SPIN's 50 Best Albums of 2011

In the wake of 2007’s spectral *White Chalk*, Polly Jean Harvey turned her songwriting focus outward. Dismayed by the direction of politics in her British homeland and around the world, she set to writing lyrics—fever-dreamish poems that used brutal imagery and borrowed lines from older music—that worked through her sadness and anger. Using three autoharps, each tuned to different, dissonant chord configurations, she transformed the verses into striking, sad songs. *Let England Shake* is an elegiac 21st-century reimagining of the protest album, an urgent call to end global cycles of war that hits harder because of its ghostly sonics. Harvey’s voice is the focal point of *Let England Shake*, although its timbre sharply contrasts with the shredded wailing that made her harsher ‘90s records so celebrated. On songs like the rain-spattered “The Glorious Land” and the swirling “Hanging on the Wire,” she’s in the upper reaches of her range, adding a pleading edge to her cutting observations; she hovers over the echoing chords of “On Battleship Hill” in an unnervingly beautiful way, heightening the horrors once committed on that site. “The Words That Maketh Murder,” meanwhile, accentuates its grimy images with bleating brass and a snippet of Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” that simutaneously calls back to the post-World War II era’s seemingly endless promise and mourns the present. *Let England Shake* evokes the fog of war while puncturing it with potent reminders of its bloody reality.

Here The Rapture transitions back to a trio after the departure of longtime member Mattie Safer and makes a clean break from its inspired dance-punk revivalism. A slightly more somber tone reflects recent life-changing events in frontman Luke Jenner’s life, such as becoming a father and losing his mother to suicide. Exuding a smoother and more cerebral dance-club vibe, *In the Grace of Your Love* simultaneously celebrates and parts ways with his recent past, both lyrically and musically. *In the Grace of Your Love* is indeed a more mature record and delivers an astounding number of delightful surprises. Hints of gospel are interwoven with bouncy dance beats and balkanized accordion snippets on “Come Back to Me”; the yearning, melancholic stomper “Sail Away” morphs effortlessly into a Sun Ra melting pot; “Never Die Again” revisits 1978 Blondie, with a killer verse/bridge/chorus combo propelled by gusts of gliding horns, glittering disco guitar, and clattering percussion. Like its labelmate YACHT, The Rapture works in a rarefied arena of dance-pop that’s smart, sophisticated, and deeply pleasurable.

From the original press release, September, 2011: The release of The Rapture’s long-awaited third album In The Grace Of Your Love marks the dawn of a new chapter in the bands history and a welcome return to DFA Records family, having re-signed with the label that released some of their most acclaimed early singles, and whose founders James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy produced their debut album Echoes. Together with French producer Phillippe Zdar (Phoenix, Beastie Boys, Chromeo) they have crafted and shaped a bold and euphoric album that sounds definitively and distinctly like The Rapture and no one else. Through the course of its eleven tracks, you can immerse yourself as waves of lyrical optimism and introspection crash between angular guitars and pulsing synthesizers, pounding drums and into sweet rhythmical lullabies. This is the sound of The Rapture re-engaged and revitalized with a voice as clear as they ever had. In The Grace Of Your Love was recorded at Motorbass, Paris and Gary's Electric in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Any honey flowing through Lykke Li\'s coy pop fully hardened on this dark and doomy follow-up to her 2008 debut album. The Swedish singer/songwriter traps the loss of youth and love in a warped wall of sound that echoes vintage girl-group pop on big, gushing torch songs like \"Unrequited Love\" and \"Sadness Is a Blessing.\" But she comes into her own when harnessing her womanly power, with big, booming percussion on the tribal-esque thriller \"Get Some.\"

If you fell for Telekinesis’ infectious debut, prepare to swoon again. Sticking to what he does best, songwriter and one-man-band Michael Benjamin Lerner, along with producer Chris Walla (Death Cab for Cutie), delivers a dozen energetic pop gems in just over 30 minutes. Though there’s not a bad song here, “Please Ask for Help,” “Dirty Thing,” “Car Crash,” and “Gotta Get It Right Now” best represent the album — rapid drumbeats, sunny harmonies, fuzzy bass, and loads of ringing power chords delivered with unquenchable urgency. This album is noisier and grittier than his debut but still focused on brief bursts of fun, dance-around-the-room power pop. The direct, heartfelt lyrics mainly deal with dysfunctional romance yet the catchy hooks and upbeat choruses come across as cathartic release rather than a mope-fest. *12 Desperate Straight Lines* is a straightforward, no-frills winner.

When The Weeknd’s debut mixtape, *House of Balloons*, dropped in 2011, it was clear, even then, that something had shifted. This was a divergent kind of R&B that hinged on atmospherics over vocal prowess—an almost soulless quality in a genre built around soul. At the time, The Weeknd was largely anonymous, hiding in the shadows of his own music, the aloofness only adding to the allure. He was no one and yet everyone, as his raw, bruised candor resonated with fans suffering the effects of overexposure and contradicting desires to both feel and be numb simultaneously. He was a decent enough singer (his falsetto often drew comparisons to Michael Jackson), but it was the one-two punch of the nocturnal sound and indulgent lyrics—the darkness, the dysfunction, the hazy synth-bath of it all—that gave it staying power. When he says, “Trust me, girl, you wanna be high for this,” as he declares on the opening track, it\'s hard to tell whether it\'s an invitation or a warning, but it landed on ears that were all too happy to oblige. *House of Balloons*, here now in its original form with all samples restored, introduces the sentiment that has underscored nearly all of The Weeknd\'s music that\'s followed: a blurring of the lines between love and addiction, between having a good time and being consumed by it. In multi-part songs such as “House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls” and “The Party & The After Party,” a night\'s zenith and nadir are never too far apart; his audience, like his women, are held captive by the mercurial nature of his moods. A line like “Bring your love, baby, I could bring my shame/Bring the drugs, baby, I could bring my pain,” from lead single “Wicked Games,” serves as a kind of mission statement for the mixtape\'s (and, perhaps, the singer himself\'s) central tension. In the exchange of affection and substances, there exists an emotional transference wherein power is gained by feeling the least. The Weeknd taps into our id-driven urges for pleasure and domination and rewards them again and again. Cruelty somehow becomes sexy in this world where detachment—from everything—is the only goal; the music that he’s created as a soundtrack continues to leave its audience equally insatiable. As the years go by, *House of Balloons* has become increasingly timeless. It remains as much an exercise in mythmaking (and star-making) for The Weeknd as a testament to our own pathological impulses, sending us barreling towards destruction and ecstasy all at once.

On their sophomore album, Bon Iver add just a touch of color to their stark indie folk, while retaining every bit of its intimacy. The haunting chill of solitude continues to cling to Justin Vernon\'s every word, even when his lilting falsetto radiates warmth over a rich bed of acoustic guitar, synths, and horns. The drama exudes from every little sound—the soft, pattering snare guiding \"Perth,\" the delicate whirrs of sax on \"Holocene,\" and the big, gleaming synths on \'80s-esque noir jam \"Beth / Rest.\"

Bon Iver, Bon Iver is Justin Vernon returning to former haunts with a new spirit. The reprises are there – solitude, quietude, hope and desperation compressed – but always a rhythm arises, a pulse vivified by gratitude and grace notes. The winter, the legend, has faded to just that, and this is the new momentary present. The icicles have dropped, rising up again as grass.

In the hipster borough of Brooklyn, four scrappy noisemongers called the Men have been mashing up and scraping out an interesting blend of hair-raising post-hardcore and discretely melodic post-punk (think Swell Maps, early Sonic Youth).  Vocals screech and yelp on tracks like “Lotus” (where the warped guitar din vaguely recalls the Butthole Surfers) and on the corrosive “Think,” but on other tunes, like “( ),” there is something approximating singing — though it’s pained, and buried. On the blistering “Bataille,” guitar notes blaze and blink like a neon rail, and the melodic bawling evidence some lineage to ‘60s garage rock. The bookend tracks alone define the true greatness of *Leave Home*: “If You Leave ...” takes more than three minutes to launch, and when it does, the song kicks into a churning brew of clanging, fuzzed-out guitars layered in varied tones, with a concrete, percussive bottom keeping the song on track. On closer “Night Landing,” guitars and snares pulses ominously, sounding a bit like Big Black meets Can, and Smith’s yelp is perilously close to complete mental melt-down. Hardcore never sounded this good.

The Men yes, “The,” are a four-piece post punk outfit from Brooklyn, NY. Their catalog, which began in 2008 with a hand-dubbed self-released demo cassette, has grown to include two LP’s — We Are the Men and Immaculada — two more tapes, and a 7-inch. They have toured three times, played over 75 shows and have grown a following of die hard fans crowding into living rooms and basements throughout the five boroughs, desperately trying to see them. The buzz in their hometown has grown so fervent that the Village Voice debuted this album’s first single, “Bataille,” a full six months before the record was scheduled to street. Named for the famed French pornographic writer, the track review expounds, “rides a pug-ugly joy-punk riff into almost krautrock oblivion — complete with gorgeous voice cracks and face-mooshing distortion.” Nick Chiericozzi, Mark Perro and Chris Hansell recorded this album at Python Patrol in 2010. Rich Samis joined the band shortly after and is now their full time drummer. Having three songwriters in the band allows them to pull from innumerable post punk sources, referencing drone, metal, shoegaze, and even Spaceman 3 lyrics on Leave Home. Recording to tape for the first time here, using elements of distortion, feedback, pop hooks, and a couple of beautifully destructive instrumental passages, The Men have been described by Mishka as, “more composers than musicians.” They have breathed new life into the genre of hardcore and created a seminal album that is truly for punks of all ages. Look for them on tour this summer.

On several levels, Dum Dum Girls’ second full-length Only in Dreams is a great leap forward for a gifted songwriter and an equally gifted band—it’s heavy, deeply personal stuff and surely unprecedented for this style of music. “The first record was basically the first songs I’d ever written,” says band-leader Dee Dee, “and I was thinking nostalgically about being a teenager. This record, it was pretty much impossible not to write about very recent, very real things.” Very real things indeed: Dee Dee wrote “Hold Your Hand” immediately after her mother (the pretty lady on the cover of both the Dum Dum Girls’ self-titled 2009 debut EP and their 2010 debut album I Will Be) was diagnosed with what turned out to be a fatal illness, and it’s one of several songs on Only in Dreams that unsparingly trace her mom’s passing. Other songs spell out the emotional toll of separation from one’s lover, something Dee Dee had to deal with while she and her husband (Brandon Welchez of the acclaimed noise-pop band Crocodiles) pursued their own tour schedules. Only in Dreams more than fulfills the promise of 2011’s acclaimed and fast-selling He Gets Me High EP. It retains Dum Dum Girls’ signature blend of the girl-gang eyeliner punk of the Shangri-Las, the trashy propulsion of the Cramps, and the moody atmospherics of Mazzy Star, but for the first time, all four Dum Dum Girls play and sing on the album. Now the harmonies have more depth, Jules plays her own distinctive guitar leads, and the Bambi (bass)/Sandy (drums) rhythm section powers the music like a vintage V-8 engine. Best of all, tons of time on the road—including two massively successful headlining tours—have molded Dum Dum Girls into a very formidable rock & roll band, giving the music an undeniable force. And now that power and glory is showcased by full-on studio production—while I Will Be was recorded at home and modestly spiffed up in a studio by legendary pop maestro Richard Gottehrer (Blondie, Go-Go’s), Only in Dreams was recorded at Josh Homme’s Pink Duck Studios, and Gottehrer again produced, this time with Sune Rose Wagner from the Raveonettes. Only in Dreams represents a musical evolution for Dum Dum Girls and a personal one for Dee Dee, and that’s no coincidence. “I’m for real,” she says. “We all are. I’m really passionate about this, it’s all I know. And maybe we’ve just grown up a bit-or grown out a bit. There’s some weight to what we do, and a pure intent, and I think that comes across on this album.”

M83’s cinematic tendencies come to a head on French musician Anthony Gonzalez\'s sixth album. Zola Jesus’ turn on “Intro” sets the scene like a cliff dive filmed in sparkling slow motion, and “Midnight City” amps up the synth-pop drama with soaring vocals and volleys of electronic drums. “Reunion” revisits the ringing guitars of ‘80s soundtrack staples from bands like Simple Minds, and from there Gonzalez glides across ambient interludes, bright digital keys, and stadium-sized New Wave. It’s the perfect marriage of indie aesthetics and blockbuster production.

Although Youth Lagoon’s masterfully crafted debut was recorded by a barely 20-year-old Trevor Powers in his bedroom, kitchen, and garage, it shares production values with seminal indie rock albums like Mercury Rev’s *Deserter’s Songs* and The Flaming Lips’ *The Soft Bulletin*. “Posters” opens with a whirlpool of ambient noise funneling under plodding bass and analog synthesizers before electric guitars and a drum machine get things going. In the following “Cannons,” Powers’ vulnerability is accented by slathering his vocals with so much reverb it sounds like he’s confessing his feelings from the depths of a wet cavern. He whistles alongside a keyboard in “Afternoon,” a lilting standout with dynamic layers building a kinetic composition; by the tune’s end it sounds like an oiled machine has run itself into the ground. But there’s more momentum throughout *The Year of Hibernation*; check out “July” with its gradual swells building like a set of hurricane waves or the faster-paced “Daydream,” which finds Powers slipping into a fantasy realm to escape the chronic anxiety that’s plagued him since childhood.

Drake\'s still fretting about lost love, the perils of fame, and connecting with his fellow man; just look at him on the cover, staring into a golden chalice like a lonely king. These naked emotions, however, are what make *Take Care* a classic, placing Drake in a league with legendary emoters like Marvin Gaye and Al Green. \"Marvin\'s Room\" is one of the most sullen singles to hit the Top 100, and the winsome guitar howls of the title track, coproduced by Jamie xx, are among of the most recognizable sounds of the decade.

The noise-lovin’ What’s Your Rupture? label brings us the guitar ... er, eruptions of Denmark’s youthful (teenaged) Iceage, with a U.S. debut entitled *New Brigade*. Fans of tough, abrasive punk — with a tolerance for undercurrents of noise, no wave and thrash — will want to put headphones on and clear the room of breakable items; songs like “New Brigade,” “Total Drench,” and “You’re Blessed” are fueled by semi-automatic drum parts and sparking guitars that throw enough heat to melt a Danish winter. Other tunes, like “White Rune” and “Collapse” hint at the earliest jolts of England’s great post-punk band Wire, tapping into the tangled roots of noise and art-damaged punk. Singer Elias Rønnenfelt intones the lyrics in English, barking in a flat, brooding expression of dissatisfaction, and there is a vortex of visceral, emotional energy at the music’s core. “Broken Bone” and “Eyes” pulse with raw energy, landing like a Fugazi punch wrapped in shoegazing softness; did original punk ever feel this good when it landed square in your gut? We think not. These kids are something to watch.

Cass McCombs is to release his second album this year, Humor Risk, on November 8th. Humor Risk was recorded in various homes and studios in California, New York, New Jersey and Chicago, and was produced by Cass McCombs and Ariel Rechtshaid, with whom he created Wit’s End, and before that, CATACOMBS. Humor Risk is an attempt at laughter instead of confusion, chaos instead of morality, or, as fellow Northern Californian Jack London said, “I would rather be ashes than dust!”. Musically, it is more rhythm-based, tempos swifter to nearly rocking, than the sparse Wit’s End. Infectious melodies are outlined by a wry lyricism that expresses the stories of characters from McCombs’ native land. Rather than fulfilling the stereotype of the confessional singer-songwriter, he describes the lifestyles and feelings of those that surround him, with more love than judgment: drugs, Scientology, Western America, and so on, in allegorical form. Humor Risk portrays yet another façade of this versatile, incredibly talented and much underrated artist.

Brooklyn based Liturgy is Hunter Hunt Hendrix, Greg Fox, Tyler Dusenbury, and Bernard Gann. Aesthethica, their second album and third release, shows the band exploring, in greater depth, themes initially touched on by their critically acclaimed debut album, Renihilation. The band used every instrument, literal or figurative, to produce meaning and intensity, disregarding the genre boundaries of black metal, hardcore and experimental music. On Renihilation, Liturgy made use of simple song structures, and concentrated on sustaining a blindingly high intensity level from start to finish. Aesthethica, a more controlled and polyvalent effort, finds the band operating at multiple levels and using more varied forms. The music is both elaborately crafted and chaotically performed. Songs often begin in the form of a simple chant or hypnotic abstraction, then evolve into something dense and complex. A constant sensitivity to the states of attention that different musical patterns activate and foster, yields a paradoxical result: the more complex the music, the simpler the message. Cycling through the fundamental modes of being: stasis, chaos, repetition and entelechy, Aesthethica is a metaphorical exercise in affirmation. The record is a unified whole. A major concern, sonically and lyrically, is the question of what it is to be meaningful, and how intensity relates to emotion or affect. Many of the songs activate and manipulate cliches relating to heroism, tragedy, hope, and so on by connecting black metal techniques to the spirit of film score writing (Vangelis, Badalamenti) and post-Romanticism (Scriabin, Sibelius). "High Gold" presents a vision of apocalypse, "Harmonia" presents a judgment on the meaning of life, and so on. The resulting collection of songs, at once, embodies and transcends these tropes. The music is supersaturated with lofty melodies and lyrics, bursting with frenzied execution, and builds to a boiling point of chaos, distorting all meaning and distilling to reveal the raw core of pure sonic joy. Liturgy surrounds these fractured islands of meaning with a sea of a-signifying ritual repetition and sound (Branca, Sleep, Lightning Bolt). Tear at the seams of the straitjacket of ordinary life, release the energy from the field of potentiality that it binds, enter the realm of the good and the beautiful, so commands Aesthethica. Highly technical musicianship, poetico-mystical gesturing, and a minimal directness; all singular elements, whose interactions and reactions are contained in and bursting from a black metal framework. Revelatory contrasts presented in an intensely physical performance whose energy is palpable and whose abatement is as illuminating as its arrival.

Tim Hecker albums have always sounded like an eternal struggle between darkness and light, with glimpses of terror and tranquility lurking around the edges of every ambient loop. And while they’re all worth a late-night listen, *Ravedeath, 1972* is one of his most cohesive artistic statements yet; 12 songs that bleed into one another beautifully. So beautifully, in fact, that they could have been combined into a single track without anyone noticing. Since they aren’t, it’s best to let the entire thing fill your room like the live recording that led to its creation. (Most of the record was captured in one day at an Icelandic church with Hecker’s close friend, fellow sound sculptor Ben Frost.) To listen is to let the light creep in through the bandages, and feel cleansed as the very last note flickers and dies like a rain-doused bonfire. Heavy stuff indeed.

While they’re clearly inspired by classic late ‘80s and early ‘90s shoegaze and indie rock—Ride, Dinosaur Jr., Pavement—this young London quintet proved on their self-titled debut that they could spin their influences into a memorable, blissful, fuzzed-out sound all their own. Whether heavy in the red on the ebullient “Holing Out” or swooning on the sweet, reverb-laden ballad “Stutter,” Yuck’s sunny songwriting has that sense of infinite possibility that, at its best, underground rock music is all about.

The title track twists Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” into a manic juke-joint knife-fight as it slips into the mind of a young soldier working his way through the difficulties of Afghanistan (the acronym stands for “Kiss My Ass Guys, You’re On Your Own”). Elsewhere, this thirty-something Texan sounds wiser and more experienced than his years. “The Letter” is spare, a country-blues sent from jail. “Bottle In My Hand” throws Todd Snider and Corb Lund into the deep country terrain where banjos, mandolins and guitars do the dirty work. “Grateful For Christmas” makes a strong argument for Carll as a stand-up comedian. “Another Like You,” a duet with Cary Ann Hearst, is a humorous take on a mismatched one-night stand. The country slide of “Grand Parade” bolsters Carll’s honky-tonk delivery. Carll has a voice so perfect for country music that he sounds like he grew up in the mid-20th Century and was now unearthed. The sweet gospel finality of “Hide Me” elegantly caps this exquisite album.

Helplessness Blues is the new full-length from Fleet Foxes. Helplessness Blues was recorded over the course of a year at Avast Recording, Bear Creek Studios, Dreamland Studios, and Reciprocal Recording. The album was recorded and mixed by Phil Ek and co-produced by Fleet Foxes and Ek. The piece that appears on the album cover was illustrated by Seattle artist Toby Liebowitz and painted by Chris Alderson. Fleet Foxes is Robin Pecknold, Skyler Skjelset, Christian Wargo, Casey Wescott, Josh Tillman and Morgan Henderson.

After two previous releases, St. Vincent (a.k.a. Annie Clark) finds a way to channel her avant-garde instincts in more accessible directions, displaying a firm grasp on pop songwriting forms even as she subverts them. In tandem with producer John Congleton, she plays nervous industrial beats and quivering keyboards against billowing ‘60s-ish melodies. Her cooing vocals on “Cruel” and “Surgeon” insinuate dark scenarios of betrayal and abandonment, transcending mere irony into something palpably sinister. More direct in their intentions are “Cheerleader” (an anthem of personal liberation) and “Champagne Year” (a jaundiced look at success). If Clark’s lyrics tease and dazzle, her music hits hard sonically, clattering to a galloping groove on “Hysterical Strength” and erupting into guitar-fueled cacophony on “Northern Lights.” The otherworldly grandeur of Kate Bush or Björk is recalled on tracks like “Chloe In the Afternoon.” But St. Vincent is in a class all her own as she exorcises sexual demons, grapples with psychic breakdown, and achieves an uncanny catharsis.

The first full-length release by producer and multi-instrumentalist Ernest Greene helped define the sound of the chillwave movement. *Within and Without* is a heady mix of throbbing bass and cleverly layered synth sounds underpinning Greene\'s tender, faded vocals. The single \"You and I,\" featuring Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek, is a particular high point. But from the sumptuous melodies of \"Eyes Be Closed\" and the uplifting \"Amor Fati\" to the blissed-out haze of \"Soft\" and the title track, Greene\'s relaxed, sensual vibe creates a sustained mood of pleasurable nostalgia.

Washed Out is the operational alias for Atlanta, GA’s Ernest Greene, and on July 12th, we at Sub Pop Records will be releasing the first Washed Out full-length, Within and Without. We are excited about this, to an almost unseemly degree. Greene recorded Within and Without with Ben Allen, who, among a great many other things, co-produced Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavillion, Gnarls Barkley’s St. Elsewhere and Deerhunter’s Halcyon Digest. In 2009 Washed Out released two critically-acclaimed EPs; Life of Leisure (Mexican Summer) and High Times (Mirror Universe Tapes). Most recently, the Washed Out song “Feel It All Around,” from Life of Leisure, was chosen as the theme song for the new and very funny IFC series Portlandia, which features Saturday Night Live cast member Fred Armisen and Sleater-Kinney/Sub Pop alum and current Wild Flag member Carrie Brownstein. Early confirmed press for Within and Without includes a “Breaking Out” feature in the June issue of SPIN, as well as NPR “Song of the Day” coverage for the album’s lead track “Eyes Be Closed.”

Keeping the momentum going after their breakthrough *Brothers*, The Black Keys reunite with Danger Mouse, who produced 2008\'s *Attack and Release*. Taking on a co-writing role as well this time, the producer helps Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney stray from their Southern-rock comfort zone. Increasing both the tempos and the hooks, *El Camino* is a joyous, danceable rock album. Standouts like the infectious, fuzztoned single \"Lonely Boy\" and the acoustic-into-electric epic \"Little Black Submarines\" are among the duo\'s most exciting songs.

It’s with the arrival of Looping State Of Mind that you finally realise that, for The Field’s ambient techno explorer Axel Willner, the loop never stops. While fans and critics alike point to 2007’s phenomenal debut From Here We Go Sublime – included in Pitchfork’s Top 100 albums of the 2000s – and 2009’s equally stirring follow up Yesterday & Today as standalone points of the Swede’s music; it becomes clear that they appear as mere snapshots of what, for the producer, is a continual cycle of revolutions. Revelling in the warm recognition of their recurring patterns, imbuing conflicting twin senses of present and nostalgia, familiarity doesn’t breed contempt; for Willner sees each loop as another chance to adjust, to build upon and multiply so that several of even the slightest nuances can combine to form a true aural evolution. So it is on this, The Field’s third album, and yet so it has been too for the artist. Rewind three years and, plaudits from his debut LP still ringing in his ears and amongst resultant tours with LCD Soundsystem and !!!, he’d swapped his native Stockholm for the nocturnal utopia of Berlin’s heady streets and clubbing scene. A major internal shift occurred meanwhile when he invited Dan Enqvist and multi- instrumentalist Andreas Söderstrom – since replaced with drummer Jesper Skarin - to turn his hitherto singular vision into a three-piece group. Yesterday & Today was the immediate reaction concocted by the alchemy of those events, gaining more plaudits and leading to headlining tours of Europe. Looping State Of Mind though is the strengthening of those bonds and ideas, the addition of Skarin in particular – Axel comments – “taking The Field to another level.” “It’s been evolving and it will keep on doing so,” he says, in a statement that could be equally true of the group’s music, “people come and go, adding their things to it, you change as well and so will the sound.” It’s this evolution that’s notable in this new record, a move away from the more unblended techno foundations that encapsulated From Here We Go Sublime in particular. “Many of my old influences are still there,” he admits, “German electronics, modern classical, shoegaze and so on ... but to be perfectly honest I now rarely put on a techno record at home or check out techno acts at clubs.” Instead, previous ideas have been expanded upon and, more importantly, new ones added; vocal samples now creep around signature sound washes, whispering on the periphery; greater contrast has been added with acoustic instruments such as double bass and piano recorded amongst the samples – the result of recording of in the fully-equipped Dumbo Studios in Kompakt’s home town of Cologne. Many of the initial sketches, however, still came from Willner himself at his home studio in Berlin, suggesting an embryonic growth to the creation process; “some of the ideas stretching back to the debut are still there,” he says, cementing this idea of furthering the re-visited, “but we’ve just made a real attempt to grow the sound.” The album was mixed by Jörg Burger aka The Modernist. What’s truly evident – as has always done with The Field’s music - is its evocative quality, how it can stir a half-image or memory of a certain time or event in its listener’s past. To that end it makes the trio’s output an open-ended interpretation; moods and feelings are provided, allowing the listener to then follow them towards requisite personal checkpoints – something made succinct in the album’s title. “It comes from the feeling of having looping thoughts – both good and bad – in your head, and being unable to get them out,” explains Willner, “but then, of course, my music is based around loops and repetition too.” And so for The Field the loop keeps on spinning, a journey that may find no location yet is content to know that it’s moving firmly forwards. This most recent snapshot that they’ve decided to take, however, is their most captivating yet.

In the three years leading to 'Conatus,' Nika Roza Danilova went from being an outsider, experimental, teenage noise-maker to a fully-fledged, internationally-celebrated, electronic-pop musician. It was a huge accomplishment, and, despite her age (young), her origins (mid-western, desolate), her accelerated scholastic achievements (high school and college were each completed in three years) and her diminutive physical size (4'11", 90 lbs), she has triumphed. She has emerged as a figurehead — a self-produced, self-designed, self-taught independent woman. Conatus is a huge leap forward in production, instrumentation and song structure. The definition of the title says it all: the will to keep on, to move forward. From thumping ballads to electronic glitch, no sound goes unexplored on her new record. It is an icy exploration in refined chaos and controlled madness, an effort to break through capability and access a sonic world that crumbles as it shines.

Cass McCombs, singer-songwriter born in Northern California in 1977 and currently residing somewhere in that State, is set to release WIT’S END, his fifth-and-a-half album and third on Domino, on April 26th. The result of two years recording in various homes and studios in California, New York, New Jersey and Chicago, Wit’s End was produced by Cass with Ariel Rechtshaid, with whom he also created CATACOMBS. Sounds that conjure the colors purple and black, this is his darkest record to date. It seems he is going deeper into the mania of a man buried alive inside his self-made Catacombs, banging the stone walls, crying to be let out, and enjoying the quiet away from the outside world. However, he is not a man afraid of his own shadow, for in this environment of complete darkness, no shadows can be cast. This is a world of total Feeling. Here, words become a catalyst away from the slavery of arbitrary Thought and toward Feeling. “With each release, Cass McCombs has proven himself a wordsmith of great economy and precision. His compositions, often sparse and non-traditional, paired with his melodies and arrangements, transform into subtly revealing songs, filled with depth of emotion and meaning. It is that precision that would lead one to believe that all the autobiographical material a person would seek about McCombs is embedded in the songs (and you'd be right) but then he would insist after the fact that your deductions couldn't be more off the mark about what is truth and what is simply artistic expression. Light in its darkness, claustrophobic in its panorama, distant in its intimacy, present in its timelessness; WIT’S END should be given one’s full and undivided attention” -Kris Gillespie, Domino Records

Eric Church may not have been the first to blend modern country with bluesy Southern rock and outlaw honky-tonk, but his breakout album, *Chief*, made him a superstar. “Drink in My Hand” is a “Take This Job and Shove It” for a new generation of blue-collar good ol’ boys, while “Homeboy” is a heartfelt ballad lovingly addressing a younger brother headed down a dangerous path. And in blockbuster hit “Springsteen,” Church gives a nostalgia look back at the music from his formative years.

The rapper formerly known as K-Dot had built a buzz prior to his 2011 breakthrough album, but the Compton native still had everything to prove: In spite of a coveted co-sign from Dr. Dre, he was barely out of the shadow of his Top Dawg Entertainment labelmate Jay Rock, on whose tour Lamar still regularly served as hype-man. Los Angeles’ old guard of gangsta rap greats was waning; the hottest trend in L.A. rap around the time Lamar was forming his Black Hippy super-group (alongside Jay Rock, Ab-Soul, and ScHoolboy Q) was the jerkin’ movement, a fun but frivolous dance craze. Los Angeles hip-hop needed a new hero, and Lamar stepped up to the plate. But *Section.80* was far from a bid for mainstream attention. Over jazzy beats suited for contemplative spells, Lamar raps like he’s searching, bar by bar, for answers to America’s biggest questions, turning a critical eye on his own reality and the systems that reinforce it. The title itself combines Section 8 housing, the low-income developments in which Lamar was raised, with the decade of Lamar’s birth; he thus fashioned himself an ambassador for a generation raised under Ronald Reagan and the crack epidemic. “You know why we crack babies? Because we born in the ’80s,” Lamar spits on lead single “A.D.H.D.,” a generational study as sharp as it is catchy. Ultimately, though, *Section.80* channels that unrest into a quest for enlightenment; on the knocking “HiiiPower,” Lamar conjures visions of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. and urges listeners to “build your own pyramids, write your own hieroglyphs.” Upon the album\'s release, some listeners thought this stuff was too radical for Lamar to ever fully break into the mainstream; but the maverick was on the threshold of something even bigger.

Beginning with a beeping flatline and ending with a four-part instrumental suite, *Undun* tells the tragedy of Redford Stevens—according to ?uestlove, a character who’s “young, gifted, black, and unraveling”—in reverse. Juxtaposing Black Thought’s bittersweet bars with indie folk, the group’s tenth album encompasses wordless, heart-wrenching Sufjan Stevens samples (“Redford \[For Yia-Yia & Pappou\]”) as well as the poignant boom bap of “Make My,” where, alongside Big K.R.I.T. and Dice Raw, Black Thought raps, “If there’s a heaven, I can’t find a stairway.”

Produced after an eight-year break from recording new songs, this weighty album finds Gillian Welch making up for lost time and then some. Her throaty contralto leaves us breathless on one inspired track after another. Gritty tunes like the down-and-dirty bluegrass number \"Scarlet Town\" feel like portals into another time and place, while sultry ballads like \"Dark Turn of Mind\" combine traditional blues structures with delicate, country-style harmonies, reminding us that Ms. Welch can\'t be categorized—she\'s simply one of a kind.