The Week in Music: Paste’s Favorite Songs, Albums, Performances and More

This week at Paste, the studio returned with a new and exciting crop of artists, from pop-punk bands to electronic acts to country singers. We also published features from a couple of indie rock legends (Stephen Malkmus, Ben Gibbard) and spun new singles from Mitski (pictured above), Snail Mail, and gobbinjr. Here’s everything you might have missed.

BEST ALBUMS
Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks: Sparkle Hard
As always, Stephen Malkmus and his mates have a way of making guitar-rock feel oblique and breezy. They offset the herky-jerky pace of “Future Suite” with synth zaps and a dizzying vocal coda. Lead single “Middle America” gets a lift from Malkmus’ falsetto, the album’s most likeable melody and the comfort of a strummed acoustic guitar. And “Brethren” starts out as a jumbled pile of dissonant parts, but soon forms into the kind of disheveled gem that would fit in perfectly on Pavement’s divisive 1995 album Wowee Zowee. “So you flip-flop over again,” Malkmus sings as an unexpected string section fades out behind him, “to the dark side of the coliseum. Down into a hole, into the cellar, here we go.” —Ben Salmon

GAS: Rausch
Heard as one unedited gush, Rausch is a thing of wonder. The experience, especially played through headphones or a great pair of speakers, is overpowering to the point of overload. Wolfgang Voigt starts off slow, with string and horn drones swarming together in a Ligeti-like sunrise. As it moves forward, more sounds and the 4/4 pulse of a kick drum come into view. They don’t necessarily complement what Voigt has set up. They instead move around the edges like counter-rhythms or little intrusions that refuse to let up. —Robert Ham

Frog Eyes: Violet Psalms
For all the moments of unsettling weirdness—and there are plenty—Violet Psalms is almost compulsively listenable. There are flashes of effusive melody: “Idea Man” starts as a bright, hooky tune with a burbling, frenetic beat and sunny vocals until it deflates into an extended come-down in the second half of the song. There are mesmerizing guitar parts, too: A terse and foreboding two-note riff cuts through a wash of noise on “Sleek as the Day Is Done,” then yields to trebly squibs that ring out like demented bell chimes. The pattern repeats as the song builds tension until a huge descending guitar line tumbles down with the force of a slow-motion rock slide. —Eric R. Danton

BEST SONGS
Mitski: ‘Geyser’
“Geyser,” according to Mitski, “introduces us to a woman who can’t hold it all in any more. She’s about to burst and unleash a torrent of desire and passion that has been building up inside.” Zia Anger’s cathartic visual accompaniment finds Mitski alone on a secluded beach under gray skies, beginning with thrumming synths and exploding in sound at its halfway point, as the singer takes off running down the shore.—Scott Russell

gobbinjr: November 163’
gobbinjr’s new record Ocala Wick, out June 8 via Topshelf Records, was entirely written, performed, recorded, and produced by Emma Witmer. The wobbly and pretty “November 163” details a relationship gone sour, with Witmer singing, “I liked when you avoided me/ It made it easier for me to breathe.” However, by the track’s end, she’s grown bolder: “I’ll be alone but i think that’s fine/I’m not as hopeless as you might like.” —Loren DiBlasi