musicOMH's Top 100 Albums of 2014

On their third full-length, Cleveland-bred outfit Cloud Nothings give joy a hard, sharp edge. “I was feeling pretty good about everything so I just made stuff that made me happy,” says founding member and mild-mannered chief songwriter Dylan Baldi of "Here and Nowhere Else." “I had nothing to be angry about really so the approach was more positive and less ‘fuck everything.’ I just sat down and played until I found something that I like, because I was finally in a position to do that.” Utilizing every possible opportunity to write while on the road for 18 consecutive months following the release of 2012′s "Attack on Memory," Baldi presented an album’s worth of new material to his bandmates with just days before they’d enter the studio with esteemed producer John Congleton. “I’m pretty sure every song was written in a different country,” he says. “It’s the product of only having a couple of minutes here and there.” But Cloud Nothings would enjoy a full week with Congleton at Water Music in Hoboken, New Jersey, followed by three days of mixing at his own studio in Dallas shortly thereafter. The result is Cloud Nothings, refined: impossibly melodic, white-knuckle noise-rock that shimmers with sumptuous detail, from Baldi’s lone, corkscrewing guitar to his dramatically improved singing to bassist TJ Duke’s piledriving bass lines and drummer Jayson Gerycz’s volcanic fills. “It’s more subtle,” says Baldi. “It’s not just an in-your-face rock record. There’s more going on. You can listen to a song 20 times and still hear different little things in there that you didn’t notice before. Every time I listen I notice something that I didn’t even realize we did.” It’s yet another staggering show of a progress from a songwriter and band still coming into their own.

Four years of slow-burning success on from the rolling primal rhythms and joyous arpeggios of his 2010 debut album Holkham Drones, Luke Abbott makes a bold return to the Border Community with his sublime second album offering ‘Wysing Forest’. Named after the Wysing Arts Centre in Cambridgeshire who hosted Luke as their first ever musician-in-residence over a six week period during the winter of 2012, the album comprises a series of improvised live recordings, edited and compiled after a period of after-the-act reflection into one rapturous movement. The finished article’s 52-minute duration may have been chopped into nine track-sized chunks for its official album release, but this is most definitely an album which is greater than the sum of its parts, designed to be listened to in one immersive go. “‘Wysing Forest’ has a very particular arc to it an the tracks only make sense in the context of that arc,” Luke explains. “Structuring the album to work as a whole was quite a challenge, almost more of a challenge than making the music, but I think I’ve ended up with something that has a kind of internal logic.” And though only a pair of tracks – ‘Free Migration’ and ‘Highrise’, together forming the subtle peak that marks the mid-point of the album – approach ‘Holkham Drones” idiosyncratic lumpen danceability, it is thanks to Luke’s perfectly judged elegant transitional dynamics that neither piece – although as dancefloor-directed as anything he has ever done before – feels out of place amongst the album’s more mellow moments.

Chris Clark is the quintessential Warp Records artist; his electronic palette wanders between melodious piano loops and abrasive synth squelches, pummeling techno and eerie ambience. His eponymous seventh album may be his most virtuosic work yet. The caustic throb of \"Unfurla\" gives way to the metallic ambience of \"Strength Through Fragility.\" \"Snowbird\" is an arrhythmic collage of chirps and chimes, while \"Beacon\" is one long, raging arpeggio, a live wire showering sparks. For a record this peripatetic, it\'s surprisingly cohesive, conjuring visions of a sci-fi future full of machines on the fritz and sunsets tinged with industrial smog. 

Selling more than a million copies in the U.K. and earning the pensive singer/songwriter a Mercury Prize nomination, Ben Howard\'s 2011 debut was no slouch—but it\'s his sophomore album that brings his talents into sharp focus. From the dub ambience and electric curlicues of the opener, producer Chris Bond judiciously flanks Howard\'s reedy tenor with light percussion and bright guitars. \"Rivers in Your Mouth\" sizzles like Springsteen\'s \"I\'m on Fire,\" and the skipping notes and vocal dips of \"She Treats Me Well\" recall Nick Drake. This is a thoughtful, meditative record, taking its time to create a uniquely melancholy mood. 

Inventions is the new band formed by longtime friends, tourmates, and labelmates Matthew Cooper of Eluvium, and Mark T. Smith of Explosions In The Sky. There are plenty of talking points here: The fact that Cooper hasn’t been in a “band” of any sort since he was a teenager; no member of Explosions In The Sky has released an album outside of the context of EITS since their inception in the late 90s; and, of course, this is a dream duo for anyone familiar with the unparalleled emotional resonance of Cooper and Smith’s respective day jobs. However, thirty seconds into their eponymous debut album, you realize that the esteemed pedigree is irrelevant. Inventions exceeds all expectations by discarding them from the get-go. They have created their own tiny, wondrous corner of the world, one with ever-changing sounds and colors. Inventions began in earnest last year when Cooper invited Smith to collaborate on a song for Eluvium’s otherworldly double-album, Nightmare Ending. The track, “Envenom Mettle”, was a standout on an album full of them, and just like that a longstanding friendship blossomed into a full-fledged creative partnership. The following six months the duo continued to send audio files back and forth to each other from their respective homes in Portland, Oregon and Austin, Texas. The collaboration proved fruitful, inspiring, and truly enjoyable from the outset, and in less than a year they had amassed more than an album’s worth of material. They traveled together to a secluded beach house on the Oregon coast to complete the album, an environment that proved not only highly productive but also clearly influential on the album’s windswept beauty and warm vibrations. Across eight songs the duo explore the delicate and disturbing – and virtually everything in-between – with majestic abandon. It’s the kind of beauty and brilliance that only masters of their craft can accomplish when all egos and expectations are cast aside in pursuit of the splendor of sound.

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.

www.paradiseofbachelors.com/pob-15 Other online purchase options (physical/download/streaming): smarturl.it/PoB15 NARRATIVE In Donald Barthelme’s 1982 story “Lightning,” the narrator, a journalist investigating lightning strike survivors, reflects that “lightning changes things; the soul burns, having been struck by lightning.” He wonders about aesthetic (and supernatural) dimensions—is “lightning an attempt at music on the part of God?” Three decades later, as the catastrophic effects of climate change encroach upon the realms of science fiction, how might our communications and social conventions change, becoming correspondingly weirder and darker? Weather is, after all, both a formulaic conversation starter across cultures and a shared condition that connects us experientially. So what happens when “How about this weather?” becomes a less banal and much more compelling, and dangerous, question? While ecological unease worries at the edges of Steve Gunn’s bold new full-band album Way Out Weather—the breathing sea of the billowing title track, the bad wind and moon over “Wildwood,” the polluted pyramid and blue bins in “Shadow Bros,” the desert heat sickness of “Atmosphere”—the resonance of the title is primarily metaphorical and oblique. Written largely while on tour, the record is an elliptical but seductive travelogue, more engaged with navigating foreign (“way out”) emotional landscapes, and with grasping at universal threads of language and narrative, than with bemoaning rising sea levels. Despite the album-opening lyric to the contrary, “Way Out Weather” is an uncommon song in Steve Gunn’s discography. Sonically and lyrically the album demonstrates a radical evolution, lighting out for lusher, more expansive, and impressionistic territories; it’s his first major work as an artist for whom the studio provides a critical context. A more enigmatic and elevated affair than its predecessor, Way Out Weather completes Gunn’s satisfying transformation into a mature songwriter, singer, and bandleader of subtlety and authority. It ranks as most impressive and inviting record yet, an inscrutable but entirely self-assured masterpiece. The critically acclaimed Time Off (2013), his first full-band album highlighting his vocals, represented the culmination of Steve’s steady fifteen-year migration from the frontier fringes of the guitar avant-garde, where he is regarded as a prodigy, and toward his especial style of more traditionally informed (albeit deconstructed) songcraft. Those songs developed from years of woodshedding and performance, offering a linear, local narrative that mapped the contours of Gunn’s Brooklyn neighborhood and a matrix of musical friendships, earning him a broad new following. Less patently intimate, Way Out Weather angles for something far more cosmic, dynamic, and widescreen in sound and sentiment. In contrast to the interiority of Time Off, these eight decidedly exterior songs aren’t grounded by the specifics of geography, instead inhabiting headier, more rarefied altitudes (see in particular the ethereal “Shadow Bros,” “Fiction,” and “Atmosphere.”) They step beyond home and hover above horizon, unmoored from immediate circumstances and surroundings. Here Gunn’s discursive, mantric guitar style, at once transcendent and methodical—and as influenced by Western guitarists such as Michael Chapman and Sonny Sharrock as by Ghanaian highlife, Gnawa, and Carnatic forms—maintains its signature helical intricacy and mesmeric propulsion, while buoyed by a bigger crew of musicians, a wider instrumental palette, and higher production values than ever before. Belying their ambitious new scale and scope, most of these songs arrived at Westtown, New York’s scene-seminal Black Dirt Studio as skeletal solo demos. An enthusiastic and generous collaborator—recently he has partnered with Kurt Vile, Michael Chapman, Mike Cooper, the Black Twig Pickers, Cian Nugent, et al.—Gunn assembled an accomplished group of comrades to flesh out the full arrangements, trusting the germinal songs to an instinctual process of spontaneous composition, transposition, and improvisation. The WOW studio band comprised longtime musical brothers Jason Meagher (bass, drones, engineering), Justin Tripp (bass, guitar, keys, production), and John Truscinski (drums), in addition to newcomers Nathan Bowles (drums, banjo, keys: Black Twig Pickers, Pelt); James Elkington (guitar, lap steel, dobro: Freakwater, Jeff Tweedy); Mary Lattimore (harp, keys: Thurston Moore, Kurt Vile); and Jimy SeiTang (synths, electronics: Psychic Ills, Rhyton.) This preternaturally intuitive and inventive band allowed Gunn to sculpt the album as a composer and colorist as well as a player. The cascading runs of “Milly’s Garden,” the menacing urgency of “Drifter,” and the alien, galvanic syncopation of album closer “Tommy’s Congo” (the latter unlike anything Gunn has heretofore recorded) display a thrilling mastery of heavier, increasingly kinetic full-band arrangements. His vocals throughout are more present, commanding, and refined, revealing a restrained but highly nuanced baritone capable of remarkable grace. Way Out Weather is Steve’s career-defining statement to date. Lightning changes things; the soul burns. + A radical widescreen evolution, featuring a larger band and lusher arrangements, this is the virtuosic guitarist and songwriter’s career-defining statement to date + Available on 150g virgin vinyl as an LP, with deluxe tip-on jacket and full-color inner sleeve, as well as on gatefold CD and digital formats (later LP editions feature heavy-duty board jacket instead of tip-on) + Vinyl edition includes digital download coupon + Featuring photography by KT Auleta, Dan Murphy, and Constance Mensh www.paradiseofbachelors.com/shop/pob-015 www.paradiseofbachelors.com/steve-gunn

Thee Silver Mt. Zion (in all their permutations) are a critical part of post-rock’s inception, along with founder Efrim Menuck’s other band, Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Both groups are experimental, collective entities that make exciting, unpredictable music (add “aggressive” in the case of TSMZ). Since Silver Mt. Zion’s inception—as a three-piece back in 1999—they\'ve grown both in number and scope. And with *F\*\*\* Off Get Free*, their seventh full-length release, they make clear the weight of their influence. The monstrous opening track roars into life with layers of buzz and howl, a postpunk clang that feels somehow original, slightly dangerous, and faintly toxic. Menuck’s voice is more confident and darkly sage; dissonant violins and thumping toms roil and build until the seven-minute mark, when a mass of sludgy metallic guitar makes its way into the picture, threatening like an oil spill. It’s a massive piece of work. There is sheer beauty here, too, for the fainter of spirit: the lullaby “Little Ones Run” neatly sums up the vibe of *FOGF*.

*Rips* indeed. Ex Hex’s debut delivers a steady stream of muscular riffs, dirty hooks, and sticky melodies. It’s tight, lean, and a lot of fun. Made up of singer and guitarist Mary Timony (Helium, Wild Flag, solo), drummer Laura Harris (The Aquarium), and bassist Betsy Wright (The Fire Tapes), Ex Hex cross garage rock with power pop. It’s not revolutionary, but it’s done well. You can pump your fist to it while appreciating Timony’s clever and often biting lyrics and straight-ahead guitar solos. Longtime Timony fans will also notice the difference in her voice. Trading her hushed vocals for a full-throated wail, here she sounds tough and assured.

Featuring four college friends from Gainesville, Fla., Hundred Waters are an unlikely signing to Skrillex\'s OWSLA label, home to such EDM big shots as Porter Robinson and Zedd. Instead of dubstep bombast, this four-piece traffic in ethereal post-rock, a mix of soaring ambient textures, melancholic synth melodies, and fidgety rhythms, all anchored by Nicole Miglis\' seraphic vocals. With its celestial strings and deep bass, \"Cavity\" evokes Portishead, while the stuttering beats and airy melodies of \"Xtal\" (plus the title itself) are directly descendent from Aphex Twin. If there\'s one thing the band have in common with their iconoclastic label head, it\'s scale: both acts are enamored of grandly cinematic electronic statements, of which *The Moon Rang Like a Bell* is a stunning example.

*Rolling Stone* magazine noted that Baltimore is “becoming our nation’s hub for soft-focus synth pop,” citing groups such as Future Islands, Beach House, and Wye Oak as prime examples. This might come as a surprise to fans who remember Wye Oak from their previous album, 2011’s *Civilian*, where they kept themselves rooted in tradition with guitars that gave them a yin-yang of folk and shoegaze textures. But with 2014’s *Shriek*, the duo of singer Jenn Wasner and keyboardist/drummer Andy Stack have tossed the six-strings for full-time synths, and the pop aspect is just a natural output when melodies are as light as the ones heard on the title track. “The Tower” works with a fighting rhythm, but “Glory” surrenders to the automation that makes electronics work. Wasner’s vocals are the true standout here. Her flexible approach turns the usual arpeggiated arrangements behind “Sick Talk,” “Despicable Animal,” and “Paradise” into a world of goth, pop, and diva worship all into one. 

The second LP by Gazelle Twin. WAV download. Also available on Vinyl + CD at gazelletwin.tmstor.es

With their eerie textures, spare pianos, and whispered vocals, Liz Harris\' songs send shivers up your spine, even as they emanate a certain warmth, like a ghost story told by a close friend. Recorded at an artist retreat in Portugal, *Ruins* is her most accessible release, with spectral odes like \"Call Across Rooms\" and \"Lighthouse\" eschewing the looping techniques of previous work for spare arrangements of piano and voice. \"Labyrinth\" pulls you in with circular piano lines, while Harris\' vocals in \"Holding\" drift by like clouds as samples of a thunderstorm populate the background.

Ruins was made in Aljezur, Portugal in 2011 on a residency set up by Galeria Zé dos Bois. I recorded everything there except the last song, which I did at mother's house in 2004. Iʼm still surprised by what I wound up with. It was the first time Iʼd sat still for a few years; processed a lot of political anger and emotional garbage. Recorded pretty simply, with a portable 4-track ,Sony stereo mic and an upright piano. When I wasnʼt recording songs I was hiking several miles to the beach. The path wound through the ruins of several old estates and a small village. The album is a document. A nod to that daily walk. Failed structures. Living in the remains of love. I left the songs the way they came (microwave beep from when power went out after a storm); I hope that the album bears some resemblance to the place that I was in.

The magic of Robert Plant’s tenth solo album, *lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar*, is its ability to combine a pastiche of disparate musical fragments with effortless fluency. Coming to life with a richly orchestrated version of “Little Maggie”—a traditional bluegrass tune popularized by The Stanley Brothers—Plant interweaves a scrawl of modal strings, grinding electric guitars, and laser-beam synths. And yet, the vocalist and his Sensational Space Shifters (a group that includes versatile guitarist Justin Adams and West African percussionist Juldeh Camara), make the genre-defying collision of musical ideas—old and new, familiar and exotic—seem comfortable and uncomplicated. “Rainbow” opens with a ringing hand drum and buzzing guitar, rising to an etherial chorus of cooing “ooh”s. Turn It Up” combines a righteously distorted riff and jaunting, syncopated percussion. Even the most straightforward songs, like the reverberant ballad “Somebody There,” are sumptuously ornate. The result makes *lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar* a profound musical endeavor, as brilliant, mystical, and difficult to classify as the artist himself.

It might be time for Steve McBean to declare Pink Mountaintops his day gig and shove Black Mountain over to the night shift. The fourth PM album has McBean showing off his love for rock ’n’ roll by playing it without compromise. If the “concept” element of this gets a tad too obvious on “Sell Your Soul,” it’s more than made up for with the natural blare of “Ambulance City,” “The Second Summer of Love,” and “Through All the Worry,” where the sounds lean toward the nasty and the loud. J Mascis, Darker My Love’s Rob Barbato, and Giant Drag’s Annie Hardy are among the party-crashers who give the album a loose, joyous, celebratory tone that can’t be faked (or scripted to happen). “New Teenage Mutilation” echoes the barroom slur of Lucinda Williams singing “Metal Firecracker,” with an extra nudge from actual cowbell that every song is allegedly in more need of. “Sixteen” distorts in a lo-fi attack that sounds like what’s really meant by \"cow-punk.\"

It's doubtful that Stephen McBean set out to make The Great Rock 'N' Roll Primer when he started conjuring the songs that would come to be Pink Mountaintops' Get Back.   The record's beginnings were reasonably straightforward:  McBean had moved to Los Angeles, taken a long hiatus from Black Mountain and an even longer one from Pink Mountaintops when he met producer Joe Cardamone, lead singer of Icarus Line at Valley Recording Company in Burbank, CA. The two bonded quickly over Flying Nun bands, Television Personalities, Roxy Music, Johnny Thunders, and Born Against. Joe was excited to meet someone he actually liked. Stephen was excited to work with someone who said "Sing it like you would've sung it when you were 21." Simple enough, right? But ask him to set the scene and you'll hear about a motorcycle shop owned by Michael Barragan, former member of Los Angeles noise rock band Plexi. You'll hear about an endless supply of rock 'n' roll video documentation for last minute inspiration or deevolution in the living room. Ask who's on the record and you'll get a constellation of greats: J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr & Witch), Rob Barbato (Darker My Love, The Fall & Cass McCombs), Steve Kille (Dead Meadow),  Daniel Allaire (Brian Jonestown Massacre, Cass McCombs & Darker My Love), Annie Hardy (Giant Drag),  Jon Wahl (Clawhammer),  and Gregg Foreman (Cat Power & Delta 72). Randal Dunn (SunnO))), Earth, Sun City Girls, Boris) mixed Get Back  at Avast! Studios (Bikini Kill, Mudhoney, Christ On A Crutch, Soundgarden) in Seattle. Howie Weinburg (Nirvana, Beastie Boys, Danzig, Ramones, Slayer) mastered it in Laurel Canyon. Ask about the record itself and McBean will tell you about "Alleys, curbs, walls, and cigarette stained gig flyers. An island on the Pacific coast. Fake British towns. Slayer posters. The beauty of youth. It's about listening to Driver's Seat and 'Guns of Brixton' and hotboxing The Duster." And suddenly it becomes clear: when the aliens do touch down and they don't know rock 'n' roll, you can play them Get Back start to finish, and that'll be all they need. Get Back comes out swinging with "Ambulance City," a head-trip of a song with a chugging, insistent, oddly timeless guitar riff sitting front and center. "The Second Summer of Love" needs almost no explanation; it dives into 80s VHS saturation and never comes up for air. "Sell Your Soul" is a deep sigh and a motorcycle ride, a roll in the grass lamenting summertime blues with a little grit and a little harmony. And "North Hollywood Microwaves" is downright obscene. But what better way to start Side B than this? You can listen at hushed volumes so your parents don't hear, you can crank it in a dorm room, you can smirk to yourself from the safety of rock 'n' roll's old age. You start to wonder - why don't all Side Bs start with a song like this one… The number of platitudes in music hit critical mass years ago, and among those tropes is that annoying, inescapable mantra: rock 'n' roll is undefinable. And yeah, sure, that's true. It's different things to different people. It starts with guitars, maybe, and ends with a stage-dive, or spit, or feedback. Rock 'n' roll is drugs, is rebellion, is youth, is sex, is cosmic. It's wanting more than you have. Rock 'n' roll is butts and cigarette butts. And Pink Mountaintops might not be the best-known band ever to make rock 'n' roll, but in Get Back they just might have written its scripture -- an exploration and celebration of what, exactly, rock 'n' roll can be. 

Every time Ryan Adams thinks he’s out, he pulls himself back in. It turns out the follow-up to 2011’s *Ashes & Fire* isn\'t the completed album he made with Glyn Johns but a self-produced collection of songs recorded at Adams’ recording studio, PAX AM. (Some tunes were coproduced with Mike Viola.) The mercurial singer/songwriter who broke up his band (The Cardinals), flirted with retirement, and formed a punk group sounds plenty much like the Ryan Adams we’ve come to expect. The alt-country sounds are scrubbed down for an electric guitar–based heartland rock that gets a touch of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, thanks to the involvement of longtime Petty organist Benmont Tench. “Shadows” is the loudest cry in the dark, with Adams’ guitars ringing and clashing over Tal Wilkenfeld’s stalking bassline. “Feels Like Fire” follows up the existential ache, with Johnny Depp playing guitar and adding a backing vocal. “I Just Might” pulses with a hint of Bruce Springsteen’s “State Trooper.”

After a prolific first decade as a recording artist—between the band Rilo Kiley, her solo efforts, and side collaborations, she released eight full-length albums—Jenny Lewis took her time working on *The Voyager*, her third solo album. The six years that followed her sophomore release (2008\'s *Acid Tongue*) let Lewis refine and polish these 10 buoyant tracks. Working with two producers who are worthy of her wickedly intelligent songwriting—Ryan Adams and Beck—she devised her most mature and confident album to date. Lewis has rarely sounded in greater command of her versatile vocal gifts, from the sharp, vaulting chorus of the beat-driven opener, “Head Underwater”—which chronicles her emergence from a dark period (“I put my head underwater, baby/I held my breath until it passed”)—to the classic soul melody of “She’s Not Me” and the pleading western noir “You Can’t Outrun ‘Em.” The effervescent, summery production contrasts thoughtfully with Lewis’ piercing lyrics, which find her surveying life with restlessness and resignation in equal measure.

Nile, Prefab Sprout, Talk Talk, and The xx. In the case of Woman’s Hour, everything centers on vocalist Fiona Burgess, who brings human tenderness to subtle but stunning songs such as the title track, “To the End,” “Two Sides of You,” and “Devotion.” Even when the rhythms bounce upward, surprisingly on “Darkest Place” (earning comparisons to Beach House) and more expectedly on “Her Ghost” and “The Day That Needs Defending,” Burgess brings a vulnerability that adds further dimensions to everything she touches. William Burgess’ guitar work never veers from its context, working as much behind the scenes as weaving additional layers of texture with keyboardist Josh Hunnisett for sister Fiona to exploit. “In Stillness We Remain” swirls with a touch of old-school Cocteau Twins. Bassist Nicolas Graves provides a sober pulse while all else is an intoxicating shimmer. As a debut album, *Conversations* sounds unusually assured and experienced, as if the band *must* be hiding something on their shelves. 

Alt-rap bubbling over with ideas and jackhammer attitude? Experimental indie with a splash of forceful spoken word? However you categorise this genre-brewing first album from Edinburgh-based trio Graham Hastings, Alloysious Massaquoi, and Kayus Bankole, its verve and energy is impossible to ignore. From the sinister atmospherics and strange couplets on “Mmmh Mmmh” to the twitchy, exultant clatter of “Get Up”, *Dead* sounds utterly distinctive and, paradoxically enough, thrillingly alive.

An Oscar nomination (along with Arcade Fire) for Best Original Score for Spike Jonze’s 2013 film *Her* ensures that Pallett is more confident and daring on the second studio album under his own name. Recorded in Montreal with the core rhythm section of Robbie Gordon and Matt Smith—with integral contributions from Brian Eno and the Czech FILMharmonic Orchestra—the album was written and produced by Pallett. It flows smoothly from orchestral pop confections to serious incidental music, underpinning Pallett’s many talents. “I Am Not Afraid” and the title track suggest serious emotional dissonance. But even when things are dire, Pallett finds ways to counterpoint with the bright and airy arrangement of “On a Path.” Like many of the album’s best pieces, it\'s a dazzling use of instrumental space and vocal technique. The textbook synth arpeggios of “Song for Five & Six” are transcended by Pallett’s silken vocals, which reveal even more on “The Secret Seven,” which makes room for a sublime string arrangement in its midst. For spiritual depth, “The Passions” offers an eerie moment of introspection.

Though beset by label delays and Twitter squabbles, no amount of innuendo could stymie the vividly original debut by Harlem pop iconoclast Azealia Banks. The snaking electro-house breakout \"212\" remains essential listening, flanked by a kaleidoscopic mélange of Latin, funk, trap, and hip-hop: forget naming styles, they\'re all here. Rapping and singing with equal aplomb, Banks anchors the spooky U.K. garage of \"Desperado\" as ably as she does the industrial skronk of \"Yung Rapunxel\" (the conflation of \"rap\" and \"punk\" there is no accident). The Ariel Pink collaboration \"Nude Beach A-Go-Go,\" with its echoes of Gidget and \'50s pop, is positively flummoxing in the best way.

The title of the debut full-length from England’s Matthew & The Atlas gives a nod to the great American author John Steinbeck, and indeed the dusky, gnarled feel of Matthew Hegarty’s music (and especially his voice) conjures an Americana sensibility. Trading in the more prominent banjos and front-porch feel of earlier EPs and singles for background washes of electronic keyboards and crispy percussion puts Other Rivers just outside the realm of folk and into something richer, like a brew of Port O’Brien, Will Oldham, and The National. But the songs still pulse and twinkle with late-night introspection. Hegarty’s voice adds a few extra-rich layers to the yearning quality that\'s so common—and necessary—for this type of music. He’s weary, hopeful, and resigned, and his voice resonates with a warmth and familiarity that’s hard to resist. The opening track, “Into Gold,” is a gorgeous, alluring tune that pulls listeners in, with gentle synthetic swells, fragile guitar lines, and muted, heartbeat percussion that lifts dewy choruses to lofty heights. Elsewhere, tones of husky soul, shades of quivering uncertainty, and a palpable desire color the beautiful topography of *Other Rivers*.