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New This Week: Neko Case, Nine Inch Nails, Okkervil River & More

eMusic Editorial Staff — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 19:13:46 +0000

And just like that, the long, slow crawl of the summer release schedule ends and we have a million new records dumped in our laps. It might take weeks to sort through the best of this week’s releases, but in the meantime…

Nine Inch Nails, Hesitation Marks: Trent Reznor’s Indian Summer, complete with Grammys and Oscars, continues with the major-label backed return to form record, the strongest effort to bear the NIN name in years. Andrew Parks says:

The Second Coming of Trent Reznor shouldn’t be the least bit surprising. And yet, Hesitation Marks exceeds even the loftiest expectations by signaling Reznor’s sober sally years with some of his most subtle but satisfying work to date. It’s as if he was sharpening his sample banks and synth lines with How to Destroy Angels, only to emerge with material that alludes to everything from death-disco (the groove-locked guitars of “All Time Low”) to acid-techno (the snake-like leads of “Copy of A”) to Reznor’s own impressive oeuvre (the rubber-bullet beats that hammer “Came Back Haunted” home).

Neko Case, The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You: Neko Case can do no wrong. She’s back with a Fiona Apple-length album title and a fine LP. Stephen Deusner says:

Neko Case has spent the last 15 years perfecting both a dark strain of alt-country and a lyrical style that rejects songwriting conventions in order to build up wholly new personal mythologies. As her songs have grown moodier and more cinematic, Case has become less willing to state anything outright, instead finding ever more circuitous routes around her subjects. Hers is a defiantly impressionistic style, both withholding and revealing, and it reaches a peak on her latest album.

Okkervil River, The Silver Gymnasium: Will Sheff and Co.’s latest is a master class on pop writing as narrative. eMusic editor-in-chief Joe Keyes says:

A dog-eared novelization of Will Sheff’s teenage years in Meridian, New Hampshire (the lyrics are even written out in paragraphs instead of verses), Gymnasium is full of the classic literary symbols of lost innocence: falling autumn leaves, broken bones, crashed cars too big for their drivers. In a way, the album’s subject matter mirrors the group’s own musical evolution. They began as gangly, fumbling youth, prizing emotional immediacy over lyrical precision, but Sheff has steadily transformed the group into a well read, nattily-attired adjunct professor with a fondness for sidecars and a deep, fanatic knowledge of Richard Brautigan.

Chelsea Wolfe, Pain is Beauty: Chelsea Wolfe goes beyond creepy on her second studio album. Ashley Melzer says:

Building her sound from layers of droning synths, crisp percussion and hypnotic strings, Wolfe harnesses a dark glamour, not too far removed from the sort of misty, doom-laden orchestral power rock of ’80s fantasy films like Ladyhawke or Labyrinth. The Warden” threads an ethereal melody over the industrial drive of programmed beats, juxtaposing expansive beauty with violence and gloom.

Volcano Choir, Repave: The second effort from Volcano Choir is sturdier and something more like Justin Vernon’s other project. Brian Howe says:

The music, alternately pastoral and explosive, cosmic and martial, shapes itself into sturdy structures from delicately trembling parts. Hints of digital manipulation stand out with detailed clarity. After a Straussian overture, “Tiderays” embarks on a winding guitar odyssey in the manner of Broken Social Scene, while “Acetate” and other tracks recall the majestic gloom of Grizzly Bear. Usually singing in his underutilized natural voice, which is low and gruff and sounds, especially on “Dancepack,” like Wolf Parade’s Dan Boeckner, Justin Vernon sparingly breaks into the vaporous falsetto on which he made his name.

Forest Swords, Engravings: The latest from English electronic producer Matthew Barnes. Andy Battaglia says:

Forest Swords suggests a series of answers to a riddle that may have never been posed but proves worth pondering nonetheless: What would reggae sound like if, in terms of overall vibe and tone, it sounded nothing like reggae at all? Forest Swords is aligned with dub, in all its ethereal, abstracted, echo-effected glory, but on Engravings, the first Forest Swords album after an auspicious EP in 2010, the genre’s tenets are treated with a different ear and a different sort of hand on the controls.

The 1975, The 1975 - I have been waiting curiously for this record to come out ever since this band was called The Slowdown in 2010 and only had one song, the incredible, Jimmy Eat World-worthy anthem “Sex.” This album has been in long, painful, major-label gestation, and they’ve arrived on the other hand a hugely keyboard-sweetened, starched-stiff 80s dance-rock outfit, about as Top 40-ready as you can sound and still be a rock band these days. I’m not mad. I AM furious at the slower, re-recorded version of “Sex” on here, which is vastly inferior to the original.

Califone, Stitches: Staying close to their concept-album format on their first LP in four years. Hilary Saunders says:

A number of religious themes pervade Stitches, marked by titles like, “Magdalene,” “moonbath.brainsalt.a.holy.fool” and “Moses.” Stitches alternates between acoustic and electronic — sometimes within songs — and Rutili moves past nontraditional instrumentation (like the recurring use of tablas), toward almost an anthropological soundtrack.

Jonathan Rado, Law and Order: One of the dudes from Foxygen already has a solo record, which Matthew Fritch says is more challenging than his band’s output:

The reductive assessment of Law and Order is that it’s simply louder and less baroque than Foxygen, but at the album’s corners — the punishing, bratty distortion of “I Wanna Feel It Now!!!,” the final track “Pot of Gold” and its ridiculous aping of Human League — it’s more challenging, too, and way more fun than Foxygen’s occasionally predictable ’60s/’70s rock groove.

Holograms, Forever: The Swedish quartet builds on their influences on their second LP. Annie Zaleski says:

Keyboards are more prevalent in the mix, from the corrugated synths humming through “Luminous” to the frantic chords dominating “Rush,” while frontman Andreas Lagerström’s reverb-coated vocals are fraught with desperation. And although Lagerström isn’t always easy to understand as he howls his way through the straightforward punk throttle “Meditations” and early Cure-influenced strum “Flesh and Bone,” the urgency in his voice is unmistakable.

Gorguts, Colored Sands: The Canadian technical death metal band returns with their first album in a dozen years. Catherine P. Lewis says:

Colored Sands is a fierce addition to Gorguts’ dissonant sound. Instead of just unleashing an unholy terror of disjointed technical riffs, the quartet builds songs that meld riffs together, with space to breathe in between. The album’s longest track, the nine-minute “Absconders,” tweaks tempos as the group shifts from one heavy groove to the next, while the title track grows to a howl from an atmospheric groan.

John Wizards, John Wizards: African and Western, traditional and modern, mashed together in a way that defies separation.

As the music project of John Withers — in conjunction with Rwandan vocalist Emmanuel Nzaramba — John Wizards dials back the cacophonous density, aggressive BPMs and neon-bright synths of their contemporaries. On their debut, they instead meld together the languid, leisurely sounds of everything from reggae to R&B slow jams.

Dave Holland & Prism, Prism: A collaboration between Dave Holland, Kevin Eubanks, Eric Harland and Craig Taborn. Britt Robson says:

All four musicians individuate and coalesce in bold, dramatic, prismatic fashion. Each member contributes at least two songs, and the composer sets the tone. Drummer Eric Harland provides a gospel-soul drum-and-organ groove on “Choir,” and the gorgeous closing ballad, “Breathe,” which is a vehicle for pianist Craig Taborn. But Harland also excels at the sort brittle-beat carpet-bombing that catapulted Billy Cobham to fame.

TV Ghost, Disconnect - Vapor trails of post-punk guitar, quietly chanted and a generally sepuchral tone to this In The Red release by TV Ghost, who have toned down their earlier freneticism into something spooky and coolly remote.

Vasaeleth, All Uproarious Darkness – Sulfurous-evil belching vocals, thudding drums, and a series of death-metal gas-bursts that never quite go past four minutes. A heaving, visceral, straight-up gross death metal experience, which is the classical kind.

Vattnet Viskar, Sky Swallower - Brutally beautiful, windswept blackened doom metal from an exciting new band from New Hampshire. Like watching time-lapse footage of a flower blooming superimposed over that scene from Carrie.

Grooms, Infinity Caller - Grooms are a solid-to-excellent indie guitar-rock band, and their best and most satisfying stuff usually has that chalk-dust whiff of amateur guitar heroism that you could find in such abundance in the Pacific Northwest in the ’90s. Infinity Caller finds them sounding like them, which is good.

M.I.A., “Come Walk With Me” - This new M.I.A. single sounds horrible to me, guys. Horrible. Lord knows Maya knows her crafty way around some trolling, but this single sounds like getting sprayed in your mouth with Aquanet.

Paul McCartney, “New” - Paul McCartney’s solo career is doomed to never receive its full measure of respect. McCartney fans have made peace with this. And, one assumes, so has McCartney. It seems to be the price he has paid for being in the Beatles. Which, you know, fair enough. But he has written a lot of piercingly wonderful McCartney music, especially in the last fifteen or so years, that has almost no reputation at all. This new song feels like something he tossed off in about half an hour, a happy little paean to his “Penny Lane”-era dancehall bounce.

Chet Faker, “Melt” ft. Kilo Kish - Part of me wishes no one had ever released music commercially under the moniker “Chet Faker”; that same part of me wishes even less that it was stumbling, blunted, and harmonically interesting enough to make me type about them. But here we are in, and this song is good.

Free eMusic Samplers

eMusic Editorial Staff — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 18:00:35 +0000

It’s easy to get stuck in a musical rut. The amount of new music that’s released, at this point, on a daily basis can feel overwhelming, and the deluge can cause you to run panicked to old favorites instead of looking for something new. That’s where we come in. We’ve assembled this page of samplers — all of them free — as a way to help you find your next favorite band without burning through your precious balance or making you spend hour after hour digging through the stacks. Just grab a bunch, load them on to your music player of choice, and let the discovery begin.

Who to See at Lollapalooza 2013

eMusic Editorial Staff — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 20:41:47 +0000

Headed to Chicago but still not sure who you want to see in Grant Park? Fear not: We’ve boiled the brain-busting Lollapalooza schedule down to 15 essential sets.

Nine Inch Nails

The Downward Spiral

Nine Inch Nails
1994 | NOTHING

There's a sense in which this write-up feels ridiculous — recommending you go see Nine Inch Nails is a little like saying you ought to check out eating and breathing some time. Whether or not you like their music is irrelevant; Trent Reznor consistently delivers one of the best live shows in the business, with no exceptions. It's not just smoke and fire — the show is meticulously crafted to follow... a story arc, the songs moving from anger to despair to, believe it or not, redemption and healing. The visuals — which, make no mistake, are stunning — are just a complement. Make no mistake: Nine Inch Nails are a live act completely without equal. — J. Edward Keyes
more »

The Killers

Battle Born

The Killers
2012 | ISLAND RECORDS

Anyone aching for the unselfconscious pomposity of old-style rock 'n' roll: Look no further. For 12 years running the Killers have been delivering all-smiles feel-good cotton-candy-rush-n-roll and bringing gloriously, heartbreakingly sincere reminders that sometimes rock clichés actually became clichés because they are the greatest. Their show is pretty much all crescendo; they've been opening with "Mr. Brightside" lately, which is the kind of move you pull when you're cocky enough to believe... you've got two better hours in store. And the thing is, they do. Even their hokiest songs feel vital live, their cornball lyrics ringing incredibly true and hitting the softest spot in your heart every goddamn time. Spoiler alert: They usually end with "When You Were Young," which sounds more like "Born to Run" now — in the best possible way — than it ever has. One more spoiler alert: When they do play it, you will lose your shit. — JEK
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Kendrick Lamar

good kid, m.A.A.d city

Kendrick Lamar
2013 | Top Dawg / Aftermath / Interscope

Kendrick Lamar is a tiny stub of a man — standing onstage, he doesn't seem to come much past 5'4". But his quiet charisma widens out around him like a crop circle, and with his triumphant 2012 masterpiece good kid, m.A.A.d city still resonating in the air, he will likely arrive trailing clouds of rap-savior glory. Liquid, languorous songs like "Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe" and "A.D.H.D." transform into shout-alongs when he's... onstage, and come prepared to rap along to every tongue-twisting verse: He usually gets heavy with the crowd participation. — Jayson Greene
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Eric Church

Chief

Eric Church
2011 | EMI RECORDS NASHVILLE

Eric Church's debut Sinners Like Me was the kind of sly alt-country classic that somehow sneaks into the mainstream once every few years, rollicking and dust-caked, every song ending either in a hug or at the bar (his "Two Pink Lines" remains one of the cleverest, funniest songs about a pregnancy scare ever written — twist ending and all). He foundered a bit on its follow-up, but his most recent album, 2011's... Chief, righted the ship, restoring his wise-guy persona and leavening its Jesus references with enough good-ol'-boy drankin' songs to keep you cockeyed 'til Tuesday. His live show is a big, boisterous party, his band spiking Church's songs with clever AC/DC quotes and ramping up the volume until the ground shakes. — JEK
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Matt & Kim

Lightning

Matt & Kim
2012 | FADER Label / The Orchard

Matt & Kim play punky electropop with huge, beaming choruses and feel-good lyrics about living every second like it's your last. In the last few years, the duo has risen from tiny club shows to a staple at every summer festival, and it's because they take on every live show with mile-wide grins and more energy than a 24-pack of Red Bull. Keyboardist/vocalist Matt Johnson is known for climbing up the side... of the stage, drummer Kim Schifino seems to stand on her drumset more than she plays it, and they both crowd surf. — Laura Leebove
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Father John Misty

Fear Fun

Father John Misty
2012 | Sub Pop Records

"Father John Misty" is actually Josh Tillman, the somber folkie and former Fleet Fox. Father John Misty is kind of Tillman's Tony Clifton persona; in case you are prone to conflating a musician with his music, Father John Misty is here to remind you that every song is a pose, and hey, also, your fly is open, thanks for coming and try the veal. Misty is a wisecracking, soused, Laurel Canyon singer/songwriter... scoundrel, prone to running naked in broad daylight and doing ayahuasca, and his 2012 record Fear Fun was a rollicking tumble in Harry Nilsson's bedraggled bathrobe. Live, he brings a sharp tongue, a Borscht Belt comedian's timing, and a practiced road warrior's worn charisma. Short version: If you're bored by Fleet Foxes, and indie-folk in general, go and be surprised by Father John Misty. — JG
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Jessie Ware

Devotion

Jessie Ware
2013 | Interscope/Cherrytree

In the video for breakout single "Wildest Moments," UK singer Jessie Ware appears, dressed in white, in front of a blank white backdrop and begins to sing. And that is pretty much all that happens. But the thing is, not much more needs to happen: The song itself is potent, big, "Paper Planes"-style bass drums and Ware's smoky alto preaching the gospel of two-way love as a path to self-actualization. It's like... that throughout Devotion, Ware's sneakily seductive debut that fuses the best parts of '90s R&B with current trends in UK dance. Throughout, the music is deliciously underplayed: cool blankets of synths, percussion that percolates like an 8-bit coffeepot and the occasional filigree of guitar. It makes for a new kind of high-tech lover's rock, cruising sleek and quiet as a sports car on a city street in the hours just before the sun comes up. Like all the best crushes, it sneaks up on you unexpectedly, and takes a firm, unwavering hold. — JEK
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Icona Pop

Iconic EP

Icona Pop
2012 | Big Beat Records/Atlantic

Here is Swedish duo Icona Pop summed up in six words: "I don't care! I love it!" That refrain — cribbed from last year's giddiest breakup song — perfectly captures Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo's exuberance and reckless abandon. Their songs are straight-up sugar shots, firework synths and hollered vocals and drum machines that wallop and squelch like medicine balls full of purple Kool-Aid. It's the sound of pure joy — a... nonstop barrage of leaping neon exclamation points. — JEK
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Ghost B.C.

Infestissumam

Ghost B.C.
2013 | Seven Four Entertainment / Republic

As soon as Ghost swarmed out of the depths of Linköping, Sweden, in 2010, the metal community came running. Not only was the band's underground blend of Mercyful Fate riffs and Blue Oyster Cult melodies instantly appealing, its evil shtick was too goofy to ignore. Fronted by Papa Emeritus II, a cryptic skull-faced vocalist in a pope costume, and backed by musicians who all went under the moniker "Nameless Ghoul," Ghost were... a Satanic Spinal Tap with crafty, infectious songs they clearly sold their souls for the ability to write unforgettable songs. Ghost's (who had to add "B.C." to the end of their name to avoid confusion with another Ghost) blatantly Satanic content is likely far too extreme for commercial radio, but for those who value strong, unique songs regardless of genre or lyrical content, they're more illuminating that 100 burning Bibles. — Jon Wiederhorn
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Charles Bradley

No Time for Dreaming

Charles Bradley
2011 | Daptone Records / The Orchard

It's time to put to bed, once and for all, Charles Bradley's oft-repeated origin story as a James Brown impersonator. The Screaming Eagle of Soul, The Original Black Swan and, most recently, The Victim of Love, Bradley is at this point a performer fully his own, possessing boundless charisma, gallons of passion and the kind of unstudied, unadulterated joy that an outdoor festival desperately needs. To stand in the presence of Charles... Bradley is to be basked in 100 percent pure love — so completely unsullied and unpolluted you feel yourself choking up before the first song ever hits the chorus. To put it another way: if James Brown were alive today, he'd be impersonating Charles. — JEK
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Heartless Bastards

Lianne La Havas

Is Your Love Big Enough?

Lianne La Havas
2012 | Nonesuch

While inspired by the more robust Who Is Jill Scott?, Lianne La Havas's promising debut Is Your Love Big Enough? ponders dating an older man (fluttering ditty "Age") and lobs bitter accusations of betrayal (downbeat duet "No Room for Doubt") over finger-picked, reverb-tinged guitar tinged. Over top, La Havas's vocals beckon like flickering candlelight. — Christina Lee

Baroness

MS MR

Secondhand Rapture

MS MR
2013 | Columbia

"We fear rejection, prize attention, crave affection/ Dream, dream, dream of perfection!" That's the refrain of "Salty Sweet," a song MS MR wrote about signing to a major label — but on their stellar debut, Secondhand Rapture, it would seem that the duo's fears didn't materialize. Not only do Lizzy Plapinger and Max Hershenow deliver an array of haunting, period-skipping pop gems: They strike a rare balance between maintaining their DIY background... and opening up their sound for a larger audience to enjoy. By meshing classic pop with more experimental sounds, they're making up their own rules, as well as borrowing from the playbooks of some of the bands Plapinger helped launch on her label Neon Gold, like Passion Pit, Gotye, Ellie Goulding and Icona Pop. MS MR's approach is similar — as they put it: "Pop rooted in an indie ethos." — Marissa G. Mueller
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New This Week: F**k Buttons, Edward Sharpe, Grant Hart

eMusic Editorial Staff — Tue, 23 Jul 2013 21:01:09 +0000

Fuck Buttons, Slow Focus – Bristol duo’s latest, and their first self-produced effort, is their most expansive. Andrew Parks writes:

Slow Focus is the first time Benjamin John Power and Andrew Hung attacked their maximalist bangers sans help at their own aptly-named Space Mountain studio…They expand their sonic vocabulary considerably with no one around to rein it in. If you felt like their trance-inducing tracks could go on forever in the past, wait until you hear songs like “The Red Wing,” a mid-tempo mix of buzz-sawed synths, liquified drum loops and nutty disco nods. It’s groove-locked to the point where it could be performed live for an extra 10 minutes without anyone noticing. Or complaining, for that matter.

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, S/T – Third full-length from communal psych-folk outfit. Ryan Reed writes:

Their third album is their messiest and most sprawling effort, blending their trademark psych-rock goofiness with warped gospel balladry and vivid Age-of-Aquarius soul. An army-sized ten-piece, The Magnetic Zeros still give off the whiff of a cult. It’s often transportive, as if the pit band from Jesus Christ Superstar started up a psych-rock outfit. “Come celebrate, life is hard!” the voices cry on “Life Is Hard,” swirling higher in the mix, battling violins and tambourines and what sound like bouncing basketballs. Sharpe and his Zeros have a gift with this sort of gentle absurdity, as over-the-top and obvious as it is impossible to resist.

Grant Hart, The Argument – Latest solo record from the former Husker Du member, and a 20-song concept record based on Paradise Lost. I’ve been hearing some pretty great things about this, to be honest; some places are calling it his best-ever solo work and the first ever to touch his Husker Du work.

Van Dyke Parks, Songs Cycled – The waggish, reclusive singer/songwriter and arranger returns with his first solo record since 1989, and the way he saunters onstage, a flourish of tangled Disney strings sprouting up around him, it’s like he never left. When you barely acknowledge the last half-century’s worth of pop music’s existence, it’s easy to come and go as you please. Winston Cook-Wilson has more:

In many ways, Van Dyke Parks’s first solo studio album in 25 years feels directly connected to his 1968 debut Song Cycle; the near-identical titles, of course, encourage this comparison. There are collage-style song forms and fast-picked balalaikas. Parks even includes a revamp of “The All Golden.” It’s easy to see Songs Cycled as a “comeback” outing: Parks embracing the daredevil spirit of his early output at a time when critics and fans appreciate it more than ever. After a few listens, however, it becomes clear that the precedents for these songs actually come from throughout his career. “Black Gold,” a comment on the Prestige oil spill, is a South Pacific-esque exercise in exoticism that recalls Tokyo Rose. “Sassafrass” (more Oklahoma!) would sound at home on Jump! The album’s instrumental compositions vacillate between Americana-infused neo-modernism and high kitsch, evoking his idiosyncratic soundtrack and arranging work.

True Widow, Circumambulation – Bleakly alluring stoner metal, tinged with shoegaze drone. Jon Wiederhorn writes:

The members of Dallas trio True Widow have called their music “stonergaze,” for the way they mix elements of stoner metal with shoegazer rock. It’s a somewhat misleading tag for the band’s third album Circumambulation. These are songs rooted to the earth, not created for the cosmos. The music is heavy and repetitive, yes, but it’s too bleak to be mind-altering. The whole album seems to have been composed out of weariness and danger, not bliss; the droning guitars, phlegmatic vocals and down-tempo beats echo with bad vibes.

Mean Lady, S/T – A lovely, old-fashioned guitar pop record. Annie Zaleski says:

Mean Lady is a versatile duo made up of vocalist Katie Dill — who also contributes guitar, ukulele and omnichord — and bassist/keyboardist/sampler-wrangler/producer Sean Nobles. On Love Now, their breezy debut full-length, they mix up murky electronics with hardy, time-tested folk elements. Hard rhythmic tracks — clipped grooves, strident beats, rollicking piano, the occasional funky freakout — serve as a backbone for gauzier tones (misty production, found sound effects, hazy keyboards, Smiths-echoing guitar tones). Dill’s dusty alto and carnival-esque omnichord burbles lend a longing but playful vibe to the record.

Bombadil, Metrics of Affection – A pastoral indie-folk record with a hint of Hobbit. Annie Zaleski, again, has the review:

Rich, warm production enhances the record’s amalgam of stately folk, ’60s pop, alt-country, orchestral indie and even classical (the lovely piano instrumental “Patience Is Expensive”). While there’s a decidedly Southern bent throughout — mainly due to the easygoing vocal style of Michalak, guitarist Bryan Rahija and pianist/ukulele player Stuart Robinson, who take turns singing lead — British artists are Metrics of Affection‘s biggest underlying influence, from XTC (“When We Are Both Cats”) and Elvis Costello (“Have Me,” the piano-driven “What Does It Mean”) to the Beatles (the White Album-like “Whaling Vessel”).

Gogol Bordello, Pure Vida Conspiracy – Another entry into a catalog that, as Andrew Mueller notes, is fast becoming a genre unto itself:

From the first notes of the surging opening fanfare “We Rise Again,” Pure Vida Conspiracy fulfills every expectation that one might harbor of a Gogol Bordello album, which is to say that it would not be altogether surprising for any given track to be abruptly interrupted by a visit from the riot police. “We Rise Again” is a delirious, joyful cacophony even by the group’s standards, and the pace it sets rarely drops. The distinguishing aspect of this album is Gogol Bordello frontman Eugene Hutz’s determination to bring the influences of his adopted homeland of Brazil to bear upon the Ukrainian folk that animated the group in the first place.

Shelby Earl, Swift Arrows – This is an absolutely lovely record, a singer/songwriter album by a woman with a dusky, slightly Dusty Springfield voice and a tart, wry way with kiss offs. One of my favorite new surprises in a minute. Laura Studarus reviewed it for us, saying:

Earl is a singer/songwriter unafraid of dirty riffs and dark lyrics—all delivered with a wicked grin. With Damien Jurado in the producer’s chair, Earl strays from the winsomeness of her debut, Burn the Boats. Swift Arrows is the work of an artist who has discovered her tart, wry voice, which infuses her songs no matter what shape they take: “I love you/You love you too,” goes the mocking singsong of the Phil Spector-leaning “The Artist.” “I’ll make the bed while you are off to shoot the moon,” she sings, tongue firmly planted in cheek. Yeah right. Earl may be adroit shapeshifter, but she’s no one’s woman but her own.

Guy Clark, My Favorite Picture of You – Latest record from Texas singer/songwriter legend is a heartbreaker as usual, in his devastatingly plainspoken way. Here’s Britt Robson with more:

On My Favorite Picture of You, Guy Clark’s first studio album in four years, the reigning sage of Texas singer/songwriters remains allergic to pretense and vigilant against pathos, lest it siphon away the dignity and essential truth of his music. The worn leather of Clark’s 71-year old voice powerfully parses the understated lyrics, and one can’t help but marvel at the alliteration, assonance and seemingly effortless rhythm balled up in lines like, “Standing in the rain in Durango/Right side of wrong/Wrong side of gone.”

Weekend, Jinx – New one from the Slumberland indie-pop band that has absolutely nothing to do with The Weeknd. Marc Hogan writes:

Weekend moved to Brooklyn in time for their sophomore album, and Jinxoffers their make-it-anywhere take on the ’03 New York of Interpol or A Place to Bury Strangers. Guitar squall and percussive thunder once again help Weekend hit harder than most other bleakly romantic noise rockers, while Durkan’s voice, circles around sparse, repetitive lyrics lodge ambivalent feelings in your head.

Hidden Treasures 2013

eMusic Editorial Staff — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 12:00:21 +0000

Every year, hardcore music fans wrestle with the same wonderful problem: There are too many records. Even if we listened to nothing but new records, non-stop, the numbers just don’t add up; we’re going to miss something, it’s certain, something strange and special. But what? What are we missing?

We at eMusic know this exquisite pain better than anyone; the question “What are we missing?” keeps us up nights. Our Hidden Treasures feature is a partial answer. The records in this list span genres, from vintage soul to frozen Gothic pop; from death-obsessed classical song cycles to sloppy garage rock; from chamber music to churning doom metal. Some of these records were overshadowed by higher-profile releases in the same style; some are on labels that never get the attention they deserve. Some of these records are simply damned weird. They all caught our ears and hearts, however, for one reason or another, and we think they’ll do the same to you.

Bleak Visions

Lang: Death Speaks

David Lang
Cantaloupe Music

First, I feel it's important to say that, as of this writing, David Lang is nowhere near death. I see him walking through the neighborhood from time to time and he is his usual cheery, deadpan self. And yet the Bang on A Can co-founder has produced an incandescent string of pieces in recent years focused exclusively on death and dying. His Pulitzer Prize-winning Little Match Girl Passion gravely watches a poor... young girl freeze to death as passersby ignore her. His yet-to-be-recorded Love Fail takes an oblique look at the fatal love affair between Tristan and Isolde. His haunting, drifting Salle des Departs (recorded here under the title "Depart") was written for a hospital morgue. And then there's Death Speaks, a five-movement work which takes up most of this recording. Here, death is not an event, but a figure, like something out of an engraving by Albrecht Dürer. But unlike the American folk song "O Death," in which Death is a scary, implacable foe — the singer asks, "oh Death, won't you pass me over another year" — Lang has assembled a text in which Death is addressing us, with a message that is ultimately reassuring, and comforting.

The text is built around the many and varied instances in the songs of Franz Schubert in which the figure of Death speaks. The music, as in the other death-themed works named above, has a transparent texture that sets off and subtly colors those texts, and the voice delivering it. That voice belongs to Shara Worden, one of the current breed of musicians who move fluidly between the worlds of classical music and indie rock. While still leading her own band, My Brightest Diamond, Worden has become the go-to voice for the so-called "indie classical" crowd. The rest of the ensemble here is equally remarkable: Bryce Dessner, one of the twin electric guitarists from the popular rock band The National, and a fine composer himself; Owen Pallett, the violinist, vocalist and composer who formerly recorded as Final Fantasy; and Nico Muhly, the in-demand composer and keyboardist whose works range from choral to electronic. With essentially an all-star band, Lang has chosen to write music which is not conventionally virtuosic, relying instead of the quartet's musicality and precision. The results are quietly stunning. Highlights include the gentle, chiming minimalism of part 1, "You Will Return"; the resonant percussive use of the piano's bass end in part 2, "I Hear You"; the deft, rhythmic use of the violin in part 3, "Mist Is Rising"; and the lovely duet that blossoms in part 5, "I Am Walking."

After Death Speaks, the album invites you to relax in the dark-hued but warm ambience of "Depart," for chorus and strings. Probably best not to think too much of the French morgue for which it was written.
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Meir

Kvelertak
2013 | Roadrunner Records

Metal typically exists in a kind of "either/or" dichotomy: either bands are grinding and infernal or they're triumphant and anthemic. The Norwegian group Kvelertak is strictly "both/and." Their scorching second record Meir pairs the bludgeoning brutality of bands like Cannibal Corpse Rotting Christ with the kind of sugary hookiness typically found on an album by Andrew W.K. "Manelyst" is the perfect example: It opens with a barrage of barnstorming chords, a terrifying... asteroid shower of sound, before cruising up into a refrain that's practically singable, sounding like something from the Rocket From the Tombs catalog, if someone set vocalist John Reis on fire. "Burane Brenn" opens full-hurtle, frontman Erlend Hjelvik's wrecked-larynx howls offset by a holler-along soccer-anthem chorus. Kvelertak ride AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" right to its fiery end, and stage a never-ending kegger amid the flames.
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Excavation

The Haxan Cloak
2013 | Tri Angle Records / SC Distribution

It may be glib to assume that London-based producer Bobby Krlic dwells exclusively on the dark side, but given the evidence it's hardly unreasonable. His alias references a 1922 Scandinavian docudrama about witchcraft and inquisition, and his 2011 self-titled debut album aligned him with avant-black-metal/doom acts like Mayhem and Sunn O))). And the sleeve of his gloomily titled follow-up depicts a single length of rope coiled into a noose.

However, The Haxan Cloak's... thrillingly dark and chilly aesthetic goes far deeper than the kind of parent-bothering occult primer these details might suggest. There are echoes of Burial's cavernous dub and Demdike Stare's haunted techno in Excavation, but its magnificently maleficent, post-dubstep soundscapes have more in common with musique concrete, Expressionist cinema soundtracks and medieval monastic cantos than so-called witch house or drone metal.

Krlic's sounds are again rooted in acoustics (cello, violin, guitar, vocals) and field recordings, but this time they've been heavily processed — magnified, stretched, dissembled, reconstituted and rearranged — to produce nine micro-symphonies of stark beauty and extraordinary menace. Whether suggesting the dull throb of an old nuclear power plant, the spooked echo inside an abandoned iron foundry or the howl of an Arctic wind at a remote scientific station, they evoke a compressed anxiety that seeps into every note, causing the likes of "Dieu" to heave and quiver before it dies away and underlining the fact that despite its title, epic closer "The Drop" is concerned with something rather more ominous than build-and-break patterns.
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Abandon

Pharmakon
2013 | Sacred Bones Records / S.C. Distribution

Pharmakon is noise artist Margaret Chardiet, but you'd be forgiven for thinking it was some infernal ghoul. Abandon opens with a scream, and then plunges to unholy depths, full of icepick electronics, horrifying turbine wooshes and suffocating layers of static. It makes Swans sound like The Byrds.
A Breathtaking Trip to That Otherside

Alexander Spit
2013 | Decon

Alexander Spit's bleak, baleful Breathtaking Trip to That Otherside is not good-times music. Spit is from California, but his dank, druggy rap music feels allergic to sunshine. Spit produced the entire album, and his sticky, bleary sound owes more to Dilla and RZA. Everything seems to move through a thick film, including Spit's raps, which gob up into bits of blacklit surrealism about Roswell and chemtrails and unspool into long spleen-venting rants.... If you've ever sat, stoned, in an apartment during a blazingly hot day with the blinds drawn, Breathtaking Trip will feel clammily familiar.
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Vexovoid

Portal
2013 | Profound Lore / Revolver

Nirvana once wrote a song called "Endless, Nameless." Take a look at this picture of Portal's lead vocalist, and then submit to the swirling, backed-up churn of "Orbmorphia," from the Australian death metal band's fourth album Vexovoid, and you may find yourself with an entirely new appreciation of what those two words can mean.

Portal, as a band, is all texture, no melody. But they have mastered so many different textures... that you never think to yearn for melody. The down-tuned guitars, gurgling beneath the ever-shifting blastbeats of the drums, bring to mind all kinds of things, none of them musical: the alarming suck of wet mud when you walk in loose boots, the sounds old motorcycle engines make. The album title evokes a zone of confusion, a place where you can't get your bearings and the ground is constantly shifting. Exactly.
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Arriving Angels

Helen Money
2013 | Profound Lore / Revolver

Play any of the songs on the harrowing third record by Alison Chesley — who records as Helen Money — on electric guitar, and you'd have one of the most brutal, unnerving metal records of the year. But play them as she does on cello, and — well, you still have one of the most brutal, unnerving metal records of the year. Much of this comes from Chesley's command of dynamic. Aptly-titled... album-opener "Upsetter" starts with a low thrum that skitters forward like a tarantula before erupting into slasher-film goring, Chesley's instrument so distortion-caked it sounds like a rotary saw. She's joined by Neurosis drummer Jason Roeder on "Beautiful Friends," which progresses from seasick lurch to undead horse stampede, growing more violent and insistent as it goes on. It's a snarling, suffocating record, and by the time you get to the avalanche that concludes "Radio Recorders," it's clear the angels of the title aren't coming down from the sky, but up from below, horns gleaming, eyes yellow as old bones.
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Obsidian Spectre

Crosss
2013 | Telephone Explosion / The Orchard

In the chilling video for CROSSS's "Bones Brigade", a figure in an ominous black cloak kneels motionless on a beach, staring blankly off into the grey sky, as if in a trance. He remains like that, stock still, hypnotized, for a full three minutes and 30 seconds, his motionlessness becoming more sickeningly unsettling the longer it lasts. Finally, at the end of the video, he bows — as if in supplication... to some god or spirit or eerie form that only he can see. He straightens, and the video cuts to black. That turns out to be a handy encapsulation of the Halifax group's aesthetic: slow-moving, hypnotic and deeply, deeply creepy. Sounding something like Thee Oh Sees slowed down to about 2 RPM, the group tops grimy, repetitive chord patterns with wicked-warlock sneering, making for a final product that feels invested with prime '70s sorcery rock black magick. "Smoke" warns, "Look into your mind's eye/ don't forget to not let your guard down" as guitars churn and boil like the steaming liquid in a witch's cauldron. "Old Sound" draws its dark strength from its continual, gooseflesh-raising dives from major to minor key. Throughout, its members acquit themselves as if they've all just done kegstands with the blood of Kali Ma — dead-eyed, dutiful, and wearing sickening grimaces.
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Lost Mixtape Gems

Out of View

The History Of Apple Pie
Marshall Teller Records

On their debut album Out of View, London quintet The History of Apple Pie blend the most precious of indie-pop impulses with the messiest squalling noise-rock has to offer. Vocalist Stephanie Min's feathery vocals float high in the mix, leaving her teen-romance lyrics ("We're having so much fun in the light of the sun/ You're so cool") faintly discernible above the thick clouds of My Bloody Valentine-style glide guitar that threaten to... overwhelm them. It's that constant give-and-take between pop and art-rock chaos that keeps Out of View interesting: A gruff chord or two always cuts the cotton candy at just the right moment, like when the full-on breakdown interrupts the strawberry lemonade-flavored workout "I Want More." On "Mallory," the daydreaming verses and the yearning melody are tossed about by an underlayer of sneering riffs and distorted noise. No one side ever wins out over the other for long and the seesawing can give you a powerful sugar buzz.
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Cruise Your Illusion

Milk Music
2013 | Fat Possum Records

On Cruise Your Illusion, the first proper full-length from Olympia, Washington's Milk Music, the quartet wedges itself somewhere within the SST Records-Neil Young-Wipers universe, pitting sweat-stained, heavy hardcore punk against indelible melodies and endless sincerity. Since their early output, a 2009 demo cassette and a 12-inch in 2010, the band has turned their DIY determination into full-fledged ambition, and the songs on Cruise are as honest and spiritual as they are messy... and loud. On "Lacey's Secret," Alex Coxen's shouting, imperfect voice cuts through the instrumental heap with lines that that scan endearingly like poetry in a rest-stop bathroom: "You got to get all you can here/ when you're burning every night".

The songs on Cruise Your Illusion bask in youthful charm. "…And although the sun sets heavy on the dreamer/ You can feed your pain to the song," Coxens sings on "No, Nothing, My Shelter" as the band rips into the overdriven wail of "Coyote Road" before running amok on "I've Got A Wild Feeling," a populist manifesto that might as well be the band's anthem. When Milk Music started out, their songs were loud, fast and full of Big Muff. And while the sound is still bruising on their debut, they've found a larger scope and a deeper message. On "Cruising With God" Coxen invites the listener into the band's inner sanctum: "They all love our songs/ But even with the music on/ Baby you've got it all wrong/ You haven't danced in so long."
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Sock it to Me

Colleen Green
2013 | Hardly Art / Sub Pop Records

Colleen Green writes simple songs about simple things and records them as simply as possible. The first song on the irresistible Sock it to Me is basically just Green singing, "Oh yeah, uh-huh, oh God, I really love my boyfriend," and the lazer-light dollar-store Elastica song "You're So Cool" builds to an equally straightforward refrain: "You're so cool, how do you do it? You act like there is nothing to it." Her... logo is a stick-figure drawing of herself that looks not entirely unlike Fido Dido's long-lost sister, and her music is defiantly, joyously basic: just Green's distorted guitar, pouting voice and a Goodwill Store drum machine.

But lean closer in and the images start to distort. Green opens the provocatively-titled "Every Boy Wants a Normal Girl" by singing, "Sometimes I wish I was a normal girl," and then follows it with the height of abnormality: "Like the ones on TV, like the ones in the movies." The drowsy "Darkest Eyes" scans quickly as plainspoken puppy love, with Green celebrating her true love's eyes and contemplating how to retain his affections. And what's her solution? "There's no better way to keep appearances preserved/ than a razor to the optic nerve." And then you skip back to that first song, the one where she's singing about loving her boyfriend, and catch what she says near the ending: "When he tells me that he loves me, I lose the air from my lungs/ his love has finally killed me." Sock it to Me is strychnine-laced Strawberry Fanta.
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Mozes And The Firstborn

Mozes And The Firstborn
2013 | Mozes And The Firstborn / The Orchard

Anyone looking for a 21st-century analog to Weezer's "El Scorcho" should start with "I Got Skills" from the debut album by the Belgian group Mozes & the Firstborn. It's got a similarly motley, gang-hollered chorus, that same nerdish braggadocio ("I got skills to make it through your doorway") and a shambling, thrown-together aesthetic that is charming in spite of itself. The rest of the record pinballs between that same kind of... Jr. High sheepishness — "Skinny Girl" is what Mellow Gold might have sounded like if Beck was a teenager when he recorded it — and genuine star swagger. "Peter Jr." opens with an instant-classic rock couplet — "The longer you work here/ the less you get paid" — before sailing straight into the kind of cruising melodicism that characterizes the best Brian Jonestown Massacre songs (its cocky stride singlehandedly earns the group the right to own this coat) Mozes and the Firstborn are teenage panic and grown-up confidence all at once.
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Paper Moon

Georgiana Starlington
2013 | Hozac / Revolver

As K-Holes, Jack and Julie Hines kick up an unholy racket. Their work as Georgiana Starlington is different in sound, but just as grim in feel. Their dusky, country-influenced songs foreground their dazed, trancelike vocals as they glide over arid guitar like phantoms across the prairie at midnight.
Ex-Cult

Ex-Cult
2012 | Goner / Revolver

Boasting the same feral ferocity as '70s US post-punkers like Rocket From the Tombs and Pere Ubu, Ex-Cult (nee Sex Cult) solder clambering riffs to half-spoken, half-hollered vocals and drench the resulting songs in enough echo to make them sound almost alien. Much murkier and moodier than the music of their producer Ty Segall, Ex-Cult seethe and stalk where Segall storms right in. "Shade of Red" circles and circles, guitars humming like... old Cessnas looking for a place to land. "On Film" is doomier — its downcast bassline could have been lifted from Unknown Pleasures, its howled chorus coming off like some dark warning from a fortune teller. Throughout it sounds both ragged and well-aged — like a relic from an earlier era, recently unearthed. That they are both new and still active is to our great fortune.
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Ultramarine

Young Galaxy
2013 | Paper Bag Records / The Orchard

On their fourth LP, Young Galaxy go big, trading woozy, lo-fi-leaning dreampop for busy, dancefloor-ready electropop hits. They returned to producer Dan Lissvik, who worked on 2011's Shapeshifting, but this time the group traveled from Canada to Lissvik's studio in Sweden instead of sending their unfinished recordings overseas. The result is slick, cinematic and cohesive: There are disco influences ("Out the Gate Backwards"), tropical beats ("Fall For You"), and glorious pop anthems... ("Pretty Boy," "Fever"). In losing all hints of the haziness that masks their earlier releases, Young Galaxy simultaneously shed the Slowdive comparisons and make their best record yet.
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Peach Kelli Pop

Peach Kelli Pop
2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

Like a lollipop caught in a lint filter, Peach Kelli Pop nestles sticky sweetness beneath layers of cottony fuzz. The group, fronted and more or less embodied by White Wires' Allie Hanlon, takes their name from a Redd Kross song, and in many ways, they're that group's cheaper, sunnier analog. Both bands have a fondness for immediately-memorable hooks and piles of guitar, but Peach Kelli Pop seems to be constantly operating in... fast-forward. "Panchito Blues II" sounds like the Shangri-La's trying to outrun The Monkees, and "Julie Oulie" is floor-filler at a jackrabbit sock hop. By the time your brain has caught up you're ready to savor the sweetness, the next song is half over.
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Ready For Boredom

Bed Wettin' Bad Boys
R.I.P. SOCIETY

Australia's Bed Wettin' Bad Boys are basically a drunker version of The Faces, a bunch of hooligans getting shitty on Foster's then stumbling over to their guitars, cranking the amps and seeing what happens. Their live shows are notoriously sloppy (and, depending on whom you talk to, hilarious or infuriating) — bend members swap instruments, goof off interminably between songs and pound beer after beer after beer.

We're spared all of that on... the amazingly-titled Ready for Boredom, skipping instead right to the busted Mustang riffing and the blown-throat vocals. "Sally" is to The Rolling Stones "Happy" what Turkish Star Wars is to regular Star Wars: It has a lot of the same component parts — a blues lick deep-fried in axle grease, a somersaulting two-note hook — but is decidedly lower-budget and flaunts its inattention to detail. Their closest US analog is probably The Men — both bands mine classic rock for its junkiest spare parts — but the Bad Boys are sloppier and soggier still. The glistening album-closer "Keep it From You" is the closest they get to actual sentiment, but Nic Warnock's heartsick lyrics sound like they're coming from the business end of a drunk dial. He may not remember what he said in the morning, but he sounds like he means it in the moment. And isn't that all that matters?
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White Orchid

French Films
2013 | GAEA Records

The phrase "French Films" doesn't generally evoke the happiest images: the last-act betrayal in Breathless, a stricken Jean Pierre-Leaud standing balefully on the beach in The 400 Blows, pretty much all of Shoot the Piano Player. So chalk up the fact that this impossibly hooky Finnish band chose it as their handle to either irony or bad translation. Or move right past it and get right to the main thing that matters:... the songs. And what songs they are: French Films force-feed uppers to the Field Mice and kick the keyboard player out of New Order, delivering a batch of breathless Britpop-inspired songs with gargantuan choruses and guitar lines that glisten and glide like tiny tin airplanes. "Never let me go, never let me go," is the central plea on the rocketing "Where We Come From" — which, sonically, is the Pains of Being Pure at Heart by way of recent Mikal Cronin. As if shaking free of songs this addictive were even an option.
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Rare Birds & Strange Beasts

Sing to the Moon

Laura Mvula
2013 | Columbia

"I don't need love to rescue me/ I'll be all that I choose to be," Laura Mvula sings on "Make Me Lovely," the second track on Sing to the Moon. The British soul singer's voice is as strong as her sentiment, augmented further by delicate orchestra flourishes, soulful handclaps and college-a cappella-style vocal acrobatics. Elsewhere, Mvula fights against ideas of conventional beauty ("That's Alright"), sings about the power of music during hard... times ("Sing to the Moon"), and triumphs over loves that didn't work out ("Flying Without You"). A truly stunning, powerful debut.
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Apocalypse

Thundercat
2013 | Brainfeeder

Apocalypse, the follow-up to the madcap jazz-fusion/Saturday-morning-cartoon hallucination that was The Golden Age of the Apocalypse, explores the more chilled-out and unzipped side of Stephen Bruner. Bruner's command of jazz, R&B, Quiet Storm and straight-ahead bachelor-pad pop is stunning, and this gorgeous album makes a nice companion to the new Daft Punk.
The Moths Are Real

Serafina Steer
2013 | Stolen Recordings / PIAS Digital

Creating a sense of mystery in an age of instant information is difficult, but Serafina Steer manages it beautifully with her third album, The Moths Are Real. There's nothing particularly enigmatic about her CV — classically trained London harpist who has worked with Bat For Lashes, Patrick Wolf and John Foxx — but left to her own devices, Steer enters a world of her own, drawing you in by her side. Produced... by Jarvis Cocker, The Moths Are Real flickers between the physical realities of love, sadness and urban life — the naked romance of "Skinny Dipping," the wintery alienation of "Ballad Of Brick Lane" — and a frosted mythological wonderland that lurks the other side of the looking glass. It's a record that trembles on the threshold between worlds, not just in its merging of folk, psychedelia, prog and electronica, but in the way the lyrics are sweetly conversational one second ("Of course, my scanty life philosophy, as you suspected all along, is actually based on lines from songs," shrugs "Disco Compilation") and as stylized and strange as a temple oracle the next ("Island Odyssey," "Lady Fortune"). The reference points might seem to be in place — Joanna Newsom, Shirley Collins, Alice Coltrane, Robert Wyatt — but Steer sends the compass needle spinning, charting the places where magic and mystery poke through threadbare normality.
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Flume

Flume
2013 | Mom & Pop Music / The Orchard

Few have ever looked to Australia for the latest trends in electronic music. Although it has produced its fair share of innovators, from disco flirts Vanda & Young to hip auteurs The Avalanches, Down Under electronic music is largely seen as the foppish cousin to rock's more masculine manoeuvres. There was a brief flirtation with acid house in the early '90s, mainly fueled by British ex-pats, but interest was always confined to... pockets of aficionados. Until, that is, the arrival of Flume on forward-thinking label Future Classic.

With comparisons to The Weeknd and Toro Y Moi (whom he supported on a recent London date), 21-year-old Harley Streten has seemingly risen from nowhere to produce one of the most exciting electronic debuts of the year. Breakthrough single "Holdin' On" is a sublime slice of wobblesome R&B, while the instrumental "Ezra" has crunk beats leavened with a hook that could have been lifted from the Art of Noise. "Left Alone," which features Melbourne's magnificently-named Chet Faker, feels delivered straight from a Pentecostal church rather than a precocious kid from the Sydney 'burbs, while "More Than You Thought" veers towards stomping Skrillex territory without ever resorting to the easy pay-offs the American producer favors.

This album has already knocked Justin Bieber off the No. 1 spot in Australia — an astonishing achievement for music that is still some way from being pure pop. From a trickle to a torrent: This Flume is unstoppable.
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Leave Me Midnight

My Gold Mask
2013 | Goldy Tapes / CD Baby

At this point, the breakup album has been bent into countless shapes. So rather than try to re-shape it, on their debut album My Gold Mask's Gretta Rochelle and Jack Armondo simply amplified its effects. They didn't skimp on dramatics, with Rochelle's pleading vocals, Armondo's spiraling guitar riffs and lyrics that grapple with psychosis and reference Gothic literature and Italo horror flicks. The result achieves a spellbinding emotional intensity that's easy to... inhabit.
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Baroque

Nadia Sirota
New Amsterdam

Nadia Sirota is the violist of choice for the New York contemporary-classical scene, and on Baroque, she follows up her astoundingly assured debut, First Things First, with fresh works from many of the composers who contributed to that recording. Judd Greenstein's piece for seven violas (all of them multitracked by Sirota), "In Teaching Others We Teach Ourselves," employs a variety of dizzying riffs, separated by episodes of subtle pizzicato, in order to... evoke the many stages of cosmos-crossing undertaken by the famous "Golden Record" shot into deep space by NASA back in 1977. It's also a tour de force opportunity for Sirota to show off her otherworldly chops and a variety of techniques: Nico Muhly's jaunty "Etude 3" is as memorable as the two others in his series, which he gave Sirota the first time around, and is a showcase for Sirota the player.

But there are new composers this time as well, even if they are generally familiar to the New Amsterdam coterie. Shara Worden's "From the Invisible to the Visible" is a brief, attractive offering that introduces keyboards and organs into the mix to considered effect. Missy Mazzoli's "Tooth and Nail" continues the electronic theme and is the album's standout, featuring some exciting hyper-glitch programming by the composer in during its opening minutes. Solid pieces from Paul Corley and Daniel Bjarnason complete this satisfying program, which, while more tricked-out electronically than Sirota's first offering, retains her aesthetic imprint.
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Smart Ass Black Boy

Fat Tony
2013 | Young One

Fat Tony is the kind of guy fated to slip between the cracks. He's from Houston, but sounds like no Texas rappers; occasionally political, but not much of a firebrand; muted and thoughtful, but no one's idea, really, of a "conscious rapper." He has a casual, conversational voice, and his raps tumble out like early Common, before he got too serious. There are dumb puns, a few trenchant insights and, above all,... an appealing confidence. The entire project was produced by Tom Cruz, a producer with a rubbery, cut-and-paste style, and Smart Ass Black Boy slips by agreeably like a late night dorm room bull session.
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Your Turn

Ceramic Dog
2013 | Northern Spy Records / Redeye

"We have a new business model, we'll blow you for a nickel." This is the acidic guitarist Marc Ribot, summing up the effect that the internet has had on the value of recorded music, in one pithy quote. Ribot, who played with Tom Waits just as the singer was morphing from hobo crooner to glass-spitting carnie barker, has never been afraid of sharp edges, and has made his career since his Waits... days in the avant-garde circuit. But Your Turn is a veer back into rock-song territory, albeit rock songs with big crayon doodles all over them: Title track "Your Turn" is a driving motorik groove defaced with a sloppy guitar solo that could be a Shreds video.
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Clayton: The Julius Eastman Memory Depot

Jace Clayton
New Amsterdam

In his performances as DJ/rupture, Jace Clayton has been part of that experimental breed of DJ/producers who draw on the sounds of the classical avant-garde. But while names like Edgard Varese, Iannis Xenakis and Karlheinz Stockhausen have become hip in DJ culture, Clayton has turned to one of music's true outliers, the gay African-American composer Julius Eastman. (Both his sexual orientation and race figure prominently in his titles.) The Julius Eastman Memorial... Depot is neither a mash-up nor a straight remix. It is a recasting and reimagining of two of Eastman's most important and defining works, "Evil Nigger" and "Gay Guerrilla," both originally for four pianos but arranged here for two pianos and live electronics. And it is a remarkable, heartfelt tribute to a man who was a fixture on the New York "downtown" scene in the '70s and '80s, performing with Meredith Monk and singing the lead role in Peter Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs For a Mad King before succumbing to alcohol and drug addiction, homelessness and death at the age of 49.

"Evil Nigger, Part 1" is almost pretty, with the layered chiming of its minimalist pianos; Part 2 abruptly switches to a more obviously electronic sound; Part 3 takes on a darker, dramatic hue as the music descends to the bass end of the keyboards, heaving and rolling in waves of increasingly dense sound that almost sounds like a kind of broadband drone. The final part announces itself with the sounds of glitch electronica, while the piano textures thin out, creating a sense both of space and of expectation that something will soon come rushing in to fill it. Shards of gamelan-like piano, impossibly rapid trills and tolling chords hover around the edges of the mix, until a brief explosion of massive piano sounds takes over. It ends as ambiguously as one of Bela Bartok's nachtmusik ("night music") pieces, with the half-remembered echoes of those earlier trills in a haunted electroacoustic haze.

"Gay Guerrilla," in five parts, begins with the steady pulse of the pianos; Clayton's electronics are subtle but telling, often hard to distinguish from the pianos themselves. In Part 2, a web of shifting electronic drones grows out of the patter of almost bell-like tones in the upper registers of the keyboards. When the pianos return, in a gently galloping rhythm, the result is perhaps the most conventionally beautiful music here. "Conventionally" being a relative term, of course. Part 3 begins to build up rhythmic counterpoint that sounds reminiscent of Steve Reich's work, but no sooner does that happen then the sound of a turntable dying brings the music to a grinding halt — at which point we hear Martin Luther's hymn "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." (This appropriation appears in Eastman's original version of the piece.) Echoes of that tune flit through the thick piano textures of Part 4; and Part 5, with its endlessly ascending pianos, has a more reflective, even valedictory cast.

The album concludes with a Jace Clayton original, a short song that takes the wry humor of Eastman's own work and turns it on the usual "equal-opportunity employment" speech, turning it into a pensive contemplation of a man who was driven to despair in part by a lack of employment opportunities.
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Betty Rubble: The Initiation

Mykki Blanco
2013 | UNO NYC

Mykki Blanco is a performance artist, a black gay drag queen and a rapper. She is the center of her own Venn diagram, in other words, and on Betty Rubble she went from "promising" to great. Her voice is raspy and manic, a bit of Lil Wayne at his most enthusiastically unhinged and a bit of Young Dro in how audibly she relishes the vowel and consonant sounds leaving her mouth. The... beats on Rubble are a collision of electro, snap music and Neptunes, a lot of empty space and room for attitude and personality. Blanco obliges, calling herself "Richie Rich with a clit in the middle" and interpolating "If I Was a Rich Man" on "Angggry Birdz" and telling a hilariously detailed story about a tour-stop conquest on "Vienna."
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Out-of-Time Dispatches

Sudden Elevation

Ólöf Arnalds
2013 | One Little Indian / The Orchard

The most attractive thing about Ólöf Arnalds's music is the sense of mystery. Beginning with her beguiling 2007 debut Við og Við, Arnalds spun songs that felt like recitations from some yellowing old elvish spell book, her soprano curling like enchanted vines and gentle guitar spinning out notes like spiderwebs reflecting sunlight. That she sang in Icelandic — with its strange vowel runs and twisting cadence — only made her songs feel... more otherworldly. So it's no small risk for her to write and sing the entirety of Sudden Elevation in English; like a sitcom actor suddenly deciding to go Method, peeling away Arnalds's gauzy façade leaves the raw essence of her music exposed.

The good news is that the songs can bear the scrutiny. Sudden Elevation contains all the tender beauty of Arnalds's previous efforts — the wandering-bard guitar playing, the vocal melodies that bob like butterflies in a spring breeze. And though her lyrics are in English, that doesn't mean they're any more easily parsed. The verses in the gently waltzing "Return Again," for instance, are tangled as old riddles. Though the decision to forsake her native tongue could be read as a bid for more mainstream acceptance, thankfully, Arnalds has resisted any temptation to further burnish her sound. There are no horn charts, no swooping orchestras, nothing much beyond Arnalds's guitar and voice. All of this only contributes to Sudden Elevation's dreamlike feel: You can understand the words and make sense of the general narrative, but the overall meaning remains as alluringly ambiguous as ever.
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Leanin' On Slick

Aceyalone
2013 | Decon

From the breaks that first propelled Kool Herc's parties in '73 to Dre's minimoogs to Mystikal's manic James Brown tics, funk has not only provided a foundational structure to hip-hop, it's often risen to the surface and flat-out driven it. West Coast indie-rap vet Aceyalone has spent more than 20 years riding the outskirts of that territory, through his time with Freestyle Fellowship to his cult-classic solo debut All Balls Don't Bounce... to the later-career triumph of RJD2 teamup "A Beautiful Mine" (aka the Mad Men theme song). So after a long career — concurrent with a stab at making another excursion into grown-man rap — Leanin' on Slick sees Aceyalone toeing that line between underground rap and the traditions that scene built its base on.

The title track draws off the J.B.'s sound more in a way befitting a '70s indie-label garage-funk band (or a Daptonian revivalist group) than, say, the Bomb Squad, and the lyrical conceit isn't the only throwback — Acey's smooth-rolling delivery relays hustler tales from days when Caddies rolled long and low instead of high on 24s. That's not the only nod to vintage soul: "I Can Get It Myself" cockily struts through the door that James Brown demanded be opened back in '69, the handclaps and horn stabs of "What You Gone Do With That" is an old-school road-show with Acey's own overdubbed echoes standing in for call-and-response vocalists, and the pairing of his steady-job grind motivation with a wailing Cee-Lo chorus makes "Workin' Man's Blues" the closest Aceyalone's come to a genuine but uncompromised potential pop crossover. If the record vibe skews older, it's by design — leadoff cut "30 and Up" practically decrees it — but if this is the album young Aceyalone figured he'd be making once he approached middle age, he had some right-thinking foresight.
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The Coming Tide

Luke Winslow-King
2013 | Bloodshot Records

The 29-year-old singer/songwriter, slide guitarist and eMusic Selects alum Luke Winslow-King is from Michigan, but he has called The Big Easy home since 2001. On his third full-length, you can hear that the city has made its way into his bones. On The Coming Tide, Winslow-King masters the art of revivalist folk, seamlessly blending New Orleans jazz, Delta blues and ragtime into an album as sweet and satisfying as devouring plate of... beignets and sipping a café au lait on the banks of the Mississippi.

Accompanied by his girlfriend, the sugary-voiced, washboard-wielding Esther Rose, Winslow-King amasses a fine collection of traditionalist originals and personalized covers on The Coming Tide. Rose sings harmony while a thumping upright bass and a brass section leading call-and-repeats accompany them, and the album sways with easy confidence. Winslow-King particularly shines in his blues numbers, namely a faithful, slower rendition of Blind Willie Johnson's "Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning" and a slide-driven cover of "Got My Mind Set On You," made famous by George Harrison in the late '80s. Nostalgia rains heavy on The Coming Tide, but Winslow-King reins it in, refashioning weathered words and sounds and branding them his own.
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The Stand-In

Caitlin Rose
2013 | ATO Records

Given her avowed love of old Hollywood glamour (just check out that album cover), the title of Caitlin Rose's sophomore full-length likely refers to the 1937 backlot comedy The Stand-In, about a love triangle between the title character, a hapless number cruncher and a hopeless film producer. While Rose does write about similar romantic confusions, the film reference nevertheless comes across as false modesty: On these dozen songs, she emerges as a... confident, distinctive pop-country artist with a biting lyrical style and a smart way with a hook. Perhaps A Star Is Born sounded too cocky?

Like any good actress, Rose has impressive range. The Stand-In has roots in classic country, displaying the poise of Tammy Wynette on "Everywhere I Go" and the assertiveness of Loretta Lynn on "Waitin'." Standout "Golden Boy" casts her as a countrypolitan chanteuse against a widescreen arrangement that recalls Owen Bradley, and she turns that chorus into a gently devastating plea: "Golden boy, don't go away/ I won't ask you what you're here for/ If you stay." Occasionally she holds her twang in check, but for the most part her vocals are expressive, building from the conspiratorial whisper of "When I'm Gone" to the full-throated belt of "Only a Clown."

Rarely reverent to one style or genre, The Stand-In mixes country with classic rock, radio pop, and even speakeasy jazz on closer "Old Numbers." The rollicking Hank- and Tennessee Williams-inspired "Menagerie" and first single "Only a Clown" both hinge on Byrds-style guitar riffs that suggest an affinity for West Coast nuggets, and the Las Vegas-set "Pink Champagne" is debauched country folk, a sad-eyed and slightly sloshed reimagining of Gram Parsons's "Sin City." No matter how blue she sounds, there's always a lively hint of humor even in her despair — a distinguishing trait that suggests she may be ready for her close-up.
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Berberian Sound Studio

Broadcast
2013 | Warp Records

When it came to soundtracking Peter Strickland's horror film Berberian Sound Studio, about a British sound engineer working for an Italian film company in the 1970s, there could have been no other name on the list than Broadcast. The band, aka Trish Keenan and James Cargill, were recording this album when Keenan died from pneumonia in 2011, age just 42, and it is a sublime, sad reminder of a remarkable talent lost.... On their own albums, the pair's haunting songs are constructed from elements that evoke half-remembered television themes, or a ghostly folk group transmitting from the future. It's rare that a soundtrack album constructed from fragments of music and snatches of dialogue is a rewarding listen, but Broadcast — perhaps because they are so adept at creating otherworldly sounds from pop's detritus — managed it beautifully here. Some of the tracks are genuinely unnerving, such as "Mark Of The Devil," its mean electronic pulses and chants sounding like wraiths in charge of a power station, or the guttural gabbling of "A Goblin." These terrifying moments are contrasted with pastoral instrumentals, built largely from flute, xylophone and organ, which could soundtrack a cold, misty morning as well as the original film. A bewitching last Broadcast.
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Kid Face

Samantha Crain
2013 | Ramseur Records / The Orchard

Singer-songwriter Samantha Crain has always sounded like an old soul, her dusty alto worn down by restless thoughts and free-floating anxiety. On the autobiographical Kid Face, the Oklahoma native sounds even more wizened as she explores loneliness, wanderlust and emotional disruption. Produced by John Vanderslice, Kid Face is a sparse record, laced with stark folk and Americana signifiers: acoustic guitar, wobbly piano, curled pedal steel and keening violin. Shambling banjo, stabs... of synthesizer or electric guitar add occasional jolts of urgency to the mix.

But significantly, Crain comes into her own as a lyricist on Kid Face. Besides being a meticulous wordsmith ("I'm going to shows, counting my toes and crying over you" is how she describes one particularly trying breakup), she offers thorough, unflinching self-analysis. Crain uses Kid Face's songs to examine her place in the world — and figure out how her actions affect others, for better and for worse. "Churchill" addresses the realization that "my whole life I thought I was an opportunist/ But I'm not"; "Sand Paintings" struggles with overcoming self-sabotaging tendencies; and "Ax" is a call to be kind in the face of negativity. Perhaps most impressive is "Never Going Back," which describes (hopefully) breaking free from a disastrous affair: "The ending of 10,000 dreams/ My soul has finally been set free from his cool eyes." The song is devastatingly effective because of its economy, the same trait that also makes Kid Face a wonderful record.
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Fairouz: Native Informant

Mohammed Fairouz
Naxos

Native Informant begins with a tense, mournful clarinet, sobbing quietly in bent phrases. The soprano Melissa Hughes joins in, her voice blending eerily with the clarinet. The piece is "Tahwidah," by the composer Mohammed Fairouz, and it blends harmonic languages and geography in a way that will remind modern classical listeners of the famous Osvaldo Golijov, before the composer got lost in his own hype. The piece is meant as a lullaby,... but it carries a deep sadness that could curdle milk.

Native Informant is an arresting showcase for Fairouz's voice, which is plangent, melodic, folkloric and unpredictable: His lines spool out in ways that don't follow your ear's predetermined path for them. He wrote eloquently of soaking in Armenian and Lebanese art and poetry for the Huffington Post, and Fairouz's music is that of a thoughtful traveler: Native Informant traverses boundaries without ever losing its gentle footing.
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Nightmare Ending

Eluvium
2013 | Temporary Residence Ltd. / SC Distribution

As gentle as mist settling over a lake at daybreak, Nightmare Ending, the latest album from Eluvium, is a work of tender beauty. Piano drifts down slow as snowflakes, soft bands of sound expand and Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan turns in a lovely, fragile vocal on "Happiness."
Selected Studies Vol. 1

Lloyd Cole & Hans-Joachim Roedelius
2013 | Bureau B

Hans-Joachim Roedelius is a towering figure of Krautrock: He formed Qluster (later renamed Cluster) and Harmonia, and his deceptively simple synth pieces in the late 1970s and early '80s are a genre unto themselves. Lloyd Cole is better known for literate guitar rock than synth drones, but here the two find a serene common ground, creating an airy, spacious album full of twinkling, twirling little mobiles. The music seems to move forward... and backward at once: Roedelius's genius was in creating gently hypnotic pieces out of minimal materials, and Selected Studies, belying its forbiddingly dry name, sparkles.
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Lady

Lady, The Band
2013 | Truth & Soul Records

This invigorating retro-soul album comes from a duo consisting of one-time UK 2-step garage star Terri Walker and Nicole Wray, whose "Make It Hot" (under her first but not last name) was one of a half-dozen Jeep bombs Timbaland concocted in 1998. Nothing about Lady, also the name of their act, feels forced — Walker and Wray sound like they're having the time of their lives, not least because nothing is stopping... them from getting to dig in lyrically. "If You Wanna Be My Man" analyzes a relationship sharply but without rancor ("You changed, and I changed/What we used to be") over a groove that's equal parts Spinners and Bill Withers. And the amazing "Money" is a bad-boyfriend anthem (she likes the green better than him) that doubles as a proud feminist declaration ("I feel proud that I'm an independent lady") — not to mention a classic soul single, whatever the calendar year.
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Underdogs and Introverts

TORRES

TORRES
2013 | TORRES / TuneCore

The debut album by this woman who calls herself Torres (real name: Mackenzie Scott) was recorded in a creaky old Nashville house that happens to be owned by Tony Joe White, he who gave the world "Polk Salad Annie." But that may have just been a lucky coincidence. These songs feel as if they were bound to come crawling out of Scott's body no matter what she did or where she was,... a strange litter of scowling, writhing fuzzballs just dead set on getting born. Dominated by the wavery tones of her Gibson 355 electric, the songs explore the fragile architecture of human relationships, often finding Scott standing amid a steaming pile of rubble, wondering not about what caused the house to fall but what to do, now, with all the shattered pieces left behind. "Everything hurts, but it's fine, it's fine," she sings — almost seethes — on "Honey," the album's lead single, a languid meditation on stasis and confession that builds up slow around a ground-out guitar line and crests in waves of pummeling drums, frayed vocals, frayed everything. Though lit up with distortion and drum-machine pulses, Torres is easily imaginable as a stripped-down acoustic affair, and in some ways might be better as such; "Come to Terms" finds Scott unplugged and fingerpicking, allowing lines like "just because the two of us will both grow old in time/ don't mean we should go old together" the time and space to make their full devastation known.
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Ripely Pine

Lady Lamb the Beekeeper
2013 | Ba Da Bing! / Revolver

The first two minutes of Lady Lamb the Beekeeper's Ripely Pine seem to reinforce the notion of fragile acquiescence that 23-year-old Aly Spaltro's stage name suggests. "Take me by the arm to the altar/ Take me by the collar to the cliff/ …Take me by the braid down to my grave," she croons on "Hair to the Ferris Wheel" over a languidly-thumbed electric guitar, the ghost of an autoharp shuffling around in... the background. But on this, Lady Lamb the Beekeeper's first record cut in a proper studio, nothing is quite as it seems. Just when a lesser song might be content to wrap up its delicate reverie, the wool is ripped away and a Technicolor blast of crunchy guitars and detached-garage drums gush forth, Spaltro's dusky voice bottoming out over the deluge. This is par for the course on Ripely Pine; these songs tend start in one place, end in another, and cycle through sometimes a dozen imaginings of themselves on the way — like "You Are The Apple" which, over seven minutes, slides from a nervous acoustic twitch to a swampy low-slung romp to a billowing, spiking orchestral swoon. The album's lyrical turf is both elemental and surreal, like a funhouse mirror turned on a dream of an anatomy lab; hearts are eaten like strawberry cake, blood is canned like jam, love is handled like a newborn's skull. By the end, it's clear those opening lines weren't a coy feint, but a trap; it's you who is being led, and Lady Lamb the Beekeeper with her claws in your arm. And you will go with her — to the altar, to the grave, wherever — and love every weird minute of it.
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A Love Surreal

Bilal
2013 | eOne Music / Entertainment One Distribution

Bilal's career is odd: He is indelibly associated with the rise of early-'00s neo-soul, and while he hasn't become as famous as some of his contemporaries, he also didn't disappear down a wormhole like D'Angelo. Bilal's elastic, glorious voice has been a reliable presence on Roots records and other rap projects over the last 10 years, but his solo career, hampered by the usual setbacks, sputtered. His name seemed destined to be... forever preceded by a "ft."

A Love Surreal, released last winter, is only his third in 12 years, a batting average only slightly higher than D'Angelo's. The album doesn't reflect any bitterness or discontent, however; it is a lush, relaxed album, one that pivots neatly between styles. "West Side Girl" is grotty, sexy and Prince-ly; "Slipping Away" gazes at the stars like Donny Hathaway; "Lost For Now" even sounds remarkably like Big Star.
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Open the Crown

Arrington de Dionyso's Malaikat dan Slnga
2013 | K Records / SC Distribution

Now 16 years into his career, Arrington De Dionyso is essentially doomed to be underrated. His work with the brilliant, ignored Old Time Relijun channeled the same chaotic mania of The Pop Group, full of slashing voodoo guitars, hyperventilating percussion and De Dionyso's urgent, terrified howl — which bore more than a passing resemblance to Pop Group frontman Mark Stewart. Since embarking on a solo career in 2006, his work has only... gotten more daring and more fascinating. It's guaranteed to appeal to anyone with any measure of fondness for pioneering late '70s UK groups like the Slits, Swell Maps and PiL. Like those groups, De Dionyso dismantles jazz, dub and reggae and uses the individual elements to create something riveting and otherworldly. "There Will Be No Survivors" crawls grimly forward, a strangled saxophone punctuating De Dionyso's seething promise: "We're going down in flames." "I Create in the Broken System" is essentially Satanic reggae, De Dionyso doing his best Don Van Vliet over burnt-to-a-crisp, undead two-step. The title track is glorious cacophony, full of falling-down-the-stairs drums, horror-house organs and De Dionyso's madman proclamations ("I am the shapeshifter! I am the song of psychic fire! 10,000 tigers in my temple!") It's one of the year's most fearless records, daring music for those who dare investigate.
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House of Woo

Maxmillion Dunbar
2013 | RVNG INTL. / SC Distribution

Maxmillion Dunbar, a DJ/producer from Washington, D.C., makes sleek, spacious electronic music pitched between the current vogues for the rhythmic action of vintage Chicago house and the heady contemplation of cosmic synthesizer jams. About half of House of Woo plays as certifiable dance music, with upright rhythms that assert themselves with force, while the other half has nary a beat to speak for. Representing the former, "Slave to the Vibe" opens with... unbound '80s keyboard sounds, patiently arrayed in floating fashion, that snap into a formalist grid when the beat kicks in a little more than two minutes in. The way the hi-hat hangs in what sounds like a sweaty expanse of the stratosphere evokes old Chicago house anthems by the likes of Larry Heard (Mr. Fingers, Fingers Inc.), but "Woo" pulls back, quiets down, and drifts into comparatively ambient territory. A few beats still clack and clang, but the background textures creep the fore, and a wandering, thinking-out-loud synth-riff establishes itself in a way that remains present in tracks like "Coins for the Canopy" and "The Figurine (Nod Mix)." The funky dancefloor-filler "Ice Cream Graffiti" goes big and beat-intensive again, but it's never long before the sound spaces out and spreads in a manner befitting the title of "Loving the Drift."
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Ugly Heroes

Ugly Heroes
2013 | Mello Music Group / The Orchard

Ugly Heroes is comprised of two rising emcees, Verbal Kent and Red Pill, and one veteran producer, Apollo Brown, who set out to create rap music that embodied the spirit of the diminishing blue-collar workforce. "It's the person that works on your car. It's the factory worker that's counting parts all day, smelling like oil and grease," Brown says. "That individual that provides for their family, makes a living and is a... human being — that's a ugly hero." Ugly Heroes' debut, self-titled album takes a hard look into a life of grueling work: clocking in long hours, drinking afterward and somehow maintaining enough strength to continue.
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Haw

Hiss Golden Messenger
2013 | Paradise of Bachelors / Redeye

After making music for nearly 20 years, veteran Michael Taylor is just now finding his largest audience with Hiss Golden Messenger. It's actually his third band, following the short-lived punk group Ex-Ignota and the longer-lived San Francisco alt-country act The Court & Spark. When the latter broke up in 2007 — after four albums and nearly a decade of near-constant touring — Taylor settled down in Durham, North Carolina, where he started... a family, pursued a degree in folklore, and made music more as a hobby than as a priority.

Over several albums — a few self-released, a few more via North Carolina indie label Paradise of Bachelors — Hiss Golden Messenger has alternated between an austere solo acoustic project for Taylor and a full band featuring Scott Hirsh on guitar and Terry Lonergan on drums. For Haw, the fourth and arguably best release under the HGM moniker, they added members of Lambchop, Megafaun and the Black Twig Pickers to the line-up. Whether alone or with friends, however, the primary elements of Hiss Golden Messenger remain constant: Taylor's voice, which sounds both genial and mysterious, and his lyrics, which examine thorny issues of faith, fidelity and family.
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Bazooka

Bazooka
Slovenly Recordings

The house band at the Wild Rumpus, Greek grime peddlers and brothers-in-arms with fellow countrymen Acid Baby Jesus and Gay Anniversary deliver big, clanging songs built for late-night deep-woods campfire dancing. They've got two drummers, which is probably part of what makes the music feel so frantic: "Koritsi Stin Akti" roars forward like some kind of demonic Mustang out for one last, doomed street race; "Bye Bye Girl" is deranged country, twanging... guitar and full-gallop percussion while "Ravening Trip"'s steady chug almost sounds like a bunch of greasers mocking Madchester, its shuffling backbeat smothered by horror-film riffing. This is party music for 20-foot monsters.
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Come Cry With Me

Daniel Romano
2013 | Normal Town Records

Singer/songwriter Daniel Romano hails from Canada but sounds like he's from America's Deep South as he writes old-school country ballads sung in a deep, Man-in-Black drawl. On his latest record, this year's aptly titled Come Cry With Me, there's a dirge about unrequited love, reflections on being a rejected middle child, and a rambling saga about getting a ride with a guy who calls himself Chicken Bill.
Jay Arner

Jay Arner
2013 | Mint Records / Revolver

Jay Arner's self-titled solo debut begins with a low bass groove that sounds like an engine idling, ready to rev "Midnight on South Granville" into high gear. To say the song never bolts away is no complaint, though, as the lyrics recount a night spent catching the bus, missing your stop, getting lost and wandering aimlessly. Set against that chugging bass line, those buzzy synths and that stoner guitar, half-drunk anomie has... rarely sounded quite so epic. A Vancouver-based musician who has helmed album by Mount Eerie, Apollo Ghosts and Rose Melberg, Arner recorded these new songs during lonely sessions at his practice space, recording straight to laptop to emphasize a DIY mid-fi sound, and the resulting Jay Arner mixes mopey postpunk instrumentation with power-pop song structures. Even though the unhurried tempos are far too laidback to sell the "power" in the pop, that spacey, narcotized vibe can be deceptive: The music reveals new sonic and lyrical details with each listen, whether it's the M.C. Escher hook on "Broken Glass" or the world-weary cautions of "Nightclubs," which finds a tricky balance between wry and romantic.
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New This Week: David Lynch, Mayer Hawthorne, & More

eMusic Editorial Staff — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 16:37:43 +0000

David Lynch, The Big Dream: David Lynch’s latest album can be described as unsettling (surprise?), and the film director provides all the lead vocals this time. Winston Cook-Wilson says:

The album’s highlights include “Cold Wind Blowin” and “The Line That Fits,” ballads that imagine Lynch singing at the Twin Peaks roadhouse instead of Julee Cruise, and “The Ballad of Hollis Brown,” a grunge-y take on Dylan’s 1964 murder ballad. On “Sun Can’t Be Seen No More,” Lynch poses as the singer of a Southern bar band; his pseudo-C&W recitations are suffocated by flange effects which transform them into otherworldly howls. Though The Big Dream sometimes wanders into maudlin, adult-contemporary sound-worlds, it is generally an enjoyable listen, and will please Lynch fans that enjoy hearing his cinematic ethos translated into musical terms.

Mayer Hawthorne, Where Does This Door Go: The cheeky guy gets a little more serious on his third record. Barry Walters says:

Teaming with Pharrell Williams, Anthony Hamilton/Cee-Lo Green producer Jack Splash, Mika/Katy Perry collaborator Greg Wells and other hit-makers, he broadens his palate beyond the blueprints of the past, mixing, matching and updating styles rather than the straightforward Motown and Philly soul mimicry of his initial records. Now he alludes to Steely Dan, Frank Ocean, Hall & Oates and Pharrell himself, particularly on the Williams-produced cuts “Wine Glass Woman” “Reach Out Richard,” and “The Stars Are Ours.”

Pet Shop Boys, Electric: One of the world’s most self-aware acts puts out a record that is very quintessentially them. Says Barry Walters:

The sounds similarly reference the duo’s various stylistic stages: “Thursday” evokes the pair’s earliest bells and electro-funk beats; “Shouting in the Evening” suggests their more aggressive, Chris Lowe-lead techno B-sides. The most remarkable cut, “The Last to Die,” continues their tradition of borrowing material from unlikely sources. Here they tackle a Bruce Springsteen anthem most likely written about the Vietnam War. Packed with references to blood, folly and heartbreak all retrofitted here with dark disco drama, it now feels like the latest in the duo’s tradition of elegies mourning those lost to AIDS. Of all the very PSB-sy songs here, this is the PSB-sy-est.

Houndstooth, Ride Out the Dark: A rootsy debut from this Portland group. Mike Wolf says:

Houndstooth have the kind of vibrant group-mind that could take them far; every twanged guitar lead, heart-prodding chord change and Wurlitzer part feels effortlessly orchestrated into a gentle sweep of twilit melody and lasting affect. Still, it’s no slight to the band (lead guitarist John Gnorski deserves special mention) to focus on vocalist Katie Bernstein, who mostly sounds compassionate but mixes a little graceful danger into her emotional well.

Robert Randolph & the Family Band, Lickety Split: Robert Randolph steals every scene on his band’s latest. Ryan Reed says:

On 2010′s We Walk this Road, Randolph worked with T-Bone Burnett and an army of veteran studio aces, tracing the evolution of African American music — from slave chants to Hendrix to Prince, from Pentecostal gospel to hip-hop. Lickety Split is less academic and more visceral, reuniting the full Family Band (drummer Marcus Randolph, bassist Danyel Morgan, vocalist Lenesha Randolph, multi-instrumentalist Bret Haas) for 40 free-spirited minutes.

Soft Metals, Lenses: This couple’s record is best suited for midnight drives and 4 a.m. foreplay, says eMusic’s Andrew Parks. More on that:

If Patricia Hall and Ian Hicks ever split up, the inevitable debate over who gets what isn’t going to involve custody battles or cheap-but-functional IKEA furniture. It’ll clearly be over the couple’s synth collection, which is as crucial to their chemistry as whatever made the Soft Metals members fall for each other in the first place. That bond is so strong, in fact, that two of the eight tracks on their second album are strictly instrumental, beaming their very own vision of melancholic body music and crystalline Klaus Schulze chords. Everything else is just as evocative in the Roland, Korg and Moog department, too, alluding to acid techno (the title track), woozy coldwave and prismatic electro-pop with Hall’s vaporized vocal melodies weaving through every last loop.

Gauntlet Hair, Stills: Gauntlet Hair offer a more accessible sound on their second LP. Ian Cohen says:

On their earliest singles, Gauntlet Hair couldn’t decide if they were a noise band playing pop music or vice versa. The Denver duo attempted to find common ground between the platinum kick of INXS and early Animal Collective’s feral caterwaul. While the results weren’t always coherent, you could hear potential in the chaos. Having excised their most abrasive impulses on their 2011 self-titled debut, Stills continues toward a more accessible sound by emphasizing the grooves and dialing down the reverb.

Chance, In Search: A great collection from a Nashville musician with a fascinating history. Stephen Deusner says:

A Nashville jack-of-all-trades during the 1970s, Chance Martin was Johnny Cash’s right-hand man and stage manager for two world tours; a songwriter and musician; a would-be outlaw called the Stoned Ranger; a professional man-about-town; and is currently a co-host of a country show on Sirius XM. In the late 1970s, he and some ex-cop buddies recorded a crazy-ass solo album, which Martin released in a limited run on his own Macho Records. For 30 years, In Search has been a footnote to a footnote, one of approximately infinite albums lost to the dustbin of Music Row history. Thanks to the North Carolina-based label Paradise of Bachelors, however, Martin’s sole full-length is now getting a larger release. Thirty years have done nothing to dull this oddity.

Chris Morrissey, North Hero: A record that combines equal parts jazz adventurousness and pop assimilation. Ken Micallef says:

Bassist Chris Morrissey’s sophomore effort is approachably left-of-center jazz, the sort of thing you might play at a party where the guests enjoy Ornette Coleman’s Tomorrow Is the Question! as much as Fleet Foxes. The Minneapolis-to-New York transplant Morrissey enlists a crack crew, including drummer Mark Guiliana, pianist Aaron Parks and Bon Iver tenor saxophonist Michael Lewis; The Bad Plus and Happy Apple tub-thumper Dave King is producer.

Steve Swallow Quintet, Into The Woodwork: The latest from this “joyously puckish” electric bassist. Britt Robson says:

Swallow rarely solos, coming closest on an extended duet with Cardenas on “Suitable For Framing” — another inspired title, since nary a note seems out of place. These evocative, winsome songs are his chief contribution. The best one, in which all five members graze against each other’s unpretentious goodwill in a seemingly effortless flow, is called “Still There.” After more than 50 years of strumming and plucking, the same can be said for Steve Swallow.

Merry Clayton, The Best of Merry Clayton – The long under-appreciated singer (That’s her on “Gimme Shelter”) receives her due. Barry Walters writes:

Known primarily as background singer for everyone from Ray Charles to Lynyrd Skynyrd, Clayton released four solo albums in the ’70s, but the closest she ever got to a hit was “Yes,” a 1988 Pointer Sisters-styled single from the phenomenally popular Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Nearly every cut on this collection is a cover, but Clayton possesses virtuoso interpretive skills that nearly rewrite the melodies of familiar songs while deepening their lyrical impact.

The Icarus Line, Slave Vows – The post-hardcore band The Icarus Line has been around forever, and their latest is a streamlined blast of everything they’ve ever offered. If more “modern rock” bands were this strong, modern rock radio would be a better place.

Darren Hayman and the Short Parliament, Bugbears – The ex-Hefner leader offers an album full of updated takes on 17th-century drinking songs.

Justin Timberlake, Take Back The Night – New JT single. This one’s got a dubious title, just on a cliché level alone, and it has the added distinction of sharing the name with a venerated and long-running organization that works to end violence against women. The organization, perhaps understandably, has registered that they’re less than thrilled by the namecheck, which JT says was unintentional. It’s a pretty stock pop-song phrase, so I’m sure that’s true. The song itself is supper-club MJ.

Eraas, Reworks – Spare, menacing, moody post-punk Brooklyn group, remixed.

Army Navy, Crushed Like A Car – New one from eMusic Selects alums! A great, midtempo tune from this always-spot-on power pop outfit.

I Am Legion, Make Those Move – Skull-hammering single off of Skrillex’s label.

Who to See at Pitchfork Music Festival 2013

eMusic Editorial Staff — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 13:00:14 +0000

From the fiery blast of White Lung to the superb showmanship of R. Kelly to the rowdy, jagged guitars of Parquet Courts, we’ve got you covered when it comes to who you should be seeing at Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago’s Union Park this weekend.

Want eMusic’s take on this year’s festivities? Be sure to follow our Twitter account and visit 17 Dots throughout the weekend for our editors’ complete coverage.

Bjork

Biophilia

Björk
2011 | Nonesuch

Twenty-seven years into her career, Bjork is running the risk of becoming a pop music Alexander the Great, weeping for there are no more worlds to conquer. She has reconfigured her sound in nearly every conceivable way, moving from adventurous electro on the still-classic Post through skewed orch-pop (Vespertine), voice-only compositions (Medulla) and globe-gobbling world music (Volta). She is one of a very few musicians — there are maybe three of them... worldwide — whose rare failures are even interesting, because they at least display evidence of ambition and novel ideas. That ambition extends to her staging. A run of shows at the Hall of Science in Queens, New York featured specially-constructed instruments and a loose theme (including voiceover narration) about the destructive power of nature. How much of that she'll carry into her festival performances remains to be seen, but if history is any indication, an equal won’t be found all weekend. — J. Edward Keyes
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R. Kelly

Write Me Back (Deluxe Version)

R. Kelly
2012 | RCA Records Label

When R. Kelly toured in 2007, he first appeared in silhouette, wearing a top hat, standing at the top of a giant staircase, underneath a neon sign that read "Mr. Showbiz." When he toured in 2010, his first appearance was in a five-minute black-and-white, note-perfect Casablanca-style short film. When he toured in 2012, he had two lackeys bring out an oversized white throne halfway through the show just so he could... sit relax for a number. Simply put: R. Kelly is a showman, and the live setting is where he gets to indulge the frustrated musical theatre director within. Songs become set pieces (In '07, he performed "Feelin' On Yo Booty" as an aria, tongue firmly in cheek), the banter is tautly-scripted and generally hilarious, and Kells visibly relishes every indulgent flourish. To say nothing of the fact that he remains one of our greatest living male vocalists, that he sings live every time, and that even 30 seconds of hearing him reinforces the notion that he is the heir to greats like Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye — even if those two never used an extended jungle metaphor to sing about doin' it. — JEK
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Solange

True

Solange
2012 | Terrible Records / The Orchard

Solange Knowles released her first album in 2011, but it was last year that she truly broke out as more than just Bey's little sister. Her EP True is all dancefloor hits, from the funky, giggly start of "Losing You," to the nostalgic heartbreaker "Some Things Never Seem to Fucking Work," to the Daydream-era-Mariah Carey-channeling "Don't Let Me Down." — Laura Leebove

M.I.A.

MAYA

M.I.A.
2010 | XL Interscope

M.I.A. took no small amount of critical heat for 2010's ///Y/, an album that took its musical cues from Skinny Puppy and Nitzer Ebb and opened with the "paranoid" notion that the U.S. government was monitoring its citizens Google searches. Flash forward three years later, in the wake of both the NSA wiretapping scandal and Kanye West's similarly industrial-influenced Yeezus, and you could argue that the only real problem with ///Y/ is... that it was too far ahead of the curve. Say what you will about M.I.A., she remains an artist stubbornly guided by her own muse, even what that muse causes her to fall afoul of even her most ardent one-time supporters. The live shows supporting ///Y/ featured backup musicians in burkas "playing" power drills, Einsturzende Neubauten style. Whateve she pulls at Pitchfork this year, don't be too surprised if you catch another artist nicking it four years from now. – JEK
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Phosophorescent

Muchacho

Phosphorescent
2013 | Dead Oceans / SC Distribution

Phosphorescent's Matthew Houck is a country-rock troubadour with a broken voice, a Willie Nelson tremble overcome with unpredictable hiccups, that some people find irritating and many find devastating. He uses it to sing to us from a series of characters who probably find a lot in common with crushed birds.

His 2013 record Muchacho is an ethereal meditation on fate and the limits of free will delivered by a sadly broken soul. It... is a record full of beautiful, inscrutably poetic language — koans, charms, blades, invocations. And all those horn charts and pedal steel guitars are still here, but they’ve been put to a larger task than ever before: Houck is contemplating his place in the universe, and ours. Live, he abandons the pretense of fragility, and rips through his music with road-warrior, alpha intensity. — Jayson Greene
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White Lung

sorry

White Lung
2012 | Deranged Records / The Orchard

White Lung vocalist Mish Way is a human tornado, a blinding corkscrew of motion and sound ripping up the center of her songs like the Tasmanian Devil turned loose in the middle of a Safeway. It's the musical equivalent of being grabbed by the shoulders and throttled repeatedly. Which is a great thing. White Lung's second full-length Sorry inflicts more damage than a runaway rotary blade, and their live show is just... as devastating. It's a blast of fire and fury, an endless barrage of megaton cannonballs aimed directly at your throat. — JEK
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The Breeders

Last Splash

The Breeders
2008 | Rhino/Elektra

Arguably the least-likely '90s crossover success, the Breeders used tart candy pop single "Cannonball" to lure an army of unsuspecting Alternative Nationalists into one of the most delightfully bewildering rock records of the last 30 years. Last Splash defies one convention after another — drums drop out and re-enter, guitar lines are curl and collapse like Shrinky Dinks and Kim Deal's voice is one part fairy godmother, one part bad witch. Twenty... years on, they sound better than ever, playing the songs from Splash better than they ever did, recreating all of its oddball glory for a new generation of acolytes. — JEK
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Killer Mike

R.A.P. Music

Killer Mike
2012 | Williams Street Records

Killer Mike hasn't made a career habit of taking prisoners: Whether you're a Forbes list millionaire ("a whore's list," as far as he's concerned), a rapper like himself who is an "advertisement for agony and pain," or, god help you, Ronald Reagan ("I'll leave you with four words: I'm glad Reagan dead"), Mike has choice words for you. And the emphasis is on "choice": his bellowing, burly voice and big gut might... give the impression of someone heavy-footed and lumbering, but Mike can rap as nimbly as he does forcefully. Live, he will leave you feeling like the slab of meat in Rocky's freezer: tenderized, worked over. But in a good way. Also, if the gods are kind, his new confidante and best friend El-P will show up. — JG
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El-P

Cancer 4 Cure

El-P
2012 | Fat Possum Records

Over his nearly 15-year career, whether as part of Company Flow or on his own Def Jux label, El-P has filled your ear with the kind of verses you can pull back on eight times in a row and still feel like you're scrambling to catch up. His mind races, his heart hammers and his production, frenetic and detailed, dramatizes every neuron firing. He has nursed occasionally a reclusive misanthropic streak, only... emerging every few years with one of his enveloping, internal full-length solo records, but he stepped back out into the spotlight, big time, in 2012, alongside the Atlanta underground king Killer Mike. The two have collaborated on three projects now; El-P produced Killer Mike's career-high R.A.P. Music; Mike guested on El's Cancer4Cure and the two traded verses on the free collaborative mixtape Run The Jewels. They are ideal partners, sharing the same coruscating, passionate anger that builds things instead of razing, the kind of purifying gale that loving something moves you to. — JG
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Waxahatchee

Cerulean Salt

Waxahatchee
2013 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

Waxahatchee is singer/songwriter Katie Crutchfield, whose home-recorded debut LP American Weekend is spare, raw and intimate; mostly fuzzy acoustic guitar with hollow vocals, about the emotional turmoil of a failing relationship and succumbing to vices in hopes of happiness. Her follow-up, this year's Cerulean Salt, is more polished, recorded with electric guitars and a band, but Crutchfield is no less wrenching in her lyrics. — LL

Swans

The Seer

Swans
2012 | Young God / Revolver

"They're just so loud." That's the reverent description that follows nearly every live performance by Michael Gira's recently-resuscitated, more-vital-than-ever body-throttlers Swans. Any attempt to describe them fails outright. Are they metal? Yeah, kind of. Post-punk? Kind of that, too. Drone? Yup. They also take the practiced monotony of krautrock and bulk it up and blast it out so that the repetition is both hypnotizing and purposely maddening — Chinese Water Torture, except... the water is 20-ton bowling balls. Swans remain one of rock 'n' roll's most punishing live acts, holding audiences spellbound with just the sheer force of their fury. — JEK
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Low

The Invisible Way

Low
2013 | Sub Pop Records

2013 marks Low's 20th year as a band, as well as the release of their 10th album, the Jeff Tweedy-produced The Invisible Way. That much history means their performance at Pitchfork could be all over the map, pulling songs from their lo-fi, slow-burning early recordings, the life-affirming electric bombast of 2005's The Great Destroyer, the moodier, tightly-wound and politically-fueled Drums & Guns, and their more polished and melodic newer releases. But then... again there's always some chance they'll do something along the lines of their recent gig in Minneapolis, where they played a 27-minute version of their song "Do You Know How to Waltz?" — LL
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Wire

Change Becomes Us

Wire
2013 | pinkflag / state51

When post-punk legends Wire first reunited 13 years ago, it was in support of the astonishing Read & Burn EPs, a trilogy that found them trading the jagged angles of their influential late '70s work for brute, clobbering force. They spurned all of their classics in concert in favor of the new material, but nobody cared: All that mattered was the intensity. Their last two records have been more mannered and more... sedate and the setlists a little kinder to their vast back catalog, but if they play with even half the force they had at the beginning of this century, the results will be astonishing. — JEK
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Frankie Rose

Interstellar

Frankie Rose
2012 | Slumberland Records / The Orchard

Frankie Rose used to be a Dum Dum; she used to be a Vivian. Now she's just Frankie, and her 2012 breakout effort Interstellar shot her modest indie-pop into, well, the stars, trailed by violet comet-trail synths and misted vocals. Few albums have sounded quiet so delightfully artificial; it's like listening to the fondant of a wedding cake. Live, she scrapes all this patina away and rocks, loudly and startlingly. — JG

Mac DeMarco

2

Mac Demarco
2012 | Captured Tracks / SC Distribution

Mac DeMarco's grubby, Pigpen-Eagles version of yacht-pop might not prepare you for the full-blown, indie-rock-Andy-Kaufman hilarity of his live set; Mac is one of few humans on this planet who can make smirking assholery seem downright endearing and infectious. It helps that his bandmates are in on the fun, that they crack each other up, and that they play their often-shoddy instruments like gangbusters: in previous sets, I've seen them cover both... Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" and a Rammstein/Rob Zombie mash-up of "Du Hast Mich" and "Dragula." — JG
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Blood Orange

Coastal Grooves

Blood Orange
2011 | Domino Recording Co

Twenty-seven-year-old Dev Hynes, aka Blood Orange, has an impressive CV, having written and produced for the likes of Florence & the Machine, Solange, Kylie Minogue and Sky Ferreira. The songs on his 2011 Domino release Coastal Grooves are perfect summery pop pick-me-ups, made with shiny guitars, quirky percussion and, not surprisingly considering his clientele, some serious hooks. — LL

METZ

METZ

METZ
2012 | Sub Pop Records

The Canadian trio METZ devote themselves to a dank, fertile corner of underground rock: the baleful, misanthropic, sonically hateful squeal-rock of Jesus Lizard. Like that band, METZ doesn't write songs so much as hock them, through clogged sinuses, into your field of vision: The screaming guitars hurt your nerve endings, the drumming kicks over alley garbage cans. But their racket is militantly organized, and martially brutal, and to see them live is... a thing of cleansing beauty. — JG
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Andy Stott

Luxury Problems

Andy Stott
2012 | Modern Love / Revolver

Andy Stott's recent albums — specifically, Luxury Problems and Passed Me By, are marvels of mood and tone. They drift from dreamy ambience to crushing drone and back again, delirious and feverish, electronics clanging and whooshing like wind rushing through empty metal hallways. His DJ set at South by Southwest, though, mostly abandoned these doomy atmospherics in favor of slightly more crowd-pleasing techno. It's hard to say how things will skew in... Chicago, thought given Pitchfork Fest's audience tends toward the adventurous, it's likely Stott will veer toward the doomy, Lynchian delirium of his records. — JEK
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Parquet Courts

Light Up Gold

Parquet Courts
2013 | What's Your Rupture?

Now several months on from the release of their perfect debut Light Up Gold, it's clear that Parquet Courts may, in fact, be trying to imagine a less-dysfunctional version of The Fall. They've got the deadpan, cleverly-constructed, surrealist-narrative, written-to-be-quoted lyrics ("As for Texas? Donuts only. You will not find bagels here."), the jagged guitars and, above all, the jaw-dropping, airtight live show, where they careen breathlessly from one song to the next... before collapsing straight into a 10-minute, drawn-out drone composition with which they've been ending recent shows. After a triumphant near-year since the release of their debut, their Pitchfork performance could well serve as their coronation. — JEK
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Angel Olsen

Half Way Home

Angel Olsen
Bathetic Records

Chicago-based singer/songwriter Angel Olsen's Half Way Home was one of 2012's most beautiful — and at times devastating — releases. Her delicate songs are about the journey from lost to found, told through finger-picked guitar and a soulful, wavering voice that often cracks as it slips into her higher register. In a festival setting, though, it's likely she'll focus on the more (relatively) upbeat numbers, like the jangly, '60s girl-group-channeling "The Waiting"... and "Free." — LL
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Icon: The Fall

eMusic Editorial Staff — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 20:38:13 +0000

Roughly 75 people have been members of the Fall over the last 35 years or so, but only one of them has been in every lineup: inimitable vocalist/lyricist/ranter Mark E. Smith, whose singular and monomaniacal vision drives the band. Smith’s a bristling, hyper-literate, deeply eccentric presence, with a thick Manchester accent and a permanent scowl directed at a world that can’t keep up with him; he’s also got an ear for a riff like nobody’s business. His musical heroes include primitivist garage bands like the Seeds and the Monks, as well as Krautrock experimenters like Can and Faust. From them, and from the Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray,” he realised the power of ranting over a repetitive groove.

For Smith, great music happens on the fly, by following instinct. Time and again, he’s disrupted the band in mid-flow, ordering them to do the opposite, the impossible, the unthinkable. Countless members — and, often, entire line-ups — have quit in anger. Some later returned to the fold, realizing that this dictatorial anti-muso had somehow been right all along…until the next bust-up.

Such were the building blocks from which the legend of The Fall was built. From their earliest days as discontents of punk rock hegemony, the Fall evolved into a spiky hedgehog of a band in the early ’80s, kicked in the back door to the new wave party later that decade, opened themselves up to electronics and wild stylistic experimentation in the ’90s, took on a heavier, tougher sound in the ’00s, and are still evolving. Many bands have based their entire sound from a single Fall song, and Smith himself is at once one of the worst — and best — singers in rock history. Now more than ever, the Fall’s catalogue deserves to be explored in depth. — Douglas Wolk, Andrew Perry and Jayson Greene

From Most to Least Essential

Slates

The Fall
2009 | Sanctuary Records Fontana

The 1981 EP Slates is the crown jewel of the Fall's catalogue, and as much of a magnificent misfit there as the Fall was among its post-punk peers. Its arrangements and production are much tighter than anything they'd tried before: "Don't start improvising, for God's sake!" snaps Mark E. Smith, as someone in the band starts taking liberties with the title track's two-chord barrage. But very few songs are both as bizarre... and as catchy as the paranoid, fragmentary spy-movie rant "Prole Art Threat," which always sounds like it's about to collapse and never does, or "Leave the Capitol," which keeps diving into and resurfacing from its mammoth chorus riff. The original six-song EP is expanded to album length here with that year's marvelous single "Lie Dream of a Casino Soul" — a loving, biting burlesque of the Northern soul scene — and some radio oddities, including "C 'n' C Hassle Schmuk," a version of their live standard "Cash 'n' Carry" that mutates into a berserk parody of "Do the Hucklebuck." — Douglas Wolk
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Hex Enduction Hour

The Fall
2013 | Sanctuary

The Fall's fourth, darkest and densest album is in fact exactly an hour long, with a two-drummer lineup grinding out repetitive, churning riffs while Smith declaims knotty, furious, half-abstract phrases about Nazis, a bitter priest, desolate English landscapes and being "humbled in Iceland." It's effectively rock as a way of getting people to listen to poetry readings. But the poetry is amazing, and so is the rock — they'd invented a musical... and lyrical idiom that sounded unlike anything before it, and as hard as the album can be to take on a first listen, it opens up like a dark flower with repeated exposure. Hex Enduction Hour had an enormous influence on the American post-punk scene, too — bands from Mission of Burma to Pavement echoed its shadowy, gnarled riffs. — Douglas Wolk
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Dragnet

The Fall
2013 | Sanctuary

Having weighed "punk" in the balance and found it nowhere near messy and nasty enough, the Fall made a second album that shoved conventional ideas of fidelity into the dustbin of history. Mark E. Smith shrieks, gnashes and squeals, the band's way out of tune, the mix is trebly sludge, and it sounds fantastic. Contempt for pop normalcy is one of Smith's big lyrical themes here (although the band does work up... a raging approximation of rockabilly on "Dice Man"); the other one is his fascination with H.P. Lovecraft's evocations of unimaginable horror, especially on "Spectre Vs. Rector," which seems to be about a disastrously failed exorcism. Dragnet also introduced the team of guitarist Craig Scanlon and Steve Hanley, who'd be the instrumental core of the Fall for the next 15 years. — Douglas Wolk
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Grotesque (After The Gramme)

The Fall
2009 | Sanctuary Records Fontana

The Fall began their initial tenure at Rough Trade with a frothing-at-the-mouth live album, Totale's Turns, that recapitulated their first two years, then took a huge leap forward with the two singles that open this edition of the 1980 album Grotesque: character sketches jacked up on trucker speed, backed by a band that always seemed about to twitch free of the riffs holding it together. Grotesque, though, is where they broke loose... from everybody else's idea of songwriting: These are songs as horror fiction, as fragments of cosmology, as anti-tune demonstrations (which are more convincing in the context of "The Container Drivers"' outrageously hard-and-fast rockabilly), as cultural revenge fantasy. Mark E. Smith's lyrics and performances are both defiantly working-class and indignantly highbrow — the narrator of "The N.W.R.A." imagines a Northern English counterrevolution after some kind of conquest that corrupts even his own song "English Scheme." And if you're curious about where Pavement got their signature sound, look no further than "New Face in Hell." — Douglas Wolk
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The Unutterable (Special Deluxe Edition)

The Fall
2010 | Gonzo / The Orchard

The circa-2000 lineup of the Fall was a mighty beast, and their final document was largely made up of songs they'd been road-testing for a while ("Ketamine Sun" had mutated from the band's live cover of Lou Reed's "Kill Your Sons"). For its first 35 minutes, it punches as hard as anything they've done — "Cyber Insekt" is the rockabilly/techno/Lovecraft hybrid they'd been stretching toward for years, and "Dr. Buck's Letter" is... a brilliant, barbed trip-hop piece in which Mark E. Smith works out new and sinister uses for his voice (and takes a sideways swipe at BBC DJ Pete Tong). The album loses its way a bit toward the end, with a handful of half-baked experiments and "Das Katerer"'s recycling of the eight-year-old "Free Range," but it's still a treat to hear Smith finding new ways to abuse new technology. — Douglas Wolk
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Cerebral Caustic

The Fall
2013 | Sanctuary

The Fall's new guitarist in 1995 was the last person most of their fans would have expected: Brix Smith, who'd left the band and divorced Mark E. Smith in 1989, and seemed to have been the subject of some rather venomous songs on Extricate. But she fit right in: Cerebral Caustic was the poppiest thing they'd done since Brix's initial tenure in the group (she sings the very simple, very catchy choruses... of both "Don't Call Me Darling" and "Feeling Numb"), and maybe the most playful record in their catalogue. "The Joke" was the Fall's standard concert opener for years; "The Aphid" is the closest thing they've made to a novelty dance number. Unmissable bonus track: "Glam Racket/Star," a blazing, Brix-augmented rewrite of an Infotainment Scan song. — Douglas Wolk
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A World Bewitched Best of 1990-2000 Vol. 2

The Fall
2006 | Artful Records / The Orchard

The '90s were a rough time for the Fall, with extensive lineup churn and a lot of half-realized projects. Weirdly, the side-projects, singles tracks, covers and castoffs collected here amount to a fine, if all-over-the-place, album. Mark E. Smith always seems to get a creative jolt out of collaborations outside the Fall (like the Von Südenfed album from 2007); his guest appearances on D.O.S.E.'s "Plug Myself In," Inspiral Carpets' "I Want... You" and Long Fin Killie's "The Heads of Dead Surfers" are delirious with power. The Marshall Suite-era bonus track "The Real Life of Crying Marshall" is one of the band's most successful hybrids of electronics and raw riffing, and the reggae covers "Why Are People Grudgeful?" and "Kimble" point out the Fall's relationship to the weirdest Jamaican deejay records. Only a guest shot on Tackhead's remake of the first Fall single, "Repetition," falls flat: Smith's never been much for revisiting the past. — Douglas Wolk
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Live At The Witch Trials

The Fall
2013 | Sanctuary

Miles Copeland financed the Fall's debut LP on a shoestring in December '78. It was recorded and mixed in two days flat — not at a live gig, as the title implies, but live, one-take, in the studio. And it sounds that way. Smith had already fired half his band, including sometime girlfriend and provider of plinky-plonk keyboards, Una Baines, and the other half would be hurled through the Fall's never-still revolving... doors immediately afterwards (they wanted to go New Wave). Here, the Fall sound-world is every bit as gnarly as the wasteland on the front cover. There couldn't be a starker contrast with the pre-punk idyll of, say, Yes's Tales from Topographic Oceans. In Smith's lyrical universe, urban alienation ("Frightened") and the wretchedness of contemporary pop ("Music Scene") are each documented with biting austerity. There is, however, unquestionable humour in a rock 'n' roll song that just goes "Yeah, yeah, industrial estate" ("Industrial Estate"). — Andrew Perry
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The Light User Syndrome

The Fall
2010 | Sanctuary Records Fontana

The revitalized, Brix-enhanced Fall lineup of 1996 roars out of the gate on this messy but vigorous album, their first following the firing of longtime guitarist Craig Scanlon during the eight months' worth of sessions for their "Chiselers" single. (That exhaustively reworked song turns up on this reissue in all three of its versions.) The band essentially recorded The Light User Syndrome on their own, with Mark E. Smith coming in to... add vocals at the end, and the best songs here are tight, taut and riddled with nagging hooks. It's full of great Fall moments, like bassist Steve Hanley hammering at a low note in the cod-German "Das Vulture Ans Ein Nutter-Wain," or the heavy-breathing give-and-take between Mark and Brix on "Spinetrak." A half-as-long version would rank among the Fall's best records, but too many throwaways, retreads and ill-considered covers weigh it down. — Douglas Wolk
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The Infotainment Scan

The Fall
2013 | Sanctuary

Undercutting themselves is one of the Fall's specialties, and this 1993 set is both the closest thing they've made to a straight-ahead pop album and some kind of cruel parody of a pop album. The three covers that anchor it are a disco-era Sister Sledge song about the power of music, with whose lyrics Mark E. Smith takes many liberties; a medley of two misanthropic Lee "Scratch" Perry songs, played as cheerful... uptempo dancehall reggae; and an obscurity lifted from a compilation of the worst songs ever, which Smith sings with all his cracked heart. Its highlight is "Glam-Racket," an appropriation of early '70s revivalism that savages the same music it embraces. And even though the band is just about the most rhythmically locked-in Fall ever recorded, Smith can't resist throwing monkeywrenches into the mix everywhere. — Douglas Wolk
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Room to Live: Undilutable Slang Truth!

The Fall
2013 | Sanctuary

After Hex Enduction Hour, Smith quickly returned to the microphone thanks to his disgust at the Falklands War, launched in spring '82 by Margaret Thatcher, to rescue the tiny mid-Atlantic islands from an Argentinean invasion — or, to curry votes for the impending election, depending on your level of cynicism. "Undilutable Slang Truth" screams the subtitle. Smith saw this album's remit as being a kind of truthful newsreel, amid obscured media reporting... in the so-called "fog of war." True to form, his writing's too covert for that, and "Hard Life in Country" is little more than a gratuitous snipe at one of his great bugbears, the rustic lifestyle. "Marquis Cha Cha," though, serves up a monologue from a nauseating Brit expat in Latin America (were the Falkland Islanders worth rescuing?!). The album's brighter and funkier, but suffered an unjust commercial fate, as indie Kamera folded soon after release. — Andrew Perry
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Imperial Wax Solvent

The Fall
2008 | Sanctuary

Tromatic Reflexxions, the terrific album Mark E. Smith made with the members of Mouse on Mars (whose Andi Toma turns up here on "Is This New") under the name Von Südenfed, may have re-convinced him that spending a bit of effort on production was a good idea. In any case, this 2008 set found yet another new lineup's grumpy, minimal rock riffs augmented by curious studio gestures and abrupt shifts in fidelity.... Its centerpiece is the jaw-dropping rant "50 Year Old Man" ("...and I liiiike it-uh!"), the longest studio track the Fall have ever released, in the course of which Smith accuses Steve Albini of being "in collusion with Virgin Trains against me." The best piece of songwriting here, though, may be the fist-in-the-air punk rocker "I've Been Duped," for which keyboardist Eleni Poulou takes over lead vocals. — Douglas Wolk
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Real New Fall LP

The Fall
2004 | Narnack Records / The Orchard

Through the '90s, Smith kept moving, but into increasingly murky sonic waters. Though feted by Nirvana and Radiohead, he fell on hard times, made embarrassing spoken-word appearances for chump-change and became legendary for erratic behaviour. Scanlon and Hanley quit, as did an entire line-up after a fistfight onstage in New York. Thereafter, he hired in a young bunch of Northerners, and with this 2003 album, finally returned to doing what he should've... been doing all along — spitting out withering and/or brain-befuddling verse over primeval rock noize. The stand-out: "Theme from Sparta FC," which scarily enters the mind of Eastern European soccer hooligans. In a hilariously Fall-ish twist, it is used as theme music every Saturday on BBC TV's football coverage. Sadly, this whole combo walked out several years later, after Smith stubbed out a cigarette on their tour bus driver's back (he was doing 80 mph at the time). Smith and new wife Elena soldier on. — Andrew Perry
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Re-Mit

The Fall
2013 | Cherry Red Records / The Orchard

2013's Re-Mit is some kind of landmark for the Fall: they've managed to keep a fairly consistent lineup together for five years and four albums. On the straightforward hard-rock tracks here, the core of guitarist Peter Greenway, bassist David Spurr, keyboardist Elena Poulou and drummer Kieron Melling don't get a chance to show much in the way of personality, unfortunately — nobody ever gets to dominate a Fall song instrumentally any more.... But Smith keeps on discovering new and intriguingly horrible things he can do with his voice (see, for instance, "Kinder of Spine," a delirious, mushmouthed conversation with a spider that seems to be a sidelong response to the Monocles' garage-rock oldie "The Spider and the Fly"), and his attitude is not even slightly mellowed with age. As he described the single "Sir William Wray": "The idea of the song was to be anti-music...Stick that up your arse, X Factor." — Douglas Wolk
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Fall Heads Roll

The Fall
2010 | Sanctuary Records Fontana

If even your album titles are jokes about how many people you've kicked out of your band, you might have a problem. By the time of this 2005 set, the Fall's modus operandi was for band members to come up with minimalist hard-rock riffs and repeat them endlessly while Mark E. Smith did his thing. When the riffs connect — particularly on the brutal one-chord stomp "Blindness" — Fall Heads Roll swings... like a grizzled old boxer. When they don't, it comes off like the work of a third-rate pickup band with a really weird singer (and, for some reason, four other vocalists fill in for Smith on "Trust in Me"). The wild card is the single: a terrific, forceful cover of the Move's 1967 garage-rock classic "I Can Hear the Grass Grow." — Douglas Wolk
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Middle Class Revolt

The Fall
2011 | Sanctuary Records Fontana

In 1994, the Fall had a bit of an acid-house hangover, and this oddly sluggish and bilious album was the result. Mark E. Smith sounds restrained and distracted on most of the original songs here, being carried along with the mechanical thwop of this lineup of the band rather than slashing against it. "Behind the Counter," with its mammoth Steve Hanley bass riff counterpointed by a flurry of dancefloor keyboards, seems to... have been the sound they were aiming at, but most of Middle Class Revolt's successes are minor, or involve going back to an old well — its high point, the clattering rocker "Hey! Student," had been in the band's set lists as "Hey! Fascist" in 1977. — Douglas Wolk
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Reformation Post T.L.C.

The Fall
2007 | Narnack Records / The Orchard

Four gigs into an American tour in 2006, most of the Fall quit and flew home. Two days later, Mark E. Smith and keyboardist Elena Poulou played their first gig with three American musicians. A week or so after that, the new Fall lineup began making this exhausted, inchoate, indifferently recorded album; the new guys were among the least distinctive who'd ever been in the group, despite Smith trying to prop them... up (or maybe mock them) with "Fall Sound" and shout them out (or, probably, mock them) with "Insult Song." The riff-rocker "Systematic Abuse" had already been in the Fall's live sets for a bit, and it's better formed than a lot of the rest of these rambling jams, but eight-and-a-half minutes of it are far too many. — Douglas Wolk
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Ersatz GB

The Fall
2011 | Cherry Red Records / The Orchard

"I don't like any of them," Mark E. Smith said of the songs on this 2011 album, a year and a half later. "You've got to be honest for the fans." If you want to hear why the Fall are a great and deeply original band, there are many, many options. If you want to hear Mark E. Smith make a way-too-long joke about Nate from Gossip Girl, gargle "I had to... wank off the cat to feed the fucking dog!" over a riff lifted from a Greek metal band, be cantankerous about laptop computers, surround himself with the most uninspired and monotonous arrangements of his band's career, and substitute vocal filters and mumbling for a near-total lack of anything to say, there's Ersatz GB. — Douglas Wolk
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New This Week: Daughn Gibson, Speedy Ortiz, Maps, and More

eMusic Editorial Staff — Tue, 09 Jul 2013 16:17:00 +0000

Daughn Gibson, Me Moan: On his new LP, the oh-so-melodramatic Daughn Gibson sounds like he’s auditioning for a David Lynch film. Andrew Parks says:

While the sample-driven sonics of Gibson’s early material remain on his second record, they’re grafted onto actual guitars — delivered in bluesy brush strokes by John Baizley (Baroness) and Jim Elkington (Brokeback) — and layers of live drums, strings, horns, organs and what appears to be a bagpipe. Or a melodica stolen from Clinic. Who knows, honestly. It’s nearly impossible to tell what’s real and what was lifted from rural Pennsylvania’s finest record stores; the aim here is to distort reality, not emulate it.

Speedy Ortiz, Major Arcana: Writing them off as ’90s-nostalgia-obsessed is an insult to this rising Massachusetts band — highly recommended. Annie Zaleski says:

The band has an ear for texture: Plumes of distortion shroud the grungy “Tiger Tank”; unsettled strums shimmer and murmur beneath the surface of “Pioneer Spine” and “Casper (1995)”; needling melodies slice through “Plough”; and the taut “Fun” has sinewy post-punk velocity. On the raucous, Liz Phair-reminiscent “Cash Cab,” Sadie Dupuis’s vocals are cracked and disfigured, drowned out by slow-churning riffs, while Darl Ferm’s hulking bass emerges occasionally to add heft.

Preservation Hall Jazz Band, That’s It!: The legendary group’s first full collection of original compositions. Stephen Deusner says:

Nothing here sounds obviously new: These 11 rousing tracks are so steeped in local technique that they could believably pre-date the band. Tinges of gospel (“Dear Lord (Give Me Strength)”), vaudeville (“Rattlin’ Bones”) and speakeasy jazz (“I Think I Love You”) suggest the form’s infinite malleability. The piano ballad “Emmalena’s Lullaby” exudes an easy sentimentalism, as though it had been played at the end of the night at French Quarter pubs for a hundred years.

Hebronix, Unreal: Daniel Blumberg, the former Yuck frontman, goes solo. Ian Gittins says:

On Unreal, cannily produced by Royal Trux man Neil Hegarty, Blumberg is devoutly pursuing truth and beauty at the heart of a squall of guitar reverb. The blissed-out title track sounds narcoleptic, love-dazed, like Sonic Youth heard through a morphine haze. Blumberg is clearly in thrall to first-generation UK shoe-gazers such as Slowdive, Swervedriver and Pale Saints, while the blanched guitar haze of the lovely “Viral” recalls ravished 1980s New York romantics Ultra Vivid Scene. Yet there is little that is retro about this immaculate, exquisite music; it is of the moment, and of itself.

Maps, Vicissitude:Maps’ latest is “grandiose innerzone pop for the discreetly blissed-out listener.” Andrew Harrison says:

Vicissitude is a lot lither than its predecessor, 2009′s Turning The Mind. Underneath the baroque electronic stylings on “Built to Last” there’s a “Planet Rock” rhythm, although Chapman clearly likes the song’s nagging synth melody so much he allows it to run on for a good two minutes after the song proper has ended, decaying into a spangly reverie. Elsewhere there’s an imperious boom to the single “A.M.A.” with jittering synths gathering in the distance — imagine Ladytron rearranged for a papal funeral. But the lyric is minor-key neuroticism, a plea for love or at least attention.

Ciara, Ciara - The R&B/pop singer Ciara made some of the best, slinkiest club hits of the last ten years – “Googies,” “Oh,” “Promise.” Her voice has always been airy and tiny, and she floated it over enormous, snarling beats. She fell out of style for a few years, as everyone in pop does, but this album brings her to the fore again with the singles “I’m Out” and “Body Party.” Her voice is a little tougher and louder, but the production is still the same state-of-the-art mix of club-pop and deep-South rap.

Araabmusik, The Remixes, Vol. 1 – Araabmusik takes his all-systems-go, hit-everything-at-once style to a bunch of other tracks he likes, reshuffling and stripping them all down until there is no doubt that You Are Listening To Araabmusik. This stuff plays incredibly well at huge outdoor festivals; I’ve seen Araab flatten hundreds of people with just his MPC. I don’t like his albums much, generally, but I like this one a bit more than usual: The source material smuggles some different moods into Araabmusik’s world. A lot of this is surprisingly moody and muted. At least until the beat drops.

A Grave With No Name, Whirlpool – This London duo makes pretty, yawning dream-pop, and Whirlpool is their richest and fullest-sounding effort. This is a beautiful-sounding record, a strong effort.

Coffins, The Fleshland - This long-running Japanese death metal outfit does its gurgling-tar-pit, horrible-production, melody-free dentist-drill thing, and it’s as awesomely satisfying as ever. Sometimes, you just want unrepentant, warty filth. Go to Coffins.

Whirr, Around - Talked-about new indie rock band, heavy gurgling guitars with light, feathery coed vocals floating on top. The songs stretch out for nice six-to-eight-minute lengths, and build to slow, crashing crescendos. Heavy MBV vibes, in other words; lots to get lost in here.

Skylar Grey, Don’t Look Down - Skylar Grey was almost a thing in 2009 or so, when she wrote “Love the Way You Lie,” Eminem and Rihanna’s dark, queasy domestic-abuse duet. She’s a talented singer/songwriter, but on Don’t Look Down she also suffers from a small case of “what do you want me to be, music industry?” There are some capable pop-folk songs, some weepy piano balladry, some raunchy strutting songs, some fake Drake songs, some ersatz Amy Winehouse. There’s a lot of skill and not much in the center of all of it; Grey has a nice dark, full voice, but a lot of this album feels like a shuffled row of demos for other pop singers. Which it might have been, but you should be able to hear the singer the song was “meant for.”

Dark Furs, Dark Furs EP – Self-released, sounded lo-fi but interesting, a strong sound: a good lead female voice, smoky and mournful, with just some watery electric guitar and some synth streaks behind it. Appealing.

Plankton, Humble Colossus - Blues-rock jam band, with lots of dueling leads, FM-rock riffs, and an oddly persistent bongo player.

Pillar Point, Diamond Mine - Grooving, brainy, gawky synth-pop, touched with some Hot Chip wistfulness.

The So So Glos, Blowout – Twelve tracks of relentlessly fun and ingratiating punk rock, some real King Tuff charm here. Splices some Buzzcocks energy and songcraft into sunny beach-pop.

Shintaro Sakamoto, Don’t Know What’s Normal - This is a great moment to point to Hua Hsu’s excellent piece for us on the Japanese underground-rock phenom Shintaro Sakamoto; these two songs perfectly encapsulate his skewed, Ariel Pink-ish charm.

No Age, “C’mon, Stimmung” – First gritty blast from the L.A. punk duo’s upcoming new record. Sounds promising.

Mariah Carey, “#Beautiful” – Mariah Carey’s excellent new single prominently features R&B savant of the moment Miguel – it’s basically a Miguel song with Mariah on it, and it is infectious and wonderful. Here, A$AP jump on it, adds a few smears of his cartoon graffiti to it.

Kate Nash, “OHMYGOD” – Kate Nash’s upbeat single, plus EIGHT remixes and an extra track.

20 Acts to See at Bonnaroo 2013

eMusic Editorial Staff — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 17:11:31 +0000

Headed to Tennessee but still not sure who you want to see? Fear not: We’ve boiled the brain-busting Bonnaroo schedule down to 20 essential sets.

Paul McCartney

RAM

Paul McCartney
2012 | Hear Music

It's easy to be skeptical about the notion of seeing Paul McCartney live. For one thing, he's the Beatle most prone to cheese (even if he's more experimental than he's typically given credit for), he has a history of being excruciatingly on-the-nose, and on top of all that, he wrote "Rocky Raccoon." Here's the thing, though: Paul McCartney is fantastic live. His shows generally run about three hours with no... breaks, he expertly weaves in lesser-known tracks to keep things interesting and he keeps hokey banter to a minimum. Oh, also, he has so many hits. How many hits? So many hits that he played "Your Mother Should Know" and "Lovely Rita" for the first time last month. So many hits that he could skip playing "Let it Be" and "Sgt. Pepper" and you'd still be like, "He played a lot of hits!" His band is astonishingly tight, they don't overplay, the delivery is tasteful and toothy and even charmingly ragged in spots. Oh, and also: he's Paul McCartney. — J. Edward Keyes
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Bjork

Biophilia

Björk
2011 | Nonesuch

Twenty-seven years into her career, Bjork is running the risk of becoming a pop music Alexander the Great, weeping for there are no more worlds to conquer. She has reconfigured her sound in nearly every conceivable way, moving from adventurous electro on the still-classic Post through skewed orch-pop (Vespertine), voice-only compositions (Medulla) and globe-gobbling world music (Volta). She is one of a very few musicians — there are maybe three of them... worldwide — whose rare failures are even interesting, because they at least display evidence of ambition and novel ideas. That ambition extends to her staging. A run of shows at the Hall of Science in Queens, New York featured specially-constructed instruments and a loose theme (including voiceover narration) about the destructive power of nature. How much of that she'll carry into her festival performances remains to be seen, but if history is any indication, an equal won’t be found all weekend. — JEK
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Wilco

The Whole Love

Wilco
2011 | Anti/Epitaph

Wilco are a perennial music-fest favorite: sunny sing-alongs, lengthy Nels Cline guitar solos, and witty banter from frontman Jeff Tweedy. There hasn't been any word of new music on the Chicago group's horizon (Tweedy's been busy producing sets from the likes of Low and Mavis Staples), but that just means fans can expect a wide-ranging mix of crowd faves and deep cuts alike. — Laura Leebove

R. Kelly

Write Me Back (Deluxe Version)

R. Kelly
2012 | RCA Records Label

When R. Kelly toured in 2007, he first appeared in silhouette, wearing a top hat, standing at the top of a giant staircase, underneath a neon sign that read "Mr. Showbiz." When he toured in 2010, his first appearance was in a five-minute black-and-white, note-perfect Casablanca-style short film. When he toured in 2012, he had two lackeys bring out an oversized white throne halfway through the show just so he could... sit and relax for a number. Simply put: R. Kelly is a showman, and the live setting is where he gets to indulge the frustrated musical theatre director within. Songs become set pieces (In '07, he performed "Feelin' On Yo Booty" as an aria, tongue firmly in cheek), the banter is tautly-scripted and generally hilarious, and Kells visibly relishes every indulgent flourish. To say nothing of the fact that he remains one of our greatest living male vocalists, that he sings live every time, and that even thirty seconds of hearing him reinforces the notion that he is the heir to greats like Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye — even if those two never used an extended jungle metaphor to sing about doin' it. — JEK
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Weird Al Yankovic

Alpocalypse

Weird Al Yankovic
2011 | Volcano

Here's a thing that you might not know about legendary song parodist and cultural icon Weird Al: He puts on a spectacular live show. Like, "It's Star Time" spectacular, with breathlessly executed transitions and peak-to-peak setlists and jokes and polka medleys all lined up one after the other. Weird Al is an entertainer, goddamnit, and if you've ever owned a single tape or Weird Al CD in your life, (and what portion... of the music-listening populace hasn't forked over cash for at least one Weird Al tape or CD?), standing in front of this man's live extravaganza is an easy way to feel good about the decisions you've made in life, for at least 45 minutes. — Jayson Greene
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Solange

True

Solange
2012 | Terrible Records / The Orchard

Solange Knowles released her first album in 2011, but it was last year that she truly broke out as more than just Bey's little sister. Her EP True is all dancefloor hits, from the funky, giggly start of "Losing You," to the nostalgic heartbreaker "Some Things Never Seem to Fucking Work," to the Daydream-era-Mariah Carey-channeling "Don't Let Me Down." — LL

Tom Petty

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
1991 | Rhino/Warner Bros.

Tom Petty occupies a curious place in the corridors of classic rock. He doesn't have the Weight of Legacy of the Stones or Dylan, nor the charisma or sense of purpose of Springsteen. He doesn't slot easily into any one format — he was initially marketed as a New Wave artist — even though his songs are staples of FM radio. And there's always been something smart-alecky about his demeanor and delivery... — he's the cut-up in the canon. All of this makes him surprisingly tricky to characterize; there's a clear cause/effect between his rootsier work and, say, Being There-era Wilco, but there's even more in the oft-cited similarity between "American Girl" and "Last Nite" by the Strokes. Which ends up making Tom Petty more like a rock 'n' roll Zelig — he's nearly everywhere you look, even if you don't notice until later, and he's logged more certifiable classics with a shrug and a smirk than some of his peers have done with gallons of sweat and overwork. You get the sense he'll still be here 60 years from now, looking approximately the same, just as consistent and just as rewarding. — JEK
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Kendrick Lamar

good kid, m.A.A.d city

Kendrick Lamar
2013 | Top Dawg / Aftermath / Interscope

Kendrick Lamar is a tiny stub of a man — standing onstage, he doesn't seem to come much past 5'4". But his quiet charisma widens out around him like a crop circle, and with his triumphant 2012 masterpiece good kid, m.A.A.d city still resonating in the air, he will likely arrive trailing clouds of rap-savior glory. Liquid, languorous songs like "Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe" and "A.D.H.D." transform into shout-alongs when he's... onstage, and come prepared to rap along to every tongue-twisting verse: He usually gets heavy with the crowd participation. — JG
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Glen Hansard

Rhythm And Repose

Glen Hansard
2012 | Anti/Epitaph

Glen Hansard might come off as a total sad-sack on Rhythm and Repose, his brooding-but-gorgeous 2012 solo effort, but don't be fooled: The Irish singer/songwriter best known for his work in Once and The Frames is actually an incredibly charming and exciting performer. He's likely to perform with his band The Frames, and you never know who else he might bring on stage. — LL

A$AP Rocky

LONG.LIVE.A$AP

A$AP Rocky
2013 | A$AP Worldwide/Polo Grounds Music/RCA Records

The cocky grinning, gold-tooth French-braid Harlem 24-year-old A$AP Rocky might not have the poetic, old-soul flow of Rakim, for whom his parents named him, but he has something else entirely: a blinding flash, charm, and a perfectly calibrated sound that pours Houston syrup and high-fashion glitz onto NY rap's sturdy concrete bedrock. Live, he's usually surrounded by other A$APs, who help amp up the energy, and he is guaranteed to be wearing... something that makes him resemble a cross between a Fruit Roll-Up, a fashion model, and a Power Ranger. — JG
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Wu-Tang Clan

Enter The Wu-Tang Clan - 36 Chambers (Deluxe Version)

Wu Tang Clan
2007 | RCA Records Label

While everyone was busy crowing about Blur and Phoenix and the Stone Roses, the Wu-Tang Clan slipped in through the side virtually unannounced and walked away with Coachella 2013 in their back pocket. By all accounts their show in Indio Valley was one of the weekend's best — if not the best — all eight surviving members taking the stage, backed by a full orchestra and performing letter-perfect versions of their classics.... The group always had a sense of vision, even if it was sometimes overruled by their more anarchic impulses. But enough time has passed — a full two decades since game-changing debut Enter the Wu-Tang — that they've managed to make live perfectionism feel almost punk — instructional and justifiably haughty at the same time. These days, it's more surprising when all of the Clan members don't show up. — JEK
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Royal Thunder

Killer Mike

R.A.P. Music

Killer Mike
2012 | Williams Street Records

Killer Mike hasn't made a career habit of taking prisoners: Whether you're a Forbes list millionaire ("a whore's list," as far as he's concerned), a rapper like himself who is an "advertisement for agony and pain," or, god help you, Ronald Reagan ("I'll leave you with four words: I'm glad Reagan dead"), Mike has choice words for you. And the emphasis is on "choice": his bellowing, burly voice and big gut might... give the impression of someone heavy-footed and lumbering, but Mike can rap as nimbly as he does forcefully. Live, he will leave you feeling like the slab of meat in Rocky's freezer: tenderized, worked over. But in a good way. Also, if the gods are kind, his new confidante and best friend El-P will show up. — JG
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Tame Impala

Kacey Musgraves

Same Trailer Different Park

Kacey Musgraves
2013 | Mercury Nashville

Rising star Kacey Musgraves writes songs for folks who don't fit into the stereotypical right-leaning country-listening mold. In her biggest hit "Merry Go 'Round," she says it's OK to eschew small-town tradition by not being married with kids by 21, while "Follow Your Arrow" implores folks to "make lots of noise/ kiss lots of boys/ or kiss lots of girls, if that's something you're into." — LL

Mac DeMarco

2

Mac Demarco
2012 | Captured Tracks / SC Distribution

Mac DeMarco's grubby, Pigpen-Eagles version of yacht-pop might not prepare you for the full-blown, indie-rock-Andy-Kaufman hilarity of his live set; Mac is one of few humans on this planet who can make smirking assholery seem downright endearing and infectious. It helps that his bandmates are in on the fun, that they crack each other up, and that they play their often-shoddy instruments like gangbusters: in previous sets, I've seen them cover both... Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" and a Rammstein/Rob Zombie mash-up of "Du Hast Mich" and "Dragula." — JG
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Lucius

EP

Lucius
2013 | Mom & Pop Music / The Orchard

Lucius have only got an EP under their belts for now, but the group of folks dying to hear more from the Brooklyn outfit is growing quickly. They've got girl-group flare, strong harmonies, and a tight, polished band, fronted by vocalists Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig. And with the ladies' matching outfits, poufy updo's and soulful sass, their live shows are mesmerizing. — LL

Death Grips

The Money Store

Death Grips
2012 | Epic

It seemed for a moment like Death Grips was going to self-immolate almost as suddenly as they'd appeared. They cancelled a slew of live dates in the rush of adulation that followed their debut, they were dropped from their label after giving away its follow-up — which, incidentally, had a picture of a dick on the cover — for free, and force-of-nature drummer Zach Hill performed the group's SXSW set via Skype... (and apparently played his drum tracks on a laptop at this year's Sasquatch festival.) The thing is, though: They're still here, and MC Ride is still one of the most gripping and charismatic frontmen in hip-hop, delivering his verses with the ferocity of early hardcore. Every Death Grips show feels like a last gasp — all the more reason to see them while you still have the chance. — JEK
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Daniel Romano

Come Cry With Me

Daniel Romano
2013 | Normal Town Records

Singer/songwriter Daniel Romano hails from Canada but sounds like he's from America's Deep South as he writes old-school country ballads sung in a deep, Man-in-Black drawl. On his latest record, this year's aptly titled Come Cry With Me, there's a dirge about unrequited love, reflections on being a rejected middle child, and a rambling saga about getting a ride with a guy who calls himself Chicken Bill. — LL

White Lung

sorry

White Lung
2012 | Deranged Records / The Orchard

White Lung vocalist Mish Way is a human tornado, a blinding corkscrew of motion and sound ripping up the center of her songs like the Tasmanian Devil turned loose in the middle of a Safeway. It's the musical equivalent of being grabbed by the shoulders and throttled repeatedly. Which is a great thing. White Lung's second full-length Sorry inflicts more damage than a runaway rotary blade, and their live show is just... as devastating. It's a blast of fire and fury, an endless barrage of megaton cannonballs aimed directly at your throat. — JEK
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Various Artists, Real World Records Label Sampler

eMusic Editorial Staff — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 21:25:55 +0000

Since its inception in 1989, the Real World label has been home to some of the most forward-thinking, boundary-shaking music from around the globe. Founded by Peter Gabriel as a kind of recorded complement to his WOMAD festival, the label soon took on a life of its own, releasing records by giants like Tabu Ley Rochereau, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Jocelyn Pook and more. This sampler is a good place to start if you’re looking to discover the label’s all-encompassing sound.

New This Week: Portugal. The Man, Quadron, Jon Hopkins & More

eMusic Editorial Staff — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:55:24 +0000

Quadron, Avalanche: Like the smooth R&B debut from Rhye earlier this year? Quadron’s latest features half of that duo in a record that draws from both classic jazz and contemporary pop. Barry Walters says:

Like Rhye’s Mike Milosh, singer Coco O sounds as if she spent her tender years wailing along to nothing but Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu and Billie Holiday. And like Milosh, she’s not purely imitative: A growly throatiness, combined with far more idiomatic phrasing than most ESL vocalists can usually pull off, adds subtle twists that set Coco apart from less distinctive students. And her lyrics are similarly uncommon, full of playful quirks: “If for one day I could be any bug/ I’d let him kill me for a taste of his blood,” she sings of the man she’s love-stalking in “Crush.”

Portugal. The Man, Evil Friends: Portland’s Portugal. The Man team with Danger Mouse for their seventh full-length, and second on a major label. Barry Walters says:

Portugal. The Man dig drama: Any band that combines Robert Plant-ian yelps with Ziggy-esque combos of acoustic strumming and power chord thunder while shooting synth lasers toward the darkest side of the moon doesn’t shy away from theatricality. Danger Mouse’s cinematic sensibilities are a fine match, and they set the tone audaciously with opener “Plastic Soldiers”: The rhythm repeatedly drops and reenters as guitars, keys, dubby bass, strings and even horns similarly drift in and out of the mix.

Jon Hopkins, Immunity: He’s worked with the likes of Brian Eno and Coldplay, but Jon Hopkins’s latest finds him asserting his own voice as a musician and producer. eMusic’s Philip Sherburne says:

It’s heavier, and even clubbier, than one might have expected from his resume, underpinned by thundering kick drums and heaving waves of sub bass. Hopkins has said that the album’s sweep is intended to encapsulate the feeling of an epic night out, and that certainly comes across in the music. Stylistically, both Four Tet and James Holden’s deconstructed techno are obvious influences, but what Hopkins brings to the table is a knack for fusing narrative arcs with an almost sculptural sense of form.

The Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra, The Benevolence Of Sister Ignatius: Members of Madness and Nutty Boys band together to cover classic-era ska songs. Andrew Harrison says:

From the opening version of the Baba Brooks Band’s “Gun Fever” (party-time ska in its rude essence, all gunshots and spry electric organ), via a sinuous take on Desmond Dekker’s “Fu Manchu,” through deliciously woozy vibe-ups of “Napoleon Solo” and the “Mission Impossible” theme (’60s Jamaica was always big on spies) this is impossibly infectious music, played for the joy of it. Guest singer Bitty McLean aside, the vocals are best characterized as charmingly amateur but this stuff was always life-affirming first and professional a distant second. This is why ska never dates.

Thundercat, Apocalypse – The return of the madcap cartoon genius who made The Golden Age of the Apocalypse. This one, on first listen, sounds pillowier, more chilled-out and unzipped-intimate, than the manic and Technicolor Golden Age. His command of the areas between jazz-fusion, R&B, Quiet Storm, and straight-ahead bachelor-pop pop. It’s gorgeous, and makes a nice hardcore-jazz-nerd companion to the recent Daft Punk album.

Stephen King, John Mellencamp, T-Bone Burnett, and Guests, Ghost Brothers of Darkland County – Wow, that is a marquee right there. Yes, that is the creative team for this project, a musical based in a parched, John Steinbeck-style cruel American heartland; John Mellencamp writes the music and lyrics, Stephen King the libretto, and the project, with a revolving door cast that features Sheryl Crow, Rosanna Cash, Elvis Costello, and MANY others, is overseen by the master T-Bone.

Rogue Wave, Nightingale – Hushed, lovely, modest and classical indie-pop from this early-’00s mainstay.

Jonathan*Fire*Eater, Wolf Songs for Lambs -An old one, showing up on t he site today again for some reason: the debut of Jonathan*Fire*Eater, the band that would later, with a few adjustments, become The Walkmen.

Rhett Miller, The Dreamer – Sixth solo record from Miller, and first for his own Maximum Sunshine imprint, a mix of some live, some demos, some live stuff. Warm, rough, intimate, lovely.

The Spinto Band, Biba! 1 Island, 879 Votes (Original Soundtrack) – The long-running indie-pop band provides the soundtrack to a documentary about two rival groups on the tiny Pacific island of Tinian. Lets Spinto step completely outside of their “eclectic indie rock band” realm and truly embrace some different styles: Hawaiian slack-key, Spaghetti Western. An interesting curio.

Capital Cities, In A Tidal Wave of Mystery – L.A.-based indie-pop outfit; electro-poppy in an OK GO-ish way.

City and Colour, The Hurry and the Harm – The former Alexisonfire guitarist continues his evolution as a solo artist with some chunky, pleasingly straight-ahead rock music, grace with his dulcet, quavering tenor.

Ben Folds Five, Live – In the “what it says on the on the tin” department. Featuring renditions of “Brick,” “Song for the Dumped,” and most of the fan favorites.

GRMLN, Empire – Sun-baked, beer-can crumpling Wavves/style pop-punk. Good if you like that sort of thing.

June Tabor, Quercus – Wow, this album is BEAUTIFUL. Renowned folk singer June Tabor joins with saxophonist Iain Ballamy and pianist Huw Warren for a glassy-still, gently bone-chilling take on a series of folk standards. An evocative, misty little clearing where jazz and folk get to put on Renaissance Faire clothes and dance gracefully together.

Giorgio Moroder, From Here To Eternity – 1977 classic Moroder album, hitting the site just as Giorgio is basking in the glow of Daft Punk’s lovely tribute to him on Random Access Memories. Get this if you liked that.

George Benson, Inspiration: A Tribute To Nat King Cole – The beloved jazz guitarist and singer George Benson pays tribute to the King, with help from guests like Wynton Marsalis and Idina Menzel.

Latvian Radio Choir with Sigvards Klava, Rautavaara: Missa a cappella – The world premiere recording of the Mass from the popular Finnish composer, whose music is always richly melodic and haunting.

Dorothy Hindman, tapping the furnace – A collection of works by the Miami-based composer Dorothy Hindaman, whose music has the bustling, squawking energy of a busy city block. Cellos crunch with an almost punk-rock gusto, pianos hammer with sweaty, panicky exuberance, and electricity, literal and figurative, courses through every note.
Daniel Wohl, Corpus Equis – The Transit new-music ensemble joins up with an all-star contemporary classical roster – So Percussion, Julia Holter, Nadia Sirota – to record the works of up and coming composer Daniel Wohl.

Hot Chip, “Dark and Stormy” – Hot Chip single! The opposite of its title, unless of course they mean the rum drink.

Jacques Greene, “On Your Side” – Collaboration with How To Dress Well.

2 Chainz, “Feds Watchin” – New single from the gangly, shouting, rope-haired clown prince of Atlanta commercial hip-hop.

Various Artists, Burger Records Sampler

eMusic Editorial Staff — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:15:28 +0000

Sean Borhman and Lee Rickard founded Burger Records in 2007 as a way to release albums by their own band, Thee Makeout Party, but soon discovered they enjoyed releasing their friends’ records even more. Six years later, Burger stands as a testament to the power of pure, boundless enthusiasm about music. All of the bands on Burger bury pop hooks beneath layers of fuzz, and the label feels like a living document of below-the-radar indie rock. It is a multicolored cartoon universe worth getting lost in.

Various Artists, Smithsonian Folkways Classic Series Sampler

eMusic Editorial Staff — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:13:56 +0000

The Smithsonian Folkways collection is a musical treasure, a chance to wander down the byways of music not only from America, but all parts of the globe. From Woody Guthrie to Leadbelly to Elizabeth Cotten, the label is like an aural encyclopedia of what Moses Asch once called “people’s music,” the rough-recorded sound of genres being born and history being made. The songs on this sampler provide an opportunity to walk through the label’s right past.

Various Artists, ATO Records Spring Sampler 2013

eMusic Editorial Staff — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:11:35 +0000

Alabama Shakes broke out as one of 2012′s most exhilarating acts; so if you love them as much as we do, check out more from their label, ATO Records. This spring’s sampler has tracks from country up-and-comer Caitlin Rose, My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James, the Fleetwood Mac-channeling Kopecky Family Band, and much more.

New This Week: Daft Punk, Laurel Halo, Dirty Beaches & More

eMusic Editorial Staff — Tue, 21 May 2013 17:00:12 +0000

Daft Punk, Random Access Memories: Heard of these guys? [See our complete coverage here.] Barry Walters says:

Daft Punk get far closer to replicating decidedly non-punk forms of the ’70s and early ’80s — disco, progressive rock, jazz-funk and West Coast studio pop — than most 21st-century musicians have ever dared. Absolutely none of it is what has traditionally been considered cool, and that’s precisely the point: RAM is instead focused on warmth, sunshine, good times, intimacy and sweaty shared body heat. There is solitude and melancholy as well, voiced through vocoders and co-writer Paul Williams, who in the shamelessly grand “Touch” plays the part of a robot who craves the reality of physical sensation. Segueing from gurgling synths to piano pop to disco to choral and symphonic pomp and back again, this multi-part epic holds the album’s theme: Even androids long for life.

Shannon and the Clams, Dreams in the Rat House: The fierce Oakland group moves up to Sub Pop’s Hardly Art imprint for their latest LP. Marc Hogan says:

Shannon and the Clams’ third album sticks to the live-sounding, punk-roughed doo-wop, girl group and surf rock throwbacks that made 2011 predecessor Sleep Talk the perfect cheap-beer chaser. It’s a narrow but fertile niche, and this trio goes after it with devilish bravado. Bass player Shannon Shaw, also of Bay Area kindred spirits Hunx and His Punx, shares lead vocal duties with guitarist Cody Blanchard, and their loose, comfortable rapport — along with the emphatic, conversational drumming of Ian Amberson — helps keep the shag-carpet and wood-paneled consistency from getting too same-y.

Laurel Halo, Behind the Green Door: A straightforwardly beat-driven new EP from Laurel Halo. Michaelangelo Matos says:

Laurel Halo still bends the framework into all kinds of aural shapes: The stalactite-like keyboards of “Throw,” the opening track, evokes mid-’90s Aphex Twin or µ-Ziq, while “UHFFO” is a phased-dizzy minimalist techno, everything from the beat to the zapping keyboard duel that livens it up midway in, coated with gauze. The heavily dubbed-out “Sex Mission,” meanwhile, contains zero heavy breathing, unless you count the way the rhythm track heaves — not in a cartoon-porn way, but something more meditative while still evoking arousal.

G&D, The Lighthouse: The latest from the prolific Georgia Anne Muldrow and Dudley Perkins, this time as G&D. Nate Patrin says:

The Lighthouse, the latest in a fruitful series of collaborations by Muldrow and Perkins, maintains their futurist-vintage outlook on music and philosophy and the places where they intersect. With a title track that pairs righteous-anger calls-to-arms with a breathless, almost blissed-out excitement, The Lighthouse kills its own stress in real time. Even the simplest material has an up-front, get-down musicality that gives a next-level jolt of stargazing eccentricity to boogie funk and skyscraper soul.

JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound, Howl: The self-described “post-punk soul rockers” get heavy on Howl. Hilary Saunders says:

Musically, Howl sounds like a calculated homage to ’70s funk and soul acts. “River” hearkens back to Al Green-style gospel and R&B and closer “These Things” showcases Brooks’s commanding vocal range and dynamics — switching from counter rhythms to falsettos with interjecting grunts in one fierce ballad.

Emerson String Quartet, Journeys: The Emerson String Quartet tackles Schoenberg and Tchaikovsky. Steve Holtje says:

What really links the works is inner turmoil. While the Tchaikovsky is prototypically Romantic and the Schoenberg verges on Post-Romanticism, both use dramatic harmonic restlessness to vividly portray unrest. The players emphasize this while giving the Schoenberg enough richness of tone to remind us of the composer’s continuing debt to Romanticism’s sound and gestures — even as he began to overthrow its harmonic language. There are, separately, better performances of each, but this combination amplifies the virtues heard here.

Dirty Beaches, Drifters/Love Is The Devil – The latest from Alex Zhang Hungtai in his Dirty Beaches guise – this is languorous and bleakly beautiful. Ilya Zinger says:

Sometime in the winter of 2012, while travelling between Berlin and his hometown of Montreal, Alex Zhang Hungtai recorded Drifters and Love is the Devil under his Dirty Beaches moniker. This double LP, Hungtai’s follow up to 2011′s Badlands, is an emotional exorcism and an intensely personal foray into loneliness and isolation.

Pat Metheny, John Zorn’s Book of Angels – The first collaboration between the guitarist Pat Metheny and the saxophonist/composer/contemporary music icon John Zorn. Metheny takes Zorn’s Jewish songs written for what he came to call his Masada Book and explodes them into suites, full of free-ranging style-devouring explorations.

The Baptist Generals, Jackleg Devotional To The Heart- New album from the Texas band – their second, and their first in ten years — expands on their heart-rending, slightly soused, roughed-up folk sound. A wonderful record.

Saturday Looks Good To Me, One Kiss Ends It All – Fifth full-length from long-running Ann Arbor indie-rock outfit mixes their usual blend of retro-rock signifiers with brainy-sugary indie rock wistfulness.

The 1975, IV – I don’t know if this band will ever get it together to release a full-length, but “Sex” remains, as always, a classic, an all-timer jam. Too bad for them they don’t live in a heavy-rotation world where this one song would be enough for them to be famous for a year or two.

Ugly Heroes, S/T – Apollo Brown, Verbal Kent, and Red Pill team up for Ugly Heroes, a low-key hard-knocking and personal soul-rap effort.

Mykki Blanco, Betty Rubble: The Initiation – Stylistically sprawling new mixtape from the talented and confrontational rapper Mykki Blanco.

Gaytheist, Hold Me…But Not So Tight -What to make of a band called Gaytheist? They are from Portland, OR; they play troglodytic punk-metal; they are a lot of fun.

Darius Rucker, True Believers – I’ve always thought that Darius would make sense as a country singer, and here he brings that mellow rich Blowfish baritone to a nice-sounding midtempo stuff that honestly sounds like Hootie given a few nudges to further into Nashville.

Emma-Louise, Vs. Head Vs. Heart – Burbling, 90s-trip-hop-redolent pop. Her voice has a creamy sort of calm to it, shades of Sarah McLachlan.

French Montana, Excuse My French – Bad Boy debut from lazily charismatic New York rapper, who has a way with bored, half-sung hooks and solid production.

Audra McDonald, Go Back Home – The jazz-standard interpreter’s latest; includes Sondheim, Hammerstein, Kander and Ebb, plus newer voices like Michael John LaChiusa and Adam Gwon.

30 Seconds to Mars, Love Lust Faith + Dreams – How did I forget this is Jared Leto’s band? The cover is Damien Hirst, btw. The modern rock band’s fourth effort.

Ke$ha, Crazy Kids – Our Ke$ha love is well-documented around these parts, but this sounds like ’09-era Ke$ha, like she’s taking a step backwards.

Mayer Hawthorne, Her Favorite Song – The appealingly nerdy white-boy soul balladeer returns, sounding more like Sade than I remember this time.

The Dodos, Confidence – New single from The Dodos.

Kate Boy, The Way We Are – Terrific single from Stockholm pop group.

New This Week: Sam Amidon, The Fall, Bibio & More

eMusic Editorial Staff — Tue, 14 May 2013 17:07:23 +0000

Sam Amidon, Bright Sunny South: On his Nonesuch debut, Sam Amidon blends anonymous traditional folk with strategic pop tunes. Brian Howe says:

Compared to 2010′s lushly arranged I Saw the Sign, the arrangements on Bright Sunny South are highly stripped down, blowing over the cores of the songs like spindrift. But the themes are familiar: On the title track, a shimmering Hammond organ and rolling acoustic arpeggios set a Civil War-era lament for lost innocence; “He’s Taken My Feet” is a murmuring religious dirge in the manner of I Saw the Sign‘s “Kedron;” “Short Life” is a becalmed mountain fiddle tune about an unfulfilled promise of marriage, like a downcast counterpart to the jubilant “Pretty Fair Damsel.”

Dungeonesse, Dungeonesse: Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner makes a synthpop album. Says Barry Walters:

In Jenn Wasner’s other duo, Wye Oak, she creates diaphanous indie-rock that draws from shoegaze, the 4AD catalog and other similarly echoing sonic caverns. Despite their subterranean name, Dungeonesse isn’t like that. Instead, Wasner and fellow multi-instrumentalist Jon Ehrens craft synthpop that’s neon-lit and glaring in the places where Wye Oak is sepia-toned and shadowy. This is effervescent fantasy music that’s escapist in the best way, but still grounded in the realities that inspire the pair’s liberating flights of fancy.

Small Black, Limits of Desire: Members of the chillwave class of ’09-10 finally graduate. Laura Studarus says:

Limits of Desire is a meditation on technology and the elements of modern society that foster emotional separation: Reveling in a newfound crispness in both production and vocals, frontman Josh Kolenik wears his heart on his sleeve across ten tracks of Instagrammed lyrics about love, escaping the big city, and being “reckless as rain.” As a result, the album shimmers with the kind of anthemic wonder usually found in the end credits of coming-of-age films.

The Fall, Re-Mit: Mark E. Smith and co. release their 30th (!) album. Andrew Harrison says:

Long-time Fall watchers will know that the band’s work now oscillates between basic, bloody-minded rockabilly-punk (see 1979′s Dragnet or Fall Heads Roll from 2005) and eccentric electronics (1990′s Extricate). This 30th full album since 1976 — does Smith get some kind of medal? — is chiefly of the first kind, a stabby, back-to-basics thrash with enough bile for a band a quarter their age and few adornments.

Bibio, Silver Wilkinson: English trailblazer Bibio rediscovers his footing on his latest LP. Brian Howe says:

Bibio’s career began with three introverted electro-acoustic albums for Mush Records that sounded like Boards of Canada gone Brit-folk, and his artistic breakthrough came when he moved to Warp for 2009′s Ambivalence Avenue, an unexpectedly bold album of jubilant glitch-soul, clever indie-pop and moody folk that triangulated an undreamt-of sweet spot between J Dilla, Yo La Tengo and Nick Drake. While Silver Wilkinson doesn’t scale the effortless heights of Ambivalence Avenue, it’s a path out of the wilderness that leads back to more generous, agreeable clearings.

MS MR, Secondhand Rapture: Buzzy New York duo offer a mesmerizing debut. Annie Zaleski says:

The theatrical “Salty Sweet” — with its tribal drums and overlapping harmonies — and the seductive, string-plucked murmur “BTSK” stand out, and the glassy piano-pop of “Twenty Seven” isn’t far behind. Max Hershenow’s warm, nuanced production is wistful without becoming consumed by nostalgia, familiar without feeling tired; his inventive appropriation of soul, electro, orchestral and hip-hop feels timeless.

The Dillinger Escape Plan, One of Us is the Killer: The fifth LP from one of the last genuinely dangerous experimental bands going. Jon Wiederhorn says:

The Dillinger Escape Plan’s fifth record, One of Us is the Killer, is a frazzling showcase of technical speed-prog, unrelenting post-hardcore barreling, near-industrial electrocution, swinging rock ‘n’ roll excursions and soulful pop forays. The basic techniques should be familiar to the band’s fans, but the group pushes the limits of its expansive sound further than ever.

Mark Lanegan & Duke Garwood, Black Pudding: Former Screaming Trees frontman and a London-based avant-bluesman combine American blues with more experimental sounds. Luke Turner says:

Black Pudding is an album that’s sparse in structure but immense in presence. “Pentecostal” conjures rich atmosphere with just guitar twangs, a shaker rhythm and Langean’s pitch-dark vocals painting vivid images: an albatross, a train, the eternal struggle between good and evil. “Mescalito,” with its arid drum-machine roll and bar-room backing vocal, would give a Nick Cave and Warren Ellis soundtrack a run for its jukebox dollars and cents. “Last Rung” is full of knackered, jazzy piano, and the eerie “Sphinx” sees Lanegan’s heavily-treated voice wobble as if through a heat haze.

Glenn Jones, My Garden State: The butter-smooth fingerpicker pens a sweet tribute to his family. Richard Gehr says:

New-school American Primitive guitarist Glenn Jones’s fifth solo album is an elegiac jewel. You may even discern the arc of a son’s bittersweet ruminations on his ailing mother and New Jersey motherland from the music alone, before taking in song titles or back-story, which sketch the contours of a sweetly autobiographical journey.

Standish/Carlyon, Deleted Scenes: Former members of Aussie band The Devastations explore new directions. Andy Beta says:

First single “Nono/Yoyo” finds Tom Carlyon’s guitar in Durutti Column mode, fragmenting and echoing around an 80 bpm snare as Conrad Standish mewls about the vagaries of love in his best Nu-Romantic falsetto. His voice is at its fragile best on “Gucci Mountain,” which mixes a drugged pace with a shimmering synth melody. And while “Industrial Resort” suggests smokestacks and rust belts, it chugs along like a lost Balearic classic. For the album’s sunny moments though, buzzing closer “2 5 1 1″ suggests not a summer jam but the dog days, made lethargic with humidity.

Brother JT, The Svelteness of Boogietude: John Terlesky’s craftiest album since breaking up the Original Sins in the early ’90s. Richard Gehr says:

Funky drum machine, squiggly synth lines, distorted vocals and sustained fuzzy guitars provide the bedrock for some pretty witty wordplay. Things begin to get weird with “Muffintop,” a slow-groove paean to fleshy surplus; JT returns to this topic a few tracks later in “Sweatpants,” a Zappa-esque slice of TMI-electrofunk that declares, “Life is hard enough, you need some wiggle room.”

R.E.M., Green (25h Anniversary Reissue) – R.E.M.’s big leap to Warner Bros., 25 years on. The record that brought us the goofy pop hit “Stand” and also the “Losing My Religion”-presaging mandolin lament “You Are The Everything.” Supplemented here with a bonus disc of the band in their live, constantly-touring prime, right before they all decided the road was too grueling and beat a retreat.

Cleaners From Venus, Cleaners From Venus Vol. 2 – Venerated little jangle-pop band, highly influential among current-day indie-pop bands, get their entire catalogue reissued via the ever-essential Captured Tracks.

Classixx, Hanging Gardens – Fun, sunshine-y, disco-pop stuff from hotly tipped L.A. duo. Nancy Whang of The Juan MacLean shows up for a vocal turn.

ADULT., The Way Things Fall – The long-running Detroit duo have perfected their sound a sour, gritty punk recasting of synth pop, complete with blankly pistoning techno drums and empty, arid space. This is a slightly more stream-lined version of this potent sound, which remains as intriguing as ever.

Snowden,No One In Control – The first Snowden record since 2006 (label troubles, not creative ones) finds Jordan Jeffares channeling his frustration into drifting, lovely synth-edged pop tunes, graced with his grey sigh of a singing voice atop it.

Pharmakon, Abandon – Brutal noise music delivered with performance-art lunatic flair by the 22-year-old NY native Margaret Chardiet. RIYL: Prurient, Throbbing Gristle, early Swans, ice picks, raw meat. Dark, dark, dark shit.

Public Service Broadcasting, Inform-Educate-Entertain – Fantastic concept behind this one – this London duo trawl through old film archives to set audio clips from time-forgotten pieces of footage – instructional videos, PSAs, propaganda films – and setting them to lightly propulsive electronic rock. Sad and oddly uplifting all at once.

The Handsome Family, Wilderness – The long-running duo return with a concept album about animals, overlaying each song with the distinct glum fatalism that they’ve made into a patent by now.

Pure X, Crawling Up The Stairs - These Austin guys have cultivated a certain syrup-slow beach music vibe – drawn-out, hallucinatory, slightly sick-sounding. The album title is well-chosen.

Kisses, Kids In L.A. – Coolly bumping little synth-pop nugget.

Pierre Boulez with the Cleveland Orchestra, Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring – In time to celebrate the piece’s 100th birthday, here is a rendition of this incandescent work, led by arguably the smartest and most sensitive conductor to ever shape the work: Pierre Boulez. Performed by the mighty Cleveland Orchestra.

Sage Francis, Personal Journals – The first official album by Sage Francis.

Ben Lee, Ayahuasca: Welcome To The Work – This is hilarious. Ben Lee is all into ayahuasca now, because of course he is, and he recorded an entire album celebrating its effects on his mind. The song titles are pretty indicative here.

The Blank Tapes, Vacation – Nicely chugging, low-stakes garage-pop from some guys who have been at it for awhile and never really gotten much shine.

The Boxcar Lilies, Sugar Shack – Dark and lovely traditional country.

Brian Eno x Nicolas Jaar x Grizzly Bear – Three names to make pretty much any living indie fan go “SQUEEE!” Not a full-length; actually a remix a piece by Jaar of one Eno tune and one Grizzly Bear tune.

New This Week: Pistol Annies, Talib Kweli, Little Boots & More!

eMusic Editorial Staff — Tue, 07 May 2013 18:40:46 +0000

Pistol Annies, Annie Up: The trio of Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley goes from side project from supergroup on their second LP. Stephen Deusner says:

Despite the success of their debut, it’s still a hard-knock life for these Annies, who smartly chronicle the joys and trials of being a woman in the 2010s. On “Being Pretty Ain’t Pretty,” they spend a lot of time and money applying make-up and even more time and money taking it off, but they never play it off as a joke. Instead, they sympathize with the woman in the mirror and their close harmonies invest the song with a deep melancholy. Songs like “Trading One Heartbreak for Another” and “Dear Sobriety” are quietly devastating, but the Annies’ sass and smarts remain.

Talib Kweli, Prisoner of Conscious: On his latest, Talib Kweli sounds liberated and awake. Says Christina Lee:

While 2011′s Gutter Rainbows updated the neo-soul sound of Kweli’s onetime label Rawkus, Prisoner of Conscious reaches back to even older genres. Samba revivalist Seu Jorge adds wistfulness to “Favela Love,” a song about wandering abroad. On “Come Here,” R&B singer Miguel does his best Marvin Gaye while Kweli composes a valentine made of hip-hop references: “We can do it like Common and Mary and ‘Come Closer’/ We can do it like Barack and Michelle, give me a fist bump.”

Patty Griffin, American Kid: The Americana songwriter’s first collection of new songs in six years. Stephen Deusner says:

American Kid is a meditation on wanderlust of all kinds — emotional, physical and musical — and it may be Griffin’s most adventurous and diverse effort yet. Rather than record again in Austin or Nashville, Griffin decamped to Memphis, where she absorbed the Bluff City’s deep, rich history and recruited Luther and Cody Dickinson of the North Mississippi All-Stars as her backing band. Fortunately, this is no kneejerk approximation of local blues or soul. No musical tourist, Griffin is not interested in re-creating that Sun or Stax sound; instead, she hits the crossroads and goes in all directions at once.

Still Corners, Strange Pleasures: Still Corners try to rid themselves of the “ethereal” and “dreamy” sound they’re associated with. Alex Naidus says:

Greg Hughes smartly juxtaposes the more traditionally “dreamy” elements of Still Corners’ sound with some crisper textures and more insistent rhythms. His songwriting and production style still skews sweeping and epic: On single “Fireflies,” the synths stack — pillowy pads, twinkling upper-octave melody lines and punchy synth-bass — and are buoyed by Tessa Murray’s vampish vocals. With Strange Pleasures, Hughes has carefully crafted a set with songs that inspire grandeur while remaining taut and gripping — an impressive feat.

Natalie Maines, Mother: Dixie Chick Natalie Maines returns scarred, but smarter, on her first real rock ‘n’ roll record. Stephen Deusner says:

Mother is not merely a shift in musical direction or a crossover attempt; instead, it’s the sound of a woman fighting defiantly to redefine herself with a harder, steelier sound. Fortunately, Maines’s commanding voice remains intact. She nimbly navigates the slow build from soft melody to full gospel finale on “Free Life,” while “Trained” binds a torrid sex metaphor to a rowdy blues-rock groove courtesy of co-producer Ben Harper.

Little Boots, Nocturnes: The long-awaited second LP from synth-pop chanteuse Little Boots. Barry Walters says:

Nocturnes isn’t a total break from her buzzy beginnings. For “Broken Record,” Hesketh writes with veteran songsmith Rick Nowels, spinning the same obsessive love angle as her attention-grabbing first single, “Stuck on Repeat.” But here and elsewhere, she downplays the ’80s vibe in favor of more eclectic synth sounds largely overseen by former Mo’ Wax/DFA honcho Tim Goldsworthy.

Joshua Redman, Walking Shadows: A diverse mix of American songbook standards, pop hits and originals. Says Britt Robson:

Redman plays with gorgeous aplomb on Kern and Hammerstein’s “The Folks Who Live on the Hill” and Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust” (the latter also features Mehldau’s best solo). He teases out the familiar melodies of The Beatles’ “Let It Be” and “Stop That Train” by John Mayer before taking transformative liberties with them via deft improvisations. The most arresting of the originals is Redman’s atmospheric “Final Hour,” in which his tenor has the low-toned plangency of a bass clarinet.

The Child of Lov, S/T – 25-year-old Netherlands musician, with the blessing of Damon Albarn (who guests here), turns out self-produced record that sounds like late-period Outkast in a bonfire, or a robot with a dying battery singing Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.”

Astrid Engberg, Poetry is Gone – This seemed intriguing. Cool, Erykah Badu-ish vocals over smoky exhalations of Dilla-esque dusty loops. “Alright” is a jam.

Bajram Bili, Sequenced Fog – Minimal techno mazes built of tiny synthesizer parts. Rudimentary in an intriguing, mysterious way. Sounded interesting.

Shannon Wright, In Film Sound – Pretty brutal, gunky riffing plus Wright’s sneering voice. Basically sounds like the kind of record Steve Albini would have recorded for Touch & Go in the late ’90s. Take a sample, I think it’s pretty boss.

The Hussy, Pagan Hiss – Tinny garage-rock with some Judas Priest-chug guitars, vocals a thousand miles in the mix. One number also seems to be enhanced with a free-recorder solo. Pretty good, bratty-primitive stuff.

Sam Sanders, Mirror Mirror – Pretty sweet, SUPER rare R&B/Soul/Funk record (apparently, this new cover art had to be created from scratch, the original is that obscure). Kind of a nice, digging-in-the-crates type find.

The Uncluded, Hokey Fright – Not the world’s biggest fan of Kimya Dawson over here, but Aesop Rock is good, and this collaboration, while blood-draining on paper, yields a pleasantly quirky (as opposed to unbearably so), finely observed and pleasant listen. If you are even marginally a fan of either of these guys, I feel pretty comfortable recommending this to you.

James Cotton, Cotton Mouth Man – Latest offering of viscerally traditionalist harmonica blues from modern classic bluesman James Cotton.

Spirit of the Garden – Gorgeous chamber art-folk band led by the adventurous contemporary-classical cellist Jody Redhage. Shades of Dead Can Dance…

Lady Antebellum, Golden – Latest studio LP from the pop-country juggernaut.

Michael Hersch, The Vanishing Pavilions Suite – Shuddering, darkly portentous suite for solo piano by the American composer and pianist Michael Hersch. This was a landmark work in the contemporary classical community when it premiered in 2007, and while casually recommending a recording of this monumental work is a little bit like casually recommending that someone read Proust, I still heartily recommend it. (N.B.: I have never read Proust; I just use him as a handy-dandy reference point for “daunting commitment,” because that is essentially what that row of grey books on my shelf represents to me.)

Original Concept, Straight From the Basement of Kooley High! – I do not know what made this come around the New Arrivals turnpike this morning, but there’s no good reason for a self-respecting hip-hop fan not to have heard it. This is the loose, fun, funny and impressive debut LP from Dr. Dre—Andre Brown, that is, of “Ed Lover and,” not the Good Doctor out West. It came out in the earlier days of the major-labels and hip-hop (this was before Yo! MTV Raps) and didn’t sell much, but it’s stuck around because it’s witty and great.

Rod Stewart, Time – Hoo boy, look at that cover. And when there was only one set of footprints, that is when Rod carried you. Do you want to hear 2013-era Rod Stewart sing a song called “Sexual Religion?” Ask yourself that, preferably while looking into a well-lit mirror, and decide what the answer reveals to you about your soul. (NB: I love the first four Rod Stewart solo LPs almost as much as I love anything.)

Various Artists, Music From The Great Gatsby, OST – Here it is – the very expensive soundtrack to The Thing That Baz Luhrmann did to The Great Gatsby. Curated by Jay-Z; featuring Jay-Z, Lana Del Rey, and others.

Courtney Jaye, Love and Forgiveness – Latest from Nashville country singer/songwriter, whose bell-like voice will have sympathetic vibrations with Neko Case and Jenny Lewis Fans. Real Laurel Canyon, Mellow Gold vibes here. Produced by Mike Wrucke, who is known for his work with Miranda Lambert among others.

New This Week: Phoenix, Laura Stevenson, Craig Taborn, & More

eMusic Editorial Staff — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:37:46 +0000

Phoenix, Bankrupt!: Of this week’s biggest release, Barry Walters argues that Phoenix are still “the epitome of rock-disco dialectic.”

Their new one picks up where 2009′s mainstream breakthrough Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix left off, maintaining that album’s crowd-pleasing formula while accentuating the group’s gentle waywardness. Mostly, there’s pleasure on top of pleasure, sweat mixed with digital mathematics, both equally generous.

Laura Stevenson, Wheel: One of our editors’ favorite records of the year, Laura Stevenson’s Wheel is the New York singer-songwriter’s most focused and self-assured release. Rachael Maddux says:

Rather than make the choice between draping the record in heartstring-plucking orchestral folk or loading it with unstoppered rock ‘n’ roll sass, Stevenson and producer Kevin McMahon (Titus Andronicus, Swans) went with all of the above, and it’s for the best; the songs plot themselves out one by one, each as connected and disconnected from what comes before and what comes next as the endless numbered days they taunt and lament. They bloom unexpectedly, then wither away; they blindside, linger and end before you’re ready.

Craig Taborn Trio, Chants : Craig Taborn, Gerald Cleaver and Thomas Morgan are not your grandfather’s piano trio. Of Taborn and co.’s latest, Britt Robson says:

Craig Taborn set a daunting standard with his two previous outings as a leader: 2004′s Junk Magic is a jazz-electronica masterwork that updated Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew for the 21st century; while 2011′s Avenging Angel has been hailed for expanding the language of solo piano improvisation. Chants doesn’t detract from the luster of that legacy. It scrolls out like a seamless series of surprises, with interplay that is earthy and organic, yet whirring with intimate, nuanced colors, like a pastel kaleidoscope.

Junip, Junip: On Junip’s latest, Jose Gonzalez and co. withdraw further into their comfortable cocoon of airy melancholy and spacey synths. Marc Hogan says:

Throughout, Junip is unassumingly elegant, particularly on bleary-eyed dancefloor pick-me-up “Your Life Your Call,” jagged psych excursion “Villain” and tranquil epiphany “After All Is Said and Done.” Over African-style rhythms, “Baton” finds a way to make even whistling sound subtle. As suggested in the lyrics of patiently propulsive first single “Line of Fire,” sometimes it’s best to beat a graceful retreat. There’s more than one way to deconstruct the mechanisms of consumer culture.

Luke Winslow-King, The Coming Tide: a long-ago eMusic Selects artist maters the art of revival folk on his latest. Hilary Saunders says:

The 29-year-old singer/songwriter, slide guitarist Luke Winslow-King is from Michigan, but he has called The Big Easy home since 2001. On his third full-length, you can hear that the city has made its way into his bones. On The Coming Tide, Winslow-King masters the art of revivalist folk, seamlessly blending New Orleans jazz, Delta blues and ragtime into an album as sweet and satisfying as devouring plate of beignets and sipping a café au lait on the banks of the Mississippi.

Slava, Raw Solutions: The debut from this Moscow-born, Chicago-raised, Brooklyn-based DJ/producer. Andy Battaglia says:

Many of the tracks on Raw Solutions take a snippet of a vocal sample and circle around it until it’s been spied from every conceivable angle. Apart from his love for spin-cycle sampling, Slava showcases a nimble production style that favors house music-derived rhythmic syncopation and infusions of pan-electronic elements like rave sirens (“Heartbroken”) and quasi-jungle “rinse-outs” (“Girls on Dick”). It’s all clenched and economical and tight, and it never lets up.

Lilacs & Champagne, Danish & Blue – Grails members continue their dusky, loop-soul side project with another album of album of pastiche-sampling you can smell the used-record bin on. Nate Patrin writes:

Grails members Alex Hall and Emil Amos struck beat-geek paydirt in 2012 with their self-titled debut as Lilacs & Champagne, a musty, scraped-up soak in sample-based psychedelia that played like the lost score to a 1972 Italo-American giallo set in a desert. To continue that cinematic analogy, Danish & Blue is the soundtrack to the best stoner-rap neo-noir never made. It’s the kind of album where RZA-eerie piano loops pair up with heatstruck AOR guitar riffs and decaying fragments of Gary Wright’s synthesizer, before everything is soaked in whiskey, and set on fire at 4 in the morning.

Amy Dickson, Dusk & Dawn - I know, I know – another classical saxophonist performing Faure. How crowded can one niche get? Jokes, obviously. This is a tastefully and beautifully played selection of light classics that steer well clear of Muzak; Dickson has a wonderfully pure, even tone, and she interprets “I Only Have Eyes For You” as elegantly as she does Faure’s Pavane. An unusual treat.

Bill Ryder-Jones, A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart – The former Coral guitarist continues his solo career with a wonderful collection of sad-eyed, gently warped ballads, in the vein of XO-era Elliott Smith.

Black Milk, Synth or Soul – Black Milk is a phenomenally talented hip-hop producer from Detroit, and this beat tape reaffirms that. I want him to make more music with Danny Brown soon.

No Joy, Wait For Pleasure - No Joy’s second record sends them diving further into Lush/Swervedriver territory, and they turn up with sharper songwriter and bigger hooks this time around.

Frank Turner, Tape Deck Heart – Hmm, a “tape deck heart.” Does that mean…it eats whatever goes into it? Curious. Frank Turner’s punky folk rock is pretty meat-and-potatoes, and it sounds like Frank Turner fans are getting what they want here.

Har Mar Superstar, Bye Bye 17 – The swarthy soul man’s latest is a sort of tribute to Sam Cooke, apparently. Lead singer “Lady You Shot Me” (the last words Sam Cooke is ever said to have spoken), however, has a distinctly ’70s Rod Stewart meets the Daptones vibe. Makes sense, as Rod was initially a white guy trying to sound like Sam Cooke.

Snoop Lion, Reincarnated – Snoop Dogg went to Jamaica for the first time. Snoop Dogg is now Snoop Lion. He has made a reggae album. Careful, folks: visiting Jamaica can be very dangerous. Featuring Drake, Mavado, Mr. Vegas, Akon, and others.

The Thermals, Desperate Ground Demos – Some demo versions of Thermals balled-fists triumphal new one.

Tom Jones, Spirit in the Room – Tom Jones attempts his geezer-stares-down-mortality, Johnny-Cash-on-The-Man-Comes-Around moment, covering Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Odetta, Bob Dylan, and more.

Lana Del Rey, Young and Beautiful – LDR sings another version of her exact same song. This time for the up-and-coming Thing Baz Lurhmann Is About To Do To The Great Gatsby.

New This Week: Flaming Lips, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Iron & Wine & More

eMusic Editorial Staff — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 17:39:10 +0000

A lot of big names this week! Starting with:

The Flaming Lips, The Terror: Darker things lurk in the cheery public persona the Flaming Lips have offered in the last decade. Dan Hyman says of their latest:

While the Oklahoma-based psych rockers have been moving aggressively in a bleaker direction since 2009′s trippy Embryonic, The Terror may well be their most dour and disturbing display to date. It’s a challenging listen, but an undeniably cohesive one, with each track fusing onto the next.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Mosquito: Karen O and co.’s fourth LP is sparse, jagged and impressionistic. Says Ryan Reed:

Mosquito, unlike the band’s first three albums, takes some time to simmer before it eventually clicks. But it does, eventually, click: “Under the Earth” is a clear standout — twitchy electro-pop with bass tones that boom like elephant cries; “Always” is saturated with sensual tension, Karen O’s voice wandering nimbly through ethereal synth mist. But the real breakthrough is “Wedding Song,” which harkens back to the emotional grandeur of early gem “Maps,” referencing the singer’s recent marriage and closing the album with a blissful serenade.

Shuggie Otis, Inspiration Information/Wings of Love: A lengthy collection of dusted-off recordings from a shoulda-been soul superstar. Jim Farber says:

Shuggie Otis enjoyed his widest exposure in 1977 for writing the funky, Top 5 Brothers Johnson hit “Strawberry Letter 23.” Though the indie label Luaka Bop re-released Inspiration Information 12 years ago, Otis couldn’t convince any label to put out the amazing recordings he’d created since. As these dusted-off — and belatedly introduced — recordings prove, Otis’s solo approach to funk utterly rethought the genre. He made it float instead of stomp, abstracting the sound through the kaleidoscope of psychedelia.

Iron & Wine, Ghost on Ghost: Sam Beam’s new LP goes into jazz-fusion, Bee Gees-y territory. Rachael Maddux on why that’s not too terrible of a thing:

Tracing the genealogy of Ghost on Ghost, its plaid polyester vibe even begins to seem a little bit inevitable. Beam’s layering up of anything besides tickled guitar and hushed vocals began two releases in, on 2004′s Our Endless Numbered Days, with some pitter-pat drums; The Shepherd’s Dog, in 2007, introduced a reinforced backbone of percussion, strings and layered vocals not always his own; in 2011 Kiss Each Other Clean brought both noodlier song structures and more distorted instrumentals while aiming not only for radio-friendliness but a certain early ’70s rock/pop pedigree.

Major Lazer, Free The Universe: Without Switch gone, Diplo called on some friends to help make the new Major Lazer record. Bill Brewster says:

On Free The Universe something strange has happened. What seemed like an off-the-wall dancehall collaboration in 2009 has turned into something far poppier, featuring an unlikely line-up of guests including Shaggy, Wyclef, Peaches, Ezra Koening of Vampire Weekend and even Bruno Mars. Yet it still has that oddball edge that follows Diplo’s productions around like a lost puppy.

Ghostface Killah & Adrian Younge, Twelve Reasons to Die: Ghostface teams up with the killer funk-soul revue live band Nate Patrin says:

Though his persona draws from comics, true crime and 42nd Street double features, it can still be pretty easy to see Ghostface Killah as simply a skilled amplification of an actual person. That’s why Twelve Reasons to Die, his collaboration with soundtrack composer and psychedelic-soul maestro Adrian Younge, is such a unique addition to his catalog: It’s an elaborate, conceptual attempt to give the Tony Starks-turned-Ghostface identity a fantastical origin story, set two years before his birth and drenched in a sound that uncannily evokes both Ghost’s fictional and real-life come-up years.

Fall Out Boy, Save Rock and Roll: The pop-punk superstars reunite, but this isn’t back to basics. Says Barry Walters:

It starts out with an orchestral flourish on the galloping and flat-out fantastic “Phoenix,” and on the way to its piano-lead and even more symphonic finale, there’s white-knuckled relentlessness: Buzzsaw guitars blare while the zinger-packed songs — now credited to the entire band — pile on the hooks. A proven master at bridging the pop/rock gap, producer Butch Walker pumps even the most delicate filigree to stadium-sized proportions. Fall Out Boy has always been dramatic, but here they sometimes lapse into desperation, as if what they’re truly intent on saving is their fanbase.

The Thermals, Desperate Ground: The Thermals’ Saddle Creek debut is their most rousing and most animated. Stephen Deusner says:

This is the sound of a band girding for a hard fight: “The sword at my side will allow me to be the last thing my enemies see,” sings frontman Hutch Harris on the punk-triumphal standout “The Sword at My Side.” The Thermals have strategized and streamlined their attack, pummeling through these songs as a three-person rhythm section: Harris playing furious rhythm guitar, Kathy Foster adding dexterous melodies on bass, and drummer Westin Glass pounding away like they’ll face the firing squad if any song exceeds three-and-a-half-minute mark. The Thermals sound reinvigorated, but rather than smite their enemies, they rally to remind themselves why they keep waging their own personal battle of the band.

Steve Earle & The Dukes (& Duchesses), The Low Highway: This set could almost be a retrospective of Steve Earle’s three-decades-and-counting career. Holly George-Warren says:

Earle’s oeuvre encompasses country, folk, rock, bluegrass and protest music, and his superb new album represents all these facets with a loose-limbed assurance. Back in the saddle is Earle’s road band, the Dukes, amended to include “the Duchesses,” featuring vocalist Allison Moorer (a solo artist and Earle’s wife) and violinist/vocalist Eleanor Whitmore (comprising half of recording artists the Mastersons, along with Dukes guitarist Chris Masterson). This family affair also boasts Earle’s co-producer Ray Kennedy, for the first time since 2004′s Grammy-winning The Revolution Starts Now.

Various Artists, Way To Blue – The Songs Of Nick Drake:Way To Blue isn’t your typical tribute album, with a few well-known acts and plenty of new names. Peter Blackstock says:

Exquisite arrangements and recording techniques result in a live album that doesn’t sound like a live album; it doesn’t sound like a tribute album either, since the tracks weren’t gathered from disparate studio sessions. It also differs from typical tributes in that the big names aren’t the primary draw. There are a few well-known acts — Lisa Hannigan takes “Black-Eyed Dog” into uncharted territory with eerie harmonium tones, Robyn Hitchcock is well-suited to the lyrically offbeat “Parasite,” and Teddy Thompson approaches the hypnotic lure of Drake’s voice on “River Man” — but newer names make the most memorable impressions.

Born Ruffians, Birthmarks: Canadian indie rockers sound like a whole new band on their latest LP. Ryan Reed says:

Birthmarks is an effusive U-turn: radiating confidence and chemistry where 2010′s Say It so often sagged. “Needle” opens with a startling statement of purpose: Gleaming choral harmonies give way to a springy bass/kick-drum pulse, as frontman Luke Lalonde wraps his chipper croon over shards of staccato guitar. Instead of relying on clumsy lyrical metaphors, as they often did on Say It (see: the awkward puns of “Sole Brother”), Lalonde’s words now pack an emotional sting.

Ghost B.C., Infestissumam: Too Satanic for commercial radio, Jon Wiederhorn says Ghost B.C.’s Infestissumam is “more illuminating than 100 burning Bibles:

Despite its bleak atmosphere and epic structures, the album is ultimately more classic rock (think Blue Oyster Cult and Jethro Tull) and proggy pop (early Genesis and Marillion) than metal. There’s no question it’s far more accessible than Opus Eponymous, featuring only a few riffs that could really quality as headbanger-worthy. That said, there’s plenty here that’s thoughtful, provocative and heavy, and the way Ghost B.C. combine influences throughout Infestissumam is uncanny.

The Haxan Cloak, Excavation: The Haxan Cloak’s Bobby Krlic dwells on the dark side, but Sharon O’Connell argues that his dark and chilly aesthetic goes deeper. She says:

There are echoes of Burial’s cavernous dub and Demdike Stare’s haunted techno in Excavation, but its magnificently maleficent, post-dubstep soundscapes have more in common with musique concrete, Expressionist cinema soundtracks and medieval monastic cantos than so-called witch house or drone metal. Krlic’s sounds are again rooted in acoustics (cello, violin, guitar, vocals) and field recordings, but this time they’ve been heavily processed — magnified, stretched, dissembled, reconstituted and rearranged — to produce nine micro-symphonies of stark beauty and extraordinary menace.

Houses, A Quiet Darkness - An incredible concept to this one; this concept record tells the story of a husband and wife attempting to reunite in the wake of a nuclear apocalypse. Dream-pop with nothing but bad dreams.

The Aluminum Group, Plano – Low-key lovely, late-80s-to-early-90s indie-pop from Chicago on Minty Fresh. Will remind you of The Clientele, who they predate.

Art Brut, Top of the Pops – Compilation of B-sides, unreleased and best-of by the some of the best stand-up-comedy indie rock that the early ’00s saw.

Barn Owl, V – Pitch-dark doom-dub – enveloping clouds of ambient synths and acres of implied space. A good companion, sonically and spiritually, to that Haxan Cloak record.

Dead Can Dance, In Concert – Live album from the beloved, and recently returned, classical/indie folk outfit.

John Parish, Screenplay – Frequent PJ Harvey collaborator brings together all of his soundtrack work.

Major Lazer, Free The Universe – Features-heavy part from Diplo’s Major Lazer alias, featuring Amber Coffman, Ezra Koenig, Beenie Man, Shaggy, Bruno Mars, Tyga, and many many more.

Elvis Depressedly, Holo Pleasures – Elliott Smith melodies, tin-can synth-pop casios, and dream-pop haze.

Various Artists, The Cumbia Beat Vol. 2 – The always-great Vampisoul returns with another platter of shrewdly sourced cumbia, this time from Peru. Grooves for days here.

Zomes, Time Was – Zoning, meditative drone-rock, based on organ, guitar fuzz, and cooing vocals.

The Shouting Matches, Grownass Man – This is Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver)’s latest side project, and it is straight-ahead blues rock.

A bunch of Daniel Barenboim recordings showed up today from Warner Classics – The world-famous pianist and conductor’s shrewd and expansive takes on a treasure trove of repertoire. Here are a few highlights.

Brahms : Symphony n° 2 / Tragic Overture Op.81

Mozart : Piano Concertos Nos 11, 14 & 15

Brahms : 4 Ballades op.10 & Piano Sonata op.5 in F minor – Elatus

Bach, JS : Goldberg Variations & Beethoven: Diabelli Variations

SINGLES/EPs

Cannibal Ox, Gotham – The legendary New York duo return after untold years with that classic sharp, druggy haze they do so well.

The Blank Tapes, Holy Roller – Strummy, jangling garage-pop single.

Egyptian Hip-Hop, Tobago – Warm, sensual Balearic synth-pop, shades of Cut Copy.

Guided By Voices, Noble Insect – Three-song morsel from the reunited GBV. Title track here sounds pretty good.

Jimmy Eat World, I Will Steal You Back – Emo has been in the slow process of coming back/not coming back for the last three or four years; if it ever does have its moment in the spotlight again, I want these guys to get a little more shine. New single.

New This Week: The Knife, James Blake, Paramore, & More

eMusic Editorial Staff — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 17:17:46 +0000

The Knife, Shaking the Habitual: The Knife’s latest is exhilarating and maybe the freakiest record this year. Kevin O’Donnell says:

What is clear is the Knife’s gift for crafting some of the most forward-thinking electronic music around — Shaking the Habitual is an exhilarating, what-the-fuck-is-going-on-here listen. It’s definitely their freakiest set yet — maybe the freakiest record this year. Cuts like “Full of Fire” and “Raging Lung” are packed with synth earworms and djembe drums and storm-the-floor electronic beats and flutes and recorders and art-damaged acoustic guitars and feedback drones. In a time when pop stars and television personalities offer up every mundane detail of their personal lives for the sake of a retweet, sometimes it’s nice to have an artist who remains shrouded in nothing but mystery.

James Blake, Overgrown: James Blake might sound like blue-eyed soul to some, but if you think he sounds like Jamie Lidell, you should get your ears checked. eMusic’s Andrew Parks says:

James Blake revisits the profoundly weird stomping grounds of his self-titled debut on Overgrown. Free of Feist or Joni Mitchell covers, the only creative voice that’s tortured or tweaked this time around is Blake’s own, whether that means something as live and direct as “DLM” or the patience-rewarding returns of, well, everything else.

Paramore, Paramore: Paramore stray from safe, simple hooks on their super-long self-titled LP. Says Ryan Reed:

“No one’s the same as they used to be,” sings Hayley Williams at the outset of her band’s boldly catchy fourth album, her lightning-rod yelp ricocheting off new-wave synths and tense punk-pop riffage. For Paramore, it’s a prophetic lyric: On this expansive self-titled set, they’ve all but ditched the emo stiffness of their early Warped Tour days, plunging head-first into the slick, arena-friendly stylings of modern pop.

Villagers, {Awayland}: The second LP from Irish troubadour Conor O’Brien, aka Villagers. Dan Hyman says:

Villagers, the musical outlet for troubadour Conor O’Brien, is a folk act at its core. But on 2010′s Becoming a Jackal, O’Brien drew justifiable comparisons to fellow Irishman Glen Hansard and Bright Eyes for his ability to expand outside the genre’s steel-stringed framework. With {Awayland}, O’Brien pushes these experiments further and expands this experimental bent, dabbling in lush orchestration and electronic textures.

Dawes, Stories Don’t End: Dawes embrace their folk-rock strengths on their latest LP. Hillary Saunders says:

Full of irresistible harmonies, clear-ringing guitar solos and astute lyrical self-awareness, Stories Don’t End serves as a graceful evolution from 2009′s debut North Hills and 2011′s Nothing Is Wrong. The album offers a more optimistic, or at least hopeful, tenor that you can hear most clearly in “Someone Will” and “Most People,” as well as the Blake Mills cover “Hey Lover.

Numbers And Letters, Guns Under Water: The debut full-length from Austin’s Numbers And Letters. Stephen Deusner says:

Austin alt-country outfit Numbers And Letters open their full-length debut with a brash declaration: “The fire’s been lit,” sings frontwoman Katie Hasty on “Ghost.” “I hope you still love this house, ’cause I just burned it down.” She’d rather torch the place than share it with ghosts who lurk but don’t pay rent. It’s a memorable introduction to an album littered with memories of doomed loves and populated by lovers pushed to emotional extremes.

The Postal Service, Give Up - The side project that swallowed the career of everyone involved. For something so unassuming and wispy, this record changed a lot of lives, straight up. I do not have much to say about this album that you all don’t already know/feel, but “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” remains one of the greatest songs of the last decade, and will be around for a long while.

Various Artists, Fania Records 1964-1984, The Incendiary Sounds of New York – Tito Puente, Ralfi Pagan, Celia Cruz, and more on this dazzling and true-to-its-name (INCENDIARY!) compilation of NY salsa, as presented by the legendary Fania records. Hear a city boiling.

Jaimeo Brown, Transcendence - A stunning statement from the “drummer/conceptualist” Jaimeo Brown, as Britt Robson calls him. In his rave review, he observes:

Jaimeo Brown’s Transcendence is “essential” music, in the sense that the essence of the black church, the blues, and the emotional gutbucket that marks the best jazz improvisation help distinguish its identity. And yet this is almost the opposite of a “roots” album; Brown, a drummer-conceptualist in his mid-30s, has fostered a species of music that incorporates the scalding blues-rock guitar and hip-hop sonics of Chris Sholar (probably best known for his Grammy-winning work with Kanye and Jay-Z on “No Church In the Wild”); extended samples from the rural Alabama gospel group the Gee’s Bend Quilters from their recordings in 1941 and 2002; the sinuous, Carnatic-styled East Indian vocals of Falu; the resonant, ductile jazz tenor sax of J.D. Allen and piano of Geri Allen; and Brown’s own polyrhythmic, African-bush-to-NYC-club assaults on the drum kit. After a couple of straight-through listens, the entire package soaks into your soul.

Dave Douglas, Time Travel – The celebrated trumpeter brings his new quintet back to the clean-lined basics for his latest offering.

Julieta Venegas, Los Momentos – Airy, off-kilter Spanish-speaking indie/folk pop from the Mexican singer-songwriter Julieta Venegas.

Joey Bada$$, “Unorthodox” – Talented, throwback-NY rapper, not yet twenty years old, links up with DJ Premier.

Vondelpark, “California Analog Dream” – Lovely, smooth, Arthur Russell-influenced watery dance-pop.

Sinkane, “Warm Spell” – Jittery, light-stepping rock/pop single given a number of bouncy, buzzy remixes.

The Juan MacLean, “You Are My Destiny” – Fluidly propulsive new one from DFA faves The Juan MacLean.

Kid CuDi, “Girls” – New single from Kid CuDi.

Kids on A Crime Spree, “Creep The Creeps” – This song sounds great; The Cure in a tin can, just wonderful pop songwriting.

New This Week: Charles Bradley, Rilo Kiley, The Besnard Lakes & More

eMusic Editorial Staff — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 17:12:34 +0000

Charles Bradley, Victim of Love: Charles Bradley, who’s taking over eMusic this week, recaptures and transcends the southern soul grooves of his last record. Barry Walters says:

Charles Bradley is not the kind of guy to sing of love in fantastical terms; he’s much too real for that. Bearing a voice streaked with the ravages of inner torment, this nomadic 64-year-old soul shouter — now based in a Brooklyn very different to the one in which he grew up — instead captures the pains and pleasures of love in sobering but unrestrained tones: He screams, shouts, pleads and moans of desire and disappointment so extreme that words alone cannot suffice. Not merely singing, he testifies of love and social injustice: This former James Brown impersonator does not hold back.

Bleached, Ride Your Heart: Sisters Jennifer and Jessie Clavin left their old band Mika Miko behind, but now they’re back as Bleached. Alex Naidus says:

Bleached’s motto might be “Sisters just wanna have fun.” The L.A. four-piece orbits around Jennifer and Jessie Clavin, the two primary songwriters and sisters who specialize in exuberant garage-punk. After the dissolution of the Clavins’ previous band — the locally-beloved, yelpier Mika Miko — the pair took joyous refuge in writing sweet, revved-up three-chord songs together. Ride Your Heart comes down a bit from the wide-eyed, sugar rush-ed bubblegum punk of early singles, mixing in some slower tempos and minor-key melodies, but Bleached’s primary m.o. is still the simple, sunshine-y, chunky-chorded Ramones-esque jam.

Rilo Kiley, rkives: An odds-and-ends comp from Jenny Lewis & co. Says Patrick Rapa:

Mostly unreleased or barely released, these tracks span the band’s career to create a lovely and peculiar listening experience. The antsy, lo-fi demo of the Sennett-sung “Rest of My Life” from 2001′s Take Offs and Landings can’t be from the same planet as this clubby remix of the Lewis-sung “Dejalo” from 2007′s Under the Blacklight — and, hey, Too $hort just popped up for a verse about tapping asses, just in case you weren’t confused.

Milk Music, Cruise Your Illusion: The first proper LP from Olympia, Washington’s Milk Music. eMusic’s Ilya Zinger says:

On Cruise Your Illusion, the first proper full-length from Olympia, Washington’s Milk Music, the quartet wedges itself somewhere within the SST Records-Neil Young-Wipers universe, pitting sweat-stained, heavy hardcore punk against indelible melodies and endless sincerity. Since their early output, a 2009 demo cassette and a 12-inch in 2010, the band has turned their DIY determination into full-fledged ambition, and the songs on Cruise are as honest and spiritual as they are messy and loud.

Mudhoney, Vanishing Point: David Raposa argues that being eligible for AARP hasn’t done much to make Mudhoney soft. He says:

The so-over-it cynicism and exhaustion that’s been the group’s m.o. all these years is a much better look on them as distinguished gentlemen. Granted, it’s hard to imagine a younger Mark Arm taking the time to write a song about white wine. But the 96-second scorched-earth screed that is “Chardonnay” shows that no subject is safe from Mudhoney’s indomitable anger and ennui. There’s no rose-colored nostalgia trip happening here, though: As Mudhoney enters their 25th year, still wrestling with whatever crawled up their backside and died way back then, they’re arguably at the height of their powers.

The Besnard Lakes, Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO: On their third LP, The Besnard Lakes perfect their blend of dreamy indie rock. Arye Dworken says:

On their fourth album, Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO, they hit a new, blissful peak. Frontman Jace Lasek, bassist (and Lasek’s wife) Olga Goreas, along with drummer Kevin Laing and guitarist Richard White, once again ply their elongated, swooning harmonies, like The Beach Boys at half-speed, over majestic, glacially moving rock suites.

Tyler, The Creator, Wolf: The face of Odd Future takes a page from Eminem on his third LP. Says Nick Murray:

In the past, Tyler, the Creator has made it clear that his favorite album by Eminem, the man he once referred to as his atheist God, is Relapse, the dark, dense comeback record that preceded the chart-topping Recovery. Wolf, the producer/rapper/clothing designer/cockroach-munching troublemaker’s third full-length, inherits the Shady influence that marked its predecessors, but it also looks back past Relapse to earlier entries in the older rapper’s discography, The Marshall Mathers LP in particular.

A Hawk & A Hacksaw, You Have Already Gone To The Other World: A Hawk & A Hacksaw’s sixth release is loosely based on a score written to accompany Sergei Parajanov’s 1965 documentary film Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors, and Luke Turner says it’s their finest work yet:

Over the past decade, the New Mexican duo of Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost, aka A Hawk & A Hacksaw, have taken a fascinating journey through the music of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Turkey and beyond. They also have a long-standing connection with cinema: Their first release was the soundtrack to a documentary about Slovenian thinker Slavoj Žižek. This album, their sixth, is loosely based on a score written to accompany Sergei Parajanov’s 1965 documentary film Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors, about the Slavic Hutsul people in the Carpathian mountains that run through Central and Easter Europe. Clearly, there’s magic in those hills, and it’s richly mined here, as the pair put some fierce twists on the music of the Ukraine, Hungary and Romania.

Generationals, Heza: Jangly indie-rockers expand their sonic palette with their third LP. Ryan Reed says:

The New Orleans duo have completely expanded their sonic palette, branching into some fascinating new directions: “Say When,” with its tongue-tied percussion and sputtering sequenced synths, sounds like New Order on a beach vacation; “Put a Light On” is adult-contemporary funk, bolstered by electronic loops and digital handclaps; “Kemal” is the biggest head-scratcher (and maybe their best song ever) — a barrage of stabbing reggae guitar, sweaty hand drums, and twinkling glockenspiel.

Cold War Kids, Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: Cold War Kids make a bold move that puts emphasis on frontman Nathan Willett’s blaring, soulful voice. Ryan Reed says:

Lead single “Miracle Mile” is the most hard-hitting track they’ve ever penned, Willett warbling over a surge of bar-room piano and Matt Aveiro’s primal pound. It’s the sole moment of familiarity on an album of colorful new twists: The creeping “Lost that Easy” buzzes with electronic hi-hats and new-wave synth-bass; “Bottled Affection” marries hip-hop programming to drizzled guitar noise and a monster chorus falsetto; the closing “Bitter Poem” is a slow-building ballad, laced with melancholy keys and grizzled sax.

Merchandise, Totale Night – The incendiary Tampa trio Merchandise continue to push outward on their sound. Here, they deliver five sprawling, anthemic, passionate rockers over thirty-four epic minutes. Watch these guys: They are building towards a Statement, and if they’re not yet all the way “there,” they’ve hit upon something.

The Black Angels, Indigo Meadow – Blown smoke rings of psych-rock revival from The Black Angels’ latest. Killer guitar tones on this.

Burger Records! Burger Records! Burger Records! – One of our favorite labels. Just go and play here for awhile! Burger Records is one of the best purveyors of lo-fi home-taped indie-rock and indie-pop around these days. Just clicking around on random titles will give you joy, I promise; I just bopped in my seat to Garbo’s Daughter’s recorded-in-a-trash-can surf-pop ditties, the warped campfire-rock of Burnt Ones, and the thrillingly cruddy home-piercing punk of The Cosmonauts. You can also find CLASSIC jangle-pop from groups like Cleaners From Venus. Trust us on this one, guys; there is something for you here!

The Gates of Slumber, The Wretch – Balefully lumbering down-tuned stoner metal, heavy on riffs. Satisfying.

Martin Hall, Phasewide Exit Signs – The Danish singer/songwriter/composer/multi-instrumentalist/author’s latest batch of heady, forbiddingly beautiful art songs, on his own Panoptikon label. RIYL: Solo Nico, Scott Walker.

Fairport Convention, Live in 87 – As the title says, a live set from the legendary folk-rockers.

Gun Outfit, Hard Coming Down – This band has been around for awhile, wallowing sexily around in bad vibes and barely-tuned guitars. This is their strongest-sounding release yet, their dual male/female vocals and dirty guitars hitting a new groove.

Mad Season, Above (Deluxe Edition) – The one-album side project featuring members of Pearl Jam (Mike McCready), Screaming Trees (Barrett Martin), and, of course, Layne Staley of Alice in Chains. These guys weren’t exactly the highest artistic peak of grunge, but this is still an interesting moment in music history, and this is a definitive reissue of their project.

Anne Sofie Van Otter/Thomas Quasthoff, Schubert: Lieder With Orchestra - Schuber lieder, sung with mellow late-afternoon-sun glory by Van Otter Quasthoff, two of the greatest lieder singers on the planet, backed by the Berlin Philharmonic. A-list stuff.

Olafur Arnalds, For Now I Am Winter – Lovely, subdued neoclassical miniatures.

Various Artists, The Music is You: A Tribute to John Denver – An indie-world tribute to good old John Denver, whose music could use to be rescued from its thick layer of accumulated cultural cheese. Here, J Mascis, Lucinda Williams, Josh Ritter, Edward Sharpe, and others pitch in with covers of their favorites.

The Baptist Generals, “Dog That Bit You” – Ornery Crazy Horse homage going on here, right down to pinched, hollering Neil Young-style vocal.

Guided By Voices, “Xeno Pariah” – New single from band that just won’t stop releasing music. It sounds like classic GBV, which you know by now is something you want in your life or not.

50 Cent, “We Up” - New track from 50 Cent, featuring Kendrick Lamar.

What is an eMusic Takeover?

eMusic Editorial Staff — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:10:47 +0000

All this week, we’ve invited Charles Bradley and his co-writer and co-producer Tom Brenneck (also of the Menahan Street Band) to “Take Over eMusic.” The “eMusic Takeover” is a special honor we extend to artists we feel are true visionaries — forward-thinking, aggressively committed to their art, and unwavering from expressing their unique point of view in song. All it takes is even a cursory listen to Bradley’s second record, the slow-smoldering Victim of Love, to realize that he meets all of these criteria and then some. We are honored to have him as our honorary editor-in-chief for the week.

Any artist we ask to take over eMusic gets control over our editorial for that week: They assign interviews with artists they like and they handpick albums to run as Reviews of the Day that week. Past eMusic Takeovers have been conducted by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Jens Lekman, Edwyn Collins, John Lydon and Bjork. We are thrilled to add Charles Bradley to that esteemed list.

We’re always on the lookout for artists to add to this roster. So we turn the question to you: Which artist would you most like to see take over eMusic in the future?

New This Week: Justin Timberlake, Phosphorescent & More

eMusic Editorial Staff — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 18:31:56 +0000

Excellent week for great new indie records, starting with:

Phosphorescent, Muchacho – One of the greatest records of the year. Jayson Greene interviewed Matthew Houck for us, and Ashley Melzer wrote the review:

Two takes on the sun’s ascent bookend Muchacho with yogic serenity. They’re a primer to the fuzzy emotional place where Houck finds himself. His trademark warble starts out shrouded in soft electronic beats and yearning violins (“Song for Zula”). Then he plays to old strengths, letting lonesome lap steel cozy up to the piano and make room for a swells of horns (“Terror in the Canyons (The Wounded Master)”). There’s a hint of that old spiritual hunger, “so holy and wasted like a prayer in the wind” (“A New Anhedonia”). But even when our ragged guide is facing up to mistakes, the music meets him with tenderness (“Down to Go”).

Low, The Invisible Way – The beloved, long-running trio’s latest is “their most sanguine in over a decade,” according to Sam Adams:

The measured tempos and fragile harmonies of the Duluth, Minnesota, trio Low — core couple Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker plus bassist Steve Garrington, who joined in 2008 — have often concealed turmoil beneath their placid surface. But their 10th album, The Invisible Way, is their most sanguine in more than a decade, less tempestuous than 2005′s The Great Destroyer and resolving the marital tensions of 2011′s C’mon. Decamping from their own recording studio for producer Jeff Tweedy’s digs, they’ve made an album that feels more suited to the inside of a church than those they’ve actually recorded in one.

Marnie Stern, The Chronicles of Marnia – The unconventionally brilliant/brilliantly unconventional indie-rock guitar virtuoso crafts the statement of her career. Our own J. Edward Keyes writes:

The first song on the fourth record from Marnie Stern is called “Year of the Glad” — a nod to Infinite Jest as well as a declaration of its theme — and crests with Stern yelling, “Everything’s starting now.” For a second it feels likeThe Chronicles of Marnia is going to be an album about rejuvenation — about letting go of the things that trouble you and kicking open the door of the dark house to let the sunshine pour in. And then the next song starts, and before long Stern is shouting, “The fear creeping in, and I am losing hope in my body.” So it goes throughout Chronicles, a breathtaking spiral of sound that fizzes and pops like a pinwheel of fireworks. It’s not only Stern’s best record, but one of the best of the year to date.

Justin Timberlake, The 20/20 Experience - Pop’s reigning do-no-wrong boy wonder returns from his long hiatus. Barry Walters writes:

“He’s so talented he can do anything!” That’s the gist of what’s typically said about Justin Timberlake, and for the most part it’s absolutely true. He’s an exceptionally nimble and unfettered singer/dancer, an extraordinary mimic with a drummer’s sense of timing. These gifts have helped him tremendously in comedy as well as drama, and despite the increasing maturity of his music and acting pursuits, he hasn’t let go of his ample boyish charm: This ex-Mouseketeer, ex-’N Sync-er still radiates mischievous yet all-American fun … These are the stats that have empowered Timberlake to make a supremely — and, at times, foolishly — confident 20/20 Experience.

Anais Mitchell, Child Ballads – “One of today’s most creative and authentic rising songwriters,” as our own Laura Leebove calls her, returns with a collaboration with Jefferson Hamer to “interpret and modernize seven of the 305 English and Scottish ballads collected by Francis James Child in the late 1800s.” Leebove writes:

Their collection is short, sweet and intimate, with little more than acoustic guitars and vocals telling the tales of an ill-fated sailor, a quick-witted sister, and disapproving parents. (If you thought your in-laws were trouble, listen to “Willie of Winsbury” and “Willie’s Lady,” where you’ll meet a king who orders her daughter’s lover to be hanged, and a witch mother who casts a spell on her son’s pregnant wife.) Mitchell and Hamer have recorded accessible, American-folk renditions of these centuries-old songs, a fitting addition to the countless modern artists — among them Joan Baez, Nickel Creek, even Fleet Foxes — who have who have passed them on throughout the years.

Suede, Bloodsports: There is no way I’m ever calling this band “The London” Suede, so you can all go straight to hell right now. Suede are back! This one is more triumphant-sounding than they’ve been in the past — huge choruses and Brett Anderson’s fantastic, keening voice. I saw this band in the UK on one of their 2010 reunion shows and they were spectacular.

Conquering Animal Sound, On Floating Bodies: ALRIGHT!! Man, do I love this band. Their last record, Kammerspiel, was one of my favorite surprises. I didn’t even know a new record was on the way but, man, am I glad it’s here. This one sounds a little nastier than the last one — the vocals a bit sharper and tougher, the electronic production a bit more stammering and stuttery and arty — fewer soft curves, more sharp angles. I am excited to spend more time with this.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Specter at the Feast: Former merchants of gloom return with a record of crisp, bright rock music. Most notable is their cover of The Call’s bright-eyed “Let the Day Begin”; Robert Levon Been is the son of Call frontman Michael Been, who passed away two years ago at a BRMC show.

Alice Smith, She: A pretty radical reinvention for Alice Smith. The onetime smoky, jazzy R&B singer gets glossier and poppier without sacrificing any of her trademark warmth and emotion. The result is a confident soul record with gilded edges.

Simone Dinnerstein & Tift Merritt, Night – The singer/songwriter and beloved classical pianist come together on record for an unlikely but fruitful collaboration. Peter Margasak writes:

Self-taught Americana singer-songwriter Tift Merritt and Julliard-trained classical pianist Simone Dinnerstein would hardly seem likely collaborators, but the rapport and cross-hatching of styles they achieve on Night sure makes it seem like they were destined to work together. The album’s stark beauty and seamless flow owes part of its success to the decision of Merritt and Dinnerstein to keep the work modest in scale and free of conceptual baggage. There’s a feel to the collection that harkens back to the sheet music era, when folks entertained themselves in their parlor room and playing songs rather than listening to records or the radio. Together they make transitions between some of Merritt’s most translucent balladry: Billie Holiday’s “Don’t Explain,” Bach’s “Prelude in B minor” and Johnny Nash’s indelible “I Can See Clearly Now” seem not only effortless, but also logical.

KEN Mode, Entrench – Brutal, sharp and zero-fat hardcore/noise rock from long-running Canadian trio. Jon Wiederhorn writes:

Over the past decade, Winnipeg, Canada’s KEN Mode — who took their name from Henry Rollins’s acronym for Kill Everyone Now (as detailed in his book Get in the Van) — have evolved from a bracing hardcore metal band into something more experimental and complex. The band’s fifth album, Entrench, is their most inventive yet, matching raw musical gristle and asymmetrical acrobatics with unexpected sonic flourishes, from the scribbling violins of the opening cut “Counter Culture Complex” to the undistorted arpeggios and pensive piano of the closer “Monomyth.”

Call of the Void, Dragged Down a Dead End Path: New, nasty, grindy stuff on Relapse. This Colorado group is adept at all the things that make grind great — the larynx-wrecking vocals, the avalanche of percussion, the oil-drill riffs. Perfect loud music for warm weather.

Dur-Dur Band, Vol. 5: Another home run from Awesome Tapes from Africa. This one is from Somalia’s Dur-Dur band, who land somewhere between highlife and what we’ve all come to (incorrectly!) term Afrobeat. There are popcorn rhythms and tangled-up guitars and beaming, jubilant vocals, and the whole damn thing is RECOMMENDED

And So I Watch You From Afar, All Hail Bright Futures: Irish art rock band return with another knotty, tumultuous effort. Complicated song structures, full-body rythms and plenty of prog-like lurch for those who like their music dense and tricky.

Batillus, Concrete Sustain – Doom metal with a groove. Jon Wiederhorn says:

The 2011 debut full-length from New York’s Batillus, Furnace was crushing, oppressive, bleak and morose, one of the top dark horse doom metal albums of the year. Not content to remain within those parameters, the band has undergone a facelift for its new album Concrete Sustain. In addition to an abundance of trudging, mid-paced riffs played on densely distorted guitar and bass, Batillus have built a framework of counterpoint rhythms that provide tension and contrast: Grinding, whirring industrial samples abound, as do textural washes of feedback that border on the post-rock nihilism of Neurosis.

Thalia Zedek Band, Via – Zedek returns with another one of her signature knotty, pleasing, and distinctive solo records.

Colleen Green, Sock it To Me: I’m a pretty big Colleen Green fan, I have to admit. Her latest doesn’t stray too far from all of the things she does best: the Casio still sounds like it was nicked from a garage sale, the guitars are tinny and fizzy and her voice is soulful and searching. Her knack for sugary hooks is what pulls the whole project together — if you are charmed by rickety indiepop as much as I am, this one’s for you.

Inter Arma, Sky Burial: Thick, murky, ashen and doomy, this is the sound of the walls closing in and hell coming to claim its sons. It’s got plenty of long, hammering passages, but also incredible moments of beauty — acoustic guitars and moody synths — making for a fascinating record that grips from beginning to end.

Tomasz Stanko, Wislawa – Excellent new record from Polish jazz eminence. Peter Margasak writes:

The veteran Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko has long been a reliable and rewarding source for jazz of smoldering intensity. He’s a deeply lyrical, probing player whose investment in free jazz is real, but he’s consistently couched his most “out” explorations in a brooding elegance. Over the last decade or so he’s made a series of gorgeously meditative and quietly scalding albums for ECM with rhythm sections half his age. While he continues to keep a residence in Warsaw, for the last five years he’s also kept an apartment in New York, fostering relationships with younger American players. The magnificent double album Wislawa is the first fruit of those new collaborations.