Stepping away from both the pop songwriting machine and his former crew Odd Future’s stoned anarchy, Frank Ocean guides us on a meandering but purposeful journey through his own vast mythological universe on his major-label debut. *Channel ORANGE* breezes from sepia-toned Stevie Wonder homage (“Sweet Life”) to the corrosive cosmic funk of “Pyramids,” which stretches from ancient pharaoh queens to 21st-century pimps. Rendered in pristine detail with calm, dazzled awe, even his most fantastical narratives feel somehow familiar—at once unprecedented and timeless.
© 2012 The Island Def Jam Music Group ℗ 2012 The Island Def Jam Music Group
Although Chromatics have substantially changed their lineup since 2002, their 2012 configuration shows a huge development in both musicianship and songwriting. Now with deadpan chanteuse Ruth Radelet on the mic, *Kill for Love* opens with her demure vocals giving “Into the Black” even more tension than on Neil Young’s 1979 recording. The title track blends Italio Disco flourishes with \'90s-inspired indie rock, as Radelet contrasts a catchy vocal melody with a coolly aloof performance. She looks toward Velvet Underground–era Nico for inspiration in “The Page,” most noticeably when singing “I could be your mirror” over cold, gothic guitars that sound imported from The Cure’s *Disintegration*. “These Streets Will Never Look the Same” taps into every young woman’s desire to be Stevie Nicks, with a muted “Edge of Seventeen” guitar stutter that sounds identical to the original.
Australian musician Kevin Parker is a bit of a musical savant. Although Tame Impala tours as a band, the group\'s psychedelic trip-pop is pretty much due to Parker\'s writing, playing, and even producing. Parker sidekick and collaborator Jay Watson shares songwriting credit this time around, notably on two standout tracks: \"Elephant\" (an impossibly delectable blend of Sabbath stomp and Syd Barrett trippy-ness) and \"Apocalypse Dreams\" (a gorgeous, chameleonic tune that reflects Parker\'s noted influence, Todd Rundgren). And though it\'s hard to hear the opening \"Be Above It\" or \"Mind Mischief\" without detecting some *Revolver*- and *Sgt. Pepper\'s*–era Beatles in the songs\' DNA, *Lonerism* is loaded with more synthesizers and ambient sounds than guitars. It\'s definitely a more pop-oriented album than the crunchy *Innerspeaker*, and it reveals another compelling side to Tame Impala. (Check out Watson\'s other band POND, and its LP *Beard, Wives, Denim*, for another dose of satisfying psych-rock.)
After two albums of harmony-heavy dream pop, Beach House continued its dazzling evolution with 2010‘s *Teen Dream*, which we named Best Alternative Album in iTunes Rewind. The ethereal, hypnotizing melodies are as gorgeous as ever on the duo’s forthcoming *Bloom*. From the jump, a sinewy guitar melody gets blanketed by blissful atmospheric mist on “Myth.” While *Teen Dream* introduced more complexity (which is echoed on the weightless, organic melodies floating from composition like “Troublemaker”), *Bloom*’s “On the Sea” proves that Beach House can also drop our jaws (and give us chills) with stripped-down, piano-driven journeys.
Bloom is the fourth full-length album by Baltimore-based Beach House. Like their previous releases (Beach House in 2006, Devotion in 2008, Teen Dream in 2010), it further develops their distinctive sound yet stands apart as a new piece of work. Bloom is meant to be experienced as an ALBUM, a singular, unified vision of the world. Though not stripped down, the many layers of Bloom are uncomplicated and meticulously constructed to ensure there is no waste. Bloom was recorded in 2011 at Sonic Ranch Studios in Tornillo, TX and mixed at Electric Lady in NYC. The band co-produced the record with Chris Coady.
Having formed during the winter of 1990, Boston quartet Converge is considered pioneers of metalcore. Their eighth studio album finds them reclaiming their sound — the preceding *Axe to Fall* was riddled with more guest musicians than a hip-hop album. Opening cut “Aimless Arrow” makes good on its name by throwing fans a curveball with Jacob Bannon trying his hand (or larynx, rather) at melody. But the following “Trespasses” returns the mentally disturbed frontman to his throat-ripping howls and growls with a feral abandon. But things get really interesting with “Sadness Comes Home,” a shape-shifting sock in the clock that opens with a Sabbathesque sludge before erupting like a sonic volcano of hyper-fast fretboard shredding and propulsive, explosive drumming that feel like a thousand fists punching one face. Over this Bannon channels all his inner demons into one ferocious beast doing battle with his own soundtrack. At under two minutes, “Vicious Muse” plays like a stormy tantrum tailor-made for the mosh pit. Conversely, “Coral Blue” stretches out almost five minutes of sludge-infused aural brutality.
With disparate contributions from its four members, Grizzly Bear’s sound has long been multifaceted and thoughtfully layered. Repeated listening is frequently rewarded with newly discovered textures and details. “Sleeping Ute” opens *Shields*, the group’s fourth studio album, and is almost like a three-movement piece; alt-country–tinged guitar and bass introduce the song before a swirl of keyboards, buzzy guitars, and thunderous drumming transpires. A vocal and Spanish-style acoustic guitar outro make for an unresolved conclusion. *Shields*\' most straight-ahead modern rock number, “Yet Again,” is in the melodically accessible vein of “Two Weeks” from Grizzly Bear’s previous release, *Veckatimest*. A showcase for multi-instrumentalist Christopher Bear’s tuned percussion and lyrical drumming, “A Simple Answer” is bathed in emotive longing. There’s an addictive new wave pop sound to the nuanced “gun-shy,” while “Sun in Your Eyes” starts and ends as a piano ballad, transforming into a chamber rock *pièce de résistance* in between.
Recorded over three weeks in a darkened room, the third album from Canadian singer/producer Grimes, a.k.a. Claire Boucher, packs an idiosyncratic punch. At once grating and soothing, melodic and dissonant, *Visions* manages to sound like a pop record above all else, with contorted melodies that seep into your brain. Boucher tangles up her eerie falsetto with crackling beats and pinging synths, resulting in a gnarled amalgam of textures—electro-pop rendered as splatter art. It\'s fascinating and wholly original all the way through.
West Coast hip-hop elders like Snoop and Dre have virtually anointed Kendrick Lamar to carry on the legacy of gangsta rap. His second studio album *good kid, M.A.A.d city*, conceptual enough to be a rock opera, certainly uplifts the genre with its near-biblical themes: religion vs. violence and monogamy vs. lust. Verbally nimble, Lamar experiments with a variety of different lyrical styles, from the Bone Thugz-type of delivery on “Swimming Pools (Drank)” to the more straightforward orthodox G-funk flow on “m.A.A.d. City feat. MC Eiht.” Like prog rock, Lamar’s tracks have songs within songs—sudden tempo changes with alter egos and embedded interludes, such as unscripted recordings of his parents asking for their car back and neighborhood homies planning their latest conquest. These snippets pepper the album providing an anthropological glimpse into his life in Compton.
Electronic pop auteur Flying Lotus (a.k.a. Steven Ellison) displays a new clarity of vision on Until the Quiet Comes as he reins in the scattershot tendencies of 2010’s Cosmogramma in favor of a more unified approach. The composer/producer still offers inspired pastiches of jazz, hip-hop and ambient sounds. But where his earlier work could be intentionally jarring, this album takes the listener on a smoothly-sequenced journey through inner landscapes. Ellison is aided by such notables as Erykah Badu (floating diva-like above the tribal groove of “See Thru to U”), Radiohead’s Thom Yorke (making his dark presence felt in “Electric Candyman”) and the Long Lost’s Laura Darlington (cooing her way through the eerie expanses of “Phantasm”). There’s plenty of sinewy pulsation amidst the billowing electronica, supplied by Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner’s insistent bass lines and Ellison’s jittery programmed beats. From the funkified growl of “The Nightcaller” to the robotic munchkin twitch of “Putty Boy Strut” and the sweet psyche-soul of “DMT Song,” Flying Lotus infuses the album with mystical vibes laced with subversive humor. Unearthly yet inviting, Until the Quiet Comes’ sonic spell is hard to resist.
A NOTE FROM MICHAEL GIRA “The Seer took 30 years to make. It’s the culmination of every previous Swans album as well as any other music I’ve ever made, been involved in or imagined. But it’s unfinished, like the songs themselves. It’s one frame in a reel. The frames blur, blend and will eventually fade. The songs began on an acoustic guitar, then were fleshed out with (invaluable) help from my friends, then were further tortured and seduced in rehearsals, live and in the studio, and now they await further cannibalism and force-feeding as we prepare to perform some of them live, at which point they’ll mutate further, endlessly, or perhaps be discarded for a while. Despite what you might have heard or presumed, my quest is to spread light and joy through the world. My friends in Swans are all stellar men. Without them I’m a kitten, an infant. Our goal is the same: ecstasy!" HOW THE SONGS CAME TO BE The songs The Seer, Ave. B Blues, Avatar, and The Apostate were developed organically as a group in rehearsals and on tour. They morphed constantly throughout the last series of Swans tours, and were captured and lovingly adorned in the studio. The remaining songs on the album were developed from the ground up in the studio with the participation and input of all the contributing musicians, guided by an invisible hand... Recorded at Studio P4 and Andere Baustelle in Berlin, by Kevin McMahon and at Marcata Studio, Gardiner, NY, by Kevin McMahon. Additional recording at Trout Recording, Brooklyn, NY, engineer: Bryce Goggin. Mixed by Kevin McMahon at Marcata. Produced by Michael Gira. FULL CREDITS SWANS Michael Gira voice, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, harmonica, casio, sounds Norman Westberg electric guitar, voice Christoph Hahn lap steel guitars; electric guitar, voice Phil Puleo drums, percussion, hammer dulcimer, voice Thor Harris drums, percussion, orchestral bells, hammer dulcimer, handmade violin thing, vibraphone, piano, clarinet, voice Christopher Pravdica bass guitar, voice, incredible handshake Honorary Swan: Bill Rieflin piano, organ, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, drums, percussion, casio, synthesizer, bass guitar, voice, bird idea SPECIAL GUESTS Karen O lead vocal on Song for a Warrior (Karen appears courtesy Interscope Records) Al and Mimi of Low co-vocals on Lunacy Jarboe backing vocals and voice collage on Piece of the Sky and backing vocals on The Seer Returns Seth Olinsky, Miles Seaton, Dana Janssen (Akron/Family) backing vocals on Piece of the Sky Caleb Mulkerin and Colleen Kinsella of Big Blood accordion, vocals, dulcimer, guitar, piano and assorted other instruments on the Seer Returns Sean Mackowiak (the grasshopper) acoustic and electric mandolins, clarinet, various songs Ben Frost fire sounds (acoustic and synthetic) on Piece of the Sky Iain Graham bagpipes on The Seer Bruce Lamont horns on The Seer Bob Rutman steel cello on The Seer Cassis Staudt accordion various songs Eszter Balint violin, various songs Jane Scarpatoni cello various songs Kevin McMahon additional drums on the Seer Returns, electric guitar, sounds on various songs Bryce Goggin piano on Song for a Warrior Stefan Rocke contra bassoon on the Seer Produced by Michael Gira. Recorded at Studio P4 and Andere Baustelle in Berlin, by Kevin McMahon, assistants Marco and Boris, and at Marcata Studio, Gardiner, NY, by Kevin McMahon. Additional recording at Trout Recording, Brooklyn, NY, engineer: Bryce Goggin, assistant: Adam Sachs. Mixed by Kevin McMahon at Marcata. Mastered by Doug Henderson at Micro-Moose Berlin. Pre-mastering by Jamal Ruhe at West Westside Music. Artwork: Paintings and Swans photo portraits by Simon Henwood.
In 2009, Cleveland’s Dylan Baldi began writing and recording lo-fi power-pop songs in his parents’ basement, dubbing the project Cloud Nothings. His music quickly started making the Internet rounds, and fans and critics alike took note of his pithy songcraft, infectiously catchy melodies, and youthful enthusiasm. Baldi soon released a string of 7”s, a split cassette, and an EP before putting out "Turning On"—a compilation spanning about a year’s worth of work—on Carpark in 2010. January 2011 saw the release Cloud Nothings’ self-titled debut LP, which, put next to Turning On, found Baldi cleaning up his lo-fi aesthetic, pairing his tales of affinitive confusion with a more pristine aural clarity. In the interval since the release of Cloud Nothings, Baldi has toured widely and put a great deal of focus on his live show, a detail that heavily shapes the music of his follow-up album, "Attack on Memory." After playing the same sets nightly for months on end, Baldi saw the rigidity of his early work, and he wanted to create arrangements that would allow for more improvisation and variability when played on the road. To accomplish this desired malleability, the entire band decamped to Chicago—where the album was recorded with Steve Albini—and all lent a hand in the songwriting process. The product of these sessions is a record boasting features that, even at a glance, mark a sea change in the band’s sound: higher fidelity, a track clocking in at almost nine minutes, an instrumental, and an overall more plaintive air. The songs move along fluidly, and Baldi sounds assured as he brings his vocals up in the mix, allowing himself to hold out long notes and put some grain into his voice. Minor key melodies abound, drums emphatically contribute much more than mere timekeeping, and the guitar work is much more adventurous than that of previous releases. For all of early Cloud Nothings’ fun and fervor, Baldi admits that it never sounded like most of the music he listens to. With "Attack on Memory," he wanted to remedy this anomaly, and in setting out to do so, Baldi and co. have created an album that shows vast growth in a still very young band.
The title *Interstellar* accurately reflects the atmosphere here—and considering Frankie Rose\'s previous work, it’s a surprising direction. She\'s a former drummer for Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts, and Dum Dum Girls, and her earlier solo release (backed by her band The Outs) was noisy, reverb-rich, and influenced by \'60s girl bands. On *Interstellar*, she works with producer Le Chev to create a glossy and spacious synth-pop album that echoes \'80s new wave. The first crystalline notes of the opening title track signal the reinvention of her sound, which is anchored by sparkling, highly polished production. Her vocals are dreamy and clear, light enough to float pleasantly into layers of keyboards and synths. The songs are minimalist, precise, and ringing with clarity. “Know Me,” “Daylight Sky,” and “Night Swim” are bouncy and mesmerizing, with shimmering guitar figures and crisp drumming. The gorgeous ballad “Pair of Wings” has a similarly spare structure but unfolds with a slow, subdued power. It repeats the same sweet melody for three verses, adding texture until the song dissolves into space, creating one of the more memorable passages on an album full of meditative and ethereal moments.
We were all knocked out by the Frankie Rose and the Outs album from 2010, the effortlessness of its gorgeous girl-pop mantras, the intimate immensity of its Spector-esque walls of reverb, the beauty of a song sung sweetly over the most graceful two-chord vamps. But are you ready for the new Frankie Rose? – her transformation into a wholly other kind of pop, the reverie and revelation of "Interstellar," an album that floats free of its maker’s history – time spent with Vivian Girls, Dum Dum Girls, Crystal Stilts, and creator of one of the most breathlessly compelling girl-pop albums of the past few years – and offers the listener something strangely other, as alien as it is familiar, as compelling as it is enchanting. Talking with Frankie about the record, it’s clear she was itching for a new start. The first big indication – production by Le Chev, remixer supreme (for Lemonade, Narcisse, Passion Pit, and Frankie’s own “Candy”), an ensemble member of Fischerspooner, etc. “We recorded the record in a private studio dubbed The Thermometer Factory in Park Slope. I wanted this record to be totally different and in so doing I knew I had to work with someone who would lend fresh ideas and know how to make sounds that I wouldn't know how to make. I wanted to make a particular record and I knew Le Chev would be the one who could help me do it.” So, out with the reverb of the Frankie Rose and the Outs, and in with something altogether more glam, glittering, shivering. On "Interstellar" Frankie takes the lessons learned with her debut album – like reverb as the holy route to pop-grandeur, scaling a wall of teenage tears – fully digests, and transfers those skills into the brave new world mapped out by ten new songs. In its place is the confident swagger of a singer and auteur fully aware of how to build the simplest of pop moves into aching, full-blown melodramas, how to grab hold of an emotion and ride its darker waves. “I always have a big picture in mind,” Frankie reflects. “I knew I wanted a HUGE sounding record. Big highs, big lows, and clean. There is no fuzz on this record. I knew I wanted to make a streamlined, spacious record with big choruses that sometimes referenced 80s pop.” But that referencing never swamps the melodies: this record isn’t a retro trip. If anything, it liberates sounds familiar from that decade and gives them new context, breathes life into clay golems of sound that too often become basic, pre-set triggers. On "Interstellar," Frankie Rose goes epic, goes widescreen. “Had We Had It” spins the sweetest sugar from chords that ascend into the firmament, a heavenly, palatial blur. “Gospel / Grace” rumbles with passion, a New Order-esque one-finger guitar figure leading the listener into the choral depths mapped by the chorus. “Apples For The Sun” is breathtaking, with Frankie singing out across a lone piano, before a glorious web of voice and organ pirouettes into the air, an arbor of pleasure connecting the verse with its instrumental shadow, a coda that slowly slips from your view, before making the briefest, most tantalizing of returns. A lot of "Interstellar" seems to be about disappearing into, or finding and reveling in, this kind of imaginary zone, something Rose confirms: “The whole record is about dreaming of some ‘other’ place.” And as you drift into the heartbreaking “The Fall,” which floats out to sea on a lunar-aquatic cello riff that’s pure Arthur Russell, you’re ready to conquer those other places, too, to let Frankie Rose guide you out of the album’s spell and land you back in the sensual world, slightly altered, adrift and in awe. How does it feel to feel? With Interstellar, your emotions come out so alive, your only escape is to dive right back in.
Baroness audaciously moves far beyond the conventional confines of metal on its third album, *Yellow & Green*. This two-disc set (the latest in a series of color-themed releases from the Georgia quartet) incorporates an amazing array of hard and soft sonic textures as it freely shifts between delicate interludes and harrowingly heavy passages. “Twinkler” and “Cocainium” shimmer with Fleet Foxes–like vocal harmonies, while “Take My Bones Away” and “Board Up the House” flex the group\'s rock biceps with brutal riffage and slamming drumwork. Baroness knows how to delve into prog-rock complexity (“Psalms Alive”), ride currents of overdrive guitar (“Sea Lungs”), and settle into the misty shoals of melancholy folk (“If I Forget Thee, Lowcountry”). What binds these sprawling tracks together is the lyrics\' pervasively ominous mood, hinting at psychic crises and societal chaos with imagery recalling Pink Floyd at its most alienated. Songs like “Eula,” “Collapse,\" and “The Line Between” lace their darkly surreal visions with undercurrents of irony and spiritual longing.
Baroness' Yellow & Green finds a band that has developed into more than just giants of the metal underground, they are now fully formed hard rock titans. Fans of the band have come to expect nothing less than constant evolution from Baroness and that is precisely what the band has delivered, but in ways noone could have anticipated: the hooks are immediately seared into your brain, riffs that take just one listen to fully lodge themselves in your consciousness and vocals that are sung both heavily and beautifully. Some songs are more delicate than Baroness ever hinted to before while others are straight up arena rockers—yet all along Yellow & Green is unmistakably the Baroness that the world has come to love and look to for Record Of The Year quality rock and roll. It’s not hard to imagine any one of the 18 songs that fill out the Yellow & Green 2CD/2LP being rock radio anthems, and deservedly so. At no risk of hyperbole Baroness’ ‘Yellow & Green’ is on a very short list as one of the new millennium’s best rock records.
There\'s not a whisper of second album jitters on this follow-up from fearsomely singular childhood friends Jamie Smith, Oliver Sim and Romy Madley Croft. But—while opener “Angel” plays like an even leaner take on their signature witching hour sound—there’s discernible evolution in all those sonic spaces. “Reunion” boasts the unexpected calypso of synthesized steelpan, and “Our Song” is a warped, strangely intimate duet that lets Madley Croft and Sim’s vocals intertwine like tangled limbs.
Now here is some amusing, candy-coated anarchy. For the blown-out punk-rap act’s second record and (somehow!) their major-label debut, Death Grips fuse abrasive techno with shouted and amped-up hip-hop and crazed distorted backing loops. The Sacramento, Calif.–based group brings together producer Zach Hill of the avant-metal act Hella with vocalist Stefan Burnett and coproducer Andy Morin. Lyrically, there’s a bit of the Rage Against the Machine problem at work here. Songs like “I’ve Seen Footage” and “Get Got” icily remark on the proliferation of violence and the way it desensitizes youth. It’s also easy to see how desensitized youth would just think it’s cool. Two of the least venerated forms of the \'90s—electroclash and digital hardcore—are resuscitated in a way that will cause parents the world over to politely ask that that music be turned down. Yet it\'s undeniably good—always layered and frequently strange.
While many electronic music listeners in the U.K. were enthralled by dubstep and grime in the late ‘00s, that era also saw the rise of darker, less accessible sounds from a group of defiantly hermetic producers on small labels like Modern Love and Blackest Ever Black. These producers took the metronomic throb and dark minimalism of deep house pioneers like Frankie Knuckles and Virgo 4 as creative touchstones, deliberately eschewing dubstep\'s then-fashionable jungle-derived break beats. Manchester-based producer Andy Stott is among the most formidable and creative practitioners of this deeply introverted brand of U.K. techno. His 2011 release *Passed Me By* set the basic template: trudging tempos, cavernous dub-like ambiance, and house-derived beats, all enlisted in the service of creating an atmosphere of unremitting dread. On 2012’s *Luxury Problems*, Stott put another layer atop this already-compelling sound, inviting Alison Skidmore to add her spectral, unearthly vocals to his sparse, unnerving instrumentals. The result is positively mesmerizing, a haunting late-night listen that stands as one of Stott’s strongest albums.
On Dirty Projectors sixth album, Swing Lo Magellan, songwriter and leader David Longstreth shows he really doesn't know how to do the same thing twice. Where prior Dirty Projectors albums investigated 20th-century orchestration, west African guitar music and complex contrapuntal techniques in human voices, Swing Lo Magellan is a leap forward again. It's an album of songs, an album of songwriting. Swing Lo Magellan has both the handmade intimacy of a love letter and the widescreen grandeur of a blockbuster, and if that sounds like a paradox -- it's because it was until now.
With fizzled record deals and forced image makeovers in his past, a frustrated Miguel Jontel Pimentel took control of his career and creativity on *Kaleidoscope Dream*. As a result, his second album not only sounded utterly singular—a swirling, moody mix of hip-hop, rock, and psychedelic soul—but it also placed the Southern Californian singer in a vanguard of new artists redefining the idea of the male R&B star (see also Frank Ocean, the Weeknd). Though just as sex-obsessed as the smooth lovermen who came before him, Miguel here projects a far more fractured and colorful view of romance tinted by deep self-reflection, hallucinogenic augmentation, and spiritual yearning. All of which tracks for a guy who grew up idolizing artsy types like Prince, Bowie, and Hendrix, but whose voice happens to sound like crushed velvet. To that last point, there’s “Adorn,” a tribute to wholehearted love that evokes Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” and shows just how sweet a Miguel album of simple, throwback R&B would be. But *Kaleidoscope Dream* is not that album—and it’s better for it. The next song, “Don’t Look Back,” lays shuffling ’60s pop over throbbing electro-house as Miguel warns a partner to run before the moon turns him into a womanizing beast. And then comes “Use Me,” where, over a plush blanket of grinding guitar, he cops to being nervous in bed. Whether he’s likening coitus to ballet (“Arch & Point”) or vamping with Alicia Keys over a tumbling drum loop (“Where’s the Fun in Forever”), Miguel proves himself a thrillingly unpredictable host. It’s no wonder this breakthrough LP led to sonic trysts with artists as wide-ranging as Kendrick Lamar, the Chemical Brothers, and Beyoncé.
Harmonicraft is Torche in their most unfiltered form and the result is a collection of songs that prove that heavy music can be progressive without being predictable. From the relentless groove of "Roaming" to the melodic grandeur of "Kicking" and sinister syncopation of "In Pieces," Harmonicraft stretches toward the sonic stratosphere and illustrates that the band are growing tighter and more powerful with each passing release.
It doesn\'t take long for Actress\' third album to start toying with your head: only a few seconds, really, as the title track massages your brain stem and sidewinds across your speakers. And with that, we\'re in uncharted territory, caught in a vapor-trailed void between the outermost realms of electronic and experimental music. Darren Cunningham wouldn’t have it any other way. The song titles and press release for *R.I.P.* present it as a heady meditation on mortality, the Book of Genesis, and the producer’s twisted version of Plato’s cave. At least that’s what we *think* it’s about. Yet even if you don’t look at the record’s 15 very different chapters as a sample/synth-driven dissertation, it holds together as a fascinating blend of gauzy house grooves, stark minimalism, static-dredged IDM, extraterrestrial techno, and all-too-brief interludes. Get lost; you’ll enjoy every minute of it.
In the \'00s, Ariel Pink home-recorded a number of murky and intriguing cassettes. Cobbling together several influences but transcending the hollowness of pure retro imitation, Pink created wonderfully eccentric pop. With the 2010 release of his 4AD debut, *Before Today*, his distinct songwriting and arranging skills were professionally produced for the first time, and the results were impressive. (His band, Haunted Graffiti, is perfectly tuned into Pink’s aesthetic.) 2012’s *Mature Themes* is a fine follow-up. The Beverly Hills native has always had a zany side, and it\'s in evidence here. (Some passages evoke Frank Zappa, another musician with a wiseass sense of humor and a taste for pastiche.) The album opens strongly with “Kinski Assassin,” which features a delightful sense of wordplay and a hook that stays with you. A number of other songs are good, and *Mature Themes* closes strongly with a cover of Donnie & Joe Emerson’s “Baby.” The original could almost be a \'60s low-rider ballad, but it actually was recorded in the late \'70s in the Pacific Northwest. Pink’s version nicely echoes the dreaminess of the Emersons’ smooth jam.
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Perfume Genius is Mike Hadreas, a Seattle songwriter whose jarring 2010 debut album, Learning, was called “an album of rare, redemptive beauty…one of the most uniquely endearing and quietly forceful debut albums of recent years” by Drowned In Sound, and established him as one of the most singular songwriters today. The bulk of Learning sprung from a time of self-imposed isolation in his mother’s suburban home following a period of trauma and self-destruction. The album was actually mastered from second-generation MP3s, as Hadreas had lost the original recordings, and this distant, abraded sound reinforced its harrowing tales and haunting melodies. “No secret/No matter how nasty/Can poison your voice/Or keep you from joy.” – Perfume Genius, “Normal Song” Though Learning’s voyeuristic window into Hadreas’s experiences resonated intensely with many people, his new album Put Your Back N 2 It is much more universal, addressing intimacy, power, family, secrecy, and hope not just through his impressionistic lyrics, but the music itself, which is as lush as Learning was stark. It’s a gorgeous soundtrack for anyone trying to keep it together in everyday life, and about moving forward. “I don’t want it to seem like I’ve been through more than other people,” Hadreas says. “Everyone has stuff. Staying healthy can be more depressing and confusing than being fucked up. But I want to make music that’s honest and hopeful.” The hypnotic songs on Put Your Back N 2 It are tender and moving, but they are also surreal and grand, recalling at times the universality of lullabies and hymns, faraway folk songs, the dramatic arc of a film score, and the almost spiritual quality suggests a kind of opiated gospel. He cites as a primary influence not one of the indie icons to which he’s sometimes compared (Cat Power, Bon Iver, Thom Yorke), but The Innocence Mission (“not their sound, but their timelessness”).
What started when Michael Angelakos self-recorded a Valentine’s Day EP as a gift for his girlfriend has now evolved into a Boston-based quintet with a thoroughly amazing sophomore album. “Take a Walk” picks up where Passion Pit’s praised 2009 debut, *Manners*, left off. “I’ll Be Alright” finds them at their most experimental, with hyper-edited cut-up arrangements tangling up and then unravelling to reveal an uplifting electro-pop standout.
On Lockett Pundt\'s second solo outing as Lotus Plaza, it becomes increasingly clear how critical his contributions really are to his *other* bands (Deerhunter and Atlas Sound). *Spooky Action* works in a vein similar to those outfits, with pop melodies and sensibilities at the heart of music wrapped in layers of fuzz and warmth. There\'s reverb on the guitars and vocals, along with restrained distortion and effects (appropriately lighthanded, since the feel here is decidedly ethereal). Tight, sturdy percussion is the grounding force. The crisp snares and chiming guitar on \"Strange\" anchor the wispy tune, and the weighty kickdrum gives bounce to the shimmering tambourines and gathering clouds of guitar on \"Out of Touch.\" One strength of this set is its range of feeling, from the artfully thoughtful \"Jet Out of the Tundra,\" to the Yo La Tengo–style gentleness of the lovely \"Dusty Rhodes.\" Lotus Plaza\'s music complements the best of Deerhunter and Atlas Sound.
The Men break all kinds of rules. Their music’s bark is as bad as its bite; it rages and pummels, burying perfectly capable hooks and melody under an avalanche of guitars. Yet they do it so smartly, so efficiently, that not a riff is wasted, not a layer of grime yearns to be wiped away. And they dare make instrumentals a large part of their weaponry (one even mixes twangy slide guitar with a Spacemen 3 haze). They serve up songs that easily crash the three-minute barrier, with two beauties clocking in at more than seven minutes each. The Men unabashedly beg, borrow, and steal: their last LP title (*Leave Home*) was lifted from The Ramones, and riffs and tones on songs like “Open Your Heart,” “Animal,” and “Oscillation” are inspired by antecedents The Buzzcocks, The Damned, and Sonic Youth. The clamorous assault of guitarists Mark Perro and Nick Chiericozzi recalls the sheer power of bands like Hüsker Dü and The Stooges. So why aren’t we complaining? Because each release by The Men leaves us a little more in awe, and they prove, again, that punk rock seeds sown 35 years ago can still sprout fresh, green shoots that impress and thrill.
Ironically referred to by Time Out New York as "Thurston Moore & the E Street Band," The Men have never been a band to play by categorical punk subgenre rules.
Balearic beat-based house music evolved in the mid-\'80s before becoming the staple of beach raves in Ibiza and European dance clubs during the early \'90s. With his debut album, *Fin*, Barcelona\'s John Talabot builds on these bygone foundations. While there are colorful hints of nostalgia throughout, Talabot never really backpedals. More swampy than tropical, “Depak Ine” opens *Fin* with a murky ambience of croaking frogs and marshland crickets chirping, as synth tones inspired by Andy Fletcher and pulsing beats slowly seep into the mix. This flourishes into a gothic disco with a choir of haunting vocal samples. Madrid’s Pionel cameos as coproducer in the following “Destiny.” Similarly eerie tones are contrasted by Caribbean-tinged instruments and melancholy singing that would sound right at home on a Cabaret Voltaire recording. Talabot’s penchant for sonic pointillism surfaces in “When the Past Was Present,” a more unapologetically sentimental glimpse at a time when jabbing synths and handclaps flourished on the floor.
With leader Jason Pierce pushing his vocals closer to the front of the mix in recent years, *Sweet Heart Sweet Light* again finds Spiritualized coming close to accessible pop music in key spots. It provides clarity to a music that previously excelled as an oblique blur. \"Too Late\" cruises near convention, with a gentle folk melody that could pass for a Mojave 3 number. Elsewhere, there\'s still plenty of sonic detail; buzzing fuzz and psychedelic orchestration make \"Get What You Deserve\" a looping narcotic hit that ends in a torrent of feedback. \"Headin\' for the Top Now\" dives deeper into the distorted sonic soup that made Pierce\'s work with Spacemen 3 such a welcome enigma. Weirdest of all is the unexpected team-up with New Orleans\' gumbo-voodoo legend Dr. John for the co-written \"I Am What I Am,\" where both artists find a way to make their presence felt and reach a common ground, where gospel vamps marry Pierce\'s harshest sonic attacks.
Pierce is still using large orchestras and choirs to take his Robert Johnson blues way past the crossroads, to vistas that are as endless as they are empty. He's still singing his own rock'n'roll gospel: Jesus, fast cars, girls named Jane and Mary, pimps, death, fire, freedom, and God all show up, giving life to Pierce's alternate-universe Eden, inhabited by Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, self-loathing, and a spitty syringe. He's still his own genre-- this tiny voice elevated by the super-church-sized arrangements in his head. "I want to make music that catches all the glory and beauty and magnificence, but also the intimacy and fragility, all within the space of the same 10 seconds," Pierce has said. It's a mad goal. But it's also an inherently intriguing and universal one, just as ancient myths or Biblical tales can be. Pierce isn't religious, but he uses Christian language and figures as a thematic shorthand. "As you have a conversation about Jesus, you know you're talking to him about how it is to be fallible and question yourself and your morals," he told me. "When I sing, 'Help me, Jesus,' you know I'm not asking for help fixing the fucking car." Such an all-or-nothing attitude is risky, but that's the whole point. Pierce mixed Sweet Heart over eight drawn-out months under something of a drug-induced stupor. But it wasn't the kind of drug-induced stupor Pierce is known for. At the time, he was being hit with experimental chemotherapy treatments to combat a degenerative liver disease. (Three doctors are thanked in the liner notes; Pierce is apparently OK now.) During this album's creation, the singer referred to it as Huh?-- a nod to his jumbled mental state. All of which would make one assume that Sweet Heart would be messy, fucked-up, and completely depressing. That is not the case. This is probably the most uplifting album of his career.- Ryan Dombal Pitchfork.com 8.8/10
At first blush, Mac DeMarco’s second album, released in 2012, is almost comically unassuming. For starters, it’s called *2*, which is the album-naming equivalent of referring to a pet as “Cat” or “Dog.” Then there’s the cover, which features a black-and-white snapshot of DeMarco, six-stringer close to his chest, flashing a toothy grin and a peace sign in a manner that brings to mind *Fast Times at Ridgemont High*’s chilled-out surfer-dude, Jeff Spicoli. And as for the music itself? Well, there are at least two songs about smoking cigarettes, while another one is simply called “Dreaming”—which, true to its title, sounds like someone lazily looking out the window during a hot summer day. (For what it’s worth, DeMarco has since claimed that most of the record was made while he was in just his underwear.) Of course, all of this plays into the deceptive brilliance of DeMarco’s entire deal: He looks and feels like *just some guy*—your good friend at the bar, maybe, or the lovable class clown from your childhood. And he’s content to let your assumptions take hold as he casually unspools warm, warped guitar baubles that possess a simple and deeply affecting tenderness—not unlike Paul McCartney’s solo work, or the reveries of indie-pop greats Felt. Released the same year as *Rock and Roll Night Club*—DeMarco’s shaggy, after-hours debut—*2* was an undeniable breakout moment for the Vancouver singer-songwriter, who would go on to become one of the 2010s’ biggest indie-rock stars. The album’s 11 songs possess a charming timelessness to them, like floating down a lazy river in a big inner tube. The lovely and romantic “My Kind of Woman” is the closest we’ll likely get to a modern indie-music standard, while the peppy beat and tangled guitars of “Freaking Out the Neighborhood” represents *2*’s most explicitly *rock* moment, as DeMarco offers a lyrical apologia to his assuredly weary mother: “I know it\'s no fun/When your first son/Gets up to no good.” Such a sentiment is key to understanding DeMarco’s appeal—and it sums up the essence of *2* as a whole: His goofball side may be endearing and immediately apparent, but the more he hangs around, the radiance of his sincerity grows brighter.
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Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s first proper LP in forever is either a rallying cry released on the cusp of a contentious election cycle or a return to form with the forward momentum of a runaway train. The band of post-rock pioneers certainly isn\'t subtle on *Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!*. As you might imagine, given how…uplifting!…that!…title!…is!, Godspeed’s fourth studio album is heady but hopeful, with an ominous but non-overbearing mood that sounds like the collective’s secular take on a tent revival. With REALLY loud guitars. And divebombing drums. And strings that are plucked, slapped, and sideswiped. Of the two 20-minute pieces here, “Mladic” is the one you might not wanna play at midnight, what with the way it bursts through your speakers screaming after just a few minutes. “We Drift Like Worried Fire,” on the other hand, raises its fists to the heavens while showing the group’s many disciples how instrumental melodrama is done. As for the record’s other pair of tracks, they’re both riff-raking meditations on the Power of the Drone. Guess GY!BE wasn\'t kidding about that whole *Ascend!* thing.
These are the first new recordings by Godspeed You! Black Emperor since 2002. Featuring two twenty-minute slabs of epic instrumental rock music and two six-and-a-half minute drones, ‘ALLELUJAH! DON’T BEND! ASCEND! provides soaring, shining proof of the band’s powerful return to form. Having emerged from hiatus at the end of 2010, GYBE picked up right where they left off, immediately re-capturing the sound and material that had fallen dormant in 2003 and driving it forward with every show of their extensive touring over the last 18 months. The new album presents the fruits of that labour: evolved and definitive versions of two huge compositions previously known to fans as “Albanian” and “Gamelan”, now properly titled as “MLADIC” and “WE DRIFT LIKE WORRIED FIRE” respectively. Accompanied by the new drones (stitched into the album sequence on CD; cut separately on their own 7″ for the LP version), GYBE have offered up a fifth album that we feel is as absolutely vital, virulent, honest and heavy as anything in their discography. We don’t have much time for mythology, but we’d be lying if we said the return of Godspeed You! Black Emperor in 2010 didn’t signify a whole lot to us as a marker from which to look back on the past decade, to reflect on what’s been gained or lost within the confines of independent music culture and what’s been gained or lost in the socio-political landscape writ large. Godspeed’s music will do that to you. It is music that bears witness to, channels and transforms this predominantly terrible, infuriating, venal and nihilistically sad story we’re all living, sharing, resisting, protesting, deconstructing and trying to change for the better. We think GYBE has once again provided a uniquely moving and compelling soundtrack for these acts of analysis, defiance and ascension. * * * Hard to believe a full decade has passed since the release of Yanqui U.X.O., the last album by GYBE. Never a band to care for conventional industry wisdom, Yanqui was released shortly before xmas 2003 with little publicity and no press availability, no marketing plans or cross-promotions or brand synergies, with back cover artwork tracing the inextricable links between major music labels and the military-industrial complex. Driven by word-of-mouth from a passionate and committed fanbase galvanized by the group's sonic vision and its dedication to unmediated, unsullied musical communication, the album found it's rightful audience. To suggest that such simple principles and goals have become harder to maintain and enact a decade later is an understatement. For all the contents and discontents – for all the "content" – of our present cultural moment, the idea of circumventing the glare of exposure, the massaging of media cycles and the calculus of identity management appears quaint, if not futile. But Godspeed is looking to try all the same. The band wants people to care about this new album, without telling people they should or talking about themselves. They want to hold on to some part of that energy that comes with the thrill of anonymous discovery and unmediated transmission, knowing full well that these days, anti-strategy risks being tagged as a strategy, non-marketing framed as its opposite, and deeply held principles they consider fundamental to health as likely to be interpreted as just another form of stealth. Truly, thanks for being open to hearing it.
*Kindred* is London-based dubstep producer Burial’s hardest and darkest-sounding EP to date. While there are only three songs here, keep in mind that they total more than a half-hour. The title track opens with keyboard ambience and looped vinyl hiss before metallic, clanging beats start driving the tune like an old car in first gear. As the song shifts into second, Burial seamlessly fuses dusty, lo-fi garage beats with the heft of his signature dubstep and some jungle that bobs and weaves with a middleweight boxer\'s agility. In place of a lead vocal, Burial uses manipulated fragments of female vocals, pitched down and up for a haunting effect. The faster-driving “Loner” serves as a snapshot of past raves. Its locomotive beats and brooding bass synth set the stage for the type of fluttering keyboard notes that dancers can feel sputtering in their sternums when cranked from huge speakers. The closing “Ashtray Wasp” is 11 minutes and 44 seconds of dark, foreboding house from the postapocalyptic future.
'I Know What Love Isn't' came out of a break up which isn't a new story. He fell in love and it didn't work out. It borrows sparingly from the vast and colorful palette of sounds he created on 'Night Falls Over Kortedala'. 'I Know What Love Isn't' has strings but not a string section, an upright piano not grand, a single saxophone, gracenotes from a flute, a lot of tambourine. Combined in exact proportions with Lekman's melancholy abstract lyrics, the songs evoke the classic sound of the Brill Building in it's heyday. Lekman is a storyteller of the highest caliber, letting his delicate vignettes unfold to show the wonder that lies in the mundane. That's what 'I Know What Love Isn't'… is. A collection of songs that grew to a story that had to be told. A story that is not new, but essentially human. The story of the grey areas of love that you have to excavate and explore, using the method of exclusion, to find out what love is.
A reissue of the 2012 debut release by the Ty Segall Band on In The Red, featuring a bonus song not on the original release! The Ty Segall Band is Ty Segall (obviously), Mikal Cronin, Charlie Moonheart and Emily Rose Epstein. While Segall has released many incredible solo releases, Slaughterhouse marks the first time he recorded with his touring band. For this mini-album (originally released as a double 10-inch, but now expanded to a double 12-inch) the band recorded with Chris Woodhouse at the Hangar, turned their amps all the way up, set their fuzz pedals on “obliterate” and commenced to kick ass and take names. Seriously, this record will melt your face. All of Segall’s usual psych-pop sensibilities are present but Slaughterhouse adds the full-throttle, go-for-the-throat bombast that the band delivers in the live setting. The fuzz riffs, bratty howl and Cro-Magnon bashing culminate with a feedback freakout that’s clearly the only sensible way to end a workout of this magnitude in shit to announce the debut release by the Ty Segall Band.
Fronted by Parisian chanteuse Melody Prochet and produced with analog wizardry by Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, Melody’s Echo Chamber is like the *Midnight in Paris* of indie pop. But instead of time-traveling back to \'20s-era City of Light, Prochet and Parker take listeners back to Paris in the \'60s. So parts of “Quand Vas Tu Rentrer” may remind you of Stereolab and Broadcast with antique guitars, chirping Moogs, droning tones, retro mixing, and Prochet’s demure inflections sounding a little like Françoise Hardy’s *Comment Te Dire Adieu*. But *Melody’s Echo Chamber* plays with more period-correct authenticity than similar modern bands. That’s not to say that there’s nothing innovative going on here; the static textures crumbling over the vintage dream-pop soundscapes in “Crystallized” are pure 21st century, especially when it takes over the tune and closes on a pulsing, distorted mantra. Prochet coos coyly like a young Claudine Longet in “You Won\'t Be Missing That Part of Me” before “Some Time Alone, Alone” digs deep into the French psychedelia of yore with electric sitars and spacy *Barbarella* vibes.
The debut solo album from Melody Prochet is a record of enchanting, psychedelic-tinged pop with just the right amount of thematic darkness. Produced by Tame Impala's Kevin Parker, Melody's Echo Chamber is one of the more satisfying LPs in recent times to bear Broadcast's influence. - Lindsay Zoladz pitchfork.com 7.4/10
Toronto trio METZ were one of a handful of ’00s bands to update the abrasive sounds of ‘90s noise rock for a new audience. Opening with the full-tilt attack of “Headache” (a fair title if there ever was one), *METZ* is a wired, compellingly unfriendly debut that sounds less like a band at work than a storm blowing through a sheet-metal shop. As with forebears like Melvins and The Jesus Lizard, their secret weapon is groove, making the shrapnel of tracks like “Knife in the Water” and “Wet Blanket” as hypnotic as they are nasty.
Canada’s METZ are a return to everything that’s good about loud, ecstatic live music; a frantic nod to Nation of Ulysses, Shellac, The Pixies, The Jesus Lizard, and Public Image Ltd. at their most vicious, while carving out some heavy new business. METZ have been around for over three years, sharing stages with Mission of Burma, Mudhoney, Oneida, and NoMeansNo. METZ, the band’s self-titled and formidable debut full-length was produced by the band and recorded by Graham Walsh (Holy Fuck) and Alexandre Bonenfant. Both live and here on this record, METZ articulate with deafening clarity what we’ve known for some time: The world of good music needs a new power trio, and this is it.