Shout Out Louds: Work
Feel-good electro-pop from Sweden—can you believe it?! On its latest, Swedish pop quintet Shout Out Louds bring their uptempo, ’80s-nostalgic style to a collection of songs perfect for that jolt you need to kick off a long road trip. Lead singer Adam Olenius’ high-register vocals—which call to mind The Shins’ James Mercer—meld unexpectedly well with the pumping beats, making lovely use of background vocalist Bebban Stenborg, whose sweet-sounding responses on “Fall Hard” offset the forceful rhythms, and who harmonizes deftly with Olenius on the otherwise insubstantial “Throwing Stones."... read more
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: Beat the Devil's Tattoo
Bad attitude makes for good rock Over the past nine years and five albums, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club has worked hard to craft a sound that’s both familiar and undeniably its own: slow-pounding drums, jagged and droning guitars, Peter Hayes’ dead-eyed vocals and the same too-cool attitude of that quiet dude at the bar who’s flipping through the jukebox, playing The Velvet Underground’s “Heroin” as if it’ll get people dancing.... read more
Frightened Rabbit: The Winter of Mixed Drinks
Scottsmen stretch their legs on ambitious third album "What’s the blues when you’ve got the greys?” asked Scott Hutchison on Frightened Rabbit’s charming 2006 debut, Sing the Greys. The Scottish band—formed around Scott and his brother Grant—put a scrappy spin on apathy and cynicism. They were raucous, but with great economy: Scott’s fuzzy guitar jittered and popped like oil in a pan as Grant bashed out frantic rhythms, hammering beats like nails into the music’s woody grain. A great care for craft lurked behind the splintered finish of the songs, and clear, infectious melodies rang out amid the washes of... read more
Miles Kurosky: The Desert of Shallow Effects
Former Beulah frontman still a little weird, wonderful Miles Kurosky’s old band, Beulah, was always the one Elephant 6 act somewhat tethered to the earth—writing and delivering relatively straightforward love songs, even as its more mind-expanded peers sang dreamily of kings of carrot flowers and birds with candy-bar heads. The Desert of Shallow Effects is Kurosky’s first solo effort since dissolving Beulah five years ago, and, happily, his singular gift for melody-rich pop hasn’t deserted him.... read more
Jimi Hendrix: Valleys of Neptune
Way past experienced It’s been nearly four decades since Jimi Hendrix laid down his Stratocaster forever, and two since the release of his first posthumous LP Radio One. Enter Valleys of Neptune, a grimy, blues-slicked collection of previously unreleased tracks and deep cuts plucked from the Experience Hendrix Group’s studio vaults.... read more
Titus Andronicus: The Monitor
We have met the enemy, and he is us If Bruce Springsteen sowed the seeds of small-town introspection, his fellow New Jerseyites Titus Andronicus are flooding the fields. The punk quintet deconstructed postindustrial life with its gut-wrenching debut, The Airing of Grievances. And the band’s sophomore LP, The Monitor, crushes the rosy spectacles of heartland rock, peeling away the façade of barroom camaraderie to reveal an entire generation inured to those highs. The comedown is a deeply pessimistic exploration of Americana and its now-quixotic quest for authenticity, loosely tethered to a fictional Civil War-era travel narrative spanning the trackless forests... read more
Broken Bells: Broken Bells
Nothing to fix The new collaboration between Shins frontman James Mercer and Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse) is a slow grower. In their inimitable ways, the singer and the wandering beatsmith have always hit for average rather than power, which isn’t to say they don’t knock it out of the park every so often—see The Shins’ “New Slang” and Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy,” two of the last decade’s most resonant hits. Still, languid is their natural pace. And as Broken Bells (a full-fledged band, both men insist, and not just a one-off team-up), there are times when they seem to have... read more
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists: The Brutalist Bricks
Indie vet is getting very sleepy Ted Leo is a rock legend, but on his sixth album, he’s beginning to show his age, and not in a wisdom-gaining kind of way. The Brutalist Bricks, one of the most highly anticipated albums of this year, is full of melodic pop-punk that would have fit right in a decade ago but sounds weary and exhausted today.... read more
Liars: Sisterworld
Transient, experimental rockers continue to reward, evolve Geography has always defined Liars. The band—which formed in Los Angeles with a menacing Australian frontman named Angus Andrew—first received attention after relocating to New York. Liars would later make an album in New Jersey that was loosely based on German witchcraft, only to actually move to Berlin for their next album.... read more
Johnny Cash: American VI: Ain’t No Grave
If Ain’t No Grave, the final installment in Johnny Cash’s rich collaboration with producer Rick Rubin, had appeared in, say, 1980, in the midst of an otherwise undistinguished run of Cash albums, it would have hardly caused a ripple. The raw ingredients—a few covers of well-known country hits, a couple of traditional folk songs, an original sacred composition—reprise the same formula that Cash employed since the early ’70s. It had all been done before, and many times.... read more
Holly Miranda: The Magician's Private Library
Spellbinding solo debut from former Jealous’ Girlfriends frontwoman “Open up your head, we found a secret,” Holly Miranda promises on “Forest Green Oh Forest Green,” the first track of her debut LP. The soulful Brooklynite could well be referring to her album itself, which is strewn with hidden gems furnished by David Sitek’s deft production and Miranda’s skillful songwriting. High points are plentiful; on “Waves,” Sitek’s pitter-patter percussion buoys Miranda’s stirring delivery, and the shimmering guitar hooks and cymbal splashes that open “Joints” underscore her spectral narrative of being haunted by unrequited love. With a voice as gauzy as Miranda’s,... read more
The Knife: Tomorrow in a Year
Scandinavian electro-opera doesn’t translate from stage to disc Co-written by Scandinavian duo the Knife and Berlin-based one-member-bands Planningtorock and Mt. Sims, Tomorrow, in a Year has been billed as an opera based on Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, but it’s actually more of an elaborate, multimedia performance-art piece. Premiering in Copenhagen last fall, the production incorporated dance, video and laser lights to create an eerily unsettling experience. The concept was ambitious but, unfortunately, in releasing Tomorrow as an album, the team divorces the music from the stage and leaves the songs stranded in a mire of effects and noise.... read more
Athlete: Black Swan
Ten catchy choruses, no original ideas Paired with a Grey’s Anatomy clip in which someone dies or falls in love, Athlete’s mid-tempo rock might pack a punch. But when alone, the sweeping choruses that swarm Athlete’s fourth record, Black Swan, shoot for the rafters without any substantial emotional anchor—the songs get lost in the clouds.... read more
These New Puritans: Hidden
British foursome gets wonderfully bizarre on second album You’ve heard music like this before, just not all in the same place. Hidden somehow synthesizes the concussive guitars and delirious chants of Liars, the cinematic industrial churn of Nine Inch Nails, brainy Reichian pattern music, Timbaland’s spacey snap, and the moody winds and horns of composer Benjamin Britten. The disparate elements—cheap dance presets and six-foot Japanese drums, intricate Foley sound effects (the sort used in radio dramas), blitzkrieg guitars and springy synths, choral arrangements and angelic pianos—all interlock seamlessly.... read more
Xiu Xiu: Dear God, I Hate Myself
Prolific angst merchant delivers sonic adventure One of the most reliable sources of autobiographical despair, Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart would seem to have reached the point of self caricature with a title as over-the-top as Dear God, I Hate Myself. Fortunately, his scars run bone-deep.... read more
Local Natives: Gorilla Manor
L.A. band’s full-length debut bridges coasts In recent years, West Coast rock has become hazier (No Age), noisier (HEALTH) and woodsier (Fleet Foxes) compared to the East Coast’s more melodic (Grizzly Bear), cosmopolitan (Dirty Projectors) and experimental (Animal Collective) style. And with their much-anticipated full-length debut, former SXSW darlings Local Natives unify the camps, bridging Brooklyn’s tumbling tribal rhythms, rousing choruses and sophisticated pop arrangements with the CSNY harmonies, guitar eruptions and straightforward hooks of their Left Coast neighbors.... read more
Carolina Chocolate Drops: Genuine Negro Jig
Musical adventurers reclaim important chapter of black Americana There’s a long tradition of African-Americans playing old-time music, from blues legends Blind Blake, the Reverend Gary Davis and Josh White to artists such as the Mississippi Mud Steppers and Howard “Louie Bluie” Armstrong, whose early ragtime outfit, the Tennessee Chocolate Drops, has provided a lasting influence—and this modern-day act with its name. The Carolina Chocolate Drops formed in 2005 at the Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, N.C., and since then the young trio has been determined to prove that “black folk were a huge part of the stringband tradition.”... read more
Joanna Newsom: Have One On Me
A panoramic dreamworld It’s still too early for grand pronouncements about 2010, but what the hell, let’s get saucy: Joanna Newsom’s Have One On Me is the finest two-hour, harp-driven, three-disc opus of the year. Newsom—still your best possible icebreaker at a dinner party of hipsters, Renaissance Fair staffers and woodland creatures—released her last solo record, Ys, in 2006 to a response that ranged from gleaming to marry-me-I’m-begging-you. But if that sophomore album was a vivid glimpse into her weird little world, this sprawling sequel, conceived in flagrant defiance of conventional logic, is legitimately bananas. It’s like tumbling into her... read more
Shearwater: The Golden Archipelago
The soundtrack to your next chill-sesh As if scoring a devastating movie scene in which the main character drives alone through the rain, pondering his weighty problems, Shearwater frontman Jonathan Meiburg emotes in a velvety bellow while pianos clatter and echo, and guitars peek through the shadows, making for gorgeous, endlessly serious music. The Golden Archipelago, Shearwater’s sixth release, sticks with the plot.... read more
Gil Scott-Heron: I'm New Here
A triumphant, if unlikely, comeback After years of crime and punishment, casual obscurity and a half-sung hip-hop canonization, Gil Scott-Heron has released a new album. On it, he covers Smog, enlists a guitarist from Oakley Hall, samples Kanye West and invokes Burial, all with a scant sniff of regard for what anyone might have to say about it. The prophet of revolution smolders deeper into himself—a gnarled, wise tree in an urban glade. The album sounds heavy and elusive, like a field recording, and it will surely be studied with the most powerful of cultural microscopes, but its author will... read more
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