Exclaim!'s Top 29 Albums of 2017 So Far

In the two years since *To Pimp a Butterfly*, we’ve hung on Kendrick Lamar\'s every word—whether he’s destroying rivals on a cameo, performing the #blacklivesmatter anthem *on top of a police car* at the BET Awards, or hanging out with Obama. So when *DAMN.* opens with a seemingly innocuous line—\"So I was taking a walk the other day…”—we\'re all ears. The gunshot that abruptly ends the track is a signal: *DAMN.* is a grab-you-by-the-throat declaration that’s as blunt, complex, and unflinching as the name suggests. If *Butterfly* was jazz-inflected, soul-funk vibrance, *DAMN.* is visceral, spare, and straight to the point, whether he’s boasting about \"royalty inside my DNA” on the trunk-rattling \"DNA.\" or lamenting an anonymous, violent death on the soul-infused “FEAR.” No topic is too big to tackle, and the songs are as bold as their all-caps names: “PRIDE.” “LOYALTY.” “LOVE.” \"LUST.” “GOD.” When he repeats the opening line to close the album, that simple walk has become a profound journey—further proof that no one commands the conversation like Kendrick Lamar.

The album that finally reveals a superstar. Sampha Sisay spent his nascent career becoming music’s collaborator à la mode—his CV includes impeccable work with the likes of Solange, Drake, and Jessie Ware—and *Process* fully justifies his considered approach to unveiling a debut full-length. It’s a stunning album that sees the Londoner inject raw, gorgeous emotion into each of his mini-epics. His electronic R&B sounds dialed in from another dimension on transformative opener “Plastic 100°C,” and “Incomplete Kisses” is an anthem for the broken-hearted that retains a smoothness almost exclusive to this very special talent. “(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano,” meanwhile, makes a solid case for being 2017’s most beautiful song.

Leslie Feist’s striking fifth album follows a series of left turns: the tidy indie pop of her early work, the commercial appeal of *The Reminder*, and the earthy about-face of *Metals*. Like *Metals*, *Pleasure* feels almost like a blues album, more spacious and stripped down than its predecessor, but strikingly dynamic, filled with rustling and whispers that swell into clangs and shouts. It proves that Feist is one of the most quietly unpredictable songwriters—and gifted vocalists—working today. “Come with your true arc/To fall all the way down,” she sings on the breathy centerpiece “Baby Be Simple,” sounding as exposed and mysterious as she ever has.

Josh Tillman’s third album as Father John Misty is a wry and passionate complaint against nearly everything under the sun: Politics, religion, entertainment, war—even Father John Misty can’t escape Father John Misty’s gimlet eye. But even the wordiest, most cynically self-aware songs here (“Leaving L.A.,” “When the God of Love Returns There’ll Be Hell to Pay”) are executed with angelic beauty, a contrast that puts Tillman in a league with spiritual predecessors like Randy Newman or Harry Nilsson. A performer as savvy as Tillman knows you can’t sell the apocalypse without making it sound pretty.

'Pure Comedy', Father John Misty’s third album, is a complex, often-sardonic, and, equally often, touching meditation on the confounding folly of modern humanity. Father John Misty is the brainchild of singer-songwriter Josh Tillman. Tillman has released two widely acclaimed albums – 'Fear Fun' (2012) and 'I Love You, Honeybear' (2015) – and the recent “Real Love Baby” single as Father John Misty, and recently contributed to songs by Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and Kid Cudi. While we could say a lot about 'Pure Comedy' – including that it is a bold, important album in the tradition of American songwriting greats like Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, and Leonard Cohen – we think it’s best to let its creator describe it himself. Take it away, Mr. Tillman: 'Pure Comedy' is the story of a species born with a half-formed brain. The species’ only hope for survival, finding itself on a cruel, unpredictable rock surrounded by other species who seem far more adept at this whole thing (and to whom they are delicious), is the reliance on other, slightly older, half-formed brains. This reliance takes on a few different names as their story unfolds, like “love,” “culture,” “family,” etc. Over time, and as their brains prove to be remarkably good at inventing meaning where there is none, the species becomes the purveyor of increasingly bizarre and sophisticated ironies. These ironies are designed to help cope with the species’ loathsome vulnerability and to try and reconcile how disproportionate their imagination is to the monotony of their existence. Something like that. 'Pure Comedy' was recorded in 2016 at the legendary United Studios (Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Beck) in Hollywood, CA. It was produced by Father John Misty and Jonathan Wilson, with engineering by Misty’s longtime sound-person Trevor Spencer and orchestral arrangements by renowned composer/double-bassist Gavin Bryars (known for extensive solo work, and work with Brian Eno, Tom Waits, Derek Bailey).

ORDER A PHYSICAL COPY HERE: www.pwelverumandsun.com P.W. ELVERUM & SUN box 1561 Anacortes, Wash. U.S.A. 98221 WRITTEN AND RECORDED August 31st to Dec. 6th, 2016 in the same room where Geneviève died, using mostly her instruments, her guitar, her bass, her pick, her amp, her old family accordion, writing the words on her paper, looking out the same window. Why share this much? Why open up like this? Why tell you, stranger, about these personal moments, the devastation and the hanging love? Our little family bubble was so sacred for so long. We carefully held it behind a curtain of privacy when we’d go out and do our art and music selves, too special to share, especially in our hyper-shared imbalanced times. Then we had a baby and this barrier felt even more important. (I still don’t want to tell you our daughter’s name.) Then in May 2015 they told us Geneviève had a surprise bad cancer, advanced pancreatic, and the ground opened up. What matters now? we thought. Then on July 9th 2016 she died at home and I belonged to nobody anymore. My internal moments felt like public property. The idea that I could have a self or personal preferences or songs eroded down into an absurd old idea leftover from a more self-indulgent time before I was a hospital-driver, a caregiver, a child-raiser, a griever. I am open now, and these songs poured out quickly in the fall, watching the days grey over and watching the neighbors across the alley tear down and rebuild their house. I make these songs and put them out into the world just to multiply my voice saying that I love her. I want it known. "Death Is Real" could be the name of this album. These cold mechanics of sickness and loss are real and inescapable, and can bring an alienating, detached sharpness. But it is not the thing I want to remember. A crow did look at me. There is an echo of Geneviève that still rings, a reminder of the love and infinity beneath all of this obliteration. That’s why. - Phil Elverum Dec. 11th, 2016 Anacortes

On her first proper album as Jay Som, Melina Duterte, 22, solidifies her rep as a self-made force of sonic splendor and emotional might. If last year's aptly named Turn Into compilation showcased a fuzz-loving artist in flux—chronicling her mission to master bedroom recording—then the rising Oakland star's latest, Everybody Works, is the LP equivalent of mission accomplished. Duterte is as DIY as ever—writing, recording, playing, and producing every sound beyond a few backing vocals—but she takes us places we never could have imagined, wedding lo-fi rock to hi-fi home orchestration, and weaving evocative autobiographical poetry into energetic punk, electrified folk, and dreamy alt-funk. And while Duterte's early stuff found her bucking against life's lows, Everybody Works is about turning that angst into fuel for forging ahead. "Last time I was angry at the world," she says. "This is a note to myself: everybody's trying their best on their own set of problems and goals. We're all working for something." Everybody Works was made in three furious, caffeinated weeks in October. She came home from the road, moved into a new apartment, set up her bedroom studio (with room for a bed this time) and dove in. Duterte even ditched most of her demos, writing half the LP on the spot and making lushly composed pieces like "Lipstick Stains" all the more impressive. While the guitar-grinding Jay Som we first fell in love with still reigns on shoegazey shredders like "1 Billion Dogs" and in the melodic distortions of "Take It," we also get the sublimely spacious synth-pop beauty of "Remain," and the luxe, proggy funk of "One More Time, Please." Duterte's production approach was inspired by the complexity of Tame Impala, the simplicity of Yo La Tengo, and the messiness of Pixies. "Also, I was listening to a lot of Carly Rae Jepsen to be quite honest," she says. "Her E•MO•TION album actually inspired a lot of the sounds on Everybody Works." There's story in the sounds—even in the fact that Duterte's voice is more present than before. As for the lyrics, our host leaves the meaning to us. So if we can interpret, there's a bit about the aspirational and fleeting nature of love in the opener, and the oddity of turning your art into job on the titular track. There's even one tune, "The Bus Song," that seems to be written as a dialog between two kids, although it plays like vintage Broken Social Scene and likely has more to do with yearning for things out of reach. While there's no obvious politics here, Duterte says witnessing the challenges facing women, people of color, and the queer community lit a fire. And when you reach the end of Everybody Works, "For Light," you'll find a mantra suitable for anyone trying, as Duterte says, "to find your peace even if it's not perfect." As her trusty trumpet blows, she sings: "I'll be right on time, open blinds for light, won't forget to climb."

Though Mac DeMarco has become known, in part, for playing a lovable buffoon online and on stage, he\'s also quietly assembled one of the most rewarding bodies of work in indie rock. *This Old Dog* picks up where 2014’s *Salad Days* left off, with a set of sunlit, heartfelt singer/songwriter fare that finds DeMarco reflecting on family with often stunning candor. From the acoustic warmth of “My Old Man” to the hushed crooning of “Sister” and the devastating observations of “Watching Him Fade Away,” it’s his finest album to date.

On his second album, the Brooklyn rapper’s heart still lies with hip-hop’s golden age. While trading verses with ScHoolboy Q and Styles P on “ROCKABYE BABY” and “SUPER PREDATOR,” his deft lyricism is as evocative of East Coast rap’s early-\'90s glory days as his buttery boom-bap. His thoughts, however, focus firmly on contemporary America, and he riffs on government, racism, and freedom with absorbing frankness. “DEVASTATED” is entirely forward-facing, saluting his personal triumph over hard times on top of sparkling trap beats.

Some bands take a few years to regroup for their next move; dream-pop pioneers Slowdive took 22, a return all the more bittersweet given how many bands their sound has influenced since. Combining the atmospherics of ambient music with rock ’n’ roll’s low center of gravity, *Slowdive* sounds as vital as anything the band recorded in the early ‘90s, whether it’s the foggy, countryish inflections of “No Longer Making Time” or the propulsive “Star Roving.”

“It felt like we were in a movie that had a totally implausible ending...” Slowdive’s second act as a live blockbuster has already been rapturously received around the world. Highlights thus far include a festival-conquering, sea-of-devotees Primavera Sound performance, of which Pitchfork noted: “The beauty of their crystalline sound is almost hard to believe, every note in its perfect place.” “It was just nice to realise that there was a decent amount of interest in it,” says principal songwriter Neil Halstead. The UK shoegaze pioneers have now channelled such seemingly impossible belief into a fourth studio opus which belies his characteristic modesty. Self-titled with quiet confidence, Slowdive’s stargazing alchemy is set to further entrance the faithful while beguiling a legion of fresh ears. Deftly swerving what co-vocalist/guitarist Rachel Goswell terms “a trip down memory lane”, these eight new tracks are simultaneously expansive and the sonic pathfinders’ most direct material to date. Birthed at the band’s talismanic Oxfordshire haunt The Courtyard – “It felt like home,” enthuses guitarist Christian Savill – their diamantine melodies were mixed to a suitably hypnotic sheen at Los Angeles’ famed Sunset Sound facility by Chris Coady (perhaps best known for his work with Beach House, one of countless contemporary acts to have followed in Slowdive’s wake). “It’s poppier than I thought it was going to be,” notes Halstead, who was the primary architect of 1995‘s previous full-length transmission Pygmalion. This time out the group dynamic was all-important. “When you’re in a band and you do three records, there’s a continuous flow and a development. For us, that flow re-started with us playing live again and that has continued into the record.” Drummer and loop conductor Simon Scott enhanced the likes of ‘Slomo’ and ‘Falling Ashes’ with abstract textures conjured via his laptop’s signal processing software. A fecund period of experimentation with “40-minute iPhone jams” allowed the unit to then amplify the core of their chemistry. “Neil is such a gifted songwriter, so the songs won. He has these sparks of melodies, like ‘Sugar For The Pill’ and ‘Star Roving’, which are really special. But the new record still has a toe in that Pygmalion sound. In the future, things could get very interesting indeed.” This open-channel approach to creativity is reflected by Slowdive’s impressively wide field of influence, from indie-rock avatars to ambient voyagers – see the tribute album of cover versions released by Berlin electronic label Morr Music. As befits such evocative visionaries, you can also hear Slowdive through the silver screen: New Queer Cinema trailblazer Gregg Araki has featured them on the soundtracks to no less than four of his films. “When I moved to America in 2008 I was working in an organic grocery store,” recalls Christian. “Kids started coming in and asking if it was true I had played in Slowdive. That’s when I started thinking, ‘OK, this is weird!’” Neil Halstead: “We were always ambitious. Not in terms of trying to sell records, but in terms of making interesting records. Maybe, if you try and make interesting records, they’re still interesting in a few years time. I don’t know where we’d have gone if we had carried straight on. Now we’ve picked up a different momentum. It’s intriguing to see where it goes next.” The world has finally caught up with Slowdive. This movie could run and run...

“I feel weird,” repeats Stephen Bruner on “Captain Stupido”. That’s encouraging because the leftfield moments have always lent his jazz/funk/soft-rock fusions singular charm—even here when he meows through “A Fan’s Mail (Tron Song Suite II)”. By those standards, the melancholy “Walk On By”, with its pensive verse from Kendrick Lamar, and “Show You the Way”—co-starring soft-rock icons Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins—feel irresistibly straightforward, but their velvet melodies are as beguiling as Bruner’s falsetto harmonies.

Parts of Oddisee’s latest confront Trump’s America: “How you gonna make us great when we were never really all that amazing?” But the DC rapper sees little renewed cause for concern: “I’m from black America/This is just another year,” he raps on “NNGE”. Not that the familiarity of oppression blunts his fight. Over funky, soulful tracks, he addresses the sexism (“Hold It Back”) and police brutality (“You Grew Up”) that stifle his simple hope: “I just wanna be free.”

The prolific MC, producer and musician Oddisee’s new album ‘The Iceberg’ is a plea for humanity to dig deeper in search of understanding and common ground. His third release in just 12 months, ‘The Iceberg’ is a distillation of stereotypical tropes in hip-hop and beyond, 12 tracks about money, sex, politics, race and religion that appear superficial until his multi-dimensional lyrics unfurl to expose the complexities of individuality and identity: how we see ourselves and how others see us. Deeply soulful, and shot through with jazz, Go-go, gospel, thick r&b and hard beats, the album is a timely, poetic statement. ‘The Iceberg’ is out February 24 on Mello Music Group. Lead single “Things” acts as a mission statement for the album, a deep dance groove with lightning-quick lyrics about “things” he’s going through. Says Oddisee, “"We all go through the trials & tribulations of life. Why is it we feel the need to individualize our shared experiences? If only we could see our concerns as others do, maybe they wouldn't be so serious." Oddisee World Tour March 2 – Paris, France – La Place March 3 – Lyon, France – Bizarre! March 4 – Nantes, France – Stereolux March 6 – Bristol, UK – The Lantern March 8 – Manchester, UK – Gorilla March 9 – Dublin, Ireland, The Sugar Bluc March 11 – London, UK – Islington Assembly Hall March 13 – Munich, Germany – Ampere March 14 – Erfurt, Germany – Franz Melhose March 15 – Berlin, Germany – Gretchen March 16 – Hamburg, Germany – Mojo Club March 17 – Cologne, Germany – Gloria March 18 – Stuttgart, Germany – Im Wizemann March 19 – Frankfurt, Germany – Zoom March 22 – Nijmegen, Netherlands – Doornroosje March 24 – Rotterdam, Netherlands – Bird March 25 – Amsterdam, Netherlands – Paradiso March 26 – Brussels, Belgium – Ancienne Belgique March 30 - Milan, Italy - Biko Club April 7 - Sofia, Bulgaria - Sofia Live Club April 8 - Bucharest, Romania - Arenele Romane April 10 – Vienna, Austria – Grelle Forelle April 11 – Warsaw, Poland – Stodola April 18 – Philadelphia, PA – Theater of Living Arts April 20 – Washington, D.C. – 9:30 Club April 21 – Raleigh, NC – King’s Barcade April 23 – Atlanta, GA – The Loft April 26 – Houston, TX – Fitzgerald’s April 27 – Dallas, TX – Dada Dallas April 28 – Austin, TX – Empire Control Room May 1 – Denver, CO – Bluebird Theater May 5 – San Diego, CA – Music Box May 7 – San Francisco, CA – The Regency May 9 – Eugene, OR – WoW Hall May 10 – Portland, OR – Hawthorne Theatre May 11 – Seattle, WA – Neumos May 12 – Vancouver, BC – Biltmore Cabaret May 13 – Spokane, WA – The Big Dipper May 14 – Boise, ID – Neurolux May 17 – Omaha, NE – Slowdown May 18 – Minneapolis, MN – 7th Street Entry May 19 – Milwaukee, WI – Shank Hall May 20 – Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall May 21 – Indianapolis, IN – The HiFi May 26 – Detroit, MI – Arab American National Museum May 27 – Toronto, ON – Lee’s Palace May 30 – Boston, MA – Brighton Music Hall May 31 – New York, NY – Highline Ballroom

The Pittsburgh band\'s follow-up to 2014\'s I AM KING, FOREVER.

Even in the increasingly crowded field of electronic music, Kelly Lee Owens’ debut album arrives as a wonderful surprise. An album that bridges the gaps between cavernous techno, spectral pop, and krautrock’s mechanical pulse, 'Kelly Lee Owens' brims with exploratory wonder, establishing a personal aesthetic that is as beguiling as it is thrillingly familiar.

Maryland/Pennsylvania experimental death-noise band FULL OF HELL have embarked on quite the journey leading up to the impending release of their latest full-length album “Trumpeting Ecstasy”, an album which will see the band deliver their most punishing, virulent, and dynamic album to date. The embryonic beginnings of Full of Hell displayed their palette at it’s most primitive, d-beat and blast ridden hardcore punk with spats of noise and caustic rhythm, and within a few short years, they have bloomed into a true force to be reckoned with within the punk and metal communities. Since the release of their Profound Lore Records debut album “Full Of Hell & Merzbow” late 2014, their third full-length album, the band began to truly come into their own, combining elements of grindcore, death/black metal, punk and hardcore with a smattering of sonically laden power electronics and industrial pounding. It would also signal the band being at their most active and prolific ever since their inception in 2009. The band would tour endlessly non-stop in different parts of the world in places as far off as Japan, Australia (twice), Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Philippines, South Korea etc.), along with several tour runs in Europe and many tour jaunts within the US, along with playing countless festivals and exclusive shows. The band would also add to their repertoire and discography as well during said timeframe releasing a direct collaboration album with The Body and several EPs, one of them being their most-recent split 7”EP with Nails (which debuts #2 on the Billboard Top 100 Singles Chart). With “Trumpeting Ecstasy”, FULL OF HELL build upon their progression since the Merzbow collaboration and the releases succeeding it. This time the band decided to go into God City Studios with Kurt Ballou at the production helm to help achieve the intended vision of “Trumpeting Ecstasy”. The result being the best and strongest sounding FULL OF HELL album along with it being their most towering release to date. Sky tearing and sonically cataclysmic, the aural deluge that is “Trumpeting Ecstasy” also features guest appearances by Aaron Turner (Sumac/Old Man Gloom/Mamiffer/Isis), Nate Newton (Converge/Old Man Gloom), Andrew Nolan (Column Of Heaven/The Endless Blockade), and Canadian singer/songwriter Nicole Dollanganger. Expect FULL OF HELL to tour relentlessly in support of “Trumpeting Ecstasy” as well.

Album out January 27th, 2017 Dylan Baldi maintains simple, admirable standards in quality. “A thing I like to do with all of my records is drive around with them,” the 25-year-old Cloud Nothings frontman says. “In high school, I would listen to music for hours like that: just driving through the suburbs of Cleveland. And if it sounds good to me in that context and I can think of high school me listening to it and saying, ‘That’s okay,’ I feel good about the record. This is the one that’s felt best.” “This” is "Life Without Sound", the radiant, far-far-better-than-okay fourth full-length his rock outfit has recorded since he began writing and releasing songs on his own under the Cloud Nothings alias in 2008. While its highly acclaimed predecessor—2014’s "Here and Nowhere Else"—came together spontaneously, in the little time that touring allowed, "Life Without Sound" took shape under far less frenetic circumstances. For more than a year, Baldi was able to write these songs and flesh out them out with his bandmates—drummer Jayson Gerycz and bassist TJ Duke—before they finally joined producer John Goodmanson (Sleater Kinney, Death Cab for Cutie) at Sonic Ranch in El Paso, Texas, for three weeks in March of 2016. The result is Baldi’s most polished and considered work to date, an album that speaks to his evolving gift with melody while also betraying the sort of perspective that time provides. You can hear it in the aerodynamic guitar pop of “Modern Act,” and feel it in the devastating wisdom of “Internal World,” a lullaby-like howler that dwells on “the fact that being yourself can be uncomfortable and even potentially dangerous at times.” “Generally, it seems like my work has been about finding my place in the world,” Baldi says. “But there was a point in which I realized that you can be missing something important in your life, a part you didn't realize you were missing until it's there—hence the title. This record is like my version of new age music,” he adds. “It’s supposed to be inspiring.” It is.

Do Make Say Think has been widely celebrated as one of the preeminent instrumental rock bands of the 90s-00s. Stubborn Persistent Illusions is the group’s first album in eight years – and a brilliant addition to one of the most consistently inventive and critically praised discographies in the ‘post-rock’ canon. The band has been acclaimed as “the supernova in Constellation’s stellar network…arguably the finest back catalogue of any currently operating instrumental rock band” (Drowned In Sound), creating “some of the most honest, unpretentious, group-oriented rock of their time” (Popmatters). Among the band’s strengths is an ineffable naturalism that avoids anything too woolly, proggy, purist or clichéd, while remaining a fundamentally guitar-driven group whose ornate four- and six-string interplay uniquely balances rockism, pastoralism, and electronic-influenced post-production. Stubborn Persistent Illusions is at once familiar and as fresh as anything DMST has committed to tape; produced and mixed as always by the band itself – a continuing affirmation of the group’s DIY ethos and their singular self-production acumen and aesthetic. Do Make Say Think enter their third decade with a new album that reaffirms their promise of genuinely expressive, narrative and restorative instrumental rock music – an one that will surely rank among their best.

Rocket is Philadelphia-based artist Alex G’s eighth full-length release—an assured statement that follows a slate of humble masterpieces, many of them self-recorded and self-released, stretching from 2010’s RACE to his 2015 Domino debut, Beach Music. Amid the Rocket recording process, Alex made headlines for catching the attention of Frank Ocean, who asked him to play guitar on his two 2016 albums, Endless and Blonde. More than any stylistic cues, what Alex took from the experience was a newfound confidence in collaboration. Rocket wears this collaborative spirit proudly, and in its numerous contributors presents a restless sense of musical experimentation - effortlessly jumping from distorted sound collage to dreamy folk music to bouncing Americana. Rocket illustrates a cohesive vision of contemporary American experience; the cast of characters that Alex G inhabits have fun, fall in love, develop obsessions, get in trouble, and—much like rockets themselves—ultimately they burn out. Alex, though, in a collection of songs that’s both his tightest and most adventurous, is poised only for the ascent.

Bolstered by a notoriously great *Letterman* performance, Future Islands’ 2014 effort *Singles* was a breakthrough for the synth-pop romantics. *The Far Field* dives further into their sound, combining the expressiveness of soul with the leanness of post-punk and New Wave, underlined by immediate songwriting and the strong, vulnerable voice of Samuel T. Herring. “I don’t believe anymore/I won’t grieve anymore,” he croons on the standout “Cave.” “’Cause what was gold/Is gone and cold.”

In the body of work of Cologne artist Wolfgang Voigt – who, like few others, has informed, shaped and influenced the world of electronic music with countless different projects since the early 1990s -, GAS stands out in particular as a saturnine sound cosmos based on heavily condensed classic sequences. Even after nearly 20 years, the sound of GAS doesn’t seem to have lost any of its luster, as shown by the commanding success of Kompakt’s fall 2016 re-release of the essential back catalogue as a 10xLP/4xCD box set. The overwhelming feedback from a loyal international fan community and worldwide media outlets attests once again to the sheer timelessness of GAS. Which is why it will feel like hardly a day has passed since the release of the last official album “Pop” nearly two decades ago, when Wolfgang Voigt resumes this specific creative path with the upcoming new full-length NARKOPOP. Even in the here and now, the unmistakable vibe of GAS immediately hits home, taking the listener on an otherworldly journey with the very first sounds, drawing him or her into an impervious sonic thicket, down to the depths of rapture and reverie. From wafts of dense symphonic mist emerges a floating and whirling feeling of weightlessness, before the listener steps into an eerily beautiful forest of fantasy, pulled in by the allure of a narcotic bass drum. While earlier GAS tracks were often based on the hypnotic effects of looping techniques, the 10 new pieces on NARKOPOP unfold their magic in a more entwined manner, sometimes with the sonic might of an entire philharmonic orchestra, sometimes as subtle and fragile as the most delicate branch of a tree with many. A main characteristic of Voigt’s oeuvre, the coalescence of seemingly contradictory stylistic aspects such as harmonious and atonal, concrete and abstract, light and heavy, near and far is also a decisive feature of NARKOPOP. In accordance with the transgressive spirit of his collective work, Voigt carries the aesthetic conceptions of his music over to the realm of the visual. Based on his abstract forest pictures, the GAS artwork addresses Voigt’s artistic affinity to romanticism and the forest as a place of yearning. For the first time, a closer look at the cover of NARKOPOP reveals signs of architectural fragments which hint at another, maybe parallel world behind Voigt’s forest. Truth is the prettiest illusion.

Following 2013’s *Paramore*, Hayley Williams became “tired of self-doubt and losing friends” and considered decommissioning the band. It makes this rich, vibrant, defiantly poppy return as surprising as it is satisfying. On an album indebted to the ’80s, there are echoes of Talking Heads (“Hard Times”) and Blondie’s forays into reggae (“Caught in the Middle”), while guitarist Taylor York’s love of Afro-pop informs “Told You So.” Darker moods sit beneath the shiny surface though, and Williams’ lyrics offer compelling studies of frustration and self-sabotage.