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.
On her sixth studio album, the incomparable Neko Case returns to the exquisitely dark, structurally complex, yet unfailingly lovely songwriting that made her 2006 landmark *Fox Confessor Brings the Flood* so transcendent. “Night Still Comes” is Case at her most achingly gorgeous, even while singing tormented lyrics reminiscent of Fiona Apple’s “Every Single Night” (“My brain makes drugs to keep me slow… but not even the masons know what drug will keep night from coming”). “Bracing for Sunday” finds Case singing matter-of-factly about murdering the man responsible for a friend’s death. “Nearly Midnight, Honolulu” is an appalled a capella lullaby to a child Case witnessed being viciously berated by his mother, while the darkly baroque “Afraid” gives us the gift of Neko covering Nico, the former Velvet Underground muse. Still, the album is not without lighter moments such as plaintive love song “Calling Cards” or the resilient, horn-swirling closing track, “Ragtime.”
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke delivers a brilliantly colored robotic carnival with his latest extracurricular endeavor, Atoms for Peace. Joined by a cadre of collaborators who supported his 2008 solo project—Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, Brazilian percussionist Mauro Refosco, and drummer Joey Waronker—Yorke first led the group on an unstructured jam session. Then he spliced, manipulated, and reconstructed the recordings with the help of longtime Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich. The psychedelic result is *Amok*: a set of funky, doctoral-level laptop rock that groove as hard as anything Yorke has ever made.
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.”
Deerhunter’s 2010 opus *Halcyon Digest* captures the dream-pop savants at their most elegant and fragile, but on their follow-up album, *Monomania*, Bradford Cox and company rediscover their scuzzy punk roots. “Neon Junkyard” rattles out of its cage with inhuman vocal contortions while “Pensacola” straddles over a hooky cowpunk guitar riff. The noisy title track cranks up the volume further and further, drowning out Cox’s screeching vocals with a torrential downpour of twisted feedback.
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.
The debut full-length release from the duo of Sam France and Jonathan Rado—a.k.a. Foxygen—is exactly what we\'d been hoping for. In 2011, Foxygen unleashed the EP *Take the Kids Off Broadway*, which encouraged careful and gleeful discovery, layer by layer, revealing two talented guys with an uncanny skill for harvesting the past in order to nurture the future. On *We Are*, they further refine their methods. Lou Reed, The Kinks, and The Beatles all flavor the outstanding \"No Destruction\" and \"In the Darkness\" (we\'ll let you discover the configurations). The title track is an ultra-cool \'60s rocker with a touch of Elvis (or Suicide, take your pick), and \"Shuggie\" is a perfect hybrid of contemporary indie pop, Neil Diamond, and vintage soul. \"Oh Yeah\" is what The Jackson Five might\'ve sounded like had they been produced by Richard Swift (the production guru here). The smooth genre-splicing that deftly glues together \"On Blue Mountain\" is genius; fat bass lines and Elton John piano notes downshift into sultry, late-night meandering. Then vintage organs and shiny choruses rise to a blissful finish in a rush of chaotic guitar squalls. Did we use the word \"genius\" yet?
'We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic' is a precocious and cocksure joyride across California psychedelia with a burning, bursting punk rock engine. In the same year as Scott McKenzie the singer of "San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)" leaves this mortal coil, Foxygen delivers unto us the dandy Glockenspiel-packing "San Francisco," which both circumvents and dissects McKenzie's tune and its many cousins of the era. "I left my love in San Francisco/(That's okay, I was bored anyway)/I left my love in a field/(That's okay, I was born in LA)" goes the lovely call-and-response chorus, slamming together the archetypal flower children of the 60s and the archetypal ADHD vapidity of our recent generations. Another highlight, "Shuggie," manages to fit all the light bounce of the song's namesake and the climbing choruses of ELO into it's 3 minutes while still filling the tune with imagery of "rhinoceros-shaped earrings" and haunted parlors. Every nook and cranny of the record is loaded with their unflappable, brazen personalities. Foxygen takes "swagger," that as-of-late misused adjective, back once and for all. It's flipping pyramids old and new upside down — from the miracle demo hand-off to their Richard Pryor-as-Jagger live shows to their singular idiosyncratic vision of rock n' roll.
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.”
Robert Pollard isn\'t going to edit himself; we know that. So it\'s up to his fans to do it themselves. 2013\'s *English Little League* is the *fourth* album by the reunited mid-\'90s version of Guided by Voices in about a year. (A fifth one is planned for release before year\'s end.) Clearly, not even a prolific middle-age prodigy like Pollard can make clean contact this often. However, debating the merits of his relentless output is a sport of its own, and fans agreeing to disagreeing comes with the territory. Listeners have been noticing Tobin Sprout\'s contributions as well; here they include his Robyn Hitchcock–like \"Islands (She Talks in Rainbows)\" and acoustic Nikki Sudden–esque \"The Sudden Death of Epstein\'s Ways.\" These are sweet, measured counterpoints to Pollard\'s brazen, slap-in-the-face pop songs, which can either nail it down (\"Crybaby 4-Star Hotel\") or linger in lo-fi purgatory (\"A Burning Glass\"). Pollard and Sprout put together the lovely \"Noble Insect\" and the enjoyably psychedelic \"Birds.\" There\'s still plenty of gold in these hills. Just sift carefully.
John Wesley Harding has been writing novels under his given name, Wesley Stace, since 2005. In 2013, he finally applied his original name to his music career, and the Wesley Stace album *Self-Titled* continues his quiet, literate singer/songwriting without changing his approach in any noticeable way. In his early years he often sounded like an Elvis Costello understudy, but since then he\'s evolved into a mild folk-rock artist with music closer to the reflective writings of Harry Chapin, Cat Stevens, and Jim Croce. The small-band approach puts Stace\'s lyrics front and center and lets the stories driving “We Will Always Have New York,” “A Canterbury Kiss,” “Lydia,” and the economical “The Bedroom You Grew Up In” fully connect with audiences looking to hear songs very much in the short-story format. At 16 songs, the album weighs in as a double album, showing how prolific Stace can be when playing himself. “Stare at the Sun” and “When I Knew” were cowritten with Eleanor Friedberger of Fiery Furnaces.
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.
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.
*Dream River* is Bill Callahan’s 16th (or so) release, including those he recorded as Smog. His music is mysterious and intense. Even after 25 years, it remains filled with surprises. Where in the past Callahan has thrived on repetition, here nothing is static. *Dream River* is sublime in its subtlety; each word and pause feels essential. The instruments are in sync with Callahan’s drowsy and understated baritone, and the arrangements fully support the freeform lyrics and open song structures. The music is lush and the backing band inspired, particularly the remarkable guitar work of Matt Kinsey. His guitar tones play off Callahan’s vocals beautifully as keyboards, flute, congas, and percussion add texture and motion on standouts like “Javelin Unlanding” and “Spring.” Another highlight is the opening “The Sing,” a Callahan classic featuring pedal steel, electric guitar, country fiddle, and a hint of mariachi rhythm. *Dream River* is an affecting album that ranks among Callahan’s best work.
Ol' man Eagle is back, floatin' Apocalyptically on a Whaleheart down the Dream River. Eight gentle percolations fire the pressure-cooker of life, dialing us into the Callahanian mind- and soul-set. Deep like aqua, soulful like man and animal alike.
Dr. Dog sound warm and soulful as they ease into *B-Room* with “The Truth”—a gentle, classic pop tune with ringing bells and soft organ. That warmth permeates the record on more rollicking tracks too, like the tambourine-shakin’ rave-up “Distant Light” or the raw and wild “Rock & Roll.” “Twilight,” with its bright autoharp, dives deep into the spacier side of the band’s psychedelia; “Nellie” is a grand, folky finale that offers a sweet group sing-along.
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.
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.
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.