. New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light is the final installment in a trilogy of solo albums, again recorded live in single takes and again mixed by groundbreaking producer Ben Frost. Colin's membership in Bon Iver has also led to vocal contributions from Justin Vernon for this record, who appears on four songs, and whose voice constitutes the only overdubbing on the album. New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light is the most cohesive and fully realized of Stetson's solo albums to date. It should reliably stand as the apotheosis of the New History Warfare trilogy, and certainly signals the full flourishing of Stetson's unique talents as both composer and performer, pressing his arsenal of virtuosic techniques into the service of vivid, impassioned and conceptually astute songcraft.

The Allentown, Pa.–based Pissed Jeans let their sound breathe a bit more on their fourth album, 2013\'s *Honeys*. GRAMMY®-nominated producer Alex Newport gives the band\'s aggressive bite more depth in spots, while other moments (\"Something About Mrs. Johnson\") are as lo-fi and nasty as the group has ever been. \"Male Gaze\" has the off-balance lurch of the best hardcore punk, sounding in part like the legendary \'80s New Jersey hardcore band Bedlam. Just like their neighbors in Bedlam, Pissed Jeans sing about the trials and tribulations of the suburban workplace and do so with passionate hatred flowing through the rhythms and riffs. \"Chain Worker,\" \"Cafeteria Food,\" \"Cat House,\" and \"Health Plan\" are no more and no less than what they seem: screams of rage from workers staring down a dead end. Catchy choruses occasionally venture out of the chaos (\"Bathroom Laughter\"), but this is mostly the brutal damning noise that\'s been driving punk bands since the days of Black Flag.

*New Moon* opens up with a tune that sounds like something Wilco or The Jayhawks might have done in their formative years—bringing The Men\'s fans to ask, what gives? The countrified melody and plucky guitar, mandolin, and piano on “Open the Door” jaunt along like a confident charlatan in a roomful of over-boozed innocents. Are they toying with us? Nah. They’re just pushing boundaries, and on their fourth album, The Men force back the edges song by song. The next tune, “Half Angel Half Light,” saunters a bit more aggressively (as if our charlatan is hurriedly *leaving* the over-boozed and bamboozled crowd) before the record tumbles open full bore with the clamorous “Without a Face.” They take a step back to tumbleweed town on the White Fences–ish “Seeds” before pushing the pedal to the floor for a little Crazy Horse homage on “I Saw Her Face.” When the pummeling, bruising “The Brass” explodes in a rage of glorious fury, it’s so profoundly visceral you might need to sit down. Honestly, what can’t these guys do? We like ‘em best when they scare the heck out of us on songs like “The Brass” and “Supermoon,” but it’s all amazing.

With their fourth full-length album released in as many years, The Men proudly present the sweeping New Moon, the most intensely personal and immersive installment yet. Never content to draw on the same methods twice, nor to recline under the heel of expectation, The Men quit the city in early 2012 to head for Big Indian, NY - transforming a remote Catskills locale into a full-fledged stray dog studio home. Entering with only the most skeletal sketches, the house was selected as an incubator for its technical limitations.

With her second full-length album, Janelle Monáe continues the imaginative narrative of her futuristic alter-ego Cindi Mayweather. This storyline started on Monáe\'s debut EP, *Metropolis: The Chase Suite*, and continued though the acclaimed 2010 full-length *The ArchAndroid*. The richly detailed tunes on *The Electric Lady* continue the story of Mayweather—a femme android superhero—through a funk-infused power struggle in the city of Metropolis. And even though Monáe’s concept is elaborate, hard-grooving tunes like “Q.U.E.E.N.” (feat. Erykah Badu), “Electric Lady,” and “Dance Apocalyptic” are undeniably magnetic and stand on their own merits. Tracks like “We Were Rock n\' Roll” and “It\'s Code” demonstrate Monáe’s gift for weaving influences of classic soul and exploratory funk (think Funkadelic and Nona Hendryx) with crisp neo-soul production and rock guitar flourishes. Prince makes a guest vocal on an album highlight—“Givin Em What They Love”—while reflexive ballads like “PrimeTime” (feat. Miguel), “Can’t Live Without Your Love,” and “What an Experience” feature some of Monáe’s most personal songwriting to date.

While Waxahatchee’s debut, *American Weekend*, is often described as “haunting” (for good reason), the artist’s sophomore release exudes a more pointed, aggressive sound. Waxahatchee is Katie Crutchfield, a singer/songwriter and Alabama native doing what should be impossible by now: giving new life to a well-worn musical genre. On *Cerulean Salt*, she swings from stabbing, grimy guitars on the first two tracks to a relaxed and almost sweet-seeming saunter featuring tambourines and acoustic guitar (“Lips and Limbs“). Then a thudding, spare bass and hollow snare paint a bleak picture on “Brother Bryan.” That song opens with the line “I said to you on the night we met, ‘I am not well,’” which tells you what to expect lyrically on this beguiling work. Crutchfield’s an honest, straightforward artist who emits the smart pop-flavored confidence of Liz Phair, the mystery of Cat Power, and the melodic playfulness of Pavement, though Waxahatchee’s sound is considerably simpler. Whether she’s slamming her electric guitar or strumming an acoustic, the emotional nakedness of *Cerulean Salt* is a beautiful thing.

On her second full-length record as Waxahatchee, former P.S. Eliot singer Katie Crutchfield’s compelling hyper-personal poetry is continuously crushing. Cerulean Salt follows last January’s American Weekend -- a collection of minimal acoustic-guitar pop written and recorded in a week at her family’s Birmingham home. On this new record, Crutchfield’s songs continue to be marked by her sharp, hooky songwriting; her striking voice and lyrics that simultaneously seem hyper-personal yet relentlessly relatable, teetering between endearingly nostaglic and depressingly dark. But whereas before the thematic focus of her songcraft was on break ups and passive-aggressive crushing, this record reflects on her family and Alabama upbringing. And whereas American Weekend was mostly just Crutchfield and her guitar, Cerulean Salt is occasionally amped up, with a full band and higher-fi production. At times, Cerulean Salt creeps closer to the sound of PS Eliot: moody, 90s-inspired rock backed by Keith Spencer and Swearin’ guitarist Kyle Gilbride on drums and bass. The full band means fleshed-out fuzzy lead guitars on “Coast to Coast”, its poppy hook almost masking its dark lyrics. Big distorted guitars and deep steady drums mark songs like “Misery over Dispute” and “Waiting”. There’s plenty of American Weekend‘s instrospection and minimalism to be found, though. “Blue Pt. II” is stripped down, Crutchfield and her sister Alison (of Swearin’) singing in harmony with deadpan vox. She’s still an open booking, musing on self-doubt versus self-reliance, transience versus permanence. “Peace and Quiet” ebbs and flows from moody, minimal verses to a sing-song chorus. “Swan Dive” tackles nostalgia, transience, indifference, regret — over the a minimal strum of an electric-guitar, the picking at a chirpy riff and the double-time tapping of a muted drum. The album closes with a haunting acoustic-guitar reflection on “You’re Damaged,” possibly the best Waxahatchee song to date.

James Blake\'s second studio album, *Overgrown*, is a hypnotizing foray from an artist whose influences have grown from the subtle, futuristic textures of his eponymous 2011 debut to embrace everything from gospel choirs to post-dubstep. On *Overgrown*, Blake further expands his omnivorous influences and yields eclectic results—from a hip-hop track featuring RZA (\"Take a Fall for Me\") to a piano ballad that foregoes synths and electronics entirely (\"Dlm\"). *Overgrown* is challenging but accessible, confidently pacing through a multifaceted garden blooming with complex electronic layers, styles, and emotions.

There is an early Daft Punk track named “Teachers” that, effectively, served as a roll call for the French duo’s influences: Paul Johnson, DJ Funk, DJ Sneak. Within the context of 1997’s *Homework*, “Teachers” presented the group as bright kids ready to absorb the lessons of those who came before them. But it also marked Daft Punk as a group with a strong, dynamic relationship to the past whose music served an almost dialogic function: They weren’t just expressing themselves, they were talking to their inspirations—a conversation that spanned countries, decades, styles and technological revolutions. So while the live-band-driven sound of 2013’s *Random Access Memories* was a curveball, it was also a logical next step. The theatricality that had always been part of their stage show and presentation found its musical outlet (“Giorgio by Moroder,” the Paul Williams feature “Touch”), and the soft-rock panache they started playing with on 2001’s *Discovery* got a fuller, more earnest treatment (“Within,” the Julian Casablancas feature “Instant Crush,” the I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-The-Doobie-Brothers moves of “Fragments of Time”). The concept, as much as the album had one, was to suggest that as great as our frictionless digital world may be, there was a sense of adventurousness and connection to the spirit of the ’70s that, if not lost, had at least been subdued. “Touch” was “All You Need Is Love” for the alienation of a post-*Space Odyssey* universe; “Give Life Back to Music” wasn’t just there to set the scene, it was a command—just think of all the joy music has brought *you*. “Get Lucky” and “Lose Yourself to Dance”—spotlights both for Pharrell and the pioneering work of Chic’s Nile Rodgers—recaptured the innocence of early disco and invited their audience to do the same. There was joy in it, but there was melancholy, too: Here was a world seen through the rearview, beautiful in part because you couldn’t quite go back to it. “As we look back at the Earth, it’s, uh, up at about 11 o’clock, about, uh, well, maybe 10 or 12 diameters,” the sampled voice of astronaut Eugene Cernan says on “Contact.” “I don\'t know whether that does you any good. But there\'s somethin’ out there.” This was the Apollo 17 mission, December 1972. It remains the last time humans have been on the moon.

After kicking in the door as a 16-year-old rap phenomenon, Odd Future\'s Earl Sweatshirt, now 19, is unleashing *Doris*. His first full-length album further establishes him as a promising talent in hip-hop. With production from The Neptunes (\"Burgundy\"), drunken ad-libs from RZA (\"Molasses\"), rapping by Frank Ocean (\"Sunday\"), and energetic cameos from Tyler, The Creator (\"Whoa\", \"Sasquatch\"), Earl\'s introduction is assertive. Swerving among hard raps, smooth melodies, and jazz-infused chords, *Doris* is eclectic, elusive, and hard to pin down. By the time the record finishes with the sweeping soul samples of \"Knight,\" Earl\'s outing makes for an entertaining ride.

Running nearly 70 minutes, *Centralia* is a sprawling and hypnotic journey. The duo of Koen Holtkamp and Brendon Anderegg creates a plaintive and moving work from disparate parts woven together with great care. Understated and contemplative, *Centralia* is a celebration of subtle interactions. The interplay between synth drones and hypnotic acoustic guitar and piano melodies blurs the line between organic and electronic. On first listen, the music seems to rarely waver. Yet subsequent listens reveal many unexpected and startling moments, such as the cello passage near the end of “Sand” and the gentle warble that rises to the surface midway through the 20-minute centerpiece “Propeller.” *Centralia* is a captivating tour de force that stretches the boundaries of ambient music.

Mountains’ music is defined by slow builds, and subtle transformations, textures and melodic lines that evolve in a variety of ways to create grand soundscapes and acutely detailed compositions. For Centralia, the duo of Koen Holtkamp and Brendon Anderegg wrote and recorded in a way that mirrors the pace of their music. While the current trend in experimental music is towards hyper-prolificity, Mountains have taken their time on Centralia, resulting in an album that is as precise as it is boundless. Holtkamp and Anderegg approached the album layer by layer, throughout much of the record combining purely-acoustic recordings with purely-electronic sounds rather than using electronics to manipulate acoustic source material. Guitar, cello, organs, electric piano, and more are seamlessly combined with modular electronics, synthesizers and other sound sources. The result is a fully engrossing listen, always shifting focus between acoustic instruments, processed instruments and electronic sound. Most of Centralia was recorded by Holtkamp and Anderegg at Telescope Recording in Brooklyn, with the exception of the side-long “Propeller” and “Liana,” which are recordings of live shows later augmented with additional instrumentation. The duo recorded, edited, and mixed everything themselves, creating a sonic and aesthetic continuity only achievable through such fastidious and insular methods. Be it the gently melodic acoustic guitar and keyboard of “Tilt” or the steady, subtle pulsating haze of “Living Lens,” the album is as sonically rich as it is compositionally diverse. Centralia is the most fully realized Mountains album, it encompasses everything Mountains represents, from the analog electronic sound of Air Museum, to the gentle warmth and improvised grandeur of Choral. Mountains are utterly singular in their ability to combine such varied and complex sources into such delicately detailed songs of perceived simple pastoral ambience.

Author Nick Hornby included a song by Mark Mulcahy in his 2002 book *31 Songs*, a collection of essays on tunes that carry a particular emotional impact for him. Included alongside tracks by the likes of Springsteen, Dylan, and Patti Smith was Mulcahy’s “Hey Self-Defeater.” After a brief, clandestine affair with semi-fame in the ‘80s and ‘90s with his superb band Miracle Legion, Mulcahy continues to make music that reaches somewhat limited circles, which is a shame. He’s one of the best songwriters around today, admired by the likes of Michael Stipe, Mark Eitzel, and Thom Yorke. It’s his music that speaks loudest, and on this—Mulcahy’s fourth full-length album since the late ‘90s and the first since his wife\'s tragic death in 2008—the artist shows his range and skill with stunning confidence. The see-sawing acoustic guitars and cooing backup singers on the opening “I Taketh Away” and the vehement “Where’s the Indifference Now?” (a song about the public spectacle surrounding Heath Ledger’s death) bookend nine more superb and uniquely American tunes.

There’s an audacity to the way the Arctic Monkeys\' fifth album gathers disparate musical threads—West Coast hip-hop, heavy ’70s rock—into something that feels so assured, inevitable and outrageously enjoyable. From biker-gang stomp of “Do I Wanna Know?” to the bouncing G-funk of “Why’d You Only Call…”, they turn the sounds of their adopted Californian home into a set of can’t-miss instant classics. Seductive, slinky and brimming with nocturnal attitude, *AM* is the sound of a band locating a sonic sweet spot no one else thought to look for.

At just 16 years old, New Zealand pop singer Ella Yelich-O’Connor—d.b.a. Lorde—captured the top of the pop charts with the smart and wise-beyond-her-years single “Royals,” where she trashes modern pop and hip-hop’s obsession with materialism in favor of a world of love, friendship, and ideas. It’s the best Morrissey song he never wrote. Her earlier *The Love Club EP* primed audiences for what they’d be hearing, but nothing could prepare one for the actual excitement of her debut album’s best cuts. Lorde’s co-conspirator/producer/writer Joel Little ensures that songs like “Tennis Court,” “Ribs,\" and “Buzzcut Season” never lose their way. This is sharp, inspired pop music that knows how much fun it can be to play up to type and then spin things on their heads for a new conclusion.

When Jordan Lee\'s gentle vocals take shape in the fog of a baroque pop group tuning up and finding its footing, a sweet crescendo makes a pillowy landing. It\'s immediately clear: you’re in good hands with Mutual Benefit. There will be no cowbells, industrial collisions, pouty punkettes, or sterile, neon-colored synths. There *will* be acoustic guitars that sparkle, tiptoeing percussion, swaying strings, and vocals that wrap you in a cocoon of comfort and warmth: this is the music that would accompany a lone sailor on a twinkling sea of light in a Hollywood fantasy. No sharks here—just an adventurous spirit. The listener is swept away in “Golden Wake,” a tune that both lulls and delicately fist-pumps its chorus (“We weren’t meant to be afraid!”), all the while barely noticing a metronomic hiss weaving in and out of the piano and violin threads. “Advanced Falconry” billows softly, with strings and a muffled bit of banjo, while that maligned instrument shines more brightly (and with more pluck!) on the airy, pastoral “Strong Swimmer.” Jordan’s view is of the half-full variety, and this stunning debut makes the world feel right.

Sky Ferreira—a hugely talented pouty-lipped waif with an old soul—wrested what was to be her debut full-length away from her label and convinced them to grant her a do-over. The result was recorded in less than three weeks, then mixed and released in a whirlwind of alchemy. *Night Time, My Time* is an impressive and muscular collection. After a series of singles and EPs, Ferreira exudes her L.A. cool all over *Night Time*, from her nude photo on the cover to her edgy delivery. Her dusky throat and pop-be-damned attitude puts her squarely between artists like Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Icona Pop, swerving between an injured coo and a bad-kitty snarl with smooth deftness. Whether she\'s belting out the wistful ballad “24 Hours” or the stomping hissy fit “Nobody Asked Me,” there’s an appealing anthemic quality to these songs, written by Ferreira and a songwriting team that incudes producer Ariel Rechtshaid (Charli XCX, Usher, Haim). She strays into Madonna’s fertile territory on tunes like “I Blame Myself” and reaches into the icy underworld of ‘70s postpunk pioneer Alan Vega on “Omanko,” a clear measure of her intentions. The girl’s got it.

So So Glos sputter and spit with the friendly energy of early U.K. punk bands like The Undertones and 999; singer/bassist Alex Levine evokes the smoke-and-beer pub vibe of 999’s Nick Cash circa 1978. But at the same time, a distinctly American East Coast (Brooklyn, to be exact) sensibility permeates this modern group. Though early punk roots are clearly under these guys’ sneakered feet, a more *au courant* Green Day–style pop-punk essence also wafts from the members\' sweat-drenched t-shirts, perhaps due to the band’s impressively tight sound. Or it may be due to the deliciously sticky melodies and songwriting. (So So Glos do cite The Kinks as an influence.) The bombastic, irresistible “Son of an American” bounces like a paddleball trying to get free; it could have every adolescent air guitarist in the country wearing out their mirrors. Grittier punk spirit is alive and well on songs like “Wrecking Ball,” “Speakeasy,” and the title track, where the feeling is very *much* of a blowout—a party that ends in a boom. If these guys don’t spontaneously combust soon, we’re pretty sure there’s a lot more to come.