Louder Than War's Albums of the Year 2016

Radiohead’s ninth album is a haunting collection of shapeshifting rock, dystopian lullabies, and vast spectral beauty. Though you’ll hear echoes of their previous work—the remote churn of “Daydreaming,” the feverish ascent and spidery guitar of “Ful Stop,” Jonny Greenwood’s terrifying string flourishes—*A Moon Shaped Pool* is both familiar and wonderfully elusive, much like its unforgettable closer. A live favorite since the mid-‘90s, “True Love Waits” has been re-imagined in the studio as a weightless, piano-driven meditation that grows more exquisite as it gently floats away.

ANOHNI has collaborated with Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke on the artist's latest work, HOPELESSNESS. Late last year, ANOHNI, the lead singer from Antony and the Johnsons, released “4 DEGREES", a bombastic dance track celebrating global boiling and collapsing biodiversity.  Rather than taking refuge in good intentions, ANOHNI gives voice to the attitude sublimated within her behavior as she continues to consume in a fossil fuel-based economy. ANOHNI released “4 DEGREES,” the first single from her upcoming album HOPELESSNESS, to support the Paris climate conference this past December. The song emerged earlier last year in live performances. As discussed by ANOHNI: "I have grown tired of grieving for humanity, and I also thought I was not being entirely honest by pretending that I am not a part of the problem," she said. “’4 DEGREES' is kind of a brutal attempt to hold myself accountable, not just valorize my intentions, but also reflect on the true impact of my behaviors.” The album, HOPELESSNESS, to be released world wide on May 6th 2016, is a dance record with soulful vocals and lyrics addressing surveillance, drone warfare, and ecocide.  A radical departure from the singer’s symphonic collaborations, the album seeks to disrupt assumptions about popular music through the collision of electronic sound and highly politicized lyrics.  ANOHNI will present select concerts in Europe, Australia and the US in support of HOPELESSNESS this Summer.

The songwriter transfigures personal tragedy into growling, elemental elegies. On his latest collaboration with the Bad Seeds, Nick Cave pulls us through the gorgeous, groaning terrors of “Anthrocene” and “Jesus Alone” only to deliver us, scarred but safe, to “I Need You” and “Skeleton Tree,” a pair of tender, mournful folk ballads.

TRACKS OF WIRE is the debut album from Anglo/ Scottish agit punk duo deux furieuses and the result of an intensive ten day residential session at Bryn Derwen studio, Wales with producer Rob Ellis (PJ Harvey). Tracks of Wire topped many Album of the Year lists and was No 9 in Louder Than War's Top 50 Albums of 2016 along with albums from PJ Harvey and Savages. "Anger masterclass. Their self-released album positively bristles with rage. The fat-free song structures recall Rid of Me, the harshness and austerity of Savages. They are most effective when they slow down on Kill Us which nods to Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song before locking into a menacing groove. A bold and accomplished debut' *** Q MAGAZINE (print) Phil Mongredien "'Tracks of Wire' is this year's 'Nevermind'. Ros Cairney and Vas Antoniadou's aptly named band combines the fury and intensity of early Fugazi with the stylish atmospherics of Savages." 9/10 LOUDER THAN WAR MAGAZINE (print) Gus Ironside "It is, in modern day terms, a classic album..a soundtrack to life in 2016. What makes a classic album? Perfect songs, emotive lyrics, unforgettable choruses, excellent production, a feeling that the band has contributed blood, sweat and tears to every note, and for Deux Furieuses all those boxes are ticked. It's the sound of standing up and fighting for your rights, it’s the sound of now...Sometimes an album comes along that just grips you by the throat on the first listen and won’t let go, Tracks Of Wire is one such album. It sets the bar very high in terms of modern day punk." 10/10 LOUDER THAN WAR Paul Scott-Bates 'It's massive. These two push the boundaries..two musicians throwing literally everything into their art, creative song writing that never feels tired or dated' 13/13 ROOM THIRTEEN Neil Richardson 'Tracks of Wire is an extraordinary tour de force combining visceral rock power, thunderous tribal rhythms and intelligent, articulate lyrics. In many ways Tracks of Wire follows in the tradition of Nirvana's 'Nevermind' or the Sex Pistols 'Nevermind the Bollocks' - a raging rock record with compelling lyrics that address pivotal contemporary issues. With hooks and atmospherics reminiscent of The Breeders and Savages, this irrepressible debut should find a wide audience for its powerful messages.' SOGO MAGAZINE '​It’s probably lazy to compare Deux Furieuses to other female punk/post punk acts like Savages, PJ Harvey and even The Joy Formidable but if you could imagine a blend of all of these, you’ll come somewhere close to the sound these two create. One of the best releases of the year. Get it!" PUNKONLINE "Capturing the mood of frustration, bitterness and righteous fury directed at the political establishment, Tracks of Wire is a call to arms to the disenfranchised that screams “we can and must do better than this” with every pounded drum and howl of distorted guitar." JOYZINE "Spitting out fury this is a band for rock music obsessed feminists of any gender and generation and/or passionate poetic souls seeking a band to believe in" THE ZINE "Incisive words, blistering riffs, brooding post-punk energy" LITTLE INDIE BLOGS

*You Want It Darker* joins *Old Ideas* and *Popular Problems* in a trio of gorgeous, ruminative albums that find Cohen settling his affairs, spiritual (“Leaving the Table”), romantic (“If I Didn’t Have Your Love”), and otherwise. At 35, he sounded like an old man—at 82, he sounds eternal.

How do you make a grand statement when you have nothing left to prove? On *Post Pop Depression*, Iggy Pop huddles with Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme, Dead Weather’s Dean Fertita, and Arctic Monkeys’ Matt Helders. The results are wiry, muscular, and shape-shifting, much like Iggy himself. His unctuous cool drips all over slow-burners like “American Valhalla” and “Break Into Your Heart.\" “Vulture” sounds like Iggy reading a twisted campfire story. “Paraguay” and “Chocolate Drops” are as poignant as they are profane. Nearly 50 years from where it all began, *Post Pop Depression* proves that the punk pioneer can still cause a ruckus.

There’s one moment critical to understanding the emotional and cultural heft of *Lemonade*—Beyoncé’s genre-obliterating blockbuster sixth album—and it arrives at the end of “Freedom,” a storming empowerment anthem that samples a civil-rights-era prison song and features Kendrick Lamar. An elderly woman’s voice cuts in: \"I had my ups and downs, but I always find the inner strength to pull myself up,” she says. “I was served lemons, but I made lemonade.” The speech—made by her husband JAY-Z’s grandmother Hattie White on her 90th birthday in 2015—reportedly inspired the concept behind this radical project, which arrived with an accompanying film as well as words by Somali-British poet Warsan Shire. Both the album and its visual companion are deeply tied to Beyoncé’s identity and narrative (her womanhood, her blackness, her husband’s infidelity) and make for Beyoncé\'s most outwardly revealing work to date. The details, of course, are what make it so relatable, what make each song sting. Billed upon its release as a tribute to “every woman’s journey of self-knowledge and healing,” the project is furious, defiant, anguished, vulnerable, experimental, muscular, triumphant, humorous, and brave—a vivid personal statement from the most powerful woman in music, released without warning in a time of public scrutiny and private suffering. It is also astonishingly tough. Through tears, even Beyoncé has to summon her inner Beyoncé, roaring, “I’ma keep running ’cause a winner don’t quit on themselves.” This panoramic strength–lyrical, vocal, instrumental, and personal–nudged her public image from mere legend to something closer to real-life superhero. Every second of *Lemonade* deserves to be studied and celebrated (the self-punishment in “Sorry,” the politics in “Formation,” the creative enhancements from collaborators like James Blake, Robert Plant, and Karen O), but the song that aims the highest musically may be “Don’t Hurt Yourself”—a Zeppelin-sampling psych-rock duet with Jack White. “This is your final warning,” she says in a moment of unnerving calm. “If you try this shit again/You gon\' lose your wife.” In support, White offers a word to the wise: “Love God herself.”

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Sweeping, shambling, bleak, brutal, and epic. In other words, classic Swans.

2CD, 2CD+DVD and 3LP available for order here: USA: Official Young God Records / Swans Store (all albums hand signed by M. Gira): bit.ly/1TznKrF Europe: Mute Records: bit.ly/1q1o0nw The Glowing Man will be available on double CD and deluxe triple gatefold vinyl, with a poster and digital download. In addition, there will be a double CD/DVD format, which features a Swans live performance from 2015. The Glowing Man, announced as the last album release of Swans’ current incarnation, will be followed by an extensive tour. The tour will unfold with dates beginning in North America in the summer followed by Swans first ever South American shows, before returning to Europe in the autumn. Announced tour dates are listed here, with more to follow. A NOTE FROM MICHAEL GIRA OF SWANS: “In 2009 when I made the decision to restart my musical group, Swans, I had no idea where it would lead. I knew that if I took the road of mining the past or revisiting the catalog, that it would be fruitless and stultifying. After much thought about how to make this an adventure that would instead led the music forward into unexpected terrain, I chose the five people with whom to work that I believed would most ably provide a sense of surprise, and even uncertainty, while simultaneously embodying the strength and confidence to ride the river of intention that flows from the heart of the sound wherever it would lead us - and what’s the intention? LOVE! And so finally this LOVE has now led us, with the release of the new and final recording from this configuration of Swans, The Glowing Man, through four albums (three of which contain more complexity, nuance and scope than I would have ever dreamed possible), several live releases, various fundraiser projects, countless and seemingly endless tours and rehearsals, and a generally exhausting regimen that has left us stunned but still invigorated and thrilled to see this thing through to its conclusion. I hereby thank my brothers and collaborators for their commitment to whatever truth lies at the center of the sound. I’m decidedly not a Deist, but on a few occasions – particularly in live performance – it’s been my privilege, through our collective efforts, to just barely grasp something of the infinite in the sound and experience generated by a force that is definitely greater than all of us combined. When talking with audience members after the shows or through later correspondence, it’s also been a true privilege to discover they’ve experienced something like this too. Whatever the force is that has led us through this extended excursion, it’s been worthwhile for many of us, and I’m grateful for what has been the most consistently challenging and fulfilling period of my musical life. Going forward, post the touring associated with The Glowing Man, I’ll continue to make music under the name Swans, with a revolving cast of collaborators. I have little idea what shape the sound will take, which is a good thing. Touring will definitely be less extensive, I’m certain of that! Whatever the future holds, I’ll miss this particular locus of human and musical potential immensely: Norman Westberg, Kristof Hahn, Phil Puleo, Christopher Pravdica, Thor Harris, and myself mixed in there somewhere, too.” …………. THE GLOWING MAN TRACKLISTING 1. Cloud of Forgetting 2. Cloud of Unknowing 3. The World Looks Red / The World Looks Black 4. People Like Us 5. Frankie M. 6. When Will I Return? 7. The Glowing Man 8. Finally, Peace. “I wrote the song ‘When Will I Return? specifically for Jennifer Gira to sing. It’s a tribute to her strength, courage, and resilience in the face of a deeply scarring experience she once endured, and that she continues to overcome daily. The song ‘The World Looks Red / The World Looks Black’ uses some words I wrote in 1982 or so that Sonic Youth used for their song ‘The World Looks Red’, back in the day. The music and melody used here in the current version are completely different. While working up material for this new album, I had a basic acoustic guitar version of the song and was stumped for words. For reasons unknown to me, the lyric I’d so long ago left in my typewriter in plain view at my living and rehearsal space (the latter of which Sonic Youth shared at the time) and which Thurston plucked for use with my happy permission, popped into my head and I thought “Why not?” The person that wrote those words well over three decades ago bears little resemblance to who I am now, but I believe it remains a useful text, so “Why not?”. Maybe, in a way, it closes the circle. The song ‘The Glowing Man’ contains a section of the song ‘Bring The Sun’ from our previous album, To Be Kind. The section is, of course, newly performed and orchestrated to work within its current setting. ‘The Glowing Man’ itself grew organically forward and out of improvisations that took place live during the performance of ‘Bring The Sun’, so it seemed essential to include that relevant section here. Since over the long and tortured course of the current song’s genesis, it had always been such an integral cornerstone I believe we’d have been paralyzed and unable to perform the entire piece at all without it. ‘Cloud of Forgetting’ and ‘Cloud of Unknowing’ are prayers. ‘Frankie M’ is another tribute and a best wish for a wounded soul. ‘The Glowing Man’ contains my favorite Zen Koan. ‘People Like Us’ and ‘Finally, Peace’ are farewell songs.” - Michael Gira 2016 The Glowing Man was recorded at Sonic Ranch, near El Paso, Texas, with John Congleton as recording engineer. Further recording was made at John’s Elmwood Studio, in Dallas, Texas, and at Studio Litho (Seattle, WA) with Don Gunn, engineer, and at CandyBomber (Berlin) with Ingo Krauss, engineer. The record was mixed by Ingo at CandyBomber and by Doug Henderson at Micro-Moose, Berlin. Doug Henderson mastered it at Micro-Moose. Here’s a list of the principal players on the record (complete credits and words to the songs available on request): Swans: Michael Gira – vocals, electric and acoustic guitar; Norman Westberg – electric guitar, vocals; Kristof Hahn – lap steel guitar, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, vocals; Phil Puleo – drums, dulcimer, knocks, vocals; Christopher Pravdica – bass guitar, vocals; Thor Harris – percussion, vibes, bells, dulcimer. Hit Man and 7th Swan: Bill Rieflin – drums, piano, synth, Mellotron, bass guitar, electric guitar, vocals. Guest Musicians: Jennifer Gira sings the lead vocal on ‘When Will I Return?’ The cello solo on ‘Cloud of Unknowing’ was graciously provided by the ferocious improviser, Okkyung Lee.

Singular adventures in pop oddness, recorded in a nuclear bunker in the east of England. Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth’s debut has many childlike charms: over-sweetened teenage-witch vocals; liberal use of glockenspiel and recorder; and a low-boredom-threshold flightiness that carries the pair from dimly-lit trip-hop (“Deep Six Textbook”) to sinister folk (“Chocolate Sludge Cake”), and lo-fi rave and hip-hop (“Eat Shiitake Mushrooms”). There’s nothing infantile about their execution though, and they layer sound and ideas into enrapturing melodies with skill and fearlessness.

GNOD MIRROR As 2016 dawns , it’s a fool who predicts the next move of Gnod, seemingly less a musical collec-tive and more a psychic force fuelled by maverick spirit and fearsome willpower. Their mind-frying 2015 triple-album ‘Infinity Machines’ stood proud as a towering work of experi-mental expansion, acidic invective and nihilistic abrasion.Yet as an outfit whose restlessly uncom-promising nature is matched only by their unflinching anti-establishment drive, Gnod set about cre-ating a diametrically opposed aesthetic. Just as dramatically as their restless disposition morphed their sound to a binary-driven direction for their last work, now Gnod were to strip their electronic setup to a vicious, viscous attack, as redolent of the primal punishment of early Swans as the angular clangour of prime Public Image Ltd, yet shot through with a mercurial power and fiery intensity that could come from no-one else. The opening title-cut of ‘Mirror’ seethes with lithe energy and dubbed-out vitality, whilst elsewhere the eighteen-minute closing track ‘Sodom & Gomorrah’ may be the most dystopian piece of music the band have yet created; a harrowing yet fiercely compelling colossus of bleak abjection. “The tracks were pretty much written on the road in May 2015” elaborates Gnod’s Paddy Shine. “The final versions of the tracks on the album are a reaction to the results of the re-cent UK election and also some shit that was happening to us and our friends during that period. Lyrically it deals with mental health issues and how things like social media are a vehicle for our split personalities and egos - that and being under the thumb of forces and power structures we can't really fully understand, or even if we understand them we feel helpless to change the situation. This album won't change the situation or start any revolu-tions but it felt good for us to write some music to let the rage out" Reflecting and refracting the uncertainty of a darkening era, ‘Mirror’ is a work of bold rein-vention and raw renewal, sculpting chaos and discord into a formidable statement of in-tent. Only one thing is certain - wherever Gnod choose to go next, their ire and inspiration blaze as brightly as ever.

On their final album, Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and Jarobi rekindle a chemistry that endeared them to hip-hop fans worldwide. Filled with exploratory instrumental beds, creative samples, supple rhyming, and serious knock, it passes the headphone and car stereo test. “Kids…” is like a rap nerd’s fever dream, Andre 3000 and Q-Tip slaying bars. Phife—who passed away in March 2016—is the album’s scion, his roughneck style and biting humor shining through on “Black Spasmodic” and “Whateva Will Be.” “We the People” and “The Killing Season” (featuring Kanye West) show ATCQ’s ability to move minds as well as butts. *We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your service* is not a wake or a comeback—it’s an extended visit with a long-missed friend, and a mic-dropping reminder of Tribe’s importance and influence.

Emerging from the distant light we have a new double LP from our own John Dwyer's Thee Oh Sees. The first studio recordings to capture the muscular rhythm section of double drummers Ryan Moutinho and Dan Rincon with ringer bassist Tim Hellman cracking spines, the groove and bludgeon we've come to expect from the live shows is captured seamlessly here - they go from zero to head-splitter from the get-go and on the rare occasions they do let up on the gas a bit, we're treated to some locked-in hypnotizers, too. The guitar sounds more colossal and ethereal at the same time, riding roughshod over the vacuum sealed rhythm section, spiraling skywards, and diving into the emerald depths so quick your guts tingle. Synths, strings and smoke soaked things crawl behind the scenes to make an extra far-out party platter.

The avant garde Norwegian throws open a ghostly sonic sketchbook on this complex sixth album. Taking vampirism, gore, and femininity as her stated themes, Hval uses everything from percussive panting (the compellingly sinister “In The Red”) to distant, discordant horns (“Untamed Region”) to conjure challenging, dark dreamscapes. Thankfully, she never forgets the tunes. “The Great Undressing” is a propulsive art-pop jewel, and “Secret Touch” pits Hval’s brittle falsetto against hissing, addictive trip hop.

Jenny Hval’s conceptual takes on collective and individual gender identities and sociopolitical constructs landed Apocalypse, girl on dozens of year end lists and compelled writers everywhere to grapple with the age-old, yet previously unspoken, question: What is Soft Dick Rock? After touring for a year and earning her second Nordic Prize nomination, as any perfectionist would, Hval immediately went back into the studio to continue her work with acumen noise producer Lasse Marhaug, with whom she co-produces here on Blood Bitch. Her new effort is in many respects a complete 180° from her last in subject matter, execution and production. It is her most focused, but the lens is filtered through a gaze which the viewer least expects.

For more than 12 years, Marissa Nadler has perfected her own take on the exquisitely sculpted gothic American songform. On her seventh full-length, Strangers, she has shed any self-imposed restrictions her earlier albums adhered to, stepped through a looking glass, and created a truly monumental work. In the two years since 2014’s elegiac, autobiographical July, Nadler has reconciled the heartbreak so often a catalyst for her songwriting. Turning her writing to more universal themes, Nadler dives deep into a surreal, apocalyptic dreamscape. Her lyrics touch upon the loneliness and despair of the characters that inhabit them. These muses are primal, fractured, disillusioned, delicate, and alone. They are the unified voice of this record, the titular “strangers.”

On her first release for 38 years, Shirley Collins covers a collection of English, American and Cajun songs dating from the 16th Century to the 1950s. Although absent from music for some time, her influence on new artists never diminished and now it is time for another generation to hear her delightful tones.

Bon Iver’s third LP is as bold as it is beautiful. Made during a five-year period when Justin Vernon contemplated ditching the project altogether, *22, A Million* perfects the sound alloyed on 2011’s *Bon Iver*: ethereal but direct, layered but stripped-back, as processed as EDM yet naked as a fallen branch. The songs here run together as though being uncovered in real time, with highlights—“29 #Strafford APTS,” “8 (circle)”—flashing in the haze.

'22, A Million' is part love letter, part final resting place of two decades of searching for self-understanding like a religion. And the inner-resolution of maybe never finding that understanding. The album’s 10 poly-fi recordings are a collection of sacred moments, love’s torment and salvation, contexts of intense memories, signs that you can pin meaning onto or disregard as coincidence. If Bon Iver, Bon Iver built a habitat rooted in physical spaces, then '22, A Million' is the letting go of that attachment to a place.

After the lonesome folk and skeletal roadhouse soul of her debut album, 2012’s *Half Way Home*, Angel Olsen turned up the intensity on *Burn Your Fire for No Witness*, and she does it again on *MY WOMAN*. The title’s in all caps for a reason: The St. Louis, Missouri, native’s third album is bigger in both the acrobatic feats of her always-agile voice and the widescreen, hi-fi sound that Olsen and co-producer Justin Raisen bring to the table. With the very first song, “Intern,” it’s clear that Olsen has taken us somewhere new. A slow dance in a dive bar at last call, it might be familiar turf were it not for the synthesizers that cast an eerie glow across the song’s red-velvet backdrop. “Never Be Mine” harnesses the anguish of ’60s girl groups in jangling guitar and crisp backbeats; “Shut Up Kiss Me” couches desire in terms so heated the mic practically melts beneath Olsen’s yelp. Mindful of its ancestry but never expressly retro, the album is a triumph of rock ’n’ roll pathos, an exquisite dissertation on the poetry of twang and tremolo. And even if “There is nothing new/Under the sun,” as Olsen sings on the fateful “Heart Shaped Face,” she is forever finding ways to file down everyday truths to a finer point, drawing blood with every new prick. As she sighs over watery piano and fathomless reverb on the heartbreaking closer, “Pops,” “It hurts to start dreaming/Dreaming again.” But that pain is precisely what makes *MY WOMAN* so unforgettable, and so true.

Anyone reckless enough to have typecast Angel Olsen according to 2013’s ‘Burn Your Fire For No Witness’ is in for a sizable surprise with her third album, ‘MY WOMAN’. The crunchier, blown-out production of the former is gone, but that fire is now burning wilder. Her disarming, timeless voice is even more front-and-centre than before, and the overall production is lighter. Yet the strange, raw power and slowly unspooling incantations of her previous efforts remain, so anyone who might attempt to pigeonhole Olsen as either an elliptical outsider or a pop personality is going to be wrong whichever way they choose - Olsen continues to reign over the land between the two with a haunting obliqueness and sophisticated grace. Given its title, and track names like ‘Sister’ and ‘Woman’, it would be easy to read a gender-specific message into ‘MY WOMAN’, but Olsen has never played her lyrical content straight. She explains: “I’m definitely using scenes that I’ve replayed in my head, in the same way that I might write a script and manipulate a memory to get it to fit. But I think it’s important that people can interpret things the way that they want to.” That said, Olsen concedes that if she could locate any theme, whether in the funny, synth-laden ‘Intern’ or the sadder songs which are collected on the record’s latter half, “then it’s maybe the complicated mess of being a woman and wanting to stand up for yourself, while also knowing that there are things you are expected to ignore, almost, for the sake of loving a man. I’m not trying to make a feminist statement with every single record, just because I’m a woman. But I do feel like there are some themes that relate to that, without it being the complete picture.” Over her two previous albums, she’s given us reverb-shrouded poetic swoons, shadowy folk, grunge-pop band workouts and haunting, finger-picked epics. ‘MY WOMAN’ is an exhilarating complement to her past work, and one for which Olsen recalibrated her writing/recording approach and methods to enter a new music-making phase. She wrote some songs on the piano she’d bought at the end of the previous album tour, but she later switched it out for synth and/or Mellotron on a few of them, such as the aforementioned ‘Intern’. ‘MY WOMAN’ is lovingly put together as a proper A-side and a B-side, featuring the punchier, more pop/rock-oriented songs up front, and the longer, more reflective tracks towards the end. The rollicking ‘Shut Up Kiss Me’, for example, appears early on - its nervy grunge quality belying a subtle desperation, as befits any song about the exhaustion point of an impassioned argument. Another crowning moment comes in the form of the melancholic and Velvets-esque ‘Heart-shaped Face’, while the compelling ‘Sister’ and ‘Woman’ are the only songs not sung live. They also both run well over the seven-minute mark: the first being a triumph of reverb-splashed, ’70s country rock, cast along Fleetwood Mac lines with a Neil Young caged-tiger guitar solo to cap it off. The latter is a wonderful essay in vintage electronic pop and languid, psychedelic soul. Because her new songs demanded a plurality of voices, Olsen sings in a much broader range of styles on the album, and she brought in guest guitarist Seth Kauffman to augment her regular band of bass player Emily Elhaj, drummer Joshua Jaeger and guitarist Stewart Bronaugh. As for a producer, Olsen took to Justin Raisen, who’s known for his work with Charli XCX, Sky Ferreira and Santigold, as well as opting to record live to tape at LA’s historic Vox Studios. As the record evolves, you get the sense that the “My Woman” of the title is Olsen herself - absolutely in command, but also willing to bend with the influence of collaborators and circumstances. If ever there was any pressure in the recording process, it’s totally undetectable in the result. An intuitively smart, warmly communicative and fearlessly generous record, ‘MY WOMAN’ speaks to everyone. That it might confound expectation is just another of its strengths.

After all the accolades from press and peers, what’s a legendary band to do? Forget the recording studio, rent out an abandoned office space in the middle of the New Mexico desert, set up, plug in and play REALLY LOUD. Starting with hardly a notion of the outcome, by seven days later Deerhoof had found (you guessed it) The Magic: a raw and refreshing 15-song wallop of an album about what happens when you leave your comfort zone. The version of Deerhoof you hear on The Magic is a most punch-drunk proposition. Everyone showed up in the mood to sing. Satomi, Greg, John and Ed dream up alchemies of punk, pop, glam, hair metal, doo-wop, hip hop, and R&B, late-night car rides, long days, attitude and spandex. Poetry into noise. Volume knob into gratification. Friendship into rock band. According to drummer Greg, the music on The Magic was lurking in the shadows of "what we liked when we were kids - when music was magic - before you knew about the industry and before there were rules. Sometimes hair metal is the right choice." For singer/bassist Satomi Matsuzaki The Magic is but the latest episode of an ongoing gamble: "I joined Deerhoof a week after I arrived in San Francisco from Japan. I hopped on a MUNI bus to have a first meeting but got off at a wrong stop. I was lost and confused. They found me on a dark street corner after I called for help from a pay phone. Since then my adventure expanded. Deerhoof is a vehicle with four powered wheels that takes me through forest, desert and buildings. My life is adventure!" The Magic is a mixtape imbued with Deerhoof's sorcery -- boldness, wonder, technical know-how, risk. It is a mixtape by the kid with the biggest music collection you've ever seen, who will take you camping and show you how to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

You have no right to be depressed You haven’t tried hard enough to like it There are two kinds of great lyrics. The first is the banger/anthem catch phrase: "Normal life is borin' / but superstardom is close to post-mortem." The second is more complex (and more rarely found): "Like a bird on a wire / Like a drunk in a midnight choir/I have tried in my way to be free" — with ideas, themes, and personae unfolding over the course of songs, contradicting each other, confronting the listeners' preconceptions, like Pete Townsend, Morrissey, or Kendrick Lamar. Will Toledo, the singer/songwriter/visionary of Car Seat Headrest, is adept at both, having developed them over the course of his eleven college-recorded Bandcamp albums and his retrospective collection last fall, Teens of Style. With Teens of Denial, his first real "studio" album with an actual band, Toledo moves from bedroom pop to something approaching classic-rock grandeur and huge (if detailed and personal) narrative ambitions, with nods to the Cars, Pavement, Jonathan Richman, Wire, and William Onyeabor. "I’m so sick of / (Fill in the blank)" or "It’s more than you bargained for / But it's a little less than what you paid for" are more than smart, edgy slogans. Over the course of Teens of Denial's 11 songs, Will narrates a journey with his mysterious companion/alter-ego Joe that addresses big themes (personal responsibility, existential despair, the nature of identity, the Bible, heaven) and small ones (Air Jordans, cops, whether to have one more beer, why he lost his backpack). By turns tender and caustic, empathetic and solipsistic, literary and vernacular, profound and profane, self-loathing and self-aggrandizing, he conjures a specifically 21st century mindset, a product of information overload, the loneliness it can foster, and the escape music can provide. “Fill in The Blank,” the mission statement of the album, kicks things off — it’s a fist-pumping anthem about feeling lousy in an ill-defined way, the fear of settling into a routine of futility, and not wanting to deal with it. Although it’s oddly joyful sounding, Toledo considers it the introduction to his angriest record yet. In that vein, “Vincent,” “Hippie Powers,” and “Connect The Dots” are about both fighting to hold your place in the crowd and to hold your drink, as well as DIY college house shows, and having no one to dance with, respectively. Initially similar, "Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales” veers off in surprising directions, each piece flush with huge, irony-free hooks. At the heart of the album sits the 11:32 "Ballad of the Costa Concordia," which has more musical ideas than most whole albums (and at that length, it uses them all). Horns, keyboards, and elegant instrumental interludes set off art-garage moments; vivid vocal harmonies follow punk frenzy. The selfish captain of the capsized cruise liner in the Mediterranean in 2013 becomes a metaphor for struggles of the individual in society, as experienced by one hungover young man on the verge of adulthood. Teens of Denial refracts Toledo's particular, personal story of one difficult year through cultural touchstones such as the biography of Frank Sinatra, the evolution of the Me Generation as seen in Mad Men and elsewhere, plus elements of eastern and western theology. The whole thing flaunts a kind of conceptual, lyrical, and musical ambition that has been missing from far too much 21st-century music. I won’t go down with this shit I will put my hands up and surrender there will be no more flags above my door I have lost, and always will be There are two kinds of great lyricists. The first kind is one one you find in books, canonized by time and a lifetime of expression. The second has it all in front of him. Meet Will Toledo. Or at least one version of him.

A confessional autobiography and meditation on being black in America, this album finds Solange searching for answers within a set of achingly lovely funk tunes. She finds intensity behind the patient grooves of “Weary,” expresses rage through restraint in “Mad,” and draws strength from the naked vulnerability of “Where Do We Go.” The spirit of Prince hovers throughout, especially over “Junie,” a glimmer of merriment in an exquisite portrait of sadness.

Fetish Bones is the Don Giovanni Records debut of Philadelphia-based musician, artist, and activist, Camae, who performs under the name Moor Mother. The album features 13 songs conceived and recorded in Camae’s home studio using a variety of machines, field recordings, and analog noisemakers. The music is often harsh and strange, projecting both the visceral anger of punk and the expansive improvisatory spirit of Sun Ra. It’s an album intended as a form of protest and also as form of time travel -- a collection of sounds that are events themselves, telling stories rich in history about the journey that brings us to today and the future we are creating. Fetish Bones is not an album meant to help you forget. It is made so that you will remember the injustices that we bear witness to and participate in.