Music journalists (myself included) could learn a thing or two from The Muscadettes. This Montreal five-piece, led by twin sisters Chantal and Kathleen Ambridge, displays a full understanding of a classic but forgotten philosophy: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Their songs are straightforward and brief, qualities that assure a similar analysis from typically verbose, long-winded, pretentious music critics. Side A, the first of two EPs that The Muscadettes will release this year (hence its title – one can assume the second EP will be titled Side B), is incredibly bright, catchy, and uptempo, ensuring that its appeal is undeniable except to the most difficult of listeners.

The Muscadettes describe themselves as “raised on 60s surf and 90s grunge”, and these influences immediately manifest on Side A. The glorious crashing of warm waves on a humid, skin-scalding summer day instantly comes to mind when hearing the reverb-laden, explosive guitars that open “I’m in Love”, and thereby the whole EP. This song’s title suggests the youthful, buoyant romance its lyrics depict, a subject universal to early Beach Boys tunes in particular. That The Muscadettes so confidently and quickly echo arguably the most influential surf rock group of all time testifies to their hookiness and craft, a trait that continues into second track “Growing Pains.” Traveling even deeper into sunlit bliss is “Like a Wave”, a song that jumps out from the pack due to its slower tempo. This relaxation allows a more mature, romantic, and idealistic aspect of the Ambridge twins’ voices, musicianship, and lyrical themes to come into play. “Everything is clear”, the two harmonize during the song’s chorus. “Don’t wanna live in fear/of what we are feeling here”, they conclude wisely.

“Like a Wave” is quite obviously a metaphorical title, but figurative language only rears its head this blatantly once again on Side A. On key track and second single “Pearl and Oyster”, the album’s most memorable song, metaphors include “I’m a seashell living in your ocean” and “I’m a white pearl trapped inside your oyster.” The imagery works: the track is the album’s most memorable not merely because of its incredibly catchy melody, but also because of these words. That said, its sound does bear the band’s self-described 90s grunge influences more obviously than on most of the EP: its pounding guitars and bashing percussive groove reminisce far more clearly of bands like Jane’s Addiction and The Pixies than they do Dick Dale or, again, The Beach Boys. “Honey Let Go” is the other track here that makes evident The Muscadettes’ debt to the sounds of two decades ago: its guitars rip with even more overdrive and reverb than the rest of these tracks, a technique initially advanced as the 1980s gave way to a decade of Nirvana and a second wave of punk.

Some might complain that the lack of innovation on Side A frustrates or disappoints, but those listeners are missing the point entirely. The Muscadettes let the past inform their approach rather than merely duplicating the sonic template of their favorite acts. They were raised on melodic, catchy, guitar-based pop, and that’s exactly what they deliver on Side A. Let your guard down and go for a swim; The Muscadettes will enchant you from the shore.

Since their 2012 debut, the fascinating but not fully developed Ice Level, Ava Luna have pegged their eclectic, experimental, ineffable sound as “nervous soul.” This moniker proved quite adept in describing 2014’s jagged, frenetic Electric Balloon (one of last year’s best-hidden gems), but on follow-up Infinite House, anxiety makes its presence less known than ever before in Ava Luna’s career. Each of the band’s three vocalists spends less time in the manic, shrill sections of their vocal ranges, areas into which past releases dipped heavily; furthermore, these new songs’ rhythms, melodies, and harmonies tend to cut back on the complexities of previous works’ arrangements without sacrificing them completely. Nevertheless, Ava Luna haven’t ditched every one of their hallmarks: even though Infinite House may be Ava Luna’s most mature album yet, the zany, somewhat inscrutable lyricism that’s defined them to date still appears in spades here.

Where older Ava Luna songs such as “Sears Roebuck M&M’s” or “Calculus” thrill with jagged, agitated rhythms, vocals, and multi-vocalist harmonies, Infinite House‘s tunes tend to resonate via smoother, more linear rhythms and vocals. “Roses and Cherries”, for example, recalls the relatively muted Electric Balloon number “Aqaurium”, albeit with vocalist Carlos Hernandez exhibiting more restraint and control of his shaky, hissing vibrato and fretful expression. A pillowy acoustic guitar riff underpins Hernandez’ newly stable voice; when an electric guitar fill emerges later, it continues the song’s simple flow rather than pushing it in a more spastic direction as might happen on older Ava Luna tracks. Follow-up track “Coat of Shellac” also quite boldly rides a wave of sensual moderation, its spiny guitar parts playing second fiddle to the song’s soul-imbued bass line and not concealing it. Electric Balloon highlight “PRPL” seems in retrospect to have previewed this song, one on which vocalist Felicia Douglass displays what might be her most comfortable performance to date.

In general, Infinite House shows Ava Luna retreating into comfort, a move that might signal death for most bands, but instead ensures a more interestingly subtle third album for this five-piece. For instance, “Steve Polyester” bubbles past the ears without any sort of exaggerated features; the occasional doo-wop harmony or faintly whistling ambient noise, rather than an earth-shattering guitar blast, arhythmic groove, or piercing vocal wail, proves the most startling thing about this track. Final track “Carbon” also breezes by without intrusion while remaining gorgeous; its woozy piano foundation and harnessed vocal take indicate relaxation rather than angst. The title track wins in this category, though, as its low-key rumble feels like a lazy river against the backdrop of even this album’s loosest tunes.

Even when Ava Luna attempt to write in the fractured, pounding states they’re familiar with, they wind up with a distilled, less abrasive sketch of their old selves. “Tenderize” demonstrates that Hernandez hasn’t lost his ability to absolutely holler if he needs to, but far more often finds him resting at the midpoint of his impressive vocal range; furthermore, although its guitars bear that same past tendency to sound like an object slowly falling down a long set of stairs, they also don’t possess nearly as deep a barbed, frayed edge as Ava Luna is known for. “Black Dog” too attempts to reconcile the old Ava Luna with the new one, trading in a soft shroud of crooning and timid finger-picking for a window-shattering, overdrive-blasting guitar attack at its halfway point. As Infinite House songs go, it ranks among the most idiosyncratically Ava Luna songs present, yet it still feels impressively well controlled. “Best Hexagon” follows in sequence on the album, and this song’s steady rhythm, easily traceable harmonies and flow bear merely a sliver of past intricacies while impacting just as strongly.

The track that comes next, “Billz”, represents the most extreme moment on Infinite House, one that most vividly reminds the listener of Ava Luna’s background, explaining its role as the album’s first single. The pummeling roar of its introductory guitar riff gives way to a woozy verse of—you guessed it—nervous soul, which then leads to a melodically and rhythmically elusive chorus. The repetition of this song’s fiery introduction as its post-chorus relieves the tension of the chorus, a trick employed to great success many times in Ava Luna’s previous highlights. Its lyrics are no more decipherable; even reading its lyrics on Infinite House‘s Bandcamp page never fully elucidates the song’s meaning, although guessing it’s a statement about the worthlessness of a college degree in this day and age might not be a bad start.

The lyricism of Infinite House provides the most obvious link between the album and Ava Luna’s previous two collections. If the words on songs such as “Sears Roebuck M&Ms” and “Electric Balloon” felt completely arbitrary and stream-of-consciousness, then the tale of “Steve Polyester” is the dialogue of a comic book acid trip (“Shaped like a cockroach/he smells good”). Even on “Coat of Shellac”, arguably Infinite House‘s most tender moment, the lyricism delves into the abstract: “No not like the TV, whittle it away/sorta novel to stay largest and heavy, mountain full of clay”, hums Felicia Douglass in what’s otherwise an enjoyably standard love song. It’s likely that this approach has grown into an Ava Luna trademark to impart some sort of humor to their work, as evidenced in “Victoria”‘s graduation of the phrase “you’re no good, baby” to “you’re a no good, baby”; both statements alternate with the notion that “you’re everything I want you to be.”

Although Ava Luna’s lyrics remain weird and funny, their music is now the farthest it has felt from these descriptors thus far in their career. That’s not to say a song like “Company” isn’t odd and that its stuttered chorus doesn’t impart a slightly comical tone to its words; rather, Ava Luna employ greater moderation on Infinite House, a technique that portrays the band as newly level-headed without betraying their most exciting aspects. Soulful though they may still be, nervousness has become a thing of their past.

The first five minutes of Katie Crutchfield’s third album as Waxahatchee pass without the presence of any percussion at all. An initial reaction to this fact might be to declare Ivy Tripp extreme, but this neglects that Crutchfield’s previous album, 2013’s masterful Cerulean Salt, opened with two drumless minutes. Rather, this observation serves to emphasize that Crutchfield’s newest collection sees her expanding. It contains her two longest songs to date as well as her most uptempo tune yet, and introduces the occasional synth for the first time in her career. More notably, it displays Crutchfield transforming her already robust lyricism from an introverted, self-contained diary of heartache into a more hopeful and confident stance on life and love. In writing this sturdier, more wholesome poetry, Crutchfield has also given her voice a platform to drastically broaden its range from its formerly emotive but restrained state into a much more commanding, emphatic instrument. Indeed, Crutchfield has improved on all of Cerulean Salt‘s very small handful of flaws on Ivy Tripp, resulting in an effortless, vivacious album that still manages to feel as personal as her quieter past efforts.

Ivy Tripp opens with the guitar-and-vocals take “Breathless”, a five-minute song that, despite employing an instrumental setup in which Crutchfield is well versed, feels newly immersive for Waxahatchee, immediately suggesting the strength that Ivy Tripp enjoys over its thirty-eight minutes. “Under a Rock” follows, and wastes no time in showcasing how vastly Crutchfield’s voice has grown. “Maybe/you got/your head/caught in a ditch last night” beckons Crutchfield with a rugged vibrato previously unheard in her music. This song segues seamlessly into “Poison”, an album highlight infused with waves of sailing, shoegaze-like guitar work and tugging vocal self-harmonization. But these songs prove to be mere warm-up laps for “La Loose”, the first Waxahatchee song that might reasonably be described as dance-worthy , or even a summer song. Sure, the most basic of drum machine beats drives it, but the groove laid down here is undeniable, and the peripheral synthetic hum underlying Crutchfield’s potent vocalizations makes this the first time a Waxahatchee song is bound to incite listeners out of their seats rather than sinking them further into stillness.

“Stale By Noon” thereafter provides a necessary comedown from “La Loose”, its early-morning beads of —is that a xylophone?—allowing Crutchfield’s newfound optimism to properly shine through. Sandwiched between this song and similarly tranquil ditty “Blue” is the fuzzed-out stomp of “The Dirt”, one of the sunniest songs Crutchfield’s written to date. After this three-song stretch comes aptly-chosen lead single “Air”, likely the album’s best song and one of the year’s most poignant tunes thus far. Like the rest of Ivy Tripp, this song uses Crutchfield’s greater vocal range, confidence, and vibrato to great success and tells a boldly objective tale of a love lost; where it stands out from the pack, though, is in how deeply its sadness cuts. Its chorus is utterly crushing and heartbreaking, almost on the level of career highlight “Swan Dive”, and its placement on this album provides an incessantly replayable contrast to the otherwise more bullish tone of this album.

The melancholy of “Air” continues into the desolation of “<“, a song whose title derives from its chorus: “You’re less than me/I am nothing.” Back to back, “Air” and “<” represent the most explicitly glum stretch of Ivy Tripp, a fact that becomes immediately obvious when the sprightly “Grey Hair” follows. “Sugar, soda pop/songs play on the radio” may be the most jovial lyric Katie Crutchfield has committed to record, and the surprisingly merry piano line and gleeful vocal take outlining the song indicate that her joy isn’t accidental. “Grey Hair” leads to another shockingly sunny tune, one that recalls Crutchfield’s incredibly intimate debut, the acoustic lo-fi 2012 album American Weekend. This song, “Summer of Love”, may be the album’s weakest, which is acceptable given its resemblance to Waxahatchee’s earliest work. Its smiling acoustic guitar, the only element present other than some ambient haze, doesn’t properly support the hefty weight of her vocals. “Half Moon” appears next, and this song likewise refuses to regain the drums that “Summer of Love” ditched, but its pianos do manage to successfully reinforce Crutchfield’s voice.

Ending Ivy Tripp is “Bonfire”, a song whose lurching, haunting crawl of fuzz-laced guitar drone, looping bass drums, and softly muttered vocals doesn’t impact as immediately as the remainder of the album does. But this initially faint impression may be in part due to this song’s relation to Cerulean Salt; the restraint Crutchfield places on her voice here recalls the heart-on-sleeve familiarity of that album, a trait which is mostly eliminated here. But she hasn’t forgone this approach because it’s an invalid one; rather, that approach earned her the majority of her current fan base. With this context in mind, “Bonfire” grows, over time, into one of Ivy Tripp‘s finest moments, and its placement at the end of the album feels like a nod to listeners who have willingly gone with her new direction.

Not that doing so is in any way difficult. What Crutchfield hasn’t sacrificed in moving forward from her musical past is the specificity and emotional depth of her lyrics, and the jolt of her words feels like icing on the already delectable cake of this album’s sound. Rather than the past themes of complete hopelessness (“Swan Dive”), unsatisfying revenge (“Peace and Quiet”), and love-driven obsession (“Blue Pt. II”), Ivy Tripp details more mature outlooks on Waxahatchee’s oft-explored subjects. “I could stop praying for everybody/I’m just wasting my time/I’ll read your philosophy and get a new lease on life”, she decides on “Stale By Noon”; the confidence and thorough consideration of this statement is echoed in “La Loose”‘s understanding that “I get why you would long for your past.” Even more impressively adult is Crutchfield admitting to herself on “Grey Hair” that a certain lover may not be “the only one”, later following with the admission that her excitement has her “out of breath/I can’t slow down.” Just as her music is quite often newly optimistic, on Ivy Tripp, so too are her words.

From what Crutchfield has told the press, Ivy Tripp‘s shift in a more grown-up direction makes sense. “[Ivy Tripp] was the first record that I made as an adult, on my own,” she told The Le Sigh recently, a change that’s quite evident throughout the album. She also mentioned to The Le Sigh that writing this album took her much longer than her previous work (American Weekend was created, recorded, and mastered within one week): “It’ll take me hours to write like one verse,” she admitted. “I’ll just scrutinize every single word, and then I’ll go back and I’ll edit it, and a song will take me like weeks or months to finish, because I’ll want every single word to be perfect.” The effort shows: Ivy Tripp is not only Waxahatchee’s strongest work to date, but it’s also one of the past few years’ most comforting, affecting, and assertive analyses of love, life, people, and their problems. Growing up may be hard to do, but Ivy Tripp demonstrates how worthwhile the transformation is.

Lost Boy ? get lost (pun not intended) in the noise pretty easily. Amidst the buzz surrounding bands like DIIV and Titus Andronicus, audiences failed to notice Lost Boy ? playing shows with these acts, ones to which their first album as a band rather than a solo project sometimes holds a candle. Canned, their debut for the wonderful DIY label PaperCup Music, follows last year’s Wasted EP, released on similarly excellent DIY label Exploding in Sound; it’s clear to see, then, that Lost Boy ? have a rich history in the DIY scene, but remain unknown to many a listener due to the blog buzz and internet noise that seems to constantly surround big-time acts they’ve played with. Maybe they’re called Lost Boy ? for a reason, or maybe for two; in addition to letting the clamor of others swallow them whole, Lost Boy ? drown in all manner of fuzz, low fidelity, and noise on Canned.

Not unlike fellow New York DIY stalwarts LVL UP, Lost Boy ? make music that features more than one vocalist, a nostalgia for 1990s punk sounds, an intentional lack of recording fidelity, and a good deal of straightforwardly humorous lyricism. “You were sad/in Hollywood/stuck in the sand” are Canned‘s first three lines, words delivered atop energetic percussion, frenetic guitar work, and several layers of fuzz and static. This all happens within the first ten seconds of the album, a declaration of where the band continues to head across the LP’s remaining 37 minutes. “Chew” and “Bank” are merely two of the many songs here that run with this approach, using upbeat, fuzz-drenched guitar pop to turn sad or hilarious (or sometimes both) lyrics into joyful garage rock celebrations. “Revenge Song” is particularly effective at disguising the gory details of its story in grungy, smiling instrumentation and overtly filtered vocals; it transforms a traumatic story of childhood bullying into an almost jubilant experience between Lost Boy ? and the listener. Of course, this is also partially due to how atypically blunt and comical songwriter Davy Jones’ lyrics come off: both due to his voice and his words, his description of his futile defense attempts (“I called them assholes and they would just laugh/guess I had it coming since I didn’t have a clue”) sounds funny rather than heartbreaking or infuriating.

Hell, even when Jones isn’t the Lost Boy ? member singing, his group’s songs are acutely hysterical. “Fuck This Century” and “Hemorrhage” serve as consecutive examples of this phenomenon: its vocalist is much more monotonous and deep-voiced, but he still manages to bring humor front and center. In the former song, though, the lyrics would be funny even outside Lost Boy ?’s oddly uptempo universe (“Tragic, nonetheless/I touch myself at night” precedes a proclamation of “Fuck this century!” over a ripping tidal wave of power chords), but the latter song makes a more impressive use of its vocalist. Its story isn’t inherently laughable, but the song’s dejected, almost krautrock-like vocal mannerisms’ contrast to the tune’s pop-leaning instrumentation will at least bring a smile to listeners’ faces. It’s reminiscent of earlier Parquet Courts songs, and since that group has received such an immense rush of critical praise in recent times, it can be tough to imagine that Lost Boy ? wouldn’t deserve similar treatment.

Really, the only obstacle standing between Lost Boy ? and wider success is that they’re not nearly the first group to emulate the sounds of 1990s garage punk groups ranging from Nirvana to, more obviously, Pavement. In fact, Lost Boy ? are bound to draw comparisons to Yuck, whose 2011 self-titled debut remains one of the decade’s finest retro-gazing rock records. Lost Boy ? are undeniably more witty and possibly more pop-oriented than the several peers to whom they could be compared, but it may be difficult for them to put up a fight across a full-length. Each of Canned‘s individual songs contains immense appeal, but lined up across the course of an album, it can occasionally be difficult to stay focused. The second half of “Car Wash”, which is almost certainly just the song’s first half played back in reverse, isn’t melodic or structured enough to be gripping; later in the album, “Bank” and “Deep Fried Young” can sometimes blur into each other. In general, despite the eccentricities and special features of each song, it can be troubling to absorb the album in one listen.

One possible solution to this minor problem is for Lost Boy ? to further emphasize their vocals on future records. The excessively watered-down vocals can prevent the album’s lyrics from being properly understood on the first two or three listens; that it takes a bit of time for the remarkable humor and specificity of the words to shine through can lose some listeners pretty quickly. If Lost Boy ? can ensure the impact of their lyrics, which become memorable as soon as they’re discernible, more instantly on their next many albums (they can look to Courtney Barnett for advice on how to achieve this), then they may no longer find themselves Lost, instead cultivating a fan base on par with the many acts whose shadows they’ve been living in for far too long.

Björk turns 50 this year. It’s an unusual age to release a breakup album, but hell, Björk is anything but traditional. Her 22-year career (longer if her 1977 self-titled album, released when she was 12 and not at all written by her, counts) has allowed her to experiment across an astoundingly wide range of genres, make all manner of fascinating and unforgettable aesthetic choices, compose the album Medulla almost entirely from human voices, expand 2011’s Biophilia into an educational tool for Icelandic youth, and even play the lead role in a film, Dancer in the Dark, for which she created the music. On top of all these accomplishments, she’s renowned for her voice, one to which the overused moniker “unique” actually applies. Its combination of Icelandic accent, raw emotion, extensive range, and always being right on pitch didn’t sound like anyone else on 1993’s Debut, and in 2015, perhaps only Joanna Newsom can claim to have even a strand of similarity in her voice.

Yet one quality often found in other artists’ careers that is rarely found in Björk’s dynamic, all-encompassing catalog is sadness. Well, until now, that is – Vulnicura, her eighth album, quite blatantly explores the emotional devastation she felt (and still feels) in the wake of her split with longtime partner Matthew Barney. The structure of a family, the role of sex in a relationship, and the grieving process are among the sensitive topics explored here, all in Björk’s simplest lyrics in quite some time. The familiarity of her words and topics might prove fatal in other hands, but instead proves a nice change from the science textbook that is Biophilia and the abstractions of Volta. These two albums, her most recent, suggested to some fans that Björk had passed her prime; in contrast, Vulnicura may well be her strongest effort since 1997’s classic, vastly experimental Homogenic.

Actually, Vulnicura feels like the proper follow-up to Homogenic that fans never quite received. That’s not to say Vespertine isn’t magnificent, because it is; however, it generally travels in a gentler direction than its predecessor. In terms of Björk’s career, Vulnicura could be the intermediate stage between the two. Its reliance on very few elements, mostly string arrangements and the clamor of a synthetic percussive track, pull from the wandering trip-hop of what came before, but its subject matter, emotional candor, appropriately lengthy songs (the album and many of its songs rank among her longest), and gorgeous softness could theoretically precede Vespertine. In reality, though, a major factor of the album’s success come from names virtually unheard of two years ago; featuring extensive co-production from Yeezus and LP1 right hand man Arca, and mixing courtesy of even lesser known act The Haxan Cloak, this collection both hearkens back to Björk’s greatest accomplishments and is clearly indebted to the modern dark electronic underground.

In fact, Arca’s presence here was one of the most highly documented aspects of the album prior to its announcement. This proves to be for good reason; although Björk clearly led the production, Arca’s presence is certainly felt in the scattered, rattling beats that define these songs. The thoroughly ominous, minimal sounds of his solo work might well be the only thing currently existent that could combine with Björk’s exceedingly creative mind in a way that would bring her back to her roots and thereby reignite her mildly dormant spark. For example, the shuffle of “Lionsong”, defined by some synthetic percussive rattles and finalized by a hefty, but not overwhelming, bass pulse, both looks back on Björk’s past and bears Arca’s gentle touch. “Family” and “Notget”, which appear back-to-back later in the album, much more clearly emphasize the hand her co-producers play here, although the former track is the only one to feature Haxan Cloak on production duty as well. In its first half, the nocturnally booming percussion is a Haxan Cloak trademark, and the formless, haunting ambient drone is an Arca staple. The latter track even more obviously states that Arca is in the mix: the arhythmic shuffle of horror shop synths outlining its distant edges almost sound lifted straight from last year’s Xen. Then there’s “History of Touches,” built on a completely percussion-less grip that most blatantly recalls Arca’s debut.

Clearly, the helping hands here are a notable and exciting factor in Vulnicura‘s success, but it’s far too often overlooked that Björk leads her music’s production. Vulnicura will grow to be known as an album that sounds like classic Björk; if she were not the major force in her songs’ production, this would be impossible. Rather, the significance of Arca and Haxan Cloak as co-producers is that they’re both known for executing their mutated, pitch-black styles quite minimally, reputations that led Björk to choose them as cohorts. The selection of this approach to songwriting defines Vulnicura; specifically, Björk’s occupation of this sonic template expertly matches the newly personal subjects of her lyrics.

Vulnicura‘s barren, eerie soundscapes excellently accentuate the heartbreak defining the words. This is an album whose first track declares “I have emotional needs”; it’s immediately obvious that this will be no easy journey. Two tracks later, “History of Touches” quite literally recites a detailed retrospective on the very end of Björk’s relationship with Matthew Barney; its words are almost spoken rather than sung, with the incredibly spacious music surrounding it likely built to accentuate Björk’s speech. Outlining her past is just one step in moving on, though: “If I regret us/I’m denying my soul to grow/don’t remove my pain/it is my chance to heal,” she sings on “Notget”, a song where she tries to sympathize with Barney and see things from his perspective. This attempt to conquer her emotional pain is quite clearly necessary, as outlined by what’s arguably Vulnicura‘s single most heartbreaking lyric: “My soul torn apart/my spirit is broken/into the fabric of all he’s woven,” Björk states on the ten-minute “Black Lake”, a deeply complex piece that Billboard has already mislabeled as a Matthew Barney diss track. The song and this lyric are far more than merely an insult: it’s instead a deep analysis of both their roles in their split. Björk knows that, as a part of Barney, standing in his shoes might help.

Björk’s sorrows extend well beyond the departure of a long time lover, though; these two also brought a daughter into this world. On “Family”, a harrowing standout, she begins by asking, “Is there a place/where I can pay respects/for the death of my family?” These lyrics are almost unrealistically straightforward and morbid for Björk – only the opener’s “What is it that I have/that makes me feel your pain/like milking a stone” and the entirety of “Atom Dance” rewind to Biophilia‘s mystifying science metaphors – as they are throughout the album, bringing her pain and raw emotion to the center of her music for the first time in far too long. The unsettling declaration of “When I’m broken I am whole/and when I’m whole, I am broken” sung during “Quicksand” may be an acknowledgement of just how successful these songs are for letting their guard down; regardless, the sadness of these sentiments is new for Björk.

This lyric gets even sadder, though: later in the song, Björk changes “I” to “we,” adding an entire further layer of human depth to her words. This change in wording towards the final moments of the album might depict the last stage in grieving: acceptance. That said, it’s not too likely that this is the case, since as of this past Halloween, she’s still understandably tender about the situation. “I’m just going to have to cry and be a mess and do it,” she told Pitchfork’s Jessica Hopper in a recent interview when asked how she’ll be able to convey these songs live. Very simply put, when an artist cries while singing her words, that’s how you know it’s real. If the made up word “vulnicura” does indeed have a meaning, it may well be “heart-on-sleeve”: now approaching a half-century in age, Björk is once again putting it all on the line the way she did she was in her thirties. It sounds very much like this album was therapeutic for her to create; that she found a kindred spirit in Arca to guide her so closely in a time of emotional vulnerability is just as remarkable. Even more miraculous, though, is that this living legend has recovered from a small but previously thought irreversible decline in her career to deliver her most impactful songs in almost eighteen years.

Panda Bear, real name Noah Lennox, may have accidentally prematurely ruined his newest album, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, for a small handful of fans. For listeners who enjoy coming up with their own meanings for songs they hear – a faction that does indeed exist – Lennox’s recent revelation to The Fader of the truths behind Grim Reaper‘s songs might dampen the album experience. Of course, this problem could be avoided quite simply by just not reading the article; on the other hand, the thirteen songs comprising the album don’t rely on their words to stick as sharply as they do. Although the subject matter of Lennox’s lyrics, both in his solo career and within his revered group Animal Collective, is often quite deep, Grim Reaper continues his trend of obscuring his already cryptic words with seemingly infinite layers of sound, one of which includes his distinct voice. This instrument’s inherent ability to blur his message while shining brightly through his soundscapes remains key on Grim Reaper; that said, the album continues his previous effort Tomboy‘s upward trend of clearing the vocal fog of his breakthrough Person Pitch, thanks in no small part to a newfound volume and percussive influence from hip-hop.

Although Grim Reaper‘s gorgeously stagnant, watery opener “Sequential Circuits” might be seen as a purposeful throwback to the hazy, understated Person Pitch, Lennox quickly suggests this track to be a false start with his subsequent placement of “Mr. Noah” as the next song in line. Released late last year to extensive critical acclaim, “Mr. Noah” places Panda Bear closer to the dance floor than ever before while retaining his signature glee and playfulness. Lennox’s buoyant, ecstatic vocals seem to tell an incoherent story, but this only becomes apparent after many listens; the focus of this song, like on most of the album, is the shifting, warbly synths, surprisingly hefty percussive groove, and overall psychedelic sunshine swirl. Lennox’s vocal inflection, pitches, and tones play an important role in establishing this feel, but his actual sentiments take a backseat to all else, only emerging forward in the mix after repeated listens.

The fact that Lennox’s vocals are at all intelligible is actually quite a significant step forward in the Panda Bear catalog. Think back to Person Pitch, which contained moments, such as “Take Pills”, with lyrics that, despite being nearly indiscernible, bore significant depth and meaning. Grim Reaper improves on this prior tendency, ensuring that the doe-eyed, harp-led heartache of “Tropic of Cancer” weighs its tragic words and its melting instrumental equally. “Butcher Baker Candlestick Maker” and “Come to Your Senses” also skillfully balance what’s being said and what’s being heard, although it can be argued that, as is classic Panda Bear, the sound of these tunes’ vocals matters far more than their actual content. In particular, the latter’s cries of “Are you mad?” seem merely comical when aligned with the footwork of the underlying beats, an entertainingly novel percussive technique for Panda Bear.

Where lyrical clarity, vocal intensity, and hip-hop groove most fiercely align here is on second single and album highlight “Boys Latin.” This song has maybe the most readily audible lyrics of the album; that every word is accompanied with a lopsided echo accentuates just how tough it can be to know what Lennox is saying elsewhere. A listener seeking to make sense of the repeated refrain “Beasts don’t have a sec to think, but/we don’t appreciate a thing” might encounter a significant challenge doing so before reading that pesky Fader article, but these words are delivered sprightly and joyfully enough that their meaning doesn’t matter. The song’s other lyric, “There’s a dark cloud descending again/and a shadow moves in the darkness”, takes an intentionally murkier vocal turn, successfully paving a transition from faintly lighthearted to overwhelmingly ominous. This change is contained entirely in Lennox’s incredibly deft vocals; the jilting, synth-and-drum interlaced groove remains nearly the same throughout the song, one which entraps and resonates throughout.

Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper marks a slight sonic evolution for its creator, but still feels like it could only come from this sole source. It’s an idiosyncratic document from someone who might be staring death in the eyes, a weird position from which to be sending signals this colorful. If this is how death feels, what are we waiting for?

About a month ago, I prefaced my review of Little Big League’s Tropical Jinx with a brief discussion of the Northeast’s burgeoning DIY scene. It’s a conversation that bears repeating upon the release of Two Inch Astronaut’s sophomore album, Foulbrood. Exploding in Sound is releasing this record, which adds to the continuous stream of notable works from the smaller label scene. The album is certainly more angular and technical than many other bands in this sect of modern punk music could even hope to achieve, yet it still feels right at home with the northeastern DIY crowd. That said, it’s not always as compelling as albums like, say, labelmates Krill’s jagged freakout Lucky Leaves or Double Double Whammy queen Mitski’s booming, thunderous Bury Me at Make Out Creek. In fact, it can actually grow tedious to listen to the entirety of Foulbrood in one sitting; instead, the standout songs hold up incredibly strongly on their own, with the rest of the songs being simply respectable, only a little bit interesting.

Foulbrood‘s technical prowess often sounds engaging and fresh, but this same trait sometimes comes with a sacrifice of overall song quality. Contrasting “Part of Your Scene” with “Black Fridge Area” sheds light on this conflict pretty nicely. The former track’s fuzz-blown guitars alternate between suppressed high notes and gruff, static-screen power-chord murk at an impressive pace, and its vocals snarl and bark appropriately fiercely. This combination of elements creates one of the album’s best tracks, whereas the dry, defeated approach to dissonance and showiness on “Black Fridge Area” keeps things relatively flat until the last-minute. As this song’s end approaches, the guitars wail more loudly and with far more venom, but this effect drowns out the vocals, a musical layer that could elevate the song instead of hiding behind it. “1, 2, Talk” suffers a similar flaw, its splayed, eerie notes not quite supporting vocalist Sam Rosenberg as intensely as they could. This song too approaches a higher state as it nears its end, but even the brief sequence of dirty, fleshy guitar playing that comprises the outro doesn’t hold up as well as other moments on Foulbrood. The apex of Two Inch Astronaut faltering in their flashiness, though, is “Dead White Boy,” an eight minute stoner crawl that visits so many different ideas that it’s difficult to keep up with; even describing its sound and structure proves frustrating.

Enough with the derision, though: there’s also quite a lot to celebrate about Foulbrood. The album begins excitingly with the thick, gravelly cut of the title track’s guitars, and Rosenberg’s vocals here act flexibly enough to ensure a great jam. His guitar playing is also pretty all-over-the-place, but in this case, the craziness establishes a sticky groove. Likewise, the crunch and mobility of “Type Four” is shaky in just the right way, and the lacerating high notes of its chorus are particularly incisive. The album’s true peak, though, is “No Feelings,” a jagged, brooding punk anthem that thrills in its visceral fidgetiness. “You’ve got a tendency to move slow!” Rosenberg shouts during this song’s chorus, but this sentiment directly opposes the music, which is chock full of dynamic shifts, high-octane guitar riffing, and odd pacing. Were Foulbrood to consistently use this band’s technical skills in the same electrifying, corrosive way it does on “No Feelings”, Exploding in Sound might be able to lay claim to 2014’s best punk album.

Instead, that honor still belongs to the handful of labels that distributed and released Cloud Nothings’ Attack on Memory earlier this year, but Foulbrood is nevertheless an accomplishment that Exploding in Sound can use to elevate its status among other, better-known labels. Of course the record has notable flaws, but it’s also smeared with the signs of a band that might strike pure gold in due time. For every misplaced note, guitar overexertion, or underwhelming vocal take, there’s a searing riff, a brash romp, or gut-wrenching shout. It’s a balancing act that Two Inch Astronaut is still working to perfect, but for now, they’re well worth attending to if their highlights remain the focus.

Mitski just found herself. “I’m not gonna be what my daddy wants me to be,” she chants on the harrowing, overblown chorus of “Townie”, the second single from her third and best album to date, Bury Me at Make Out Creek. It’s exactly the kind of phrase that might accompany the self-realizations that bolster the album; in fact, Make Out Creek is the first instance of Mitski sounding truly like herself, being what only she wants to be. The ghostly, precious chamber pop of her first two albums is here traded for an equally haunting, but far noisier and visceral sound. Although a few similar artists come to mind, the album is distinctly Mitski, and in discovering herself, she’s quite possibly discovered only herself: this mammoth of a collection is a treatise in loneliness, heartbreak, and the woes of solitude.

“I’ve been anywhere and it’s not what I want/I want to be still with you,” echo some of Bury Me at Make Out Creek‘s very first lines. These lovelorn sentiments, taken from opening track “Texas Reznikoff,” are as fractured and emotionally devastating as the song itself: a broken, ominous, muted folk introduction segues into a stomping, raucous, overwhelming garage pounder. The chilly image of “you’re the breeze in my Austin nights” previews next track “Townie” nicely, as do the noise and volume underlying these words. Later songs continue in this trend, with “First Love // Late Spring” gradually blooming from a barren sigh into a blazing, organ-filled coda. “One word from you, and I would jump off of this ledge I’m on, baby,” Mitski sings stolidly, emphasizing her conviction to end her loneliness.

Even the arrangements and sounds of Bury Me at Make Out Creek feel like dreary, open, depressing spaces. The guttural guitar roar of these songs often
has little to no other backing, and this sparseness is a deeply affecting, masterfully precise match for the album’s themes. The lone distorted guitar that begins “I Don’t Smoke” is only joined by at most another guitar, a distant, reverb-heavy percussion set, and Mitski’s evocative vocals; “I Will” finds Mitski’s voice at its most PJ Harvey-like against just faint keys, slinky bass, and cacophonous muted drumming. “Francis Forever” also deals in relatively minimal terrain, but uses this lack of layers to achieve a bit more noise. In whatever final form these scant sounds take, they’re deeply moving, and each pose provides deep insight into Mitski’s emotional plight.

Despite how well-crafted and successful the more sparing songs are, Bury Me at Make Out Creek‘s most memorable tracks tend to possess louder, more maximalist instrumentation. Such moments often follow quieter sections similar to those forming the entirety of other songs, making their presence a surprise that ensures the greatest possible impact. “Carry Me Out” is a great example: its initial disarming folk stance blossoms into a wailing, searing wall of guitars and demonically layered vocal chanting. “Texas Reznikoff” also opens the album with this strategy, trapping any listeners who might’ve considered ditching the album. But the song that will truly get the most attention for applying this formula is the downright scary, truly impeccable seventh track “Drunk Walk Home.” What starts as a small spattering of basic drums and an incredibly powerful vocal performance evolves into a more brazen percussive shuffle and dual-guitar unease. This tiny step up eventually explodes into a barrage of cutting, heavy guitar slamming and horror film screaming that feels like it’s trying to return to life from the grave. Easily Make Out Creek‘s standout track, it’s like Mitski’s “Hannah Hunt”: a third-album song whose moderate progression in volume and tension eventually reaches its bubbling point, resulting in a payoff that redeems itself time after time, it feels like the greatest gift the artist may ever offer.

Not to fret, though: if anything, Mitski’s latest full-length forecasts an incredibly rewarding career ahead. When a musician reinvents their sound this successfully, but with a respectable amount of sonic discrepancies among songs, it tends to be the next step in an even more cohesive, gripping direction. As menacing in its most booming moments as it is unsettling in its more subdued states, Bury Me at Make Out Creek shows Mitski solidifying her unique sound while maintaining a bit of stylistic flexibility. That someone this musically confident can be so lonely might initially be shocking, but then again, her music now stands in a class of its own. Who needs other people when you can spend time with music this good?

Eternally suffering the brunt of the music industry’s pitfalls, the DIY scene still manages to release incredible music in spite of all the obstacles facing it. In particular, New England and the Tri-State Area are putting out some incredible sounds, and many of the most notable acts from these scenes quickly get signed to rising, wholly independent record labels. Specifically, Run for Cover Records, Exploding in Sound Records, and Double Double Whammy, all labels so small that they still have Bandcamp pages, are responsible for providing listeners the recent best of what lies at the fringes of the industry. Based in Boston, Brooklyn, and Ridgewood, NJ respectively (well, EiS also has space in Boston), these labels have given excellent acts like Radiator Hospital, Krill, Two Inch Astronaut, Ovlov, Crying, Pity Sex, Makthaverskan, Mitski, and LVL UP an outlet to captivate bigger audiences. In fact, Speedy Ortiz, now universally revered in indie circles, got their start on EiS before jumping to the somewhat bigger indie label Carpark Records.

It’s worth exploring these labels in depth, but for now, this very superficial overview makes a nice backdrop against which Little Big League’s sophomore effort, Tropical Jinx, can be viewed. This Philadelphia-based four-piece, now signed to Run for Cover after releasing their debut on Tiny Engines, write somewhat lo-fi, faintly dissonant, anxiously glum tunes in line with a lot of the music these labels put out. Their nervously dismal style is grounded by the respectably flexible musicianship of vocalist/guitarist Michelle Zauner, and her words and vocals guide Tropical Jinx across ten antsy, impactful tracks in only thirty-four minutes. The album is merely the latest example of a long lineage of DIY music that manages to be tense and emotive without sounding whiny and irrational, a great new addition to the already wonderful set of recent albums looking back on emo music and 1990s sparseness and loneliness.

Within the album’s opening moments, Tropical Jinx declares its debt to the twinkle of emo and the solitude its lyrics explore. The rough but restrained distortion on the opening notes of the first song (appropriately, the title track) segues into an array of deeply hurt, staring-at-the-ground rock instrumentation. Words arrive soon thereafter, and Zauner’s chilling confession of “I used to have it memorized — the sound of you entering a room” indicates the abandoned direction this album’s lyrics will take. Later tracks such as the woozy, hushed “Take It To a Weird Sad Place” and the roaring, monstrous “Sucker” expand on these themes; in particular, the latter track is one of Jinx‘s best, and it’s exemplary of many of the album’s strengths. Even through the song’s cutting post-hardcore guitar work and fuzzy sonic barriers, Zauner’s lyrics stab like the sharpest of incisors; “Always tend to thrive alone” in the first verse is bested by the chorus’ “I don’t want to leave the house/I’m a sucker/worship the hand over my mouth.” This last line is modified to “worship the hand inside my mouth” for the second chorus, the effect of which is exactly as disquieting as Little Big League planned it to be.

Another strength that “Sucker” displays helps point to an area in which Little Big League could stand to improve. After the last chorus, a chant of “This calls for some drugs” is followed by a brief but intense moment in which Zauner ends the previously stated motif of “I don’t want to leave the house” by gutturally screaming “The house!” The extra force stored in these two words is only repeated on Tropical Jinx during the album’s best song, “Dixie Gun.” Probably the best song about catcalling since Sylvan Esso’s “Hey Mami” blew up earlier this year, its second chorus, like that of “Sucker”, leads to a breakdown followed by a rushing, acutely gratifying sing-turned-shout of “On every fucking street in town/you’ll be the one/they’ll say/’WELL HE WAS ASKING FOR IT!'” It would be great to see Little Big League include more screaming in future releases; of course, Zauner’s low-key, bleeding-heart singing sounds great, but her robust shouting is like an adrenaline shot directly to the heart.

Nevertheless, the seclusion and stress of Tropical Jinx prove to be quite worthwhile throughout. The hazy but scorching instrumentation further adds to this fulfilling setup; lyrics such as “I can’t get you off my mind/I can’t get you off in general” from the don’t-leave-me tale “Boyish” ensure that these oft-explored feelings don’t go stale, and the discomfiting imagery of the slacker-esque “Property Line” achieves the same effect. It’s all very impressive work, one that merits the question, why don’t bands like this have a bigger audience yet? The answer might be that, with releases this good, the DIY scene may soon find itself exposed to more ears than ever before. And if that doesn’t happen, then at the very least, the artists and labels who work tirelessly from the bottom of their hearts to do what they love have every right to be deeply proud of what they’ve created.

“Top 40 synth sounds from a few years ago but with more reverb on the vocals: indie in 2k14. No thank you.” This recent tweet from Vampire Weekend soundmaster Rostam Batmanglij, despite being a bit rude and superficial, isn’t an uncommon view among listeners these days. It’s a criticism that’s been unfairly lobbed at acts like CHVRCHES, M83, and HAIM, and one that assumes all pop music is bad music. Enter Zola Jesus’ fifth album Taiga, a moving piece that will change this conversation. There’s no denying that the song structures of classic radio pop litter this album, and that Zola Jesus, real name Nika Roza Danilova, sounds like she’s beckoning from inside an echo chamber. But even with the lackluster, nature-exploring narrative throughout, Taiga is far more enveloping and dramatic than a commercial pop album. It’s a cinematic approach to a familiar template, and it’s incredibly striking and beautiful despite its flaws.

Taiga seems to find a specific precedent in Danilova’s guest appearance on M83’s 2011 track “Intro”, possibly her best-known song to date despite not being hers. The film-like spectacle and overwhelming rush of M83’s best work provides an affecting, entrapping cornerstone for this album’s production; hell, it sounds like M83 mastermind Anthony Gonzalez produced these tracks. Lead single and album highlight “Dangerous Days” is particularly guilty of this sin, but the same traits that recall M83 also ensure that the hairs on attentive listeners’ spines will stand straight up. “Lawless”, another top track, also benefits from this treatment, as its choral strings and mountainous beckon, which could sound cheesy in the wrong hands (and, honestly, almost do here), instead skyrocket towards some intensely tall target that they somehow successfully reach.

Danilova takes risk after risk here, walking the paper-thin line between near-artless radio fodder and beautifully composed, deeply moving synthpop across eleven tracks in forty-two minutes. Where her former strain of Gothic pop dealt in idiosyncratic restraint, Taiga instead pounds forward forcefully, taking chances on some rough stakes. “Hunger” clomps along menacingly, with its shifting percussion and acute synth spikes drastically spicing up its standard pop form. “Nail” is approximately every mainstream pop ballad distilled into a more chilling, primal form; “Ego” too reads like an overused formula given new, meaningful life. These are very calculated risks: Danilova’s tightrope walk between vapid and intense is deft, at times almost scary.

And this is all thanks in no small part to her incredible voice. Listening to the elementary descriptions on “Hollow”, the slightly bereft words of “Dust”, or the weird lecture of “Long Way Down”, it’s clear that few other voices could actually make these lyrics tolerable. Danilova has such an all-consuming, vital, vast, gorgeous voice that she could say anything not outrightly offensive or crazy and still sound fierce. Her roar only further enhances the sweeping choruses of songs like “Dangerous Days” and “Hunger”, both of which are guilty of boasting some of the more commonplace poetry of recent tunes. It’s interesting that Taiga works by sacrificing lyrical quality at the benefit of vocal expansiveness; it’s bound to infuriate listeners in line with Rostam Batmanglij’s philosophy, but with a voice this drastic and urgent, who needs a deeper, possibly pretentious meaning?

Yet there’s one moment here where Danilova’s songwriting is bound to please all camps. This song is “Go (Blank Sea)”, Taiga‘s second single. An immaculately crafted work of synthpop introspection, its lyrics depict something more universal than the often somewhat failed connection to nature pervading the album: a desire to escape, to be alone. Here, Danilova goes “downtown/where they don’t/know [her] name”, finally freeing herself from the forest which Taiga is named after (it’s Russian for “boreal forest”). It’s a theme anyone can relate to, and it’s not disguised in bourgeois metaphors or imagery. It’s also interesting that her words and sounds succeed most outrightly when she ventures forth from the very theme of her album (the forest and nature), with a supreme, omnipresent chorus that only the most sour of ears could deny.

And sour ears will surely deny Taiga; as established here, there’s a few small reasons to. In light of these oddities, it’s all the more shocking that this album is so unforgettable, so piercing, so righteous. The music is so tremendous that its obvious weaknesses and risks simply fall to the wayside. That a voice and some synths can still do this in an era where Top 40 songs instead use these tools for generic money-making tunes is a testament to something even larger than a boreal forest.

Everything’s a remix. Consequently, there’s a comfortable aftertaste that lingers when a band can admit to wearing their influences on their sleeves. It’s a tricky, meandering road that can lead to either drowning in one’s influences or accepting the idea that we are all students of popular culture. Tennis, a husband and wife ensemble realizes that everything we create is a fusion of the past and current trends.

The album art of their latest project Ritual in Repeat takes a sharp turn with its personification of the disruptive forces that comes with comfort and uniformity. The album cover features a face that’s missing eyes, nose and all the psychological structures upon which our senses are built. Missing everything that helps shape identity. After two albums and one EP the band understandably found themselves sinking in a monotonous cycle. To break their rituals, Tennis enlisted the help of Patrick Carney of the Black Keys, Jim Eno of Spoon, and Richard Swift of the Shins. Ritual in Repeat marks on the state of being in a cloudy place, existing without one’s true identity. The album ushers in strong ideals about love, entitlement, public persona, dreams, triumph and tribulations. Tennis sails into their third album quite confidently by remixing old nostalgic sounds to create a sonically engaging experience that is both physical and endearing.

On this new LP, Tennis manages not to abandon their signature glossy and high rolling sounds. What happens differently, is the noticeable change in thematic arc. Track after track, Tennis recreates important social commentary by carefully fusing songs together into a smooth thesis. More importantly, the songs are disguised and hidden behind colorful instrumentals inspired by different decades. Ultimately, it enables us to listen, think, and then feel. Tennis gets real deep. The stories and lyrics are accentuated by interesting moments of social commentary. There are so many tracks worth re-listening to for the sole purpose of dissection and analysis.

Disco sensibilities drum up playful thumping, as Alaina Moore allows her vocals to fly freely on the track “Never Work For Free”. The line “I can’t give up what never belonged to me” is a commentary on the sense of entitlement that people feel when pursuing their dreams or love. The track drives home the sentiment that only through hard work and not entitlement do people actually succeed. Tennis delivers some more bouncy and thoughtful tracks. At the middle of the track-list is the song, “Bad Girls” which is inspired the by the 90’s gospel revivalist movement. The reborn aura is complemented by what sounds like a faint organ piano in the background. This song explores the young scarlet culture in hollywood and the good girl/bad girl labels. “Needle and a Knife” has lovely elements of 80’s funk and 60’s grooves complete with a strong message of empowered single women. The visual makeup of this album produces catchy and sticky tasty treats.

The last half of the album, packs less punch but is stripped back enough to feel nicely intimate. Equal rotation of sounds that borrow from different decades give the record a refreshing angle whether or not a track is stripped back or grander. “Viv Without the N” is a harmonizing gem, while “Wounded Heart” is a somber moment that leaves lasting feeling. From the track “This Isn’t My Song” until the last song “Meter & Line”, Tennis rides on a nice soft path. By trading their old their rituals for more bolder messages the duo comes out sounding more vivid. There’s an enjoyable balance between sounding great and having interesting lyrical content. Ritual in Repeat is carved as a natural synthesis of old school rock elements shaped into a radio hit with important little hidden treasures.

Avi Zahner-Isenberg is a weird dude. The songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist of the Long Beach-based band Avi Buffalo has an Instagram account replete with morbid, badly-drawn Microsoft Paint sketches of objects ranging from skeletons to skyscrapers to the insides of homes. As if this weren’t odd enough, the lyrics he sings on his band’s sophomore effort, At Best Cuckold, can be incredibly bad, to the point where it would be shocking if someone other than a thoroughly zany dude wrote them. Instead of being cringe worthy, though, Zahner-Isenberg’s words sound like a deeply genuine form of self-expression when paired with his immaculate, widescreen landscapes of gorgeous, reverb-soaked, crystal-clear guitars, lucid, precise pianos and frequently falsetto vocals. At Best Cuckold displays a socially strange twenty-something year old using the universal language of music to build bridges with people who might otherwise find him disquieting.

It’s easy to isolate bad lyricism from the songs on At Best Cuckold, especially since they’re often equally strange both with and without context. A notable example of this appears just after the album’s midpoint on the psych folk beauty “Found Blind.” “I was not well/and you could tell/I’m walking barefoot with some blank CDs/I’m borrowing from the campsite next door”, Zahner-Isenberg narrates with words so specific that the image they conjure is both unsettling, as probably intended, and straight up goofy. But the watery, vast acoustics and general sunshine of this track would really allow him to say anything at all; it just sounds so good that these awkward words almost become beautiful. “Oxygen Tank” is an even more blatant example of the poetic murder Zahner-Isenberg often gets away with committing; just a brief moment before the music begins, he states, “A man carrying an oxygen tank/is gonna come kill me and my family too/if I don’t stop seeing you.” Later in the song, he describes the “sounds of babies screaming/coughing, breathing poorly/in the backseat.” However, this song’s lackluster piano-based gloom isn’t nearly enough to excuse these images, making it the album’s worst track.

Imagery that’s almost as specific pervades another album highlight. “Bitch I’m on fire/you got magnum desire/I’m a cheese ball on fire” is one of the first things Zahner-Isenberg declares on “Memories of You”, which is at least partially about a blowjob (“hello sweat pea/my boner pressed/up to your chest/I let go”; “my cherry pie/please take my load/just got one holy road”). In this very same song, Zahner-Isenberg also mentions, in his words, “the mourning of the grandpa I never met.” If anything it’s a testament to the space oddity that is Avi Zahner-Isenberg, it’s his ease in thinking about sex and family within the same minute. The lyrics here are some of the album’s most memorable simply because they’re so insane, but what really ensures their impact is that Zahner-Isenberg’s high-pitched coo is drop-dead gorgeous, and the bright sparkle of piano and glorious guitars below his sentiments shoot straight into the spine. It’s incredible that Avi Buffalo can completely negate the flaws in their lyricism with such an unforgettable, sprawling melody.

Of course, a guy who can feel confident in publishing lyrics as bizarre as these could drift into some very unfriendly territory if he didn’t include some wholly resounding words in his work. It’s fitting, then, that first single and album opener “So What” has a set of excellent, albeit tangential and spontaneous, lyrics; the Real Estate-like guitar jangle that guides the song is a perfect match to Zahner-Isenberg’s ethereal, hazy vocals. The story told here is a lovelorn one, and the vein of faint melancholy running through this song also aligns nicely with this theme, making for one of At Best Cuckold‘s most enjoyable songs. Elsewhere, the gentle, heartwarming folk rock of “Overwhelmed with Pride” employs dismal descriptions of roads and birds (okay, “And these birds seem so fucking free” is the one bad lyric stuck in this otherwise stunning poem, but let’s not dwell on it). “Can’t Be Too Responsible” also gets by on some pretty solid wordwork, making Zahner-Isenberg’s defeated sighs of “I won’t give in” seem all the realer. An equally deflated guitar line is far more centered than the rest of the song’s instrumentation, and the dejected atmosphere of the song is unforgettably disarming.

In general, At Best Cuckold is an album that’s striking in its balanced sadness. This is perhaps most obvious when hearing its last track, “Won’t Be Around No More”, the album’s most explicitly forlorn tune. A organ-like synth hums lowly in the periphery as Zahner-Isenberg delivers his most steady falsetto on the album; the delicate acoustics of the song’s verses expand slightly into quietly fuzzed, fully heartbroken electrics. Naturally, a clunky lyric pops up here (“I stayed up all night/made sure I was hard/kissed you in the morning/right beside her”), but the track is so emotionally tearing that all its words feel endearing. The more Zahner-Isenberg sings “I won’t be around no more”, the more it becomes believable. In its place as the album’s final statement, it might also mean that this is the last we’ll hear from Avi Buffalo; after all, they did take a four year break of near complete silence between this album and their debut. The woe surrounding this statement will be shared by the listener as At Best Cuckold reaches its close, and this weirdo from Long Beach will have suddenly made connections all across the globe.

In case you were wondering, no, Being is not the work of the woman who is actually Mozart’s sister. Instead, Mozart’s Sister is the alias of Caila Thompson-Hannant, who chose her moniker because the real Mozart’s sister was an underdog and an outsider excluded by her peers. The real figure after whom Thompson-Hannant is named could have left a musical legacy as vast as her brother’s if women had been treated equally to men during their time. Thompson-Hannant feels like “a bit of a loner”, in her own words; although her comparison of this mentality to the sexism Mozart’s sister faced in her time is a bit of a stretch, it clues listeners in to the sounds and feelings pervading Being. With song titles such as “Lone Wolf”, “Do It To Myself (Run Run)”, and “Don’t Leave It To Me”, Thompson-Hannant’s debut explores loneliness in a way that makes it seem like the very essence of her, er, being.

That’s not to say that Mozart’s Sister treats loneliness with disdain. On “Lone Wolf”, she sounds incredibly excited to be “moving through the night”, as the song’s chorus puts it. “The best part about going out/is coming home alone/fuck yeah, I’m fifteen again/living out on my own,” whispers Thompson-Hannant over synths that, despite being some of the Being‘s slinkiest and nocturnal, may also be the album’s most pop-leaning. Likewise, “Do It To Myself (Run Run)” celebrates the personal freedom of not being tied down in a bad relationship, and features robotic, ominous synth work that’s fully appropriate for the topics at hand. But it’s really opener “Good Thing, Bad Thing” that cements her stance: “I like being alone alright” is one of the song’s first lyrics (and thereby one of the album’s first lines).

What ensures that Being is memorable is how precisely its instrumentals match these sentiments. Throughout the album, Thompson-Hannant crafts synthetic soundscapes that are resplendent in their murky darkness and low-rumbling tones. “Enjoy” makes its titular command easy thanks in no small part to the anxious, introverted contrast between its pitter-patter of bleak synthetic sounds and Thompson-Hannant’s pleading, oscillating voice. “A Move”, one of the quieter, more introspective tracks here, matches the album’s most Little Dragon-esque vocal performance with a slowly blossoming field of computer-built nocturne. “Bow a Kiss” especially impacts unforgettably due to its dicey, anxious darkness: the album’s least serious tune by some distance, Thompson-Hannant’s hilarious, out-of-place wails of “street boy, pussy money, pussy money!” are rendered genuine musical material by the song’s frayed, somewhat dance-centered groove. It’s a track that most obviously displays the alignment between words and music on Being: that its most whimsical song is also its most energetic and nervous is no coincidence.

Another artist who might be described as energetic, nervous, and whimsical is Thompson-Hannant’s friend and soundalike Grimes. In fact, when comparing Being to Grimes’ work, the Mozart’s Sister moniker takes on another meaning: living in the shadow of someone close to you. Being‘s main flaw, and one that Mozart’s Sister may continue to face, is that her work exists very specifically in the shadow of Grimes and the sect of art-electronic that she’s inspired since her 2012 masterpiece Visions. For example, “Salty Tear” has Thompson-Hannant focusing on her upper vocal register, filling out a minimal, slow-budding electronic instrumental with chanty, chirping, fairy-like vocals, just as Grimes is known to do. “My House Is Wild” also suffers this plague, although the strength of Thompson-Hannant’s lead vocals here allow listeners to overlook just how similar the peripheral vocal bits sound to the rest of the new art-electronic uprising. “Falf 1”, with a beat that could be a distant cousin of “Genesis”, even more deeply echoes Grimes, but also traces the steps of contemporaries Little Dragon and Santigold. It’s safe to say, then, that Being is stuck primarily in one artist’s shadow, while also briefly hiding in the shade of other established acts.

Luckily, though, Thompson-Hannant seems aware of how similar and often-done her sound is, otherwise Being would fail completely. Instead, it’s a good, but not quite great, album filled with enjoyable songs that aren’t ashamed of their flaws. It’s an interesting type of confidence, since it allows these songs to stick somewhat, yet prevents them from flowing with the uniqueness that ensures the success of truly unforgettable artists. It would be impossible to write a song as hooky and monstrous as “Bow a Kiss” if not for an extensive amount of brazenness and conviction, but Mozart’s Sister will need to improve in these departments for her future releases to stay interesting. For now, though, what we have is enough to appreciate.

Benjamin High did not die in vain. His tragic 2007 passing at just 19 years old, far too young an age for anyone to leave us, began to inform Cymbals Eat Guitars’ impressive catalog even before the band caught listeners’ attention with their 2009 debut Why There Are Mountains. High, a member of the long-defunct Green Arrows and briefly a contributor to Why There Are Mountains, met CEG’s frontman Joseph D’Agostino at a basement show in West Caldwell, New Jersey, and the two were instantly best friends; D’Agostino recently described their spark to Wondering Sound as “the equivalent of love at first sight for friends.” Understandably, the sudden, heart shattering loss of such a close companion still afflicts D’Agostino today, but only during the writing of his band’s third effort, appropriately titled LOSE, did he truly feel comfortable approaching his emotions. LOSE is rife with intensely personal lyrics, both in its more tranquil, traditionally gorgeous moments and during its riotous, searing garage rock anthems. The music often remains emotionally striking, even when D’Agostino’s quavering, needy voice obscures his exact words.

LOSE opens with its first single, “Jackson”, an excellent choice for a first track (and single). It firmly establishes the elements the album’s songs will bear: somber pianos, agony-laced guitar strife, unusually stable, affecting vocal work from D’Agostino, specific, storytelling lyrics, and a song structure that’s long, but not needlessly so, form this track’s backbone. “You’re taking two Klonopin/So you can quit flipping/And face our friends” is an incredibly honest group of words to open this song, and thereby the album; delivered in the almost Antlers-like haze of “Jackson”‘s music, it delivers an undeniable blow to the ears.

That “Jackson” is not nearly the only moment of emotional clarity, musical beauty, and ambitious length to appear on LOSE ensures its success. “Place Names” and “Laramie”, respectively six and eight minutes each, bear the intensity, both lyrically and musically, of “Jackson”, and both tracks are album highlights. “Laramie” scoops up a bit of what’s made CEG’s previous two albums great — the grey, moody, Modest Mouse-like atmospherics of Lenses Alien in its first half, the berserk yelping and frantic synth-guitar interplay of Why There Are Mountains‘ “…And The Hazy Sea” in its second half — and blends these traits together into an impactful tune. “Place Names”, which bears one of LOSE‘s most memorable choruses, begins as merely a draft of a thought, and ends six minutes later in a spectacle of chilling, Local Natives-esque oohs and aahs. “For the last year you lived/You slept in your parents’ bed”, D’Agostino laments among a sea of swirling, phasing guitars, in just one instance of the riveting forwardness that pervades this track.

Even the shortest tracks on LOSE cram unsettling, intimate details into their short runtime. “XR” is LOSE‘s shortest track, but it may be the album’s most direct-from-the-diary story. Details such as the well-esteemed New Jersey record store Vintage Vinyl, a low-profile Wrens show, and the cult film Faces of Death feature in its lyrics, which also directly address “Ben [High]’s Myspace grave.” However, these specifics can be hard to discern without a lyrics sheet, given the filters applied to D’Agostino’s yelping, mad vocals; further, D’Agostino wrote “XR” specifically to be played in sweaty college basements, so its high-tempo guitar work and plastered harmonica blasts introduce a whole ton of wild fun at the cost of lyrical audibility.

“XR” is really the only track where the lyrical murkiness consistently presents a problem. “Chambers” and “Warning” definitely present small moments when it can be tough to decide what D’Agostino is saying, but their melodic, straightforward instrumentals perform a lot of the work over in the feelings department. In particular, “Warning” is a straight shot of musical adrenaline to the veins, as it would be even if the words to its chorus could be understood without a lyrics sheet. A searing, aggressive piece of shoegaze-indebted garage rock, it stands directly opposite the equally potent “Child Bride”, which barely boasts a guitar at all. Instead, pianos, orchestral strings, and D’Agostino’s heartbreaking vocals form this unforgettable tale about how a friend’s early years of child abuse proved a gateway to current drug abuse.

Most of LOSE is drenched in sounds so harrowing that their words, despite their importance, wind up playing second fiddle. Although this statement sounds like a backhanded insult, it’s actually a compliment. This quality turns out to be the album’s saving grace, a trait more easily realized when listening to the album’s last two tracks, which are its least interesting songs. “LifeNet” gives an underwhelming vocal performance from D’Agostino, although the lyric “getting laid in the black sand” isn’t an image that listeners will forget anytime soon. In its place directly following “Chambers” on the album, it just sounds like a less thoroughly worked-over version of its predecessor, since they really contain the same musical approaches. “2 Hip Soul” follows “LifeNet”, an excellent sequencing choice since it’s the slowest, moodiest tune on LOSE. But this is still a mode that CEG have yet to perfect: D’Agostino’s vocals, although often delicate, are just a bit too weak here, and the song suffers for it. Its most exciting part, its final two minutes, has no words. An instrumental riot of noise pop guitar work and a barrage of, er, cymbals, frame this segment of the song, ensuring that LOSE ends with a bang.

An album this imposing deserves to end on a grand, mountainous note, as it does. LOSE may not be a perfect album, but its tiny cluster of flaws doesn’t reduce the impact of its songs, even when their size shrouds their sentiments. No, these are truly skyscrapers of songs, tunes that reach all the way up to heaven. And up there, somewhere in the sky, Benjamin High is smiling — no, beaming — down upon LOSE and Joseph D’Agostino, just as he has been for seven years now.

Enigmatic swedish outfit JJ is known for their grandiose gestures. They have gifted fans with a euphoric Lil Wayne sample, a free Christmas Eve mix tape and a name change. However, there is still an atmosphere of mystique that clouds the band. Unlike most modern bands, you won’t find them doing routine press interviews. Amid their eclectic taste is a missing personal connection that is almost obligatory in our social media age. V stands to change that. According to the band V is a statement of communication. JJ’s discography features gritty tropical flavors that never truly feel too bubblegum pop. That same gritty flavor was well represented in the trailer for V. In true idiosyncratic fashion strong images of psychological pain, fire, and hard decisions warps in and out. The expectation was that the album would deliver relatable and believable honesty. The reality is that for better or worse, JJ sacrificed big sugary pop indulgent sounds for sculptured clarity.

JJ’s tendencies towards drama proves promising as V opens up to an airy and dire 48 seconds. The stark instrumental boils over into a picturesque sound reminiscent of a song that could be perfectly placed at the beginning of a coming of age indie flick. Perhaps it wasn’t accidental. By stripping down the beginning JJ interjected a feeling of transparency. On the second track, “Dynasti”, gradual drum beats dance as Elin Kastlander’s signature heavy vocals is perfectly choreographed. But not much separates this track from those found at the end of every Grey’s Anatomy episode. That essentially becomes V’s narrative. The band frequently presents their useful dichotomy of synthy chorus hooks and laid back delivery. “Dean & Me” is the epitome of what V has to offer. A familiar formula of dream-sequence-like opening that boils into a fiery pot of semi-interesting beats.

Amid that formula, the lead single “All White Everything” becomes more interesting even if the tempo never really explodes. Raw lyricism shine along the gorgeous piano notes. JJ manages to give a sharp imagery of isolation and the  beautiful disturbance that surrounds the color white. However, the album contain loads of sleeper tracks. Songs like “When I Need You”, “Full”, “Innerlight” will be forgotten t-minus one full listen of V.  “I” is a reused anecdote with the protagonist asking the ex lover if their current lover “do this like me, kiss like me or takes you there.” On top of that the album features basic lyrics like, “If you show me love you might get a hug but if you don’t I wont care at all.”  Song after song the album feels less interesting and more like a pot of contrived moves that resulted in boring cohesiveness.

In the middle of it all, “Fågelsången’s” jungle vibe is a short bite of something more promising. V itself is promising. The scale of the songs are grander but less exciting. For every forgettable track there is one that’s decent. V leaves something to be desired. Missing are the different textures and disturbances that are previewed on the album trailer. There is a lack of intensity and sonic disruption. The album never quite lives up to the hype and becomes a saturation of false hope.

Is FKA twigs human, or is she dancer? “I can’t recognize me”, she sighs at the end of “Video Girl”, a song that expresses her disdain towards sometimes being more noticed for her dancing in the background of two Jessie J videos, among others, than for her thriving music career. It seems that twigs herself, real name Tahliah Barnett, only sees the dancer in her, but LP1, her eagerly awaited debut, suggests she’s more human than most, despite the mysterious persona she’s cultivated since last year’s cherished EP2. Outside of “Video Girl”, LP1’s lyrics touch on sexuality and emotional intimacy in a stark, honest way, and her music, despite its jagged, eerie feel, is innately sensual and wholly resounding.

Both lyrically and sonically, the content of LP1 is a continuation of EP2. Past songs like “Water Me” and “Papi Pacify” now seem like stepping stones towards excellent tracks including “Pendulum” and “Give Up.” The disorienting, almost uncomfortable R&B of “Water Me” preludes the slithering background noise of “Pendulum”, and both songs explore unmet desires in a sexual partnership. Likewise, the expansive murkiness of “Papi Pacify” bleeds into “Give Up”, whose command of “Just nod your head and give up” doesn’t stray far from “Clarify your love” on “Papi Pacify.” What’s most clear when comparing the new tracks to their predecessors, is that Barnett has now refined EP2’s combined package of lust, desolation, and smokiness into a sound even stronger than her already haughty past works.

In fact, most of LP1 is sticky and irresistible, exactly as the lovers described in FKA twigs’ songs. “Video Girl” is slinky and subtle, but it’s impossible to get unstuck from your head after just a few listens. “Lights On” at first appears choppy and frenetic, but it quickly rearranges into a breathy, striking earworm. “Numbers”, one of the album’s more upfront, immediate moments, may at first dismay listeners seeking a tune as well-flowing as EP2’s “How’s That”, but it soon grows into a ballistic, hyper-tense tale of lovelorn regret. It doesn’t come without a veiled threat, though; Barnett refuses to merely express her anger, opting instead to also act on it with the question, “Tonight, do you want to live or die?”

Even when she’s hurt, Barnett remains in control of the situations she’s placed in, so it’s even more thrilling to hear her in a confident place of complete power. “Two Weeks”, LP1’s celestial standout and a hefty contender for Song of the Year, backs Barnett’s salacious boasting and unrestricted lust with her most uncomplicated, accessible production work to date. The trap drum flickers that appear every so often accentuate her already potent words: “higher than a motherfucker dreaming of you as my lover” is one of the year’s most unforgettable phrases, and the silken synth spikes underlying it swell its impact to undeniable proportions.

Sure, “Two Weeks” is excessive in its profanity and pretty much everything else, but this risky overindulgence is a massive success. It’s also LP1’s most maximalist, obtrusive track; it stands opposite the majority of the album, and casts a shadow over it. For example, the placement of “Hours” after “Two Weeks” makes its restrained, low-key electronics easy to gloss over; that it’s also the lead-up to “Pendulum” sure doesn’t help. “Closer” feels like it could explode into a sonic bliss similar to “Two Weeks”, but never quite gets there. Final track “Kicks” suffers mildly from the same plague, although its unwinding song structure and sexual loneliness, to be overly euphemistic, do entertain quite well.

It’s on this final track that FKA twigs asks, “What do I do when you’re not here?” After listening to LP1 only a handful of times, it’s inevitable to apply this question to the album. Few albums this summer have been as simultaneously perplexing, disquieting, intimate, gorgeous, and memorable as this one. What did we do without this album?

A shoegaze band named Field Mouse. At first glance, things couldn’t be any more typical, right? Here’s yet another female-fronted, searingly emotive band taking cues directly from My Bloody Valentine; here’s yet another band with the word “Field” in the name (try not to get them confused with The Field or especially Field Music); here’s yet another band with the word “Mouse” in the name (if you haven’t heard of deadmau5 or Modest Mouse, can you teach me how not to feel restless without an internet connection?). Inspecting more closely, though, Field Mouse are a foursome with a simultaneous playfulness and dreariness all their own, despite these traits’ clear influences. Their latest album, Hold Still Life, is a gorgeous, moving display of how tactfully they dabble in well-covered terrain, although this tendency can occasionally prove problematic.

Hold Still Life immediately declares its intentions and influences, leaving no doubt as to what its listeners will encounter over its not-quite-forty-minute runtime. “A Place You Return to in a Dream” is a wise choice for an opening track, its bleak guitar roar and wispy, nasal female vocals dipping into an alternate world where Loveless is several shades darker. “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” follows, and its trippy title hints at the hallucinatory nature of this track. It’s also a great continuation of “Place”‘s motifs: restrained but blossoming guitar roars straddle the borderline between shoegaze and garage rock as vocalist Rachel Browne muses ethereally.

The songwriting methodology of “Place” and “Tomorrow” reaches its apex on album highlight “Everyone But You”, Hold Still Life‘s most outrightly sugary moment. A small glimmer of light breaks through the intro’s expansive guitars, ensuring that the chorus’s incredibly dark, haunting chorus lands as an unforgettable surprise. Browne remains restrained in her delivery, yet undeniably establishes a gut connection. Actually, this innate bond is felt often throughout the album: “Reina” and “Horizon City” are two of many similar songs here that, despite being a bit predictable, still succeed in their goal of aiming for the heart.

Redundancy is Hold Still Life‘s main problem, and it’s one that could have possibly been avoided if its tracks were presented in a different order. The album is pretty consistent until its ninth track, “Bright Lights”, a drop-dead gorgeous slow-burner that reminisces of mosquitoes buzzing, industrial lights shining on a broken sunset, and adolescent heartbreak. It’s an unexpected sound for Field Mouse, and it pays off in spades: its eerie but endearing guitar sparkle strengthens Browne’s graceful, deft vocal performance. “Kids”, the album’s only percussion-less tune, follows two tracks later; it’s another track that’s memorable simply for how different it is. Were these two songs placed earlier in the album, it might well be a more satisfying listen.

Or maybe the problem is that, overall, Hold Still Life is almost too consistent. Distinguishing “Happy” from “Asteroid” isn’t always an easy task; the first handful of tracks, with the exception of the new-wave-indebted “Two Ships”, sound only slightly different from one another. This uniformity isn’t nearly the worst of problems an album can have; in this case, Field Mouse’s songwriting is strong enough to render it only a mild setback. Hold Still Life certainly has no bad tracks, just a few too many similar moments. It’s nevertheless a great document from a worthwhile group, but one that suggests that it’s better to grab life by the horns than to hold it still.

Earlier this year, I wrote here about my disappointment with Perfect Pussy’s Say Yes to Love , and cited its length (or, rather, lack thereof) as one of its major flaws. It’s easy to get the notion, then, that I think albums need to be a certain length to succeed, but read more closely — this isn’t why Say Yes to Love failed. That album was a letdown because its shortness blurred all its songs together into one murky, indistinct, relatively uncompelling unit; when it wasn’t doing that, it was disguising noise as melody. A few moments stuck out in this haze, but not enough to excuse such a short runtime.

By contrast, White Lung’s Deep Fantasy, their debut for Domino Records (but their third album overall), is fifty seconds shorter than Say Yes to Love, but it’s far more cathartic, show-stopping, and memorable. Deep Fantasy is rife with guttural riffing, mountainous percussion, and harrowing vocals courtesy of feminist blogger Mish Way, and this formulation very rarely tires over the album’s twenty-two minute runtime. Fantasy‘s lyrics, which deal with topics such as consoling a rape victim, overcoming drug abuse, and living with body dysmorphia, are as potent and intense as its instrumentation; both these characteristics expertly recall the grunge and riot grrrl movements.

Deep Fantasy blazes through the gate immediately with opener and lead single “Drown With the Monster”, arguably the most addicting punk anthem of the year so far. Actually, the punk label adorned here is a bit misleading: “Drown With the Monster” verges on heavy metal territory. The rapid, churning guitars underlying its verses wouldn’t sound out of place on a recent Exodus album, and Mish Way’s vocals are delivered in a wailing beckon faintly reminiscent of any of Arch Enemy’s rotating female lead vocalists. In its two minutes, “Drown” tackles Way’s substance abuse with fearlessness and vigor; in fact, by turning her problems into a veritable headbanger of a rally cry, she’s drowned the monster in its place.

“Down It Goes” follows, and it begins in a similar vein as “Drown” before transitioning into sunny, beachy grunge-punk, something like you’d hear on an early Sleater-Kinney tune. “I am not as strong as you, but I am everywhere!” Way affirms over an instrumental palette that’s just as serene as it is alarming. “Snake Jaw” and “Face Down” continue this sonic path, but each refines it differently: the former adds a tad more bleakness to match its lyrical exploration of body dysmorphia, whereas the latter may be the most outrightly grungy, 90s-absorbed tune present.

Of course, a band as fierce as White Lung will only briefly allow itself this moment of relative sunshine: “I Believe You” reintroduces the heaviness and force of “Drown With the Monster”, and covers more territory than many of Deep Fantasy‘s songs despite being the album’s second shortest. “Yeah, I believe you! Girl, you’re so strong!” Way reassures a friend recovering from the trauma of rape, a powerful moment made even more intense by her band’s intermittent, dark guitar pummels and searing treble lines. “Wrong Star” offers a moment to breathe after “I Believe You”, trading in the latter’s heaviness for a less overwhelming tone, but no slower a pace.

“Just for You” and “Sycophant”, which follow next, in that order, are slightly less gripping than the rest of the album, marking one of Deep Fantasy‘s two very mildly less engaging sequences. “Lucky One” breaks up these two moments, its unreasonably shrill and rapid guitars instantly hooky. In particular, the song’s chorus is really entrapping, as its low-rumbling guitars offer a surprising and engaging change-up from the song’s mostly bright but enthralling riffing.

Ending the album is “In Your Home”, a track that’s notably different from the rest of the album. Easily the slowest (although it’s still pretty high-tempo) tune here, “In Your Home” gives up some of the near-omnipresent aggression of Deep Fantasy in favor of an unexpected bit of melancholy. Although the song is likable, it’s not quite as viscerally enjoyable as the rest of Deep Fantasy, but its placement as the album’s final track does offer a necessary comedown from the rushing adrenaline preceding it.

“Take these sights in!” commands Mish Way near the beginning of Deep Fantasy. With just twenty-two minutes of runtime, this album rarely loses focus, keeping listeners in line all the while. Short collections as engaging as this one aren’t so easy to come by, so it doesn’t take much effort to become entrapped in this Fantasy.

Is it surprising that someone writing for a site called Way Too Indie went through a deeply immersive heavy metal phase when he was fifteen years old? I’m talking about myself here. From the time I began high school until my best friend introduced me to Is This It just after I turned seventeen, I was what they call a “metalhead.” Today, my taste has evolved into something more expansive and all-inclusive, but I still enjoy some metal artists from those years. Mastodon, Gojira, Opeth, and occasionally Boris still bring pleasure to my ears (and, more recently, Deafheaven).

Notice something these acts have in common. Their compositions never sacrifice melody for heaviness and brutality. Where bands like Nile and Cannibal Corpse primarily concern themselves with achieving the heaviest sound they possibly can, the groups listed above instead throw some genuine earworms in the mix. Their music is not merely guttural, indistinguishable muck; rather, its well-developed, ornate but ruthless metal. South Dakota’s Talk Rock follows in the later transition, although the breed of metal they advance could pass for extremely low-pitched, high-tempo shoegaze. Throughout their recently released album Vile, they engage in heavy but melodic riffing. It’s an approach that sometimes works well, but is also so perpetual throughout the album that it gradually tires as the album progresses.

The foundation of most of Vile‘s songs are heavily reverbed guitar riffs that are as spacious as they are gruff. Opener “666 Lips” demonstrates this nicely, its music teetering between haunted grimness and shoegaze soaring. The excitement of this sound is dimmed by the vocal take on this song’s chorus, though: the constricted, oddly mopey whines of “Six six six!/On her lips, I felt it!” make the lead up to this break feel disappointing. A better example of the catharsis that the open-ugly contrast Vile provides is “Scapegoat”, a track that crashes through the gates on the album’s most claustrophobic, tidal riff. It perfectly sets the stage for the song’s continued tensions and balances between darkness and hugeness.

“Scapegoat” provides the best example of what Talk Rock has the potential to accomplish. “Perpetual Cryptic” is another instance of this trio deftly pairing dreaminess with deadliness: the partial immersion of its somewhat lackluster vocals by its guitar walls imbue it with the proper amount of eerie growl and upward ecstasy. More often than not, though, Talk Rock fail to fully deliver on the promise of their strongest moments. “Vile Mouth” feels drawn out and lazy, its five minutes feeling like a drag rather than an adventure. Its tempo shifts are only briefly alluring, instead descending into discomfort. Likewise, the louder sections of “Kreepen Man” don’t quite make up for the perpetual crawl of the slower parts. Instrumental track “New Wrist” is guilty of the same set of sins.

Vile is also home to tracks like “The Body”, which contains traces of both musical glory and letdown. The song’s first four minutes are absolutely great, striking an excellent pose of both haunted drone and stark slamming. Yet its last two minutes dribble off into more confusing terrain, wherein the interlocking pummels and arpeggios aggravate rather than excite. That last statement is a half-decent summary of Vile: it’s an album whose peaks are so distinguishable in part because what sounds them just isn’t as exhilarating. These peaks are possible indicators of an excellent metal album in Talk Rock’s future, but for now, they’re more talk than rock.

Is it 2014 or 1984? Although this is a question that’s been asked lately in regards to the whole NSA scandal, it’s also one that applies to the state of recent music. The last few years have given rise to a sudden surge of artists that incorporate the textures, moods, tones, and lyrical themes of three decades ago in their songs. Whether it’s Blood Orange occupying the bubblegum synthpop of the time, Destroyer transforming smooth jazz from corny cliche into enchanting folklore, or Haim taking on Fleetwood Mac’s interpretation of the era, modern listeners have been exposed to an intense amount of music that borrows heavily from the 80s.

Enter a new face to this crowd: Shamir Bailey, who records as Shamir, and draws inspiration from the wild dance pop of Michael Jackson as well as the funky R&B of Prince. For someone who was born many years after his idols reached their peaks — Shamir is only 19 years old — he tends to adopt their craft quite well. His debut EP Northtown offers a brief glimpse into just how successful he can be at continuing his idols’ legacy, while also showing that he strikes more thoroughly when letting his own shades shine through.

The most immediately entrancing thing about Shamir’s musicianship is his androgynous, soulful voice. Throughout Northtown, Shamir showcases his incredibly dynamic and adaptable voice in enticing ways. “I Know It’s a Good Thing” explores the highest parts of his register as he drifts through booming pianos, a consistent click track, and backing oohs and aahs. “I’ll Never Be Able to Love” captures the low and high ranges of his voice pretty well: he delivers his verses in a relatively low pitch, but puts his laceratingly high-pitched vibrato front-and-center during its chorus. It’s also the most downbeat of the original pieces here, its minimal palette of drums and vocal harmonies later expanding into a stuttered percussive smack for merely a moment.

This later segment of “I’ll Never Be Able to Love” is its most exciting, and it highlights an interesting trend in Shamir’s songs. Despite how inherently gorgeous his voice is, his songs are more thrilling when he surrounds it in maximalist splendor, a technique not as heavily explored by his predecessors. On “Sometimes a Man”, for example, a deep house beat flows sensually under Shamir’s voice, and the abundance and ferocity of the accompanying synths and percussion nicely round it out. The song is one of two absolute dancefloor jams included here, and it’s got a surprisingly dark underbelly, especially when compared to the other banger here, “If It Wasn’t True.”

“If It Wasn’t True” is the moment when Shamir truly glows. Actually, this is an understatement; here, Shamir shines solid gold, fully embracing the maximalism unshared with his idols. He’s brewed up what might be the most viscerally engaging funk-disco tune in ages, and he absolutely revels in it. Pulsating, fat synths and a steady click track introduce this first song on the EP, leading to our first encounter with Shamir’s already-trademark smoothly androgynous vocals. Shamir muses about his bitter breakup with a former lover, his voice soaring over a consistently in-your-face instrumental bed, which unexpectedly explodes into a barrage of searing, adrenaline-rushing synth blasts after about two minutes. It sounds like what the 1980s could have been if that time’s artists had access to current musical technology and trends: catchy, sensual, mobile, funky, and just one of the goddamn best songs of the year so far.

Placing “If It Wasn’t True” at the EP’s beginning provides an excellent introduction to Shamir’s retro-nostalgic world, but it casts a shadow over the remaining songs. Don’t be mistaken — these are all great tunes, although the final track, a lo-fi folk Lindi Ortega cover (“Lived and Died Alone”), feels completely out of place here. “Sometimes a Man” comes incredibly close to matching the magic of “If It Wasn’t True” since it’s just as bold and maximalist; “I’ll Never Be Able to Love” and “I Know It’s a Good Thing”, on the other hand, just don’t compare despite being pretty enjoyable. But, as Shamir reminds us on the latter track, talk is cheap; instead of discussing Northtown‘s flaws, let’s just be happy that Shamir’s delivered a true gem or two here, and that many more are to come.

As though Beyonce’s completely out-of-nowhere release of her self-titled album in late 2013 wasn’t untraditional enough, here’s something to up the ante: Hundred Waters celebrated their sophomore release, The Moon Rang Like a Bell, with a free three-day festival in an Arizona desert named Arcosanti. The festival, named after the desert hosting it, was free as long as guests RSVP’d and handled their own transportation there and back. It gets better: daily activities included swimming, hiking, and bronze-bell casting. At night, acts including How to Dress Well, Majical Cloudz, and, of course, Hundred Waters performed sets.

A logical follow-up question might be: where did the money for this come from? The answer is simple enough, but also pretty surprising: Hundred Waters are signed to Skrillex’s label OWSLA. With a reported income of around $15 million, Skrillex probably had no trouble financing Arcosanti; what’s more interesting is his pouring money into a band with a sound so opposite his own. While Skrillex is known as a leading name in the last several years’ upsurge of intensely aggressive laptop music oddly and unfittingly dubbed “electronic dance music”, Hundred Waters’ style is far more restrained and inherently gorgeous. The Moon Rang Like the Bell is a testament to the humanity that synthetic instruments can acquire, and a collection of truly sparkling intimacy.

“Show Me Love”, as crooned on Moon‘s brief introductory track, isn’t a very difficult command to obey given the album’s lovely arrangements and touching melodies. Nicole Miglis, Hundred Waters’ vocalist, sings in a way that’s equally compatible with trip-hop balladry, eerie piano reflections, and minimal echo chambers, and never fails to affect. The breathiness and fragility of her pondering on the sensual, flowing “Innocent” is just as potent as the more restricted tone she takes on the shuffling, elliptical “Seven White Horses.” More often than not, Miglis occupies both of these extremes in one track, as perfectly showcased on buoyant tunes like “XTalk” and “Out Alee.”

The latter of these tunes may be Moon‘s strongest example of why, in addition to Miglis’ contribution, the work of fellow bandmates Paul Giese, Zach Tetreault, and Trayer Tryon is vital to Hundred Waters’ sound. “Out Alee” phases through alternating bars of standard and 3/4 time, which gives it a tension that Miglis’ voice probably couldn’t convey on its own despite its breadth. A few sudden sections of half-time feel add to this delicate mood, a move that’s both technically impressive and heartwrenching at a gut level. Second single “Cavity” might even be a better instance of how formidably the music strikes: a percussive stutter yields to waves and walls of synths that overwhelm without being larger than life.

Actually, that right there is a precise description of The Moon Rang Like a Bell. Emotionally overwhelming but never sonically imposing, it deftly plays with pathos using as little sound as possible. Check first single “Down from the Rafters” as a demonstration of this art: no more than some wispy keys, a muffled drumbeat, some atmospheric swirling, and Miglis’ brutally gentle vocals form this song, yet it’s one of Moon‘s most direct and haunting encounters. “Murmurs” strikes in a similar way, its repeated (and, for a while, unfinished) coos of “I wish you” bearing little weight despite so effectively conveying emotion. “Yesterday was your birthday/happy birthday” about halfway through this song is one of the most awkward yet endearing lyrics to ever be heard in music this serious, and the inclusion of this line is another interesting and different way in which Hundred Waters operate.

Yet elsewhere on The Moon Rang Like a Bell, the lyrics aren’t quite so memorable. The album’s strength isn’t its actual words, despite how obviously sincere and important Miglis makes them, but rather in their delivery. “You make these feelings go away” goes the chorus to “Cavity”, a sentiment that’s undoubtedly raw and wholehearted, but in no way anything unfamiliar. Rather, the subtle impact of how Miglis sings them is what makes them truly sting. It’s a minor flaw that only emerges upon repeated listening, which Moon fully lends itself to. In particular, “[Animal]” crawls under the skin and into the nerves responsible for pressing the “Repeat One” button, as it’s the album’s most surprising track. The rhythm of its introduction suggests something more bracing and immediate than the rest of the album, a prophecy that unfolds enthrallingly over the song’s length. Heavily processed vocal clips loop and synthetic drums expand as “[Animal]” approaches its last eighty seconds, thereafter exploding into the most discrete dancefloor beat to emerge in quite some time.

Probably nobody expected Hundred Waters to release a song with deep house influences; fewer might expect it to be a contender for Moon‘s best track. Then again, Hundred Waters are signed to OWSLA, of all labels, so maybe there are things about them not yet well-known to listeners. There’s definitely a small sense of mystery contained in the simultaneous eeriness and beauty of this album, but its intimacy ensures that anyone who hears it will feel connected to this band. Although they may not be very loud, their songs absolutely scream.

Although Makthaverskan’s American presence wasn’t established until recently, their career has spanned the last five years. They released their self-titled début way back in 2009, but now this Swedish goth punk band is finally invading the music industry’s largest market. In early May, US label Run for Cover reissued Makthaverskan’s sophomore effort II, exposing their work to more American ears than ever before. True, anyone from anywhere in the world could’ve found Makthaverskan’s output on Bandcamp, but without this American introduction, their music wouldn’t be exploding all over college radio as it is right now.

And for good reason. II is one of the most distinctive punk records in a while, fusing soaring shoegaze tones with Gothic tendencies and post-punk aggression in a way that’s somehow familiar, yet solely Makthaverskan’s own approach. Although traces of acts like Joy Division, Cocteau Twins, The Cure, and even Dum Dum Girls are audible, the vivid, honest emotions of II belong entirely to its creators. Vocalist Maja Milner aches sorely throughout this album, and the dark yet gorgeous soundscapes of reverbed, watery guitars, arena-sized drums, and constantly rolling bass underlying her voice expertly match its haunting, high-pitched tones.

Milner hides nothing on this album, even in its first moments. “Antabus”, named for an a drug given to recovering alcoholics, boasts one of the most simply memorable choruses in years. “Fuck you!/Fuck you!” precedes an overwhelming, beautiful barrage of skyward percussion and pained, desolate guitar notes. “Asleep” follows this track, and treads a similar path of ominous yet sparkling guitars and distant synths. “It’s not me you’re dreaming of!” Milner emotes over steady snares and ascending arpeggios, and her woe permeates the music so forcefully it’s undeniable.

As “Asleep” and “Antabus” show, II is consistently bold, upfront, and woeful. Milner never disguises her thoughts with metaphors or euphemisms: “Fuck you for fucking me when I was seventeen!”, from “No Mercy”, is about as sexually direct and disturbing as a Liz Phair song (“fuck and run/even when I was twelve” still brings up the bile a bit every time). She’s just as transparent on “Slowly Sinking”, as she pleads to a lover, “I want/to see all of you/so come down on me/take off this shirt and we’ll make love.” Milner delivers these messages delicately, overtly yet cleverly extracting the emotional aspects of physical love with her lyrics.

In so many other cases, a young band could completely mishandle the heart-on-sleeve lyrical nature of Milner’s words, but Makthaverskan’s sounds sagely accompany their words. On “Something More”, the track here where Milner stretches her voice the farthest, the underlying percussive stutter and desolate yet endearing guitar work emphasizes her wails of “I don’t know where you are tonight! But if/But if you want, I’ll take you back.” Elsewhere, the band puts their technical extremes on full display, occupying “Distance” with tremendous percussive power and frenetic, life-sized, Gothic guitar searing. Although Milner’s voice is at its most angelic during this song’s chorus, the key change that erupts during this song’s last minute is the most abrasive moment on II. Guitars simultaneously slam and wail against a fierce backing of unforgiving percussive rage for what might be the album’s noisiest, most cathartic moment.

Makthaverskan’s influences might be easy to pinpoint, but on II, the band conveys a gripping level of sentimental forwardness and an electrifying instrumental conflagration. It’s a record that gets intimate while also clawing away aggressively at everything in front of it, and boldly stands out among the myriad modern acts citing the same idols. Forget an American presence: from wherever they broadcast their sound, Makthaverskan will be heard.

Few musicians have transitioned from cult artist to critical wunderkind as quickly as tUnE-yArDs, the creative moniker of Connecticut’s Merrill Garbus, did in early 2011. Before her sophomore album w h o k i l l was announced in early February, very few people were aware of her début, BiRd-BrAins, which was primarily recorded on a dictation machine; after w h o k i l l‘s release two months later, all eyes were on Garbus. Still today, w h o k i l l remains one of the quirkiest, most fearless, and most viscerally enjoyable albums of the decade. Its fusion of electric ukulele, brazen, confrontational, humorous lyrics, slinky bass, world-influenced percussion, and Garbus’ monstrously flexible, fiery vocals pulls from a slew of unusual influences, and three years later continues to sound like the future.

All this history makes it easy to feel disappointed by Nikki Nack, the highly anticipated follow-up to w h o k i l l, upon first listen. But like many albums, this one’s a grower, one that reveals itself with time. Collections that develop in this way aren’t at all uncommon, but few do so as quickly as Nikki Nack does. The attributes responsible for its initial letdown rearrange into its strengths after just two or three more listens, and some of these characteristics are radically different from anything Garbus has published in her career thus far. In particular, for this album, Garbus ditches w h o k i l l‘s omnipresent electric ukulele in favor of frantic, off-kilter drum machines and subtly glowing synths. It’s her pop-iest work yet, but it remains faithful to her sound: Nate Brenner’s bass is still just as central a component as ever before, Garbus’ voice continues to vacillate between passionate shouting and soulful singing, and the equally reflective and sociopolitically charged nature of her lyrics hasn’t disappeared.

Nikki Nack embraces change dutifully; in fact, one of its weakest tracks, “Look Around”, is the only one that retains the ukulele. Garbus’ sound shift is readily apparent immediately when “Find a New Way” begins the album. Synth spikes and oddly metered drum blasts control this song’s intro, after which Brenner’s bass expels the synthetic elements. “Time of Dark” treads a similar path, although its percussive eccentricity takes much longer to manifest. This song transforms into a liberating, wild, repeated chant of “Hey!” with just over a minute remaining, a change that’s neither jarring nor gradual, and this trick is repeated often on Nikki Nack.

“Left Behind”, one of the album’s strongest points, pulls the same switch at its midpoint, although its percussive flicker predicts this flip much more so than the initial tranquility of “Time of Dark” does. “Holiday! Holiday! Let’s go crazy!” Garbus chants without restraint; this relentless is signature tUnE-yArDs, only packaged differently on Nikki Nack. Lead single “Water Fountain”, which suffered the same plague of initial disappointment as its home album only to become an album highlight, puts this quality on full display: few, if any, other artists can manage to be taken seriously with such a sing-songy tune and lyrics that seem to be strewn together from those word magnets people arbitrarily rearrange on their fridges. This approach is a risk Garbus takes constantly, especially in the lyrical delivery of “Hey Life” and “Sink-O.” The latter is a frenetic, Matangi-like array of arguably vapid lyricism that’s rendered thrilling by the music accompanying it, whereas the latter begins relatively calmly and deals with relatable topics before briefly venturing into a childlike but undeniably fun mess.

Nikki Nack is ripe with potent lyrics despite its numerous slabs of intentionally inane words. The balance thrown off by the unbound lyricism of “Water Fountain” is restored by tracks such as “Manchild”, which is a cry of female empowerment just like w h o k i l l‘s “Killa” (perhaps not coincidentally, both tracks end their respective albums). “I mean it! Don’t beat up on my body!” Garbus bleats over loopy, disorienting percussion and cowbells (yes, cowbells — if you didn’t think this album was silly enough yet, now you know). “Left Behind” laments both traditional and class wars (“We said we wouldn’t let them take our soil”; “This place has really changed its ways, goodness/ruined by the boats of rich folks coming here”), and “Real Thing” callously scrapes away at America and its obsession with celebrities (“Red white blue course through my veins/Binge and purge the USA!”; “Girls, are you worried about dress size six?; “I come from the land of slaves/Let’s go Redskins, let’s go Braves!”; “I come from the land of shame/blood and guts are all I claim”). It takes a good ear to extract these messages from the utter chaos of Garbus’ music, and these words burn even more fiercely when delivered in her fire-hot voice.

Of course, Garbus’ true secret is the flexibility of her voice, and second single “Wait for a Minute”, easily her most straightforward and accessible song to date (and thus possibly the album’s best), shows her vocals operating at the exact opposite end of the spectrum as during her more politically charged anthems. It’s the first instance of a tUnE-yArds song conveying any sort of sadness, which is fully appropriate since it details its narrator’s depression. “Monday/I wake up with disgust in my head” is a hell of a downer to begin a first verse, especially coming from someone whose music is generally life-affirming. Subsequent lyrics like “The mirror always disappoints/I pinch my skin back ’til I see the joints” certainly don’t introduce any sunshine either. The psychedelic, slow-jam R&B sound and skittering drums perfectly match the song’s tragic mood. Interestingly, this song also throws in some self-reference, a trick more often reserved for cryptic acts like Destroyer. “I’ll still try to leave the high of violence behind,” Garbus croons during this song’s chorus, which hearkens back to a crucial point on w h o k i l l: “There is a freedom in violence I don’t understand/and like I’ve never felt before!” Garbus shouts, unaccompanied by music, about two-thirds into that album’s “Riotriot.” One of the most cathartic moments in her catalog is recalled here, a surprising and enticing choice.

“Wait for a Minute” doesn’t quite resemble most of Nikki Nack, a trend more frequent in its weaker tracks. “Rocking Chair”, its two-minute penultimate track, feels like an unnecessary piece of filler (even more so than the hilarious interlude “Why Must We Dine on the Tots?”, an allegory for the frustrating futility of trying to quash a misbelief commonly accepted as fact). It’s comprised solely of minimal percussion and Garbus’ vocals, and it demonstrates that her voice is so flammable that music is absolutely necessary to quell its abrasive, unpleasant edges. Although “Look Around” does exactly this, it too underwhelms: it constantly teases an explosive dynamic shift like those on “Water Fountain” and “Time of Dark”, yet never quite provides this relief. “Find a New Way”, another less memorable track, faces a problem in its rhythm section, where its percussion restricts the song instead of allowing it to soar.

At the end of it all, it really is Nikki Nack‘s use of percussion that accounts for its success. Nowhere is this more apparent than on “Stop That Man”, a track that competes with “Wait for a Minute” for the title of Best Nikki Nack Song, but is definitely a more concrete example of why Nikki Nack is so thrilling. It opens with muted, abrasive, digital percussive pounding that provides an ideal bed for Garbus’ robotically filtered vocals. Within thirty seconds, though, the song changes into a hearty shout to “Please, stop that man, stop that man, stop that man!” Garbus rides the beat perfectly throughout this song, adjusting the force and tempo of her voice almost exactly in line with the ever-changing percussion below her. The last minute of this song leaps forward with percussive blasts that belong on dance floors in sweaty, humid college basements, concluding the song with a warm but ferocious feeling.

Nikki Nack is exactly the kind of album that’s fun to write about. It’s so heavily filled and unexpected that more and more of its strengths emerge the more deeply and frequently its analyzed. At the start of this review, Nikki Nack seemed like a satisfactory, but not quite up to par, follow-up to w h o k i l l; now, at its end, it’s clear to see that this is an album that, although not as savage and unique as its brilliant predecessor, will be on repeat for a while. There’s so much to learn and to love here; so much, in fact, that subsequent listens will inevitably reveal aspects of the music that were previously buried beneath their surrounding excellence. Kudos to an album that ages gracefully.

Shriek, the fourth full-length from Baltimore dream pop duo Wye Oak, represents a drastic change for a band that never needed one in the first place. Just a few years ago in 2011, Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack were doing just fine for themselves composing delicate, wispy acoustic tunes with their third album, Civilian. This LP’s sound, although not entirely different from anything these two had done in the past, was tighter and more affecting than usual, and seemed to hint that Wye Oak would one day make a truly unforgettable indie folk record, something even better than a great meditative collection.

Turns out that prediction was wrong — well, only in part. Shriek is most certainly not an indie folk album or a meditative piece; however, it’s their sharpest and most direct album yet. Instead of using hushed acoustics and tranquil vocals to achieve dreamy eloquence, Wye Oak instead employs vivid synths and fluid bass, without even the slightest hint of guitar. As told to SPIN, Wasner’s decision to radically reform Wye Oak’s sound was a life or death situation for the act: “[While writing Shriek], there was all this weird baggage associated with the guitar for me, and I couldn’t get around that,” she grieved. “It was a block. I had to sidestep the block in order to be able to make anything.” And sidestep the block she did; in fact, she’s leapt over it. The novel sound Wasner and Stack convey on Shriek is braver and more affecting than anything they’ve done to date, although it’s a formula they have yet to perfect.

From the moment the warbly, disquieting synths of “Before” open the album, it’s obvious that Wye Oak is going for something different here. This song’s empathic vocal delivery and lush synth beds are fleshed out even more fully on the title track, which follows in sequence. Wasner’s breathy vocals and milky synths flood the music with anguish, as they do on Shriek‘s true slow-burner, “I Know the Law.” This tune would blend in near perfectly on Beach House’s masterpiece-to-date, 2010’s Teen Dream.

Actually, Wye Oak’s trajectory to date slightly mimics Beach House’s musical path. The latter act too started their career in lethargic, desolate dream pop (“Apple Orchard”, “Heart of Chambers”), eventually progressing to direct and unexpectedly heartwarming synthpop. It’s an interesting comparison because it suggests how far Wye Oak has come: just as Beach House’s more recent output, the most tactile and lively material in their catalog, has drawn significantly more acclaim than their early albums, so too should Shriek as compared to its predecessors. Songs like Beach House’s “Norway” and “Myth” find matches in Shriek‘s “Glory” and “The Tower”, respectively.

It’s no coincidence, then, that these two tracks are Shriek‘s strongest (but maybe it is a coincidence that these are the album’s two singles). Placed back to back early on in the album, they’re the most immediate moments present, and deviate a tad more obviously from Wye Oak’s past work than the rest of what’s here. Although the short ambient intro to “The Tower” could segue directly into a Civilian-style acoustic hymn, it instead swells into a massive strut of synthetic sparkle and slinky low notes. Wasner’s voice sounds unusually cold, an excellent match for the arhythmic synths defining the song. “Glory”, on the other hand, is pure warmth and ecstasy: percussive pounding, essentially the complete opposite of the ambience introducing “The Tower”, initiates this track. A thick bassline quickly appears, with snippets of synth warbles outlining the soundscape. The chorus of this track is arguably Shriek‘s most explosive: a surprisingly funky bassline and synths that almost feel like they’re hugging you envelop Wasner’s emotive, exasperated vocals.

If “Glory” isn’t the pinnacle of Shriek‘s outwardness, then this award goes to the track following it, “Sick Talk.” Synth crests outline this sweet, sugary tune, and eventually ascend to watery waves of creaminess during the song’s Friendly Fires-esque chorus. Although the breathiness of Wasner’s vocals makes her exact words somewhat difficult to understand here, this quality doesn’t stop them from sending chills up her listeners’ spines. Really, though, there aren’t too many songs on here where Wasner’s words are fully discernable, which is unfortunate since she may well be saying some incredibly affectionate, relatable things. Take, for example, “School of Eyes”: right before this song’s first chorus, Wasner says something along the lines of “my hand is mine/even when you hold it”, but the heft of her voice disguises her words too much to confirm this.

This problem with Wasner’s voice isn’t limited merely to “Sick Talk” and “School of Eyes.” “Paradise” and “Logic of Color” are particularly guilty of this sin, and of something even more troubling: these tunes simply aren’t as enjoyable as the songs comprising Shriek‘s first half. Indeed, Shriek is a frontloaded album, but that’s not to say the back half is completely flat. “Despicable Animal” is definitely interesting and almost psychedelic, and the uneasy bass of “Paradise” is impossible to track down elsewhere on the album.

Shriek expends its best moments rapidly, yet it somehow stands tall as Wye Oak’s finest accomplishment. If Wasner can learn to elucidate her vocals and enunciate her words, and both Wasner and Stack take steps to keep their formula engaging for all forty minutes of a typical album runtime, then they’ll certainly make the truly unforgettable record that’s suspected to lie within them. Until then, we’re left with a slew of blissful, sensitive songs that, despite the inevitable Beach House comparisons, probably could have come from no one else.

First, let’s address the elephant in the room. You’re on a website called Way Too Indie, where you’re reading a review of the newest album by Kelis, the artist whose 2003 hit “Milkshake” was a major label product that absolutely dominated commercial radio. Yes, this is the same Kelis responsible for “My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard/and they’re like, ‘It’s better than yours.'” It’s easy to think, then, that Kelis is exactly the opposite of indie, and that her music is simply commercial, for-profit, mainstream fodder. But take a moment to listen to “Milkshake” again: putting aside the song’s incredibly cheesy lyrics and borderline uncomfortable music video, the song’s production (provided by the Neptunes) is sleek and sensual, and Kelis’ raspy voice provides a delicate tension without which the song might simply fall flat.

More than ten years after “Milkshake”, a critically underrated, lavish R&B gem, Kelis is the mother of a nearly five-year-old son, and is divorced from rap legend Nas for just about four years (their marriage lasted for roughly the same amount of time). She’s no longer that 24-year-old employing cheap sexual euphemisms for radio play; she’s matured tremendously since then, and has gained greater artistic control of her music. Her sixth album Food serves as evidence of Kelis’ newly asserted dominance over her art: no longer a major label signee, she takes advantage of her newfound flexibility tremendously. Rather than working with a whole handful of writers as she did on albums like Flesh Tone, Kelis Was Here, and Tasty, Kelis is instead paired with only two cohorts due to the comparatively small budget of her new label, the consistently excellent, primarily electronic label Ninja Tune. Producer Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio and brass arranger Todd Simon co-write every song on this album, leading to Kelis’ jazziest, smokiest, most sensual, exciting, and certainly most consistent album yet.

Food embraces orchestral arrangements and lounge-inspired sensuality without fully leaving the realm of pop music. This trait can be traced directly back to Sitek and Simon: Sitek’s own TV on the Radio pushes the boundaries of traditional rock song structures while embracing brass contributions (best exemplified by their song “Dancing Choose”), and Simon is responsible for some of the steamy, erotic arrangements on Rhye’s 2013 debut, Woman. Their contributions to Kelis’ sound manifests constantly on Food: after the smoky, reflective aura of “Floyd” is gradually introduced, horns amplify its starry-eyed nature, resulting in an afflicting track that sounds remarkably like the slower jazz standards. Likewise, the searing, charged “Change” intensifies with frantic brass placements just as its first chorus strikes. “Jerk Ribs”, Food‘s first single, arguably benefits the most from its production: the brass placed at the song’s periphery imbues the song with a glowing, triumphant quality that makes it an unforgettable moment.

“Jerk Ribs” is also special for its lyrics, which chronicle Kelis’ relationship with music. The words on this track tell the tale of Kelis’ growing up and gradually becoming more inseparable from the sounds around her. “I was the girl/my daddy was my world/he played the notes and keys/he said to look for melody in everything”, Kelis reflects, later confirming that this passion hasn’t left: “The bass vibrates/right through me/the brass, the strings, I love everything.” Although it’s not unreasonable to view the latter lines as musically breaking the fourth wall, if you will, since they so perfectly reference the sound advanced throughout Food, more interesting is how personal these lyrics are. In fact, personal poetry pervades Food: despite some of the songs’ titles explicitly naming certain foods (“Jerk Ribs”, “Cobbler”, “Biscuits ‘n’ Gravy”), the subject matter is universally love-based, and close to the heart.

Running the gamut from lovelorn to exuberantly infatuated, Food‘s lyrics nicely suit the fiery brass behind them. “There will never be/another/day for us to be/lovers/I’ll follow in your lead/forever/and we’ll forever be/together”, goes the chorus to “Forever Be,” and these words, despite their inherent simplicity, astutely match the pulsating modern take on lounge music that backs them. “Breakfast” and “Hooch” blaze this same path, their ecstatically-in-love lyrics lining up cleverly with their brassy, passionate instrumentation. “Floyd” and “Runner”, however, explore the more upsetting side of love, but the sounds and topics of these tunes still mesh wonderfully. The former track is Food‘s most explicitly sultry number, a melancholy list of desires best summarized by Kelis’ simple wish in its chorus: “I want to be blown away.” “Runner” is equally aching, its brass spikes accentuating just how badly Kelis wants to return to a former lover.

Of course, the topic of love is in no way novel territory for any genre of music, but Kelis’ raspy yet confident vocal delivery almost always ensures that she conveys her feelings strongly and genuinely. Second single and reunion story “Rumble” displays Kelis calmly meditating on her return to an ex-lover, until her voice explodes forward towards the end of the second verse, breaking into fractured, splintered pleading for her man to “stay the night, baby.” Sure, some listeners will be instantly turned off by just how far she pushes her voice, but the limits to which she extends provide the song with a grand spark. She successfully does this during the chorus of the surprising, Western-inspired “Fish Fry” as well, but steps a bit too far outside her comfort zone on final track “Dreamer”, the huskiness of her voice feeling unstable and unbalanced rather than admirably delicate and affecting.

No, Food isn’t perfect, as “Dreamer” demonstrates: for example, the penultimate “Biscuits ‘n’ Gravy” is just a tad too dry to strike as poignantly as the majority of Food, although it’s still a great track. Really, almost every track on Food is enjoyable, but a select few have some irksome facets. The call and response sections of “Fish Fry” and “Cobbler” feel juvenile and forced, although the latter track has one of the most thrilling choruses present. The oddly dull cover of Labi Siffre’s “Bless The Telephone”, placed just after the album’s midpoint, is probably the album’s lowest point, as it completely lacks the remaining tunes’ invigorating nature despite being un-traditionally pretty. Otherwise, Food‘s consistency and novel (well, for Kelis) approach are commendable, although the album’s fifty minute runtime, over thirteen songs, is a bit excessive.

It’s great that Kelis is finally getting her chance to shine after so long. In 2003, when “Milkshake” emerged and opinions divided like 1860s America, it was unclear whether Kelis would just be a “one hit wonder”, to use one of the more reductive musical terms out there, or if her talent would last with time. With each album since then, a bit more of what makes Kelis special has emerged; Food is the first instance of it being on full display. Although the contributions of Dave Sitek and Todd Simon absolutely cannot be understated, this album is a landmark for Kelis, who’s finally crafted the kinds of songs that she’s always seemed capable of. Although her new label may have less money, it’s certainly given her more artistic freedom, helping to sculpt Food into the great piece that it is. This is her very first album released independently, and the buoyancy of Food‘s most jubilant tracks indicate that she’s probably not leaving anytime soon, suggesting that this is only the first chapter in a long, thrilling neo-soul saga. It’ll be exciting to see how the next chapter unfolds, but, for now, what’s been unveiled so far is fully satisfying and enchanting.

Todd Terje was probably born in the late 1970s, so it’s interesting that his music sounds like a lost document from that era. More than that, though, Terje’s entire aura is straight up 70s. A Google image search of his name turns up plenty of handlebar mustaches; the album artwork of his debut, It’s Album Time, depicts a martini-loving man (presumably a caricature of Terje himself) whom it wouldn’t be unreasonable to guess is a jazz pianist. Of course, this depiction of Terje as lounge master is woefully deceiving; rather, Terje is a space disco auteur, as heard over It’s Album Time‘s hour-long odyssey. Although his songs’ similarity, lack of lyrics, and lengths can make them tough to distinguish, there’s a nuanced yet discernible beauty to all these tracks.

It’s Album Time immediately makes its intentions clear with its opening title track, a short intro to the remainder of the music. “Intro (It’s Album Time)” showcases the style Terje puts forth on all twelve tracks here: crystalline disco synths and smoky lounge vibes abound. It successfully achieves its task of lightheartedly opening the doors to Terje’s interstellar electronic world, which hosts odd synth freakouts like the fractured, constantly oscillating “Preben Goes to Acapulco” and the rave splashes of the penultimate “Oh Joy.” The latter track is remarkable for unsubtly incorporating the trademarks of a genre (rave) slightly outside the usual scope of Terje’s disco-indebted music, as are the funk-soul anthem “Svensk Sas” and the giddily jazzy “Alfonso Muskedunder.”

Terje best steps into unfamiliar territory on a track that isn’t even his. “Johnny and Mary”, a Robert Palmer cover that Terje somehow managed to get Roxy Music legend Bryan Ferry to provide vocals for, is a slow-burning piece of minimal, keyboard-centered heartache. Ferry’s raspy yet controlled voice imbues this track with a warm sensuality that’s much more romantic than the sexy bravado of many other songs present. The song’s gradual ascent from merely snaps and faintly wobbling synths to sparkling synths and soulful aching over its six-and-a-half minutes is downright affecting.

“Johnny and Mary” will probably wind up being the track most listeners point to as It’s Album Time‘s standout merely because it has vocals. Terje’s songs individually are of great craft and caliber, but when placed in sequence, their touch is lost somewhat. The problem isn’t that individual tracks don’t stand out, but that these tunes are essentially built upon the same fundamentals. As an example, compare the undeniable groove of “Strandbar” and the hypnotic trance of “Inspector Norse.” These tracks are not perfectly similar, yet their components are so familiar that their effect is reduced when listening to the album in one sitting. It’s a dilemma that It’s Album Time presents more than once over its hour-long runtime.

That’s not at all to say that it’s a bad album. It’s Album Time is most certainly an enjoyable listen, but Terje could certainly have trimmed some fat off the edges of this one. Honestly, a rectified version of It’s Album Time with fewer songs and minutes of music, as well as more songs as funky and vibrant as album highlight “Delorean Dynamite”, might sound impeccable. “Delorean Dynamite” is actually the best refinement of Terje’s style: a six-minute dance tune that boldly wears its funk and disco influences directly on its sleeve, smoothly changes keys time and time again to initiate a danceable catharsis, and belongs in the 70s. It’s a tune in line with an era when perceptions of what popular music could and would be were still growing, which is fitting for Terje: even though he’s been doing this for years, It’s Album Time suggests that Terje is still learning his way around.

As of April 2013, Sharkmuffin were kind of like the Dr. Octagon of the garage rock, noise pop, and lo-fi scenes. Their She-Gods of Champagne Valley EP they released that month showcased Tarra Thiessen singing about hilariously disturbing topics including heroin-addled fembots, mermaid sex slaves, and teenage incest, while backed by some of Brooklyn’s raunchiest, gloriously messy power chords and percussion. It’s surprising and admirable, then, that the band makes some small steps towards the more personal and down-to-earth on their 1097 EP, which packs an impressive amount of punk punch into just seven and a half minutes.

Sharkmuffin’s move towards lyrical realism isn’t entirely unprecedented: “The Lake”, from their self-titled debut, seems to be about losing a friend to addiction. It’s a song about someone else’s struggles, which makes the reflective lyricism ending 1097‘s final track, and thus the whole EP, a bit less surprising. This track, “Soft Landing”, sees Thiessen turning her gaze inward, lamenting “Oh, but I always break/this feels like a mistake,” during the song’s last fifty seconds, her voice becoming increasingly fanged and searing as she repeats the phrase. Opening track “Foul Play” addresses an impromptu lover’s lack of confidence: “But you don’t know how you’ll ever be good enough/if you’ll ever be good enough,” Thiessen muses over slamming guitars, pounding percussion, and bleating bass.

“Foul Play” also shows that Sharkmuffin haven’t gone entirely serious yet. “We wed in the parking lot/we share the same name now” is a statement of youthful spontaneity, a memory not terribly different than a sudden elopement in Las Vegas. The searing noise tune “TEN TEN”, which consists entirely of the lyrics “TEN TEN!” shrieked, howled, and bellowed, both at different times and simultaneously, is another statement of unrestricted explosion and glee, its degradation into unnerving feedback and static sounding like a massive middle finger to anyone at all.

Of course, Sharkmuffin aren’t nearly the first band to use noise and volume to convey their art. Even at their young age, though, they’ve already moved well out of the shadows of their progenitors; their unique combination of caustic guitars, rattling percussion, and wobbly, haunting vocals are their own unique stamp. They’re continuing the traditions of their scene without sounding derivative, and they’re sure as hell having a lot of fun doing it. What more can you ask for?

Listen to Sharkmuffin

Given the self-loathing angst of Cloud Nothing’s 2012 masterpiece Attack on Memory, it might be surprising to learn that frontman and songwriter Dylan Baldi has a fantastic sense of humor. “Listened to the leak of that new cloud nothings album, not at all what i was expecting from them, really awful shit,” Baldi tweeted from his band’s Twitter account on March 6, almost a month before the album in question, Here and Nowhere Else, hit shelves. This quip wasn’t some sort of weird marketing ploy: Here and Nowhere Else had, in fact, leaked extremely prematurely. Baldi probably wasn’t happy about this leak, but chose to address it with humor and brevity, a mature approach for a 22-year old, especially one thrust into the music industry as just a teenager.

Or maybe Baldi was able to joke about this unfortunate circumstance because he realizes that, of all artists recording and releasing music today, Cloud Nothings is the band least likely to gain any extra benefit from an early leak. Baldi’s music is so immediate and forceful that a month more for buzz to build up wouldn’t change anyone’s reaction to his art. Here and Nowhere Else, a grand refinement of Attack on Memory‘s brooding garage rock, demands incessant replaying even after its first listen. The drums here are stronger and more frantic than ever before, and the snarl Baldi sporadically employed for Attack emerges frequently, yet always sounds vital. New additions to Cloud Nothings’ adrenaline-rushing sound can be heard too: risky yet graciously executed tempo and dynamic changes are abundant, and unexpectedly positive and hopeful lyrics pervade the music.

Even though Baldi’s words have taken a happier turn on his fourth album as Cloud Nothings, his music remains thoroughly overcast. “I’m moving forward, while I keep the past around me,” Baldi observes on “Pattern Walks”, but this optimistic message is paired with anxious, paranoid guitar lines and doom-laced percussive blasts. His anthemic cries of “I’m losing it, but what do I care?” on “Giving Into Seeing” are accompanied by morose, raging sounds, which soon swell into overwrought shouts of “SWALLOW!” and despair-driven guitar bends. Lead single “I’m Not Part of Me” is Here and Nowhere Else‘s best example of Baldi’s contrasting lyrics and sound: “I’m moving towards a new idea/you’re not what I really need” is about as buoyant a phrase as Baldi has ever delivered, but the slow crescendo of power chords underlying it is absolutely bleak.

Yet, despite the darknesses of Here and Nowhere Else, its overall mood is far brighter than its predecessor. Whereas Attack on Memory tracks like “Stay Useless” and “Wasted Days” conveyed 100% despair, the desolation of Here and Nowhere Else is subdued by somewhat sunnier guitar chords, as well as Baldi’s gentler vocals (well, when he isn’t screaming). “Just See Fear” is only subtly dismal, its jaunty guitars and relaxed vocals outweighing the inevitable darkness of a Cloud Nothings track. “You don’t really seem to care, and/I don’t even talk about it”, lyrical highlights from “No Thoughts”, coexist with guitars mostly bright, yet faintly grim. Both these songs also progress into shouted catharsis, moments when the darkness of Baldi’s music shines through more obviously. Even during these intense breakouts of screaming, though, there’s a positivity to be heard that never manifested on Attack on Memory.

It’s a bit odd that Here and Nowhere Else sounds so optimistic given its impressively ferocious drumming and blindsiding tempo shifts. Both of these musical elements lend themselves to anxiety, fear, and anger quite well, yet Baldi uses them here to convey confidence. Opener “Now Hear In” begins with midpaced, overdriven guitar rumble that smoothly quickens into a mosh pit rally. This faster portion, led by intense, technically astounding drum work, calms to its previous pace for a second verse, only to reverse again for the second chorus. “Quieter Today” follows, and this track makes even better use of tempo shifts. Its riotous verses keep their pace into the pre-chorus, which ends with a quick pause, building up the tension for a decrease in speed, yet a striking increase in forcefulness.

After “Now Hear In” and “Quieter Today” comes “Psychic Trauma”, the most blatant example of Baldi’s songwriting advancements. Possibly the album’s most galvanizing track, it starts as a dismal guitar dirge embellished with lyrics about the numbness of a bad relationship, but, after forty-five seconds, transforms into a rapid, fiery battery of guttural guitars and pounding percussion. “I can’t believe what you’re telling me is true/my mind is always wasted listening to you”, Baldi sighs over this instrumentation, and then adds even more aggression to this same soundtrack, its newfound intensity stark enough to allow Baldi to scream and repeat the song’s first verse over it. Although a short period of minor tranquility appears next, this brief passivation ascends into a brutal, manic sonic assault. The song’s last thirty seconds are particularly thrilling, as the guitars and drums both go as apeshit as they possibly can, forming a sea of dizzying, adrenaline-rushing, technically bedazzling garage rock grandeur. It’s the best example of what makes Here and Nowhere Else such a triumph, and one of the most visceral garage rock tracks in a while (although Baldi’s own “Wasted Days” is a strong competitor).

Here and Nowhere Else is a clear step forward for Dylan Baldi and his garage rock gang, yet it’s not far removed from Cloud Nothings’ breakthrough Attack on Memory. Its advancements are subtle enough to fully satisfy Attack lovers, yet are also sharp enough to earn Baldi a new wave of critical acclaim. Although it’s a surprisingly happy album, it’s still got enough darkness to perfectly convey the frenzy of Baldi’s very existence. Above all this, though, it’s a unique document in a genre far too often labeled as overdone and expired, an album that’s bound to win Cloud Nothings a slew of new listeners and confirm them as leaders of the pack. Baldi’s genre gets the last laugh, but he’s been cracking jokes from the very beginning.

For someone who’s career is all about listening, Carlos Hernandez, de facto leader of Ava Luna, sure likes to watch. He’s a bit voyeuristic in his role for Ava Luna’s “Ice Level” video, stating that his character “watches from a dark, geometrical vantage point.” More revealing is when he’s observing to learn rather than, well, to be creepy. In an interview with A Music Blog, Yea?, Hernandez confessed that, rather than jamming with his idol Ornette Coleman, he’d rather record Coleman’s performance and “just act the observer, watch for twitches and tics.” Listening to the idiosyncrasies of Ava Luna’s captivating sophomore album Electric Balloon, it’s surprising that Hernandez hasn’t already done exactly that. Each of the album’s eleven songs flaunts the band’s unique jitters and quirks, placing Ava Luna’s very own twitches and tics front and center. Although the dynamics and mood of the music fluctuate somewhat throughout the album, each track sounds uniquely like an Ava Luna song.

Of course, a unique sound isn’t a direct pathway to success. Take, as an example, the rap-rave style of Die Antwoord, a sound that’s unmatched by any other musical act, yet, frankly, sounds quite terrible. Ava Luna have no such problem: the “nervous soul” style, to steal a Bandcamp tag they invented and assigned to themselves, advanced on Electric Balloon is exciting, unpredictable, and wholly theirs. Nevertheless, superficial comparisons to other acts can be made — vocalist Becca Kaufman can sit on the border between cute and eerie just like Deerhoof’s Satomi Matsuzaki can, Carlos Hernandez has a snarl not far removed from Black Francis or tourmates and good friends Krill, and the male-female vocal interplay, odd meter, and technical complexity reminisce of Dirty Projectors, by far Ava Luna’s most frequent comparison. Yet after only a couple of listens, the gates guarding Electric Balloon‘s individuality are shattered, and Ava Luna’s anxious, oddball sound becomes entirely theirs.

One of Ava Luna’s tendencies that attributes to their already-signature sound is their ability to make various tempos, volumes, and emotions sound like no one else has ever touched upon them, all in the course of one album. On Electric Balloon, the flamenco-inspired, shuffling acoustic ballad “Aquarium” sounds just as Ava Luna-esque as does Becca Kaufman’s wild yelping on the mid-paced funk groove of “Sears Roebuck M&Ms” and the uneasy title track. Likewise, the slow-burning, oddly pretty “PRPL” never sounds like the work of a different group than that behind the angsty, boiling soul tension of “Crown.” Ava Luna’s “nervous soul” comes in a few shapes and sizes, yet never fails to strike and enchant.

Even with the diversity of sonic approaches taken on Electric Balloon, certain facets of Ava Luna’s writing consistently manifest in their music. Carlos Hernandez’ ability to swing from a soulful coo to a manic snarl in what feels like only a second drives a good number of these songs, and his laborious arrangements form the backbone of this album. The vocal turns on “Daydream” and “Crown” are particularly impressive, despite neither song sounding even remotely similar to the other. “Plain Speech” displays the extremes in Hernandez’ voice many times in its four-and-a-half minutes, but more exciting are the two tempo changes Hernandez incorporates. The dramatic shift from a sound that really epitomizes “nervous soul” to slowed indie rock greatness (and then back again) surprises each time.

The chorus of “Plain Speech” is equally important for reiterating Becca Kaufman’s significance in Ava Luna’s various sounds. Although she takes the position of background vocalist on this song, as she does on “Hold U”, “Judy”, and “Genesee”, her voice might actually be more intriguing than Hernandez’ off-the-walls vocal chaos. Kaufman quite literally whoops her way through “Sears Roebuck M&Ms” and squeals her way through “Electric Balloon”, two of the most invigorating tracks present. As a background vocalist, she reinforces Hernandez’ shaky, uncertain voice with a solidity that magnifies its emotive effects. Her hollers of “Judy, I don’t have the stomach for you!” under Hernandez’ own shouting of these lyrics delivers the message even more firmly than if Hernandez were left to his own devices.

Electric Balloon sounds more like the work of the whole band rather than just Hernandez, a problem that their debut Ice Level presented. Despite being quite a riot itself, the latter album felt restricted by Hernandez’ control; Electric Balloon flows more freely, its boundaries practically nonexistent thanks to the other members’ contributions. Although Ice Level highlights such as “Wrenning Day” and “Sequential Holdings” predicted the explosive nature of Electric Balloon without fully embracing them, tracks like “No F” and “A Year of Mirth” never quite took off as they might be expected to. Electric Balloon suffers from no such malady, as even its slightly tepid finale, “Ab Ovo”, leaps forward in its final ninety seconds. Here, Ava Luna have incorporated the ideas and skills of many people rather than just one into their sound; the result is something less trapped and more explorative.

Electric Balloon isn’t perfect, but it’s a big step forward for these five weirdos. The multi-faceted style they’ve developed is purely enjoyable, and it never tires. It’s the kind of album that tries many different outfits on out of genuine interest instead of pretentious vacillations, and provides a listening experience worth repeating time and time again. Maybe this is because it offers more questions than it does answers, which is totally fine when the music sounds this good. Perhaps the best question regarding Ava Luna now isn’t one generated directly by the album, but by the listener in response to the album: if Ava Luna is capable of something this towering and singular, who’s to say they can’t outdo themselves in the future?

“Are you going to call me a cunt? Are you going to tell me I’m ugly? Well, here’s my band name—do your worst, motherfucker.” This is the attitude of Meredith Graves, frontwoman of the bold, confrontational Syracuse five-piece Perfect Pussy. The sentiment perfectly matches the music: Perfect Pussy rose to blogosphere fame late last year on the strength of the brutally honest lyricism (well, when it could be understood behind the plethora of filters) and explosive lo-fi garage punk of their debut EP I have lost all desire for feeling. At four songs and twelve minutes long, the EP provided a bare minimum of an introduction to Perfect Pussy’s particular breed of garage rock. Their debut album, Say Yes to Love, is almost twice as long (if the live bonus tracks are excluded), yet instead of feeling twice as powerful as the EP, it rushes by like a blur, impacting surprisingly infrequently.

That’s not to say that Say Yes to Love is in any way a bad album. Although it’s not quite as invigorating as its predecessor, it’s still got many moments of thrilling lo-fi punk. Lead-off track “Driver” rails forward with a greater fidelity and a somewhat slower pace than the majority of I have lost all desire for feeling, which helps Graves’ cries of “you don’t know shit about me!” land with poignancy. “Work”, a faster, more metallic track, combines some of the album’s most incomprehensible lyrics with some of its most immediate guitar work. “Advance Upon the Real” builds upon the guitar assault of “Work”, its words often buried under layers of impossibly rapid six-strings-and-percussion interplay.

Even with all the electrifying thrash present here, though, it can be difficult to distinguish the faster songs from one another, especially since the sentiments, which are probably so lacerating that hearing them clearly would thoroughly enhance these songs, often hide behind the instrumentation, despite the improved fidelity. Consecutive tracks “Bells” and “Big Stars” seem to lead into each other, yet there’s not much to separate the pounding sounds of each song. “Dig” experiences the same dilemma: there’s nothing about it to really distinguish it from its surroundings.

The similarity across tracks on Say Yes to Love, when combined with how short the album is, somewhat dampens the excitement predicted by I have lost all desire for feeling. Although even the album’s best moments can feel monotonous, there’s one song in particular that helps break up the steady flow. “Interference Fits”, easily the most unique song on the album, is a good deal less aggressive than the rest of the album. The song starts with a few strummed notes rather than heavy power chords, as with every other track. It’s a bit more downbeat than the other songs, too, and unexpectedly gorgeous coming from a band whose scrambled sound is generally hideous. “Since when do we say yes to love?” Graves asks during this song’s brief moment of near-silence, a brief reprieve from the sensory overload of her band’s sound.

Eleven minutes of music — over half the entire length of Say Yes to Love — follow “Interference Fits”, yet none of these minutes ever binds the ears as tightly. In fact, just under eight of these minutes are mostly feedback and noise, percussion-less collages of sound that disappoint rather than fascinate. Doing the math reveals that this section accounts for one-third of Say Yes to Love, and this final third is more bothersome than it is interesting. Four bonus tracks follow the third, but each of these features a live performance, adding no value to the album. It’s hard to love an album structured so strangely, and its sameness doesn’t help. Despite its flaws though, it’s tough not to at least like a few of the songs on here, and that’s alright — since when do we say yes to love anyway?

Considering that Real Estate write almost exclusively about suburban life and are known to reference their home state of New Jersey decently often (“Suburban Dogs” features the couplet “Carry me back to sweet Jersey/back where I long to be”), it’s surprising that Real Estate never played a show in their hometown of Ridgewood until June 2012. What’s less surprising is how Ridgewood-centered the concert was: Toasted Plastic and Spook Houses, both Ridgewood-based bands that travel the local circuit, opened the concert, and the show was actually an event to support a charity close to the band’s heart. Entitled the Nick Currey Fund, the charity was inspired by the death of a Ridgewood High School classmate of both Real Estate songwriter/vocalist/guitarist Martin Courtney and bassist Alex Bleeker. Even after two successful albums that led them on American and European tours, Real Estate still came home to support the town they love, the town that formed them.

Unfortunately, Courtney and co. can no longer go home, and Atlas, Real Estate’s third album, describes this stage of life with intense sadness and longing. Whereas this group’s self-titled debut and sophomore effort Days reveled in love for the suburbs, Atlas addresses moving on and growing up, and this shift in lyrical content exposes a maturity that Real Estate had merely suggested until now. It’s not that these guys want to leave their past behind; if anything, Atlas expertly navigates through Courtney’s aching desire to return to former times. This isn’t goodbye, it’s see you later, as suggested by the solemn, pained “Past Lives”: “I cannot come back to this neighborhood/without feeling my own age,” laments Courtney as he reminisces on a past he wishes were still his present.

Throughout Atlas, it seems that the main reason Real Estate have left the suburban life is due to touring. The album explores the conflicts brought upon one’s personal life over months and months of constant traveling: “I’m just trying to make some sense of this/before I lose another year,” Courtney sings on “The Bend”, a phrase to which he could have easily attached “on the road” at the end to reveal its meaning, but the subtext is clear enough. This song’s chorus nails the sentiment even further: “Like I’m behind the wheel/but it won’t steer”, Courtney sighs, implying that, although Real Estate is driving their touring van, it’s actually the other way around: the touring van is driving them.

“Crime” follows “The Bend”, and it’s also a thoroughly appropriate sequence thematically. The “crippling anxiety” of the verses (a phrase whose bluntness is unmatched in Real Estate’s prior catalog) manifests in Courtney’s fear of dying “lonely and uptight”, suggesting a separation from the love he’s left behind, at home, in the suburbs, where his past and his heart lie. “Talking Backwards” also looks back upon a happier time “when that night was over/and the field was lit up bright/and I walked home with you/nothing I said came out right.” Even though, sonically, this song is relatively upbeat given the rest of the album’s content, this stanza of the second verse is underpinned with a clear emotional pain, a nostalgic sentiment cut with unfiltered sadness. Its last line is particularly telling: even when reminiscing on a gorgeous, meaningful moment, Courtney focuses on his own failures. His inability to say what he wanted in that moment is, to him, another significant instance of the “crippling anxiety” which “Crime” focuses on. Furthermore, this memory is “too many miles away,” reiterating the distance this album explores.

Although Atlas is a lyrical advance for Real Estate, this band has yet to evolve sonically, which, given the power of their words, works out surprisingly often. Through its first six songs, the album rarely lags, although the instrumental “April’s Song” is a bit out of place on this lyrically weighty collection. Yet it’s only “Talking Backwards” that truly sounds any different than the rest of this portion of the album: its sparkling, upbeat, almost optimistic guitars completely contrast the dismal, lethargic guitars of its counterparts. By the time seventh track “Primitive” comes around, this sameness can prove a bit exhausting, although the subtle synths underlying the chorus do bolster this song a bit. Penultimate track “Horizon” moves a bit more quickly than most of the album, and the vocal harmonies in the chorus are fully affecting, so it too stands out slightly in this pool of repetition. Overall, though, it’s entirely possible to lose focus as this album progresses, since it can begin to sound like a loop of reverb-heavy, shiny-clean guitar breeziness.

Real Estate are not new to the complaint that all their songs sound the same: in a recent interview with Stereogum, Courtney addressed this criticism by explaining that he thinks “the album is a grower.” He may well be right: Days took some time to unfold itself, but once it did, it became impossible to escape. Sure, Atlas doesn’t offer anything quite as exuberant or as purely gleeful as Days‘ literally perfect third track “It’s Real”, but it doesn’t sound terribly different than its predecessor. This similarity makes it easy to believe that, in due time, Atlas will evolve from an album that makes great occasional sadness-sympathizing listening into a collection that, like the best of albums, can be played over and over again without any expiration date. And when that time comes, hopefully Courtney will have learned to look back on his past with a smile instead of an ache.

For a band named after a bird (and a pun on Don Henley’s crew), Eagulls sure are fascinated by the human body. In September 2013, this British outfit released a music video for single “Nerve Endings” that depicted a super sped-up film of a pig brain decomposing. This brain was similar enough to a human brain, just as they had wanted, that someone who discovered the brain where it was being filmed thought it was human, and called the police. Now, six months later, without any legal repercussions from the “Nerve Endings” video, Eagulls deliver a self-titled debut filled with song titles like “Yellow Eyes”, “Footsteps”, “Amber Veins”, and “Fester/Blister.” If their interest in anatomy wasn’t blatant enough already, it sure is now. The focus seems to be on rotting body parts, and the music matches: Eagulls sounds like a shoegaze soundtrack for someone’s slow death.

In sound, Eagulls have precedents in fellow British acts The Horrors, but that band’s name would be much better applied to Eagulls. The searing hybrid punk-shoegaze guitars that The Horrors are known for also open Eagulls’ “Nerve Endings”, and thus their debut album. This sound continues through Eagulls‘ ten tracks, and it’s done better than their forebears have achieved. Lyrically, though, they don’t quite have any predecessors: what other band could make “There’s no reason, no sense, no meaning behind my awkward smile” seem like this smile is that of a deeply troubled person, someone obsessed with human death and decay? These are the first words of “Nerve Endings”, whose chorus bears the shouted refrain “Can’t find my head!”, which might not be a metaphor coming from these guys.

“Nerve Endings” is a prime example of what Eagulls does best, which makes its placement as the album’s first track somewhat unfortunate, since things can only go downhill from there. But Eagulls are, if anything, consistent, so downhill isn’t too far or steep. On all ten tracks here, the opener’s trends continue: harrowing, aggressive guitars clash bluntly with percussion that sounds like it’s falling from the sky, and vocalist George Mitchell always delivers his disquieting lyrics with a British scowl full of bile and vitriol. The battle between drums and guitars in the chorus of “Yellow Eyes”, for example, resembles another Eagulls chorus, “Footsteps”; elsewhere, “Amber Veins” shoots out fearsome tones subtly drenched in wah to pave way for the track’s percussive stomp.

Eagulls’ sonic cohesiveness is an admirable quality, one that bands as young as they are often struggle with, but while it bolsters their sound, it also mildly hinders their debut as a whole. As the final few tracks approach, the life-sized guitars and bellowed vocals blur the lines between tracks. “Soulless Youth”, the album’s ultimate track, sounds great on its own, but feels tiring within the context of the album; if not for the brief breakdown on “Fester/Blister”, that song too might fly by without leaving a mark on listeners’ receptive ears. Luckily for this band, though, their lyrical consistency helps to shadow the persistent similarities across tracks. “Footsteps”, certainly an album highlight, boasts a screaming guitar riff during its chorus that might feel like just a whimper if not for the shouting of “you’re depleting my neck!” More anatomical imagery saves the day here, as it does on single “Possessed”, wherein the idea of demonic possession sounds like a physical burden rather than just a mental drain.

Although Eagulls falters here and there, it’s a pretty good starting point for a band that, despite having their own sound, isn’t reinventing the wheel. They’ve absolutely got the potential to make a riveting punk or shoegaze album one day, something as bleak and aggressive as Cloud Nothings’ recent masterpiece Attack on Memory. These birds have learned to fly, but have yet to travel long distance. Oddly enough, it’s their preoccupation with human physicality that sprouts their wings.

How’s this for a compliment? Rolling Stone recently deemed St. Vincent “the most thrilling solo artist in indie rock right now.” It’s no small feat to receive this level of respect from one of the best-established cultural publications of all time, even though hyperbole is inevitable in any sort of art criticism. Yet praise for St. Vincent, real name Annie Clark, simply cannot be overdone; over the course of three albums, Clark has proven herself to be arguably the most unique, exciting, passionate, and genuinely incredible musician to break out in the twenty-first century. Her fourth album St. Vincent, possibly her best yet, continues in its predecessors’ unparalleled excellence, expanding on past motifs in just the right ways. It combines the best qualities of her solo output, as well as those of the disappointingly tepid Love This Giant, her collaborative album with personal idol and musical legend David Byrne, into a robust, fiery, emotionally heavy package with no filler to find anywhere and only genuine ideas explored.

Of course, outside influences can be identified as well: Byrne in the funk rhythm of jolting opener “Rattlesnake”, the percussive stutter of the great “Every Tear Disappears”, and especially the brass section of “Digital Witness”; Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin in the overpowering, monstrous last two minutes of “Huey Newton”; Pink Floyd in the background ambience of the devastating, downright gorgeous “I Prefer Your Love.” But, more than anything, Clark’s own catalog informs St. Vincent without dictating it. The wonderful third track “Prince Johnny” employs the same sort of grey, uneasy haze of Strange Mercy gems like “Surgeon” and “Dilletante”, yet aches even more earnestly than much of that album’s thoroughly yearning tunes; the shell-shock dynamic shift of “Huey Newton” is an improved take on Actor highlight “Marrow”; the acoustic guitars surrounding album highlights “Regret” and “Psychopath” recall the early days of Marry Me. Really, St. Vincent is a distillation of Annie Clark’s musical past, simultaneously a reminder of where she came from and where her music is heading.

Musically, St. Vincent succeeds by expanding upon previous instrumental tendencies; its lyrics also stem from the same seeds as on older albums. As with Actor and especially Strange Mercy, the lyrics here are deeply personal despite the frequent cloud of metaphors and imagery surrounding them. The figurative language is often so thick that, although it’s clearly sincere and close to Clark’s heart, its true meaning can be hard to interpret. For instance, when Clark sings “Summer is as faded as a long sicada call/memories so bright I gotta squint just to recall” on “Regret”, it can be difficult to establish whether she looks back upon this time with shame or positivity, although the song title very blatantly suggests the former. Elsewhere, the words of “Huey Newton” simply sound like an assortment of disparate images tossed together, seemingly unrelated turns of phrase that only coexist to sound eerie, a job they do perfectly.

Of course, when lyricism is this personal, true feelings inevitably shine through. Clark’s words on “Severed Crossed Fingers” and “I Prefer Your Love” make no effort to conceal their woe and desperation, imbuing these tracks with a heartache unmatched in her catalog to date. “The truth is ugly, well/I feel ugly too” and “Spitting out guts from their gears/draining our spleen over years” pierce the former track, ensuring that its melancholy and poignancy don’t go missed; “I prefer your love/to Jesus” is actually quite straightforward coming from Clark on the latter track. “I Prefer Your Love” is indeed deeply personal — it’s about her mother’s battle with disease — and its somber strings emphasize just how heartfelt this slow-burner is.

However, despite the blatant feelings of these two tracks, there is a moment on St. Vincent when the lyrics bring the music down just a tad. The sarcastic, preachy lyrics of “Digital Witness”, albeit humorous in their irony, aren’t quite up to par with the rest of Clark’s poetry, and the out-of-place brass section dominating the song sounds like the stronger side of the still weak Love This Giant. Released as the second single from the album, “Digital Witness” marks the first instance of Clark’s output feeling like a mild letdown. Yet, despite its somewhat silly, yet well-intentioned and socially relevant lyrics, and its borderline camp instrumentation, the song’s a grower; it might be this album’s weak point (or maybe that’s “Bring Me Your Loves”, a tune so jarring that it takes some time to accept, yet, naturally, it too grows into greatness), yet it’s still a fantastic, invigorating scorcher of a tune, and it shines even more brightly in the context of the album.

It’s interesting that “Digital Witness” benefits so greatly from its placement within the album, because it follows the best song present, the overwhelming, no-looking-back “Huey Newton.” Although the lyrics on this track sound meaningless in sequence, Clark delivers them in a manner as spooky as the underlying instrumental, a minimal mesh of muted OK Computer synths, distant digitalism, and straightforward percussion. As if this weren’t menacing enough, Clark completely reverses the song with two minutes remaining, converting it from a relatively tranquil meditation into a stomping, larger-than-life, so-heavy-it-could-be-metal anthem in what feels like a millisecond. The transformation is so quick it can make hearts skip beats and incite listeners to jump out of their seats in shock, and it may damn well be the single most rewarding moment in the St. Vincent canon to date.

Clark seems to be fully aware of just how special “Huey Newton” is: the disgustingly distorted guitar part guiding its metallic second half is none other than the fierce, unidentified-until-now riff used way back in November 2013 to initiate the St. Vincent promotional campaign. It’s that menacing, dirty jam that played under the European tour announcement on her website, a placement that might imply that it would be the intro to the first single released from the album. Yet on “Birth in Reverse”, no such riff was to be found, although equally funky and distorted guitars form its excellent instrumentation; furthermore, no other singles contained the riff, and the ninety-second previews that iTunes offered for each song showed no evidence of its presence on the album. It’s as though Clark did all she could to preserve the sheer joy of the surprise 2:38 into “Huey Newton”, the moment when she proves herself a master of unexpected, cathartic shifts in mood and sound, and an artist unrivaled in innovation and individuality.

The majority of, if not all, St. Vincent fans will cherish St. Vincent. It demonstrates Clark reimagining everything she’s done in the past in its best possible form, resulting in not only some of the most dynamic, exciting pieces of her career, but of all twenty-first century music. On St. Vincent, Clark sounds thoroughly modern and of her own kind while she picks delicately from the past for influences. That she sounds this new while still wearing old colors completely justifies anything and everything good anyone, whether fan or fledgling critic, casual listener or Rolling Stone writer, has ever said about her.

Phantogram’s career to date has proven that an artist’s musical approaches can be scattershot and haphazard without coming off messy or amateurish. Their debut LP Eyelid Movies dabbled in a wide range of styles: faintly dark, electro-tinged dream pop, terrifying, urgent, 90s-style hip-hop, and contemplative yet forceful indie rock all received equal space on this album. Follow-up EP Nightlife demonstrated the duo’s proficiency in even more modes: eerie acoustic hymns, distant electropop, and dreamy, stadium-oriented rock all appeared within. However, the band’s second full-length and first in five years, Voices, sees Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter ditching the stylistic indecision of their past releases, resulting in their most consistent work yet. Although such a decision might plague the band’s fluctuating sound with sameness, these two cleverly avoid this problem by delving further into the darkness and sexiness their catalog had previously only hinted at.

From the get-go, though, it’s not entirely obvious that Voices marks any new territory for this duo. Opener “Nothing But Trouble” explores the same musical motifs and vocal methods employed on Eyelid Movies highlights “Mouthful of Diamonds” and “As Far A I Can See”, but this is certainly not a bad thing. Acting as a gateway between Phantogram’s former doings and their newer ways, it provides a proper segue into newer terrain, leading directly into the sensual moodiness of “Black Out Days.” Constructed upon ominous synths and thrilling vocal loops courtesy of Bartel, this song begins Voices‘ journey into more affecting, lust-speckled themes, somewhat uncharted territory for these two. Elsewhere, the deceivingly-titled “Bill Murray” exudes warmth and sensuality despite the murky, bleak synth crests forming its core; “Howling at the Moon” employs Western-tinged guitars and haunting synths to achieve an aching, evocative synthpop tune. The chorus’ main lyric of “at night I crawl and howl at the moon” can easily be mistaken for “at night I cry and howl at the moon”; in fact, maybe that’s what the words really say — it can be hard to distinguish through the flickering percussion, background howls (no coincidence), and longing guitars. Regardless, it’s downright afflicting since Bartel’s voice is so flexible.

Although Bartel usually takes the vocal lead on most of these songs, Carter gets his fair share of time front-and-center. This is a continued trend — Eyelid Movies‘ “Running from the Cops” and Nightlife‘s “Turning Into Stone” feature Carter on vocals, but Voices marks what’s possibly the best use of his vocals yet. On “I Don’t Blame You”, Carter alternates between monotone storytelling in the verses and skyward, longing tones in the chorus. The bare instrumental composition of the verses — rhythmic, repeating percussion, background synth hum, muted brass samples — perfectly contrasts the explosive chorus, its synths and percussion both accentuated to far greater heights. It’s arguably Phantogram’s best tune with Carter as frontman to date, although Voices‘ sparkling, heartbreaking “Never Going Home” could also qualify for this title. “If this is love/I’m never going home,” emotes Carter during this song’s chorus, and though the sentiment may be ordinary, his pleading delivery makes it fully believable.

Preceding the somewhat introverted dynamics of “Never Going Home” is the heaviest, most adrenaline-rushing song on Voices. “Fall in Love”, released as the album’s first single way back in December of last year, proves to be Voices‘ strongest track despite how familiar it feels by now. Synthetic strings unassumingly open the song, but quickly pave the way for huge synth blasts, slamming percussion, and digitized oohs and aahs. These elements disappear quickly as Bartel croons the first verse, but reemerge thereafter as the foundation of the song’s absolutely giant chorus, in which the background voices strikingly underpin Bartel’s cries of “You were fallin’/I’m sorry.” Its bridge contains a contender for Phantogram’s most disturbing lyric yet: “The lights/on my face ate away my smile,” laments Bartel, adding more ghostly feelings to this already eerie track.

“Could it be that I’m/falling apart?” asks Bartel during the bridge of “Fall in Love”, yet, if anything, Voices implies that Phantogram are just coming together. As Phantogram’s darkest, steamiest, most cohesive effort to date, Voices establishes that Phantogram’s career has not been a series of flukes, of disparate ideas that just happen to click. Here, they’ve channeled their varied ideas into a document that speaks to their strengths like never before.

Confidence can go a long way. Rising NYC outfit Isle of Rhodes is absolutely not lacking in this department: the self-described “hardest-hitting keyboard duo in NYC” wouldn’t apply such a statement to themselves if they had low self-esteem. Or perhaps this is just a facade? On their third release, the Affirmation Caravan EP, these two struggle to find their own sound, their music held back both by vocalist Robert Farren’s often complacent, unexaggerated voice as well as their blatant adaptation of their ancestors’ approaches. The music is by no means bad, as this young duo has a clue or two about how to light a fire under their listeners’ feet, but they often do so in a perplexing and inimitable manner.

Opener “Tic Toc” starts this brief EP on a very confusing note, both literally and perceptually. Jarring, wah-infused keyboards that recall the late 60s initiate this first track, gradually calming into the background under vocalist Robert Farren’s soothing voice. Although Farren’s subdued vocals suit the verses of “Tic Toc”, their hush oddly contrasts the chorus’ overdriven guitars. Even when Farren’s voice approaches higher pitches, or harsh growls during the final verse, he only shows restraint, failing to provide the music with the proper emotional kick it suggests and deserves.

Elsewhere, Farren’s voice better matches the music, but it’s still this outfit’s weak point. “Oceans” sees Farren harmonizing with another vocalist, likely female, during its chorus, a technique that bolsters his voice’s strength, yet doesn’t fully make up for its flaws. Instrumentally, the song occupies the same retro vibes as “Tic Toc”, but its tones feel warmer and more embracing. Really, though, all these songs look back in time: the moderate keyboard warbles of single “Islands”, probably this EP’s best track, shine with the dim gentleness of past eras’ soft rock, and the title track sounds like an odd hybrid of The White Album and The Doors.

Although Isle of Rhodes never conceal their influences, they do indeed make their own small mark with “Islands.” This tune boasts a chorus during which Farren’s voice, shrouded in reverb, briefly escapes its plaintive, reticent boundaries and matches the afflicting guitars. It’s a glimmer, an eclipse, of the band’s very own methods, a sign that, although this young duo has a lot yet to learn, they’ve already learned something.

Every week, the online music magazine Stereogum publishes a list of the week’s five best songs. Being the integral component of the hype machine that they are, Stereogum often tops the list with a new song by a well-established act, so when Gardens & Villa’s “Bullet Train” topped this list on November 22 of last year — ahead of psychedelic buzzboys Temples — it came as somewhat of a surprise. It’s likely that many readers were unaware of Gardens & Villa before this list was released, but those who actually took the time to listen to “Bullet Train” were equally likely to feel excitement upon discovering a great new song from a rising group. “Bullet Train” is certainly a standout on this outfit’s sophomore effort, Dunes, but that’s a tough label to assign, since every track shines so brightly.

Dunes begins with “Domino”, a pretty synthpop tune that lightly dips its toes into chillwave’s summer of 2009. Subsequent track “Colony Glen”, the first track released from this album, further cements Gardens & Villa’s fascination with thick synthetic pulses, and displays vocalist Chris Lynch’s uncanny ability to meld his voice into an imitation of James Mercer’s. This similarity, in combination with the track’s eerie electronic elements, absolutely screams Broken Bells (who, coincidentally, will be releasing their sophomore effort After the Disco on the same day as G&V will release Dunes, also their sophomore effort). “Bullet Train” continues the fun, and combines the chillwave leanings and Broken Bells reverence of its two preceding songs.

However, despite Dunes‘ excellent opening triforce, it’s not until fourth track “Chrysanthemums” that Gardens & Villa truly come into their own. What may damn well be a faded recording of a flute loops around deep pianos, computer-programmed clicks, and Lynch’s earnest voice, which reaches nearly harrowing heights in its chorus. “Give back your love,” coo Lynch and a female backing vocalist at the chorus’ end, providing a perfect emotional segway into this track’s flowering (pun intended, although there’s no better description) second verse. It’s Dunes‘ best example of how this band’s songwriting has expanded into an emotionally potent force.

Of course, Gardens & Villa’s sounds wouldn’t ache so brilliantly without DFA co-founder Tim Goldsworthy’s expert production. Goldsworthy’s presence brightens G&V’s sound considerably, and, in the process, provides it with optimism that wasn’t always present in the band’s past works. Whereas older tunes like “Black Hills” and its B-side “Orange Blossom” occupy spacious, somewhat downbeat environments, Dunes is far perkier, its synths blaring colorfully rather than defeatedly. A great example is the Holy Ghost-esque tune “Avalanche”, whose dark undertones are very well-concealed by its lucid guitar notes, pumping bassline, and transcendent synths. The flow and hue of these synths, as well as of those on “Thunder Glove”, are surely Goldsworthy’s contributions, his dance-punk background bleeding directly into these tracks.

It’s hard to pick out flaws from such a strong album, but if Dunes makes just one mistake, it’s that its final track feels like filler. “Love Theme” is a short (one and a half minutes) ambient piece that lacks percussion, focusing on its two or three computer-programmed synth parts. Although ambient music can be thoroughly moving, “Theme” underwhelms as the album’s final moment; an introverted track that still skirts the boundaries of synthpop — something very similar to “Minnesota” — might have provided a more appropriate ending for such an exciting album. But really, degrading Dunes for a brief sidestep is like throwing our your favorite sweater when a millimeter-sized hole forms somewhere near its bottom; it’s cutting off the nose to spite the face. Dunes is an excellent listen over its not-quite-forty minutes, an album on which most tracks could easily top Songs of the Week lists.

It must be nice being a longtime Damien Jurado fan. His sound has barely changed since his 1999 sophomore effort Rehearsals for Departure, and his consistency is most certainly an agreeable approach for devoted listeners. But might Jurado’s lack of musical turnarounds eventually grow frustrating or boring with time? Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son, Jurado’s eleventh and most recent album, still doesn’t quite answer this question: it’s a collection of both his signature folk sparsity and, more commonly, some exciting, mildly different adventures. His new methods are invigorating and gripping, but his usual approach feels a bit tiring. Regardless, Brothers and Sisters is no less affecting than anything he’s previously released.

Some of the songs on Brothers and Sisters dabble in terrain that Jurado has already covered many times throughout his seventeen-year career, and falter somewhat for this approach. “Metallic Cloud”, for example, progresses at a snail’s pace, relying on pianos and Jurado’s unmistakable voice to carry the song; “Silver Katherine” employs wispy acoustic guitars and well-buried strings (so subtle, in fact, that it’s difficult to determine whether the instrument at hand is a violin, a viola, or a cello) to achieve the same effect. “Silver Joy”, the most outrightly desolate track here, is classic Jurado, slithering by on merely its creator’s voice and finger-picked guitar notes. It’s nice to see that, after so many releases, Jurado’s most frequently used formula still works somewhat.

However, these same tracks are pushed to the album’s periphery when cast in the shadow of its more daring moments. “Silver Donna” sounds just as bleak as the majority of Jurado’s catalog, but its cold, brittle bass and arching vocal howls ensure that its six minutes, a long runtime for its creator, never bore. “Return to Maraqopa” is neither a return to Maraqopa, Jurado’s previous album, nor its title track; rather, it ditches those works’ abandoned acoustics for unsettling synth undertones and gorgeous guitar gallop. Opener “Magic Number” improves on the later-featured “Silver Katherine”, borrowing the latter track’s instrumentation and resulting in a mildly quicker tune. What’s particularly notable about “Magic Number” is its middle thirty seconds, a sort of harrowing, dusty percussive breakdown. This brief interlude is sandwiched by two nearly equal halves, an arrangement that might render this section pointless if it weren’t so interesting.

“You lost your mind on a music note/caught in your throat”, Jurado mutters on “Return to Maraqopa.” The man probably isn’t talking to himself here: on Brothers and Sisters, Jurado’s voice emanates loudly and clearly from the sonic mess. Even on “Jericho Road”, a track that buries its singer’s voice under filter after filter, the plight of human emotion is readily apparent; more traditional tracks such as “Silver Joy” make no effort to conceal their sentiments. This song’s “do not disturb me/let me be” mantra pervades Brothers and Sisters, an album on which no object or person disturbs Damien Jurado’s creative process.

Dan Bejar is one of very few people who can claim to have spent the last fifteen or so years yelping and whining his way through a musical career. He’s also one of a much greater number of people who can claim to have spent the last fifteen or so years cleverly musing and sensually crooning his way through a musical career. Bejar’s music, which he releases under the name Destroyer, uses his chameleonic vocals as one of its most prominent vehicles, and on no two songs over his nine-album discography do these vocals take the exact same form. Despite the diversity of Destroyer’s acclaimed output, few listeners probably expected that, somewhere between the lethargic, resigned near-whispers of Kaputt and the manic, ear-splitting shrieks of This Night, there exists a range of Bejar’s voice that perfectly suits the Spanish language.

The most surprising element of Destroyer’s Five Spanish Songs EP isn’t that a wordsmith as extravagant and unmatched as Bejar has chosen to abandon his native tongue for a language foreign to some of his audience; if anything, Bejar might be the modern musician most apt to make such a poetic, romantic decision. What really stuns about the EP is that a man recognized for howling through lyrically dense, poetically perplexing masterpieces sounds so fluid in a language so much more nuanced than his own. From the first words of opener “Maria de las Nieves,” it’s clear that Bejar’s shape-shifting voice has settled in an unexpectedly logical place.

As an opener, “Maria de las Nieves” also establishes the dynamics and instrumentation that form the rest of the EP’s songs (all of which are covers of music by the band Sr. Chinarro). The Kaputt-esque, dreamy electric guitars lining “Maria” appear prominently on the tropical percussion-backed “Babieca”; “Del Monton” borrows the lucid, acoustic guitars of “Maria” and throws in some pianos while minimizing the percussion; “Bye Bye”, the most minimal piece here, isolates the opening track’s acoustics and electrics to create a slow-burning, Streethawk-styled ballad.

It’s this last track that best resembles previous Destroyer works. Centered on a bare, basic acoustic guitar riff and sprinkles of light, clear-as-day electric guitars, the instrumental palette brings to mind past Bejar pleasures “Helena”, “It’s Gonna Take an Airplane”, and “Watercolours Into the Ocean”, among others. Indeed, “Bye Bye” rewards long-time Destroyer fans directly after the surprising rock stomp of “El Rito.” Although the latter track is by far the most obviously energizing tune present on the EP, it’s rather straightforward and fun coming from a guy who writes about fictional society balls and swords hanging above liars (“A Dangerous Woman Up to a Point”).

Compared to the wordy weight of past efforts, Five Spanish Songs strikes gently, perhaps a relief for fans seeking something a bit less challenging than the rest of Destroyer’s catalog. Yet it’s this very quality that prevents the EP from meriting infinite replays, unlike past albums including, but absolutely not limited to, Destroyer’s Rubies and Kaputt. Even though Bejar name-checks Franz Kafka on “Del Monton,” these five songs generally lack the cultural references and wordy mass that galvanize the bulk of Bejar’s writing. Regardless, Bejar has recorded these tracks in such a way that enjoying them does not depend on knowing that they’re all covers of the same band; they shine without context, a quality that confirms, in light of the doubt cast by the language switch, that Five Spanish Songs is indeed the work of Dan Bejar.

Welcome to the twenty-first century, a time when digital methods of acquiring, sharing, and creating files ensure that independent musicians will face extreme difficulty surviving off their art. It’s an odd contradiction – although computers, the Internet, and cyber-whatnot brutally slaughter the finances of modern creators, these same forces advance better recording techniques and help underground musicians gain traction. Even though today’s songwriters suffer massively from what essentially amounts to art theft, so many unknown acts have emerged as of late that it may seem like more music is being produced now than ever before. While this abundance of art exposes curious listeners to an unprecedented plethora of new sounds, it places a troubling burden on new musicians: with so many great songs impacting modern listeners, how does one write music unique and novel enough to demand attention without sacrificing sincerity and passion?

Bird Courage, the Brooklyn trio of Samuel Saffery, Erik Meier, and Sean McMahon, may not yet have the answer to the question posed herein, but it doesn’t impede their songwriting ability. Despite the group’s clear influences (their approach to folk rock virtually mimics that of critical sages Fleet Foxes), their debut, Māia Manu, often afflicts just as a great record should. Indeed, many successful moments fill the album, but flaws can be heard as well. These mistakes never offend, but instead feel plain and unexciting as compared to their more gratifying surroundings.

The inherent pleasures of Maia Maru are apparent from the album’s first notes. The hushed, deep acoustic guitar notes that hollow out opener “Stone” immediately establish this album’s folk aspirations. Erik Meier’s voice appears only moments later, quickly confirming the direction Bird Courage will take throughout the remaining nine tracks. “Mayshower” reaffirms the barren folk motif that the tracks preceding it suggest; “Knives” further refines this theme in its first half. The latter track, despite its beginning similarly to a few other songs, accounts for one of the more surprisingly glorious moments on the album: about halfway through, light pianos enter, and coalesce with ripe vocal harmonies and forceful, hastened guitars for a brief passage that echoes psych-folk heroes Grizzly Bear.

Psych-folk mannerisms pop up infrequently on Māia Manu, but comprise the moments when Bird Courage best stand out from the pack. However, besides “Knives,” only album highlight “Reeds” really embraces this style. The track gets by on dim pianos and high-pitched background vocal harmonies, and leads to a sparkling, memorable buildup. Outside the minor psychedelic moments found here, though, Bird Courage tends to repeat the same indie folk themes while failing to expand on them in any way. “Wanderer” and “Oval Sails”, for example, fail to impact as heavily as other tracks due to their not-so-subtle Fleet Foxes worship. Elsewhere, “Constellation” and “Reconstruction Manual” change direction unexpectedly, but these sudden turns feel somewhat hollow and not fully genuine.

Even at its least believable, though, Māia Manu aches alluringly. Even when the songs veer into more perplexing territory, they never achieve complete staleness. Rather, they indicate that Bird Courage is still figuring out how to sculpt its own sound without completely imitating their forebears, a noble mission in these times. They succeed decently often for a band so young; in fact, if they do so more frequently on future works, they may just find themselves receiving the same sort of respect their idols attain.

Years down the line, critics and listeners alike might look back on 2013 as the year of mysterious, ridiculous pre-release promotion. Few eras have some of the biggest acts of the time teased their new music so extensively and tortuously. Other equally respected artists have proven such strategies unnecessary: Radiohead’s most recent two albums were announced no more than ten days before their release, yet both of them received critical acclaim, and sold just as well as any non-major label album might be expected to in the digital age.

In light of Radiohead’s success, it’s difficult to pinpoint why Arcade Fire chose to unveil their fourth album, Reflektor, via a sprawling, interminable promotion campaign. While it’s true that an excellent, potent album might absolve any musician of the tomfoolery that excessive marketing requires, Reflektor falls short of such descriptions. Coming from a band that previously released three unprecedentedly powerful, emotionally overwhelming albums, Reflektor feels a bit stale. Its lack of focus suggests that the band’s massive pre-release stunts may have been an effort to beef up an album whose creators have chosen to do nothing about its numerous flaws, of which they may be well aware before release.

Reflektor indulges in fantasy and pretense, often coming off forced and indefensible. Unlike past albums Funeral and Neon Bible, few moments on Reflektor connect to each other thematically or musically. Although this description also applies musically to The Suburbs, that album succeeded since its thematic consistency endowed the music with authenticity, and showed that Arcade Fire can experiment without losing touch emotionally. On Reflektor, the band still tries on new musical costumes, yet their motivation seems ungenuine.

However, despite the myriad incongruities Arcade Fire presents with Reflektor, the group’s innate ability to write beautiful, heart-wrenching songs prevails surprisingly often. The album’s title tracks kicks things off brilliantly, ascending from a blend of disco and tropical percussion into a brooding, sweeping array of pianos, strings, and repeated lyrics; it’s actually one of the best songs the band has ever written, and a contender for song of the year. “We Exist” thereafter continues the new wave theme with a “Billie Jean” bassline and an arena-sized gaze. “Flashbulb Eyes” follows, and marks the first betrayal of the expected disco/new wave motif; luckily, the album rebounds quickly with the ebullient, shape-shifting “Here Comes the Night Time.”

Fluctuations in sound and resonance plague Reflektor, as evidenced by its first four tracks. The pummeling, mighty “Joan of Arc” is sandwiched between the inane “You Already Know” and the empty “Here Comes the Night Time II”. Furthermore, two of the album’s least effective tunes, “Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice)” and “Supersymmetry”, bookend the three songs that comprise its best stretch. Even throughout this musical peak, though, cohesion remains distant. “It’s Never Over (Oh Orpheus)” makes an arena masterpiece out of Chromatics-style riffing and contemplation, but follows that with something different entirely: the haunting bounce of “Porno”, one of few moments to even somewhat follow the path suggested by Reflektor’s first two tracks. Finishing off this three-track high point is album highlight “Afterlife”, which matches the title track in its greatness. Its structure screams classic Arcade Fire: chilling oohs and aahs guide the intro into a smooth verse, which slides into a gripping, forceful chorus; after a return to a similar verse, the second chorus elevates the catharsis of the first to a nearly unbearable level.

It’s hard to understand how Arcade Fire can release an album that contains both “Afterlife,” a thrilling, afflicting gem, and “Normal Person,” easily the worst song in the band’s catalog to date. The latter track represents many flaws that persist throughout the album. Lyrically, it falls flat on its face: “Is anything as strange as a normal person?/Is anyone as cruel as a normal person?” lead vocalist Win Butler asks, later following with, “I think I’m cool enough/but am I cruel enough/Am I cruel enough/for you?” Indeed, this is no “Neighborhood #1” (even with no context, “I’ll dig a tunnel/From my window to yours” is devastatingly beautiful); nostalgia and human passion is replaced by vapid overgeneralization. Yes, even the words sung here feel incorrect, as they do in many places throughout the album: see the banal, elementary lyrics of “You Already Know” for proof.

If “Normal Person” sounded good, it might feel somewhat easier to accept. But, whereas the thoroughly wonderful music of songs like “We Exist” and “Porno” negate the deleterious effects of their shoddy poetry, the mocking, insincere, painfully piercing guitar squeals that line the chorus of “Normal Person” merely amplify its failure. “Supersymmetry” suffers a similar fate, its minimalist sparkle unable to reconcile its confusing, seemingly meaningless sentiments. Likewise, the vague, uncreative mantras of “Here Comes the Night Time II” bear as little weight as do its sounds.

Actually, weightlessness is all over Reflektor. Even after a great number of listens, it lacks force and is extremely difficult to latch onto. Indeed, at its worst, Reflektor is simply egregious, a crashing disappointment from a band that had previously provided only the purest of music. At its best, though, it shows that Arcade Fire is still very much capable of creating relatable, affecting, powerful music, even when they shoot too high.

It’s understandable to have trouble taking a band seriously when its bassist uses the handle “@jizziemcguire” on Twitter. No, Este Haim, one of three sisters comprising Haim (hence the band name), hasn’t changed at all now that she’s in the spotlight; according to Spin’s recent cover story on the band, she shouted her phone number – not a fake one, but her real ten digits – to a fan in the crowd at, of all giant events, the iTunes Festival. If Este and her sisters share similar traits, as sisters are likely to, then it might be logical that the Haim women display their true selves at all times. Perhaps they do so out of oblivion; maybe it’s due to apathy, or possibly a lack of restraint. Regardless of cause, the sisters’ devotion to their true selves – specifically, their desire to please only themselves – proves to be an unlikely asset on their debut, Days Are Gone. Lacking pretense and boasting forward-thinking, yet backwards-looking, songwriting, the album is a thrilling joy ride for its entire forty-four minutes.

Rather than indulging in experimentation or trying to advance an unprecedented sound, Days Are Gone reaches back in time. It sounds nostalgic for the 70s and 80s, and often embodies the R&B-meets-soft-rock spirit of Fleetwood Mac’s legendary Rumours. Danielle and Alana Haim frequently lay down smooth, deep guitar lines that maintain a sensual feel, all while escaping the low-tempo range with which such a mood is often associated. This contrast works particularly well on “Don’t Save Me,” a track on which palm muted notes originating from the lower strings of guitars mesh with thin, bright synths and Danielle’s soulful voice to form a cohesive, touching piece of music. “If I Could Change Your Mind” displays similar instrumentation, its guitars remaining sleek and low-key until the chorus centers their sounds via a flickering, yet fierce, quasi-ska riff.

Danielle and Alana aren’t only interested in restraining their instruments, though: in its verses, recent single “The Wire” employs the same sort of rolling, classic-rock notes as other tracks, but its intro and choruses see the guitars gaining a treble-filled edge missing in other tracks. “Honey & I” boldly ventures into calypso guitar lines, resulting in a tropical, sexy experience; the bluesy, post-chorus six-string stomp of “Let Me Go” might be almost as unexpected as the harmonized guitar solo that emerges near the song’s end.

Of course, the album isn’t entirely a guitar-based affair. At times, the synths bear equal, if not greater, weight; bass comes along for the ride too, albeit less frequently. “My Song 5” best demonstrates what Haim can achieve with a good synth riff: the track gets by on a massive, warped, wobbling digital bit that provides the proper backing for Danielle Haim’s pop-star-attitude vocals. Silvery keyboard tones propel the intro of “Forever”; actually, it’s this very track on which Este Haim’s bass takes flight. It rips through the verses, contrasting the backseat role it plays throughout much of the album.

Indeed, on Days Are Gone, little more than the basics is present in the way of instrumentation, but it all exudes confidence. The Haim sisters understand that excessive experimentation may not always be necessary; they revel in the music of times past without blatantly copying it. Although they gather varying well-established styles into one sound, their blend of music stands entirely on its own. Days Are Gone may have firm roots in what once was, but its sensual, alluring, and riotous core sounds like the future.

I have strong opinions about the state of music today. Some people would object to them, I even object to them most of the time. But the fact is that for those honest to the art of creating music, it exists to bring joy, energy, sadness, or any emotional response. However, that only happens when it’s created well and thought out so that it does make an impact in some way, shape or form…if it’s not, then it’s just a bunch of notes that somehow make sense.

I’d like to think that founding members of MGMT; Benjamin Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden share that opinion of an honest musical art. From the sounds of their latest self-titled album, it appears that they do indeed. MGMT’s self-titled album MGMT was released September 17, 2013, about a year after it’s announcement. The songs are a pieces of art that you can listen to over and over and still find something new to explore. MGMT’s sound is, to put it lightly, unique. It always has been and this album doesn’t change that.

The particular mix of the psychedelic and rock vibes flow softly over the poppy lyrics that are far more than your just a typical chorus lines. There’s also a couple of unique sounds that you wouldn’t expect to hear together. Included on the album is a cover of “Introspection” by a not so recognizable band called Faine Jade. The cover seems like it was meant to bring people back from the wild, synth-filled forest that they’ve created in this album. However, MGMT is a bit too synth’ed up in certain songs to the point where it just gets confusingly trippy. Perhaps that’s the point. Overall, it’s a solid album, though I’m personally still partial to their first album, Oracular Spectacular.

MGMT isn’t geared for everyone’s listening pleasure, and it’s good to see that Columbia Records hasn’t pushed them too much on that either. It’s got an easy-listening feel to it which makes it…well easy to listen to. Benjamin and Andrew are keeping true to their sound. My suggestion is to start with the first track, “Alien Days” and work your way in on a lazy saturday.

Since music has launched into the digital realm, mashups are becoming an increasingly popularly genre. While the hip-hop world has been sampling other artists’ music for decades, the concept of using an array of samples to create a complete song is still relatively new. Many music aficionados scoff at the idea as being a kitschy imitation of the original artist’s work—a mere overlaying of tracks upon tracks involving little musicality. However, I would argue that to produce a quality mashup (yes, there is such a thing) takes not only a intimate knowledge of the mechanics of music but a deep musical catalog that involves years of cultivation.

The sophomore release, DETH, from Later Babes is a perfect example of this. Sampling anything from Halls & Oats to 1979 soul hits like Peaches & Herb to the Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop” to rappers I have never even heard of to 80s staples like “Take on Me,” Later Babes have produced a well rounded, interesting album. Not only does the album that not only holds your attention for its entire 50 minutes, it moves in such a way that you hardly realize that time is moving forward. Where some mashups feel rushed and tease the listener with only a brisk riff from a song, Later Babes managed to provide just enough of that catchy hit to sing along to without letting it become boring. Later Babes, which includes members from Sioux Falls groups Soulcrate Music and We All Have Hooks for Hands, also incorporates live keyboards and drums, a touch that provides additional continuity throughout the album.

Whether you need a new workout album, are looking for some music for a backyard rave, are planning a road trip playlist, or just enjoy geeking out and testing your music knowledge, DETH delivers on all these fronts plus some. The album will be available on the band’s BandCamp.

A mere 18 months have passed since The Vaccines entered the UK Album Charts with their debut What Did You Expect from The Vaccines?, but the young band is clearly endowed with enough energy to pull off yet another bluntly strenuous record. The singles “No Hope” and “Teenage Icon” have hinted at a slightly less straightforward sound than the guitar pop found on their debut album, both bearing a resemblance to early days of The Strokes. “No Hope” is feasibly their strongest lyrical effort so far, depicting an adolescent sinking into utter despondency and tribulation.

The album’s most electrifying point comes with “Aftershave Ocean”, a simple yet effective Blur-esque track, substantially different from anything the band has released so far. And it’s not just this track; the entire album is a respectable step away from irrefutably refreshing, but slightly yielding debut. By any means, Come of Age is not a groundbreaking, historical event in the history of music industry, but it’s nevertheless patently showing progress of a young and promising band.

The Vaccines may have been accused of sounding painfully repetitive and characterless, and in all honesty, tracks such as “Lonely World” and “Weirdo” will hardly help to erase such reputation, despite being fairly popular among the band’s devoted fan base. Still, there is an occasional spark of sheer magic such as the witty “Change of Heart Pt.2”. Another playful part is “Ghost Town”, containing slightly more groovy guitar sounds and sprightly drums.

All in all, the album is noticeably less prosaic that its predecessor and the London four-piece deserve a monumental praise for breaking the spell of unproductivity that seems to surround contemporary bands. Despite being blamed for being posh, tame and altogether too clumsy, the Vaccines’ second album should ensure them a more respectable place in the hearts of fans and critics alike.

Back in 2006, when Arctic Monkeys rose to wider prominence with their highly acclaimed debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, only a handful of music enthusiasts would expect their haughty Sheffield frontman to release an acoustic solo EP in the next few years. Thankfully, at least some of contemporary musicians are still willing to step out of their comfort zone and continually provide us with exceptionally fresh music. Alex Turner proved to be one of them by writing a soundtrack for Richard Ayoade’s debut directorial feature, Submarine. In brief, it’s the precise opposite of everything associated with Arctic Monkeys.

The entire EP is narrowed down to the bare essentials – acoustic guitar, an occasional piano, mellow drumbeat and slightly stertorous vocals. If one were to pick the colossal peak of Submarine, then “Piledriver Waltz” would unerringly secure the laurel wreath. The aforementioned track is a mellifluous amalgam of mollifying guitar work and tenebrous lyricism, which has now evolved into an integral part of Turner’s songwriting. Startlingly, a version of the song was featured on Monkeys’ fourth album Suck It and See but hardly reached the eminence of its original.

Perhaps the most valuable result of Turner’s lyricism is the lingering “Hiding Tonight,” which narrates a story of a dawdling yet sanguine individual that could feasibly be found in each one of us – he/she will be stronger tomorrow but is ‘quite alright hiding tonight.’

Yet another sparkle of immensity is hidden in “Glass In The Park,” which acquires the listener to hold himself in suspense, perhaps even quieten his breathing in order to grasp the track in its full worthiness. As the case may be, the closest to a failure is the fourth song “It’s Hard To Get Around The Wind,” which proves to be slightly arid in comparison with the long sequence of true acoustic gems. Ultimately, the EP’s catchiest track “Stuck On The Puzzle” is presented in two renderings, a short one-minute intro and a blithely pleasant full version, the single most pop-sounding tune to be featured on the record.

Taking everything into account, Submarine is not quite turning the world of rock’n’roll on its axis, but in all honesty, that was far from its purpose. What Alex Turner inevitably proved with his first abundant solo project is his independence and versatility – two qualities that are deemed particularly useful when one is about to launch a solo career. Therefore, Mr Turner, we are eagerly awaiting you.

Raised by parents who were never shy about sneaking their children into a smoky bar to catch a gritty live performance, I have a hard time remembering if it was my mother or my father who turned me on to the blues. Coming at them from completely opposite directions—my mother with her country music and honky-tonk roots, while my father’s music collection was imbued with Motown R&B and jazz—the blues seemed to complete my circle of musical progression.

That being said, I am increasingly skeptical of up-and-coming bands professing their command of that classic bluesy rock ‘n’ roll sound. I have sat through too many cover band bar performance ending in “Free Bird” to know that there are far too many young men who think they have what it takes to be the next Stevie Ray Vaughn. Fortunately, the newcomers to the budding Pittsburgh music scene, Coronado, seem to be above that. Their first full-length self-titled album is a cool blend of fuzzy rock and southern blues with a complete retro feel.

Their band page on Facebook could read as homage to Harry Nilsson, but the group is far grittier than the classic Nilsson sound, an aspect that could be one of their greatest strengths. Coronado is not without its shallow moments, which is to be expected for a first release of a young band. In particular, “The Souza Show,” with tejano trumpets and impudent lyrics, feels exaggerated. Yet, Coronado is at it’s best in it’s most delicate moments—tracks such as “the Great Divide” and “Lay Me Down” juxtapose subtly sensitivity lyrical moments with the band’s bristly sound.

But more importantly, this debut album proves that Coronado is more than just a pool hall band whose discography consists solely of under produced live albums. Instead they provide a crisp, new take on a classic sound, without coming off as another garage band imitation. Certainly $5 well spent via their Bandcamp page.

Sometimes being able to eat your own words in a nice feeling. It a recent feature piece about the merger between Universal Music Group and EMI, I noted that the iTunes Top Ten chart is almost exclusive to artists signed onto one of the three major record labels. Well, it looks like a west coast MC, Macklemore, and his producer, Ryan Lewis, wanted to change that up a little bit. And they did so their newest release, the Heist, which soared to the top of the charts within hours of its release.

A showcase of Seattle’s greatest indie talent, this album is an intermixing of a stellar cast of vocalists, musicians, and fellow MCs to deliver a complete and brilliant album. It is cheeky, it is sensitive, it is political, it is introspective, it is heavy, and it is so addictive.

As I am always a sucker for music with a message, I was first drawn to Macklemore & Ryan Lewis with their release of the single “Same Love,” a hip-hop ballad that takes a strong stance in support of the Marriage Equality Act in Washington State. A commentary on the hip-hop community’s relationship towards gay rights, Macklemore makes a conspicuous statement regarding his feelings on the issue, yet does so in such a delicate way, that one cannot help but sympathize. Backed by the tenacious vocals of Mary Lambert, this track is undoubtedly set to become an anthem for future generations and the most memorable moment of the Heist.

However, it would be all too easy and narrow-minded to simply call this album a message driven, ideological one. Sure, Macklemore is infamous for addressing the concerns of the traditional hip hop community—urban poverty, racism, consumerism—while working out his personal position within that as a white MC. Yet, with the Heist, he has come to a well-balanced variety of topics, from souring love, the northwest lifestyle, newfound fame, his continual battle with addiction, and even a country-esque drinking anthem. Take the viral single, “the Thrift Shop” featuring Wanz, which successfully replaces the tenderness of “Same Love” with brazen, cocky lyrics. Between ripping on Gucci tees and begging for your grandpa’s hand-me-downs, it is so catchy that even my bachata-loving, Spanish speaking roommate loves it.

Shortly after the release of the Heist, a series of posts appeared on Macklemore’s facebook page thanking and praising his fans for their gracious support in the success of this record. It is a rare moment in the recording world that such recognition and adoration are as warranted as they are with the Heist. It leaves one to hope that with such feelings, Macklemore open the eyes of his newfound fans to something beyond the narrow scope of Top 40 charts, while staying true to his DIY roots.

The now widely known Canadian electronic powerhouse, known to the general public as deadmau5, has released his sixth record entitled >album title goes here<. The album is a wildly different approach to the world of electronic/trance music than what listeners have heard on the previous albums. The only question one may ask is this: is this a good or bad thing? deadmau5 has been ridiculed in years past for making music that sounds no different from the next, meaning that all of his songs that he produces sounds alike. Now, I must agree that is kind of a common theme in the music business in general, so it isn’t really a surprising that people have accused deadmau5 of this. Especially when you consider the genre of music that is fairly notorious for the music sounding alike. However, >album title goes here< varies so greatly from previous deadmau5 albums that it is hard to believe at times you are even listening to a deadmau5 album!

I am going to say something that is going to contradict myself right now…and I want everyone that reads this to know that I am doing so and that I realize it. While I was listening to >album title goes here<, the first song, “Superliminal” sounded like pure deadmau5 goodness and I was very much anticipating the next tracks. To my utter surprise I had recognized the beats to the very next song! How was that possible since it was my first time experiencing the album? I soon realized that the song “Channel 42” had recycled the opening beats and fade-in intro from one of my favorite deadmau5 songs from 4×4=12, “A City In Florida.”

Like I said before, it is not uncommon that musicians often stick to what works and this is clearly what happened here with the song “Channel 42.” I am sure that there are other songs from other albums by deadmau5 that are closely related to one another too, but this is the one I found to stand out to me. And I realize this can open up a Pandora’s box of criticisms of other artists, which is not what I am trying to accomplish with this statement, but just pointing out an observation that I made while listening.

The variety of musicians that leant their vocals and other musical talents to >album title goes here< is so broad that it ranges from; emo pop icons, to a Cuban/Latino hip pop group, to a British Grammy Award winning songstress, to a house DJ to a dude who happened to add his vocals to one of deadmau5’s tracks, “The Veldt”. The artists that I am speaking of are Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance in “Professional Grifers”, Cypress Hill in “Failbait”, Imogen Heap in “Telemiscommunications”, Wolgang Gartner in “Channel 42”, and Chris James in “The Veldt”. Quite frankly, I haven’t heard that kind of diversity on an album that at the same time holds true to the original genre, electronic/house music.

I feel like it is ridiculously hard to review an album of this nature. There isn’t much you can add to reviews that have been written in the past about electronic music due to the similarities between them. Bumping bass? Check. Synths? Check. Random bits of sampling? Check. The formula is pretty basic when you break it all down, but I think the most important aspect of electric/house music is this; does it make me want to dance like an overwhelming fool? In the terms of this >album title goes here< not so much. There are certainly times when the album lags and changes from traditional electronic music. Now, the question is if this is a bad thing or not and quite frankly that is a matter of opinion. Maybe deadmau5 has stumbled upon a new kind of electronic music. Only time can tell on that thought.

I feel like the musicians are expected to make music that sounds the same but at the same time completely different and fresh. >album title goes here< is an album that makes this idea a reality by having the first half of the album sound like “old” deadmau5 tracks and the second half of the album is the completely different “new” sounding deadmau5 tracks. Basically, the album is split down the middle in my mind. Old versus new. I have to say, I stand on the old side for the most part. Quite frankly, it is hard for me to decide whether I liked the album or disliked the album. Indifferent would be more appropriate.

Who doesn’t love an exquisitely played banjo? What about some well-placed harmonica? Or is the mandolin more of your fancy? Trumpet? Well, The Senators have it all on their newest album Harsher Than Whiskey/Sweeter Than Wine. I must say I was more than surprised by the musical talent of this Phoenix based indie/Americana group consisting of Jesse Teer (vocals, guitar, mandolin), ‘Rooster’ Teer (bass, harmonica), Amber Johnson (keys), Carlos Villegas (banjo, guitars), Joe Bitz (trumpet, guitars), and Jason Yee (drums).

Harsher Than Whiskey/Sweeter Than Wine is the complete package for the listener. All the instruments meld together in blissful harmony that can only be described as addicting. It also helps that lead vocalist, Jesse Teer, has a voice that almost seems to be whispering the lyrics to the listener as if he were singing the listener a lullaby, but it is by no means boring or lethargic sounding. Quite the contrary, Jesse’s vocal performance is entrancing and demands the attention of the listener without being abrasive or overpowering to the instrumentals that compliment each other in a delightful fashion Now, I feel like I need to clarify that not all of the songs resemble that of a lullaby. The Senators know when to kick it up a few notches with songs like “Lazarus” and “The Sea and Its Floor” are two amazing examples of the versatility of the musical quality on Harsher Than Whiskey/Sweeter Than Wine.

The whole album takes the listener back to what we could image to be simpler times of the old West. It is quite fascinating. I think the one song that really brought that thought to mind was “Harsher Than Whiskey.” All the songs are easy to understand and to enjoy which makes listening to the album extremely easy to do and as a listener it is easy to hit repeat and spend your day in a folk related dream.

There has been a lot of news lately about the youtube video “The Innocence of Muslims” and the consequential “muslim rage” that has follow. Well, I am here to tell you that I may have stumbled across the album equivalent. Fortunately, fanatical indie music zealots are not prone to sudden outburst of violence. Praise be to Sonic Youth.

The album in question is In My G4 Over Da Sea is the work of Psycosis, a DJ who goes by moniker “Neutral Bling Hotel.” If you have not put it all together yet, the whole album is a series of mashups combining the tracks of Neutral Milk Hotel’s idyllic album, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, with the likes of Kanye West, NAS, Jay-Z, and that guy who wants to teach you how to “dougie.” Whatever that means.

Now, I try not to be too dogmatic when it comes to my musical preferences, but I would be lying if I were to say that In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is not near and dear to my heart. However, I also love mashups and not just in a guilty pleasure sort of way. From the mega-mashups of Girl Talk or Later Babes to more conceptual albums like DJ Danger Mouse’s the Grey Album, I find well done mashups both interesting and enjoyable. I am not even opposed to mashups involving the Holy Grail of indie music – back when DJ Danger Mouse was known as Pelican City, he did a great remix of the Neutral Milk Hotel track “the Fool.” That track was fresh and original, whereas the efforts of Neutral Bling Hotel feel void of any such qualities.

Even at Neutral Bling Hotel’s best moment, such as the tracks “My 1^st Airplane” or “Miami, 1981,” when he does more than simply overlay songs with matching beats per minutes, there is not a single track that supersedes the original songs. This only caters to the critics of mashups, who claim that these songs lack the artistry possessed by originals. If you have ever had the opportunity to see DJs such as Girl Talk perform, you understand that such criticism is severely limiting. Yet, when listening to an album like In My G4 Over Da Sea it is easy understand the source of the condemnation.

On a side note, someone needs to enlighten Psycosis that breast implants went out of fashion in the early nineties. Even when spoofing, they have no place on classic album covers. The sacrilege!