Iggy & the Stooges, Ready to Die: The first Iggy & the Stooges release in 40 (!) years is as defiant as ever. (Read our interview here, and see guitarist James Williamson’s album picks here.) Holly George-Warren says:

Few albums are so misleadingly titled as Ready to Die. The first release in 40 years under the “Iggy & the Stooges” banner sounds nothing like resignation; its taut 10 songs — clocking in at an old-school 34 minutes — constitute a genuine rebirth of a sneering, vital band, defiant as ever. Iggy Pop’s voice retains its feral power on searing opener “Burn” and lower-middle class anthem “Job,” while his deep croon conveys poignancy on the woebegone closer “The Departed.”

!!!, Thr!!!ler: Dance-punk pioneers return with another batch of jittery floor-fillers. Andrew Parks says:

Considering all the factors working against !!! over the past 15 years — major lineup changes, members who live on opposite coasts, the questionable expiration date of “dance punk” — you’d think they’d be a part-time prospect by now. But no, here they are, delivering a filler-free album that feels like a carefully-curated DJ set, including the disco inferno diatribes of “Get That Rhythm Right,” the convulsive funk of “Station (Meet Me At the)” and the peak house-party hooks of “Slyd.”

Akron/Family, Sub Verses: Akron/Family’s latest finds them working with an adventurous set of influences. Ashley Melzer says:

The tracks skid from one time signature or influence to another, but feel of a whole — like some take on American roots by way of a post-industrial Africa invaded by Eastern shamans. On paper, it sounds haphazard, incomplete. But Akron/Family build these disparate parts into something explosive or holy or both, time and again on Sub Verses. There’s no mythic volcano to stamp the narrative; there’s only a radical harmony, divergent strands threading together.

Daughter, If You Leave: The lovely full-length Recommended debut from this London indiepop trio. Annie Zaleski says:

Daughter’s full-length debut, If You Leave uses chilly atmospheric effects, lyrics haunted by romantic angst and rebirth, and Elena Tonra’s low-lit voice, which is as hazy and tortured as Chan Marshall sounded on early Cat Power records. The results are often hushed and delicate; “Smother” is lovely slow-core, both “Amsterdam” and “Winter” resemble Bat for Lashes, and the relatively upbeat “Human” echoes the whimsy of Sigur Ros’s folkier moments.

Colin Stetson, New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light: Indie rock’s favorite sax man releases the Highly Recommended third installment of his New History Warfare series. Andy Battaglia says:

Colin Stetson’s most formidable and impressive on his own, with just a metal horn and a pair of heaving lungs to help push air through its twisty, peculiar channels. Stetson’s expansive style finds fine form in “Hunted,” an unusual instrumental track that matches ghostly, wordless cries to a sax treatise in which Stetson taps on keys percussively while blowing out sounds as if summoning some strange prehistoric beast. He’s credited for playing alto, tenor and bass saxophones (the latter a burly monster of an instrument), but the presence of each, in all cases, conforms to the whole of his unique sound-world.

Adventure, Weird Work: Some bright, whirring synth-based music on the always-excellent Carpark records. Adventure mainman Benny Boeldt displays an affinity with the kind of gentle, blinking music that used to score early ’80s video games. The music here feels alluringly retro-futurist, blinking blue bands of synth fit to score some interplanetary horror movie. Recommended

Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Brooklyn Babylon: The Highly Recommended latest from “steampunk-jazz” composer-bandleader Darcy James Argue. Seth Colter-Walls says:

Some of the pieces feature wooden flutes, others Afro-Peruvian percussion. Ingrid Jensen’s electric trumpet solo in “Building” calls to mind Miles’s best fusion bands. That all these sounds work together so elegantly is evidence of expert execution, not just singular vision; the entire program flows in a way that many modern-classical composers ought to envy. Argue’s curiosity and skill at integrating all his fascinations represent the humanism of the narrative capably on its own. Both florid with moment-to-moment intrigue and a fine document of an artist with a lot to say (and the ambition to match), Brooklyn Babylon is essential listening for all sorts of musical communities.

Howl, Bloodlines: The sophomore release from Howl is a little less bleak, but still as ugly as ever. Says Jon Wiederhorn:

Howl can still stomp and drone, but they’ve added new tricks to their arsenal, including southern power-groove riffs, twin-guitar harmonies and unexpected shifts in rhythm; the tempos range from mid-paced (“Embrace Your Nerve”) to double-time (“Your Hell Begins”). Clearly, Howl worked exhaustively to overhaul their sound (captured expertly by producer Zeuss and they’ve done so without sounding like a completely different band than the one that recorded Full of Hell.

Brooklyn Rider, A Walking Fire: Rightly-lauded Brooklyn string quartet returns with vibrant, lively takes on Eastern European music (their version of Bartok’s Strink Quartet No. 2 is the centerpiece) and moody avant-gardism. This is the rare album that is both adventurous and playful: the group balances forays into the outer edges of classical music with jubilant gypsy waltzes. Recommended

Coliseum, Sister Faith: Since their last album, Coliseum have evolved from a storming, metallic hardcore powerhouse to a more musically refined post-punk band. Says Jon Wiederhorn:

As much as the music seems driven by the members’ collective record collections, Ryan Patterson’s lyrics seem to stem from an inability and unwillingness to fit into the mainstream and the toll it has taken. “All my life, failure, All I see, failure/ All my dreams, failure,” he barks in “Last/Lost” before concluding, “See clearly from failure, live freely from failure.” And on “Fuzzbang,” he rails, “Gotta get away, wish we could close our eyes and dream it all away.” Patterson’s resigned discontent shines through Coliseum’s tunes, which steamroll without obliterating and cut without leaving scars regardless of tempo or intensity.

Charlie Poole, the Complete Paramount & Brunswick Recordings, 1929: The title lays it out in plain english: these are the sides banjo player Poole recorded for the Paramount and Brunswick labels in 1929. That relatively straightforward title, though, betrays the loose-limbed joy lurking in these tracks. There’s gamboling piano, swinging violin and Poole’s pinched-but-earnest vocalizing, making this a sunny and essential slice of American music. Recommended

Denison Witmer, Denison Witmer: Personal bias: Denison is an old friend of mine, but even if he wasn’t I’d still describe the tender, melancholy music on this album as ‘hard to resist.’ Fans of Mark Kozelek and early Iron & Wine will find lots to love here. Witmer’s voice is gentle and feathery, and the music leaves plenty of space for it to drift down slowly between the bars. The perfect music for a warm spring night.

Mark Kozelek & Jimmy Lavalle, Perils from the Sea: Speaking of Mark Kozelek. On this collaboration with Jimmy Lavelle from the Album Leaf, MK roams way beyond his comfort zone, laying his cracked tenor over blipping electronics. Here’s the thing: it works pretty well! It’s nice to hear Kozelek try something new, and Lavalle’s productions are simple enough that they complement, rather than distract.

R.A. the Rugged Man, Legends Never Die: Do yourself a favor sometime and Google R.A. old stories about R.A. the Rugged Man. He’s been notorious for years now, but all of his late ’90s antics distract from the fact that he’s still a really good rapper, with a distinctive voice and a nimble flow. Despite its somewhat pro forma title, Legends is a slab of solid throwback hip-hop that lets R.A. go barrel-chested over great, dusty production.

Altar of Plagues, Teethed Glory and Injury: Anyone who knows anything about heavy music knows that Profound Lore has become the go-to destination for boundary-pushing metal. The latest from Ireland’s Altar of Plagues is just further proof. Existing at the intersection of black metal and the harsher strains of electronic music, Teethed Glory is a roiling, riveting listen. Recommended

Human Eye, Into Unknown: Some pretty terrific, scuzzed-out UFO-rock from Tim Vulgar, also of Timmy’s Organism. Human Eye are more direct than that project (though just barely), and are still dripping with gunk and smeared with Vulgar’s beery vocals. God bless ‘em forever.

Amorphis, Circle: Grand, sweeping 11th record from this Finnish metal band is broader and more epic in scope than Altar of Plagues. Like all Amorphis records, this one is based around a central narrative — this one about an outsider who taps into his deep spiritual core. The music is appropriately theatrical.

Arsis, Unwelcome: And for those who like their metal a little more straightforward, the new record from technical death metallers Arsis. This one is the full grisly: heart attack drumming, corkscrewing guitars and ragged-larynx vocals.

The Heliocentrics, 13 Degrees of Reality: Playing out like a lost jazz soundtrack to some mid ’70s NY-centric crime film, 13 Degrees of Reality is loaded with tense, queasy greatness. Strings bow, drums stumble and stomp and the bass thumps and rattles like an elevated train. Recommended

Hanni El Khatib, Head in the Dirt: On his second LP, Hanni El Khatib grows as a songwriter, with an ass-kicking band behind him. Bill Murphy says:

Head in the Dirt is loaded with raw, scuzzy, no-nonsense blues-rock, its lyrics telling of misfit isolation, relationship angst and hardscrabble street life. Plenty has already been said about the garage revival spearheaded by the likes of Ty Segall, JEFF the Brotherhood and Mikal Cronin, but what sets El Khatib apart is his fascination with the rootsier end of rock ‘n’ roll — think Bo Diddley and Ballin’ Jack.

David Lang, Death Speaks: The latest from David Lang, with an impressive list of indie-rock pals: My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden, Owen Pallett, The National’s Bryce Dessner, and Nico Muhly. John Schaefer says:

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.

Various Artists, Rough Guide to African Disco: This is as great as you suspect it is. Leaping, jumping rhythms and disco wah-wah get cross-wired with highlife and juju and Afrobeat for irresistible results. Your summer dance party starts here. Recommended

The Melvins, Everybody Loves Sausages: A covers album with cuts from Throbbing Gristle, John Waters, The Jam and more. David Raposa says:

The group (joined by a handful of friends, including Neurosis’s Scott Kelly, Foetus’s JG Thirwell and Mudhoney’s Mark Arm) tears through obscurities from nearly forgotten California punk groups like Pop-O-Pies and Tales of Terror with the same eagerness and fervor that’s bestowed upon faithful renditions of Venom’s “Warhead” and David Bowie’s “Station To Station.” That said, it’s when The Kinks’ fuddy-duddy late-era track “Attitude” is turned into a great Buzzcocks outtake, or The Fugs’ “Carpe Diem” becomes a long-lost Nuggets track, that the adventurous spirit of Everybody Loves Sausages, and The Melvins’ sincere love of music of all kinds, really shines through.

Arrington De Dionyso’s Malaikat Dan Slnga, Open the Crown: Man, I used to love Old Time Relijun. They haven’t been a going concern for a while now, but frontman Arrington De Dionyso has been carrying on their tradition of scuzzy, avant post-punk. This one sounds like another winner, De Dionyso’s demonic preacher delivery yipping and wailing against rusty bars of guitar and what sounds like broke-down dancehall on the second track.

The Backhomes, Only Friend: Nice, light, springtimey indie pop from this Canadian group, this one moves from slow, sparkly, moody numbers like the hazy “Going Home” to the shoegaze groan of “Stay.” Vocals plunged in echo and gently bobbing melodies make this one a sure winner for fans of late period Yo La Tengo or newer bands like Real Estate and Ducktails.

The Body, Master, We Perish: I am pretty into these weird dudes. Maybe you will be, too. A loose definition of The Body would have to include the word “extreme,” but not “extreme” as in speed and distortion and riffery — “extreme” as in mood and tone. This two-man group excels at creating moments of sheer unholy terror — shrieking guitars, panicked vocals, wails, feedback, sludge and apocalyptic droning. Those who like a good scare should look up their video for “The Ebb and Flow of Tides in a Sea of Ash,” which may or may not contain actual footage of a cult mass suicide.

That, in part, is one of the most bewitching things about Wheel, Stevenson’s third record and first credited solely to her as opposed to “Laura Stevenson & the Cans.” Musically, it’s big and brash and joyous — Crazy Horse by way of the Blackhearts — but tune in to Stevenson’s lyrics and you’ll find California being decimated by an earthquake and fragile, trembling children begging for their mother to notice them. That Stevenson should reach such stunning musical maturation so quickly is, in part, hereditary: Her grandfather, Harry Simeone, was a musical arranger most famous for co-writing the Christmas standard “The Little Drummer Boy” and her grandmother, Margaret McCrae (née McCravy), sang with Benny Goodman’s orchestra. Stevenson’s own music eschews the lush for the ragged — they’re scrappy songs that claw their way forward, bleeding, bruised and determined.

eMusic’s Editor-in-Chief J. Edward Keyes met up with Stevenson at the Grey Dog Café to talk about suicide, nihilism and how America faked the moon landing.

I wanted to start by talking about your grandfather, actually. How did you start to become aware of the fact that he was, you know, kind of a big deal?

My chorus teachers started getting excited about me being in their classes — he was a really important choral arranger. They would ask me questions about him and I would be like, “How do they know about my grandpa?” And then I’d start to see his name on TV — like, when you see the commercials for the compilation CDs of Christmas music — and there would be a blurb about the song with his name on the bottom of the screen.

Did he offer any guidance to you as you were getting started in music?

No, he was scary.

Scary?

He was very stern, a very serious guy. So I was really intimidated by him, basically. He would tell me I was banging on the piano when I would play him something. He’d say, “Stop banging, stop banging.” And I thought I was playing gently. So now I play, like, overly gently because I’m afraid I’m banging. But he did help me a few times. When I was really little, I wrote this song for a nationwide contest, and he helped me notate it.

What was the contest?

It was a contest at the end of the year every year in school — there would be a theme, and it was multimedia, so you could write something or you could draw something, whatever. So I wrote a song called “Dare to Discover,” which was the theme that year. I remember the first part, which was about Christopher Columbus: ‘When Columbus sailed the ocean blue/ he found a great new land for me and you/ he daaaared to discover/ a land for you and me.’ And then the chorus is, “Yes he did,” over and over and over again [laughs]. I was like, six.

You were six? How did you put this together?

Well, I played piano…

Even still, though! I played piano when I was six but —

I don’t know! [Laughs.] I would write little melodies, and I sang in my room. But that was the first time it was written down. I mean, I grew up around music. My parents were divorced, and I’d stay at my dad’s on the weekends, and every morning he’d put records on, and I’d wake up to music. He listened to a lot of Grateful Dead and took me to a lot of Grateful Dead shows — a lot of Grateful Dead shows. He took me to Phish shows. And I was little! I would have wax earplugs in my ears so I couldn’t pull them out. I was really little —

Like four or five?

Littler! My mom was pissed. I mean, people were doing drugs around me. I remember there would be the “spinners” at Dead shows — those people that dance — and [shrugs innocently] I guess they were all on acid! I had no idea, I just thought they were awesome.

One of my earliest memories is of sitting in a big circle with a bunch of free-spirited 24-year-olds and they were passing around a big jar of water and everybody was drinking out of the same jar, and they were just treating me like I was an adult. They were like, “Here, man,” and I was like “Thanks! OK!” And I was just drinking, catching all the germs of all these weird people. It felt really cool, it felt really communal.

But eventually you started moving away from that music almost in the exact opposite direction, toward punk rock.

Yeah. I didn’t have MTV, so I was pretty isolated. I found out about Nirvana through this kid I was in the gifted program with when I was in fifth grade. There was this one cool kid, and he was like, “Yeah, maaan, fuckin’ Nirvana.” And I was like, “Cool! What’s that?” So I went to this store called Prime Cuts which was down the street from my house and I used my own money and I bought In Utero, because I’d heard “Heart Shaped Box” on the radio. I listened to it non-stop. And then I heard Green Day’s “When I Come Around,” and I was like “OK. More guitars that sound like this. Cool.” And I got into Green Day and then later Operation Ivy.

Something I was wondering about — I grew up on Long Island, too, and at that time, there were just not a lot of punk rock kids on Long Island. At least, not that I could see. How did you start to connect with people who had similar tastes?

Well, I found out about this a big ska fest — there were also hardcore bands and punk bands, but they called it the Ska Fest — at Our Lady of Victory church in Floral Park. And so me and my friend Katie went, and we knew a couple of kids from our school were also going. We just got really tight with those kids and that was like our first show, kind of. And then it just became an every-weekend thing — we’d find out about more bands that lived in the next town, or shows that were happening in our town, and we were like, “What is this?!” We started getting into all the local bands — not so much the hardcore bands, but I liked the bands that sounded like pop punk or ska punk. I mean, Less Than Jake was my favorite band of all time. I bought Hello Rockview for my dad. I was like, “Dad, you gotta hear this record!” After that, we’d all just get together and hang out in my friend Zach’s basement. He was the drummer in a local ska band.

What were they called?

Premarital Sax. We would hang out over there, there was Scotty Dee’s Urban Joe Café in Rockville Centre. When we got a little older and could drive, there was Witch’s Brew. That was the cool place where all the cute boys worked that had tattoos and that you didn’t know how to talk to.

I mean, in a sense, that sort of DIY community vibe is really similar to the ethos that governs [Stevenson's label] Don Giovanni.

Yeah, I mean, our reason for why we’re [making music] and the way we established it is very DIY. We’ve been doing it for a while and it gets frustrating when it’s — “Why can’t I live off this yet? Please, help me, universe!” But at the same time you’re slowly building a thing, and you’re building it based on people falling in love with it. And I think that’s what Don Giovanni does. That’s the biggest thing I learned from being on the label: Play shows in people’s houses, play shows with bands that you’re friends with, go on tour with bands that you’re friends with and who believe in the same shit, even if you don’t sound the same.

This is the first album you’re releasing as just “Laura Stevenson,” as opposed to “Laura Stevenson & the Cans.” My immediate response to seeing that is that this record is somehow more personal. How true is that?

I feel like the lyrics…I feel like I’m being more truthful to myself. I feel like I’m being more honest. Before, I would just tuck things away and be like, “This is what the story [behind this song] is on the surface,” without really getting to the root of it. Now I feel like I’m…dealing with some shit. Hopefully that will be therapeutic thing for me and I can build from there. Either that, or I’ve healed myself and now I won’t be able to write anything ever again.

The album is called Wheel, and wheel imagery turns up throughout the album. What drew you to that as a central metaphor?

I wrote the song “Every Tense,” and I knew that was a song that encapsulated how I felt at the time — which was out of control, needing to figure out my place in the world, to figure “what does it all mean?” I felt like every song kind of dealt with that, whether it was dealing with my own personal existence and nothingness, or my relationships with people and what they mean. It was an exploration of all of that. And I felt like a “wheel” was representative of what I was feeling.

But then that last song, “The Wheel,” I wrote that way after the record had already been written and recorded. I was just like, “This record isn’t making sense to me. I don’t understand how we’re gonna put it in order.” With Sit, Resist, we had figured out track order before we even got in the studio. This record, I was like, “This sucks. I don’t know where these songs are gonna go.” I knew I wanted “Every Tense” to be near the beginning, but I wanted to close it with something that brought it all back around thematically.

Is the mention of “Lucky Strikes” an allusion to your grandmother?

Yeah, she sang [commercial jungles] for Lucky Strikes, and I guess you could say she had a lot of lucky strikes in her life. It was the idea of her being a protectress in my brain, protecting me from things I don’t want to rehash.

Were these things that happened to you growing up?

Yeah, just some weird shit that I wasn’t ready to focus on. Something that I needed to…overcome.

Did you view your grandmother as a “protectress” when she was alive?

Not so much emotionally, but she’s the closest person that I had to me that’s no longer here. Not to be a hippie, but she’s almost some sort of like spiritual presence. And I’m not a spiritual person at all. I see her sometimes in my dreams and she keeps me away from things I don’t want to see. That’s kind of what that song is about.

I don’t know — we were close, she would sleep in my bed when she was in town. We didn’t have a guest room, so it was, “Put grandma in the bed with the kid.” She’d tell me stories. She had a cool life. Her father was a sheriff in South Carolina. He died in 1913 and she was raised by her mother. She had three older brothers, two of which were on the radio. They had this project called the McCravy Brothers — it was like a gospel thing. And that’s how she got into radio. And then she was put on the Hit Parade and that’s when she came to NYC and started working with Benny Goodman, but [her brothers] raised her to be a gospel singer. Like, old-timey gospel, so it sounds spooky. There’s some YouTube videos where you can hear the audio, and it sounds fucking creepy. Creepy dudes with warbly voices. It’s just kind of scary — it sounds like something from a horror movie.

My grandmother and my grandfather both came from very humble beginnings. He was the child of an Italian immigrant living in Newark — basically, he was living in the slums. That neighborhood was where all the Italian people moved that didn’t have any money. He grew up out of nothing and then went to Jiulliard and sounded working for CBS, and that’s where he met my grandmother. By 1933, my grandfather was a working musician. My grandma had glamour shots and all that. Benny Goodman made her lose weight. He was like, “I’ll buy you all new gowns” — she didn’t have any dresses, and she needed these gowns to be the singer in a big band — but he was like, “You have to lose 30 pounds.” And she wasn’t a big lady. I mean, she had meat on her bones, but she wasn’t fat. But then she just never ate again after that. She told me that was when she “quit eating.” She wouldn’t eat a lot at all. She was so thin. She would just, like, drink scotch. She’d be like, “Just make me a scotch.” And we’d say, “Grandma, do you want some food?” and she’d say, “I’ll have some creamed spinach later.” I mean, she never really ate. Ever. My mom called it a “crash diet,” because that’s what they called it at that time. Nowadays, they call it anorexia.

It’s interesting that you mention that about your grandmother, because I feel like there’s a lot of death on this record.

Yeah, I had some issues at a certain point in my life…I’m OK now, but I’m still fixated on death. I have a desire to continue living my life, but you know, I, at a point in my life — like 19, 20, 21, I didn’t think I was gonna live. I had no dreams or anything because I was just, like, really depressed. And so then I was medicated, heavily, and that was frustrating because I felt like I couldn’t concentrate — which was annoying, but I’d rather have that than be depressed. I mean, now I’m fine. I’m not medicated at all. But it was just overcoming that, but still being naturally fixated on the fact that I’m going to die at some point. It may not be self-inflicted, but it’s still actually going to happen and I have no control over it. That’s something that I think about.

The first line of “Runner” is “To give yourself a little bit of hope’s a lie.” Do you believe that?

At a certain point in my life, yes. At the end of the day? [pauses] I don’t know. I don’t know. If it’s all going to be over, then what’s the point? For some reason we’re all still here and all still believing that there’s a point, even though we know that there is no point. That’s the whole idea of that song. We’re still going, for some reason, even though we don’t know what it is.

So you reject the idea of an afterlife.

I don’t know. I’m not sure about anything, so I can’t say I’m an atheist. I don’t want to reject it. I just know that I don’t know, and that’s sort of scary. “All I know is that I don’t know nothin’,” as Operation Ivy once said.

There’s a lot of apocalyptic imagery on the record, too. “Sink or Swim” is about California basically being destroyed in a single massive earthquake.

It’s scary. It’s scary thinking about the future of this planet, this country, the future of humanity — anything in the future.

Does uncertainty freak you out?

Yeah. Yeah. But I think that I’m becoming more able to just…I’ve always been really paranoid and scared and neurotic. Meanwhile, my mother is growing more Christian by the day. It’s driving me insane.

Was there something that brought that on?

She joined this one of those megachurches in Florida. I went there and it felt like a casino. There’s no clocks, no windows, you feel like you’re…I think they’re pumping oxygen in there.

You went to a whole service? What was that like?

It’s just so manipulative, financially. They’re just tugging at the heartstrings every five minutes for you to contribute.

Do they do the “modern worship,” with the rock band?

Oh yeah. And the drummer is in one of those plexiglass cages. My mom was like, “You’re gonna love it, because the music is cool, there’s a cool guy playing guitar.” I was like [dryly] “Oh, they have a cool guy?”

So I was there and my mom was, like, crying, and there’s tissue boxes on the back of every chair in front of you. And, you know, I’m trying not to push my nihilism on my mother, but it’s just fucking bullshit. I’ll call her, and she’ll be like, “Give your fear away. Give it away. It doesn’t have to be to God, give it to nature,” and I’m like, “OK, leave me alone.” I don’t wanna “give it away.” Who am I gonna fucking give it to?

How does she feel about your music?

[Pause] She’s coming around.

So there was a point when she wasn’t into it?

She was not supportive in the beginning. She did not want me to do it. I mean, she saw what was happening in the industry, with people unable to make a living…And I totally understand that she wants me to be OK. She doesn’t want to leave this world and be wondering if I’m gonna make it, or If I’m gonna have kids. And she definitely wants me to have kids — I feel like that’s her annoying reason to want me to be successful.

You can do both, if that’s something you want.

If I’m able to make enough money. Right now, that is not in the cards. Life continues this way.

I mean, you’re still very young.

I’m 28. I mean. “Young.” But, you know. These are my “child-bearing years.” [Laughs.] I don’t know. The clock’s not ticking yet, but my mom’s sure calling a lot.

Is your dad on board with your career?

My dad is on board. He comes to all of our shows, he’s totally into it. He’s like, [In a thick, Long Island accent] “I see you’re on tour in April. Were you gonna tell me that?” He’s really supportive, and he has a brother in Austin who we were staying with for South by Southwest who’s also into music. But they’re very Irish Catholic about it [laughs]. Whenever they come to our shows, they can’t just say, “Good job,” they have to say, “This was wrong.” They’re very stoic with their praise.

And then when my mother finally started praising it, she really went over the top. The only song she really knows is “Master of Art” from our last record — but she calls it “Masters of Art,” which drives me fuckin’ crazy. She’s like, [heavy Long Island accent again] “How many times I listened to ‘Masters of Art’ today? Seven. Seven times.” Now she’s like obsessing, but just about one song. I mean, I’ll take what I can get.

Has she heard “L-DOPA” [A song on Wheel that is candidly about a mother who is emotionally unavailable]?

She heard it. She didn’t like it so much.

How autobiographical is that song?

That song definitely has hints of her in it. But she doesn’t know that any song is about her. Like, the song “Caretaker”? It’s about her. And about me taking care of the house on Long Island while she’s living in Florida, and her inability to accept the fact that I want to do this with my life. She’ll be like, “Did you ever write a song about me? You wrote a song about your stepmom” — which is “Renee,” the first song on the new record. She was all pissed about that. And I’m like. “Listen to a different song! Stop listening to ‘Masters of Art!’ Listen to another one. Listen to the words.” I told her “Caretaker” was about her — I wasn’t going to — and she was like “Oh, really? OK, I’ll listen to it again.” I don’t think she did.

What exactly is L-DOPA?

L-DOPA was a medicine they used for people who had encephalitis lethargic. My grandfather’s mother died of encephalitis in the teens in New York, and so she was never able to give him what he needed in terms of nourishing him as a musician, because she wasn’t there. So it was kind of a parallel to my relationship with my mom at the beginning of this whole thing. But she’s really come around. She told me that she was proud of me. But I’m still getting my Masters in art history — and I’m doing that for her. I want to be doing this, but I should have some kind of backup plan.

I like that art history is your backup plan.

I know, it’s so fucking stupid. I’m trying to finish the second edit of my thesis so I can turn it in to my professor. I haven’t spoken to him in two semesters

You can just do that? I thought at a certain point they kinda want to know…

Oh, I think they wanted to know. I think you’re only allowed to do a program for four years, and it’s been four years. He emailed me last semester to check in and I was like, “Fuck, we’re doing the record right now.” So I sent him the YouTube video for “Master of Art” and was like [proudly], “This is what I’ve been up to,” and he was just like, “OK, well, you have to read this and write about…” I was like, “OK, fair enough.” I have no excuse. I’m just, you know — “Playin’ music. With my band. In Brooklyn.” So’s fuckin’ everybody.

I could be mistaken about this, but when I saw you play at South by Southwest, you introduced “Telluride” — which is my favorite song on the record — by saying, “This is a song about how we faked the moon landing.” Is that true?

I guess so! I was really into the conspiracy about Stanley Kubrick helping to fake the moon landing. And I was also listening to a lot of Crazy Horse, so I was like, “OK, I guess I’m gonna write this song, about the moon landing being faked.” It’s more about, if that was true, what he might have felt about everything — about the country believing it and him not being able to express that, and trying to tell people through metaphor, and to give hints through the imagery in his movies. Just the idea of, like, living a lie. Pretending that this thing is true because you can’t say otherwise. And that’s what I did for a lot of my life in certain terms. I felt like I was kindred spirits with Stanley Kubrick. Also, I think I was really stoned for, like, a couple of days.

So you think the moon landing was faked?

Yeah, I think so! I mean, I believe they landed, but I don’t think that’s the footage we saw.

Why would we fake it?

Propaganda. To bolster people’s spirits. It’s really manipulative.

So you just think they didn’t have a camera up there at all?

I don’t think they would have been able to get the shots that they got. Those iconic images? No way. Definitely not.

To wrap up: I know that you’re on the road a lot. I was wondering what some of your more unfortunate tour stops have been.

Oh man. In Bozeman, Montana, we played a show for two people, plus the sound guy. We didn’t know what to expect. We played with this band called Genitaliens — they were, you know, your basic two-piece funk jammer — and the lead singer had been stung by a bee. His eyes were swollen shut. The sound guy was like, “Bro, you need to go to the hospital bro?” And he was like, “No, I’m cool. The show must go on.” Yeah, the show must go on, for no one.

I mean, all of those in-between shows are still hard, the ones in places like Boise, Idaho — even though they should have a good scene, because that’s where Built to Spill is from. We have a manager now who looks out for us, but on the tours we were booking ourselves, we’d be like, “Yeah, we’ll play in this community space at this college we didn’t even know existed,” and then we’d show up and it’s like three kids and they’re like, “Yay! You made it! Um, we can’t pay you, is that OK?”

I get weirdly fascinated with places like that in the middle of the country. I mean, I’d never have any cause to go to Boise. I always just wonder what it’s like there.

I mean, the drive through Idaho was one of the most scenic drives that we did. Wyoming was fucking beautiful. But you’re just bleeding money. Bleeding money.

I mean, on the other hand, it seems like the bands that suffer a lot in the early days and pay dues are the ones that have a longer career arc as opposed to the ones that blow up instantly.

I think so, too. Because you just come across people who love your music, because it’s this little thing that they watched grow. And they know that you care about them, too. So maybe we’re not the coolest band in the world, but, you know…

We have a fan who went through gender transformation, and he got the lyrics to our song “The Pretty Ones” tattooed on his arm during that process, because we helped him go through that. And that was really touching to me, to be able to help someone in a way.

I mean, I don’t want to get too philosophical about it, but to go back to something we talked about earlier — maybe that’s the point of all of this. Maybe that’s what we’re all doing here.

To give back something meaningful. [Pause.] Yeah, I think so.

But unlike most internet provocateurs, Fortune seemed both self-possessed and incredibly smart — the kind of person who pours themselves completely into their work, and who only reacts strongly to criticism because they feel things deeply and passionately. Fortune and I have struck up a loose internet acquaintance over the last few years — we occasionally Tweet at each other or send messages through Facebook — which is how I knew that she had, during the making of her second record, Discipline & Desire, struck up a stormy S&M relationship with Mark Burgess of legendary UK post-punkers the Chameleons and that, after their romance capsized, she’d fallen in love with — and pretty much immediately married — Tim Gick of the band TV Ghost. After several weeks of missed connections, I reached Heather at by phone to talk about true love, global power dynamics and murder/suicides.

So first things first: I wanted to congratulate you on your recent marriage — watching the two of you on Twitter and Facebook has been pretty adorable. I think the thing that kind of surprised me the most was how fast it all happened. What was the story? Was it a “love at first sight” situation?

It was a love-at-first-sight situation, but I met him over a year and a half ago. And I was actually dating someone else at the time, and so was he, and so nothing happened. But it was a very intense interaction. I was obsessed with him immediately. I was at one of his shows, and I was like, “That’s the guy. Right there.” I’ve never been so horny watching someone play. [Laughs]

So we stayed in touch, and I think we were both obsessing over each other secretly from a distance. We finished our records at the same time we exchanged them and found that we had both reached kind of a common middle ground sonically. His band used to be real no wave and crazy whereas I came from a more traditional pop/punk structure and then got weirder. We kind of met in the middle and we were both really intrigued by that. So we started booking a tour together and, like midway through that, he said to me, “I think I’m in love with you,” and I was like, “DITTO.”

How did his parents react to the engagement?

Oh, his mother wanted to kill me. She was not happy at all. [laughs] She’s chilled out a lot now, and I seem to have grown on her rather quickly — I do that — but at first, man, it was rough. I mean, my mom is used to me being unpredictable, so this stuff tends to roll off her like water off a duck’s back. At first, she was kind of dismissive. She kind of thought, “Oh yeah, yet another ridiculous thing that Heather is doing. Whatever.” But I think she realized quickly that I was really serious and really happy and that I was really gonna do it. And when that kinda sunk in, she got on board and was as supportive as she could be.

We were talking about your new record in the office the other day, and the one thing that kept coming up about it, in comparison to No Future, is that this one feels much more you — it’s much more of a natural extension of your personality.

Well, with No Future, what happened was that I had a collection of songs that I’d written over the course of two years. They were all over the place. I’d written some in collaboration with people who were in the band at the time and who were coming from a completely different set of influences. The thing that tied that record together was that all of the songs were more or less written about Jay [Reatard]. Pretty much every song on that record was written in the two-year period right before and right after Jay died. So the common thread was the subject matter. I made that record largely to get those songs out of my system, and also as sort of an homage to Jay. It was very much something that I needed to do as part of my grieving process. His influence is all over that record.

But by the time the record was out, I was already writing a ton of songs that were much truer to who I am, and had less to do with how I was feeling after the death of Jay, and were less informed by other people who were playing with me. Growing up being obsessed with, like, Joy Division and stuff, my whole intent with this project was to try to find myself as a songwriter and find a way to balance my aggression and my attraction to things that are darker with the fact that I am naturally gifted as a pop writer.

In other interviews you’ve talked about being influenced by Daniel Ash and Siouxsie Sioux. I was wondering what, specifically, you learned from them that you incorporated into your own writing process.

Friends of mine who are big music nerds have been telling me since the first Wax Idols 7″ that they can hear that I’m obsessed with Daniel Ash. Which is completely true. Daniel Ash and Wire have been the two strongest influences on me over the last five years or so as a songwriter. With this record, I was just hugely inspired by the first Love & Rockets record in terms of the way it was produced. I borrowed techniques from them all over the place — direct-inputting 12-string guitars, layering harmonies in weird ways, switching up effects on vocals to accentuate different transitions in songs.

Siouxsie Sioux is somebody that helped me find my voice. I identify with her as a singer, because I feel like when she started, it was very punk and she was just yelling in this really powerful weird way. And she probably didn’t think of herself as much of a singer — that’s what my feeling is at least, I could be wrong — but she was a singer. She wanted to front a band, and so she forged a path for herself vocally, and it sounded weird and androgynous, but there was power and passion in her voice. I also identify with her because I think she was really influenced by a lot of Middle Eastern singers, and I was raised in a Lebanese family, so I was raised listening to Middle Eastern music. It’s a huge influence on me. I still listen to a lot of Turkish psych and traditional Lebanese stuff.

So, the album is called Discipline & Desire. And I feel like, anyone who knows anything about you, they know you work as a professional dominatrix. So I think the natural tendency is to interpret that phrase, “discipline and desire,” in a BDSM context. But I actually don’t think that’s what you’re talking about on the record at all. I feel like you’re just using that as a metaphor to explore the power dynamics that come into play in the world at large.

You’re exactly right. Discipline & Desire is the name of an old ’70s fetish mag — that’s where I first stumbled across it. But what struck me about it wasn’t its tie to fetish at all. I immediately knew, upon looking at those words together, that it completely embodied everything this record was to me because of its association with power dynamics — which is a huge subject on this record, and in my life in general. Power is something that I think about all the time. And not in the way where I want power — it’s something that, I don’t know…Often the wrong people have power, and everyone wants it, and you can’t get it if you’re looking for it. It’s a twisted, weird world we live in.

Given that, it’s interesting that you open the record not by seizing power, but by essentially identifying with the metaphorical “sub.” You sing, “I love the sad and the sick of the world.” That’s where you’ve cast your lot — with the outcasts.

Exactly. That was intentionally the first lyric of the record — I immediately wanted to spell out who it is that I’m looking to connect with, which demographic I’m a part of and want to speak on behalf of. And that the people who are the “sad” and “twisted” people should have everything they want in life but don’t, and are trying to. Or who are misunderstood, or are being constantly told to go away or shut up, or that they’re weird, or that they’re not good enough.

When did you first start becoming interested in these issues?

Unfortunately, it was something I was raised with. I think I started becoming aware of it when I was pretty young — kind of around the time I started going through puberty. I was raised in an environment where power was unevenly distributed toward men. It was a cultural thing, a lot of it. It was the Middle Eastern family that I was raised in for the first 12 years of my life. Specifically, in my household, it was that we all lived in fear of my first stepfather, who is my brother’s father. It wasn’t the worst it could have been, but it was very much his house, his rules. And I, in particular, was terrified of him. And as I got older, I started seeing how those kinds of power dynamics play out in the world in general. I’ve always had a problem with authority figures, I’ve always had a problem with being told what to do. And it’s not so much because I feel like I’m above authority, it’s just that I disagree with it, largely. I disagree with uneven power distribution and it makes me mad. It’s something that I decided when I was rather young that I would spend my life fighting against, in one way or another.

How do you see that dynamic playing out in the music industry? You don’t have to name names.

[Cracks up laughing] Oh, come on, you know I’m gonna name names! It’s Pitchfork. It’s not the individual writers at Pitchfork that I have a problem with. But Pitchfork itself represents to me an unevenly distributed form of power within the creative world that I think is fucked. They remind me of an overbearing stepfather. That’s why I hate them [laughs]. It’s not personal. It’s not that I think that when they started that they had bad intentions or anything like that. But, unfortunately, it has become a monopoly. And I feel like over time a lot of the people involved with it — this is my feeling — may have subconsciously started wielding that power in a way that is destructive rather than constructive. And is unfair and is less about music and more about who knows who, and who can make who popular, and who’s the favorite. Pitchfork certainly isn’t the only problem by any means. But I think that money and media and all kinds of things have really changed the way the general public is exposed to art and to music, and has changed the value of music and have made artists and musicians feel like they have to change along with that in order to survive. And it’s really fucked up and sad. I don’t like it.

“Dethrone” feels like a rallying cry against that.

All I know how to do is what works for me. Obviously my way is not the way for everyone. I just feel being really honest and self-aware and true to your vision and to what you think is right, or what feels right to you, and not thinking about how well it’s gonna fit in to whatever is cool at the moment is the best way to effectively change things. It comes from within first. I think a lot of times people confuse my passion for art, expression and discussion with being insecure, or with caring too much what other people think. And that kind of makes me sad, because I feel like people are so used to having to play this “Keep Your Mouth Shut and Play it Cool” game in order to survive in this silly, irony-based indie music world. Being really passionate and open and true to yourself is seen as uncool, or the wrong way to do things. And I think it’s the right way to do things.

Things upset me, you know? I’m not made of stone. I am a human being. I’m a weirdo. I am a very passionate person. I’m very outspoken. And when I get pissed about something, I’m pissed, and I don’t feel I should have to keep my mouth shut. Keeping my mouth shut is something I swore that I would never do. I was forced to keep my mouth shut, and to be “seen and not heard,” and to be this little scared, shaking unwanted stepdaughter in the background for most of my childhood. And fuck that. I am not gonna be that in my adult life.

We’ve talked about the “Discipline” part of the record. Let’s talk a little bit about the “Desire.” The last three songs on the record — “The Cartoonist,” “Elegua” and “Stay In” — those are the songs to me that kind of encapsulate this idea of desire and longing.

Well, “The Cartoonist” isn’t about me. It’s about a couple who I became aware of through Mark [Burgess]. The man was a cartoonist, and his wife was diagnosed with a fatal illness — I think it was MS, but I can’t remember — but it was something where she was physically deteriorating. The story was really sad. What happened is that he went mad watching the love of his life die slowly in front of him, and he ended up killing her and then killing himself. It’s really brutal. It’s just really struck a chord with me as a romantic, and as somebody who’s really passionate and also kind of crazy. I wonder, you know, about the possibilities of something like that — love driving somebody to the brink of madness. So the song is written from the perspective of the woman, as if perhaps she wanted him to kill her, because she was in so much pain.

“Elegua” isn’t a love song at all. It’s kind of a weird, dare I say spiritual song. It’s not about a person. It’s more about me looking for an answer within a practice that I am engaged in. I decided to write about it.

What kind of practice?

An occult practice. I don’t like to talk about it. It’s just about a ritual that I was working at and was having problems with. And then “Stay In” is about the deterioration of my relationship with Mark.

I kind of suspected as much.

It’s ironic, because he helped to write that song. When it started, the lyrics I wrote were about being in love with him. And then I rewrote them right before I recorded it, and pretty much had a breakdown while I was recording it. It was pretty terrible.

What exactly happened there? I remember talking to you on Facebook, and I think it was before you even started making this record, or it was in the early stages, and you were joking about how you were going to seek out Mark Burgess and make him produce your record. And then the next thing I knew, it was actually happening, and you had entered a kind of dom/sub relationship with him as well.

Well, I was being kind of facetious about it at first. I can be kind of mischievous I guess. Mark and I were connected because he already knew Keven [Tecon, who played drums on Discipline] and Amy [Rosenoff, bass] from Wax Idols because their other band had opened for The Chameleons before. And also a dominatrix that I work with had known him for 20 years. Mark and I had been friends on Facebook for over a year, but I just never said anything to him, because what am I gonna say to Mark Burgess?

But then I got tipped off that he was a submissive, and also tipped off that he liked the band. So I just started talking to him on Facebook one day just casually to see if he’d be interested in just talking to me. And I had no ulterior motive at all. I kind of had a hint, based on his lyrics, that he was a fetishist, but all I was thinking was maybe we’ll be friends or something. So we started talking and — he is very…let’s see…he’s very accessible, particularly to women, on the internet. I don’t think it’s something he’s a stranger to. I think it’s something he encourages, based on my experiences with him, so it wasn’t difficult to connect with him in that way. But it did feel very genuine, like we had some kind of really intense connection.

So we just started talking all the time. And then I was talking about the new record and he was really curious about it, so I was casually like, “Oh, maybe you can come and help me with my record and that can be a ‘service’ that you can ‘perform’ for me’” [Laughs]. So, you know, I’m domming him a little bit. He just was completely on board with that, and then it just happened. And then the more we talked, it gradually started getting romantic and sexual, which didn’t surprise me. I’m a hypersexual person and a romantic and I found him to be extremely attractive — especially for an older guy. And he’s one of my favorite songwriters of all time! I got totally wrapped up. But it was a disaster [laughs]. Because although he is a fucking genius, he is a diva. A total diva. It’s The Mark Show, and there were many points [in the studio] where I had to be like, “Look, motherfucker, this is my record. Not yours. Shut up!” [laughs]. He drove me fucking insane. If I was in the middle of tracking, he’d cut in over the speaker and try to give me tips that I wasn’t interested in. If I didn’t acknowledge him the way he felt he deserved to be acknowledged, he’d storm out of the room and throw a fit. That happened a lot [laughs]. In our personal relationship, he was my submissive, but he very much actually was not. Really was not. And that played into the record, it played into every aspect of his involvement with me and with the band and it was based on this completely phony power dynamic that he insisted was real but that was not.

So he was essentially “topping from below.”

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. He totally tops from the bottom. And I’m sure if he reads this he’s gonna be furious and say it’s not true and he’s a “true submissive.” Whatever. As far as I’m concerned, being someone who genuinely is naturally dominant? That motherfucker does not know how to submit [laughs].

We broke up a million times while the record was being made. I kicked him out of my house, I kicked him out of the studio. He wasn’t around for most of the final vocal tracking, he wasn’t around for mixing, I didn’t want him to come back. And I don’t think he really wanted to come back. Monte [Vallier, producer] was exasperated by the situation toward the end and was just kind of like, “Get him out of here.” It was not just his fault — I’m a tremendously difficult person to deal with in any capacity, and I know that about myself. But it was a fucking disaster, it really was.

What were some of the positive things you learned from working with him?

He did really help me expand as a vocalist. He spent a lot of time singing with me. He really believed in me. He saw — and I think still does — something special in me that maybe I didn’t see in myself yet. And that helped me, to have that kind of encouragement from somebody that I admired so much creatively. He did a lot for me in that way. It also helped me to kind of be around him and watch the way that he writes and thinks and works because he’s a really weird, talented guy. It was really inspiring. Ultimately, all personal things aside, I still really can’t believe that he ever gave a shit enough about me or my band to do the things that he did for this record. And I am and will always be humbled and honored by that experience with him. Because he’s a genius. He’s one of the greatest songwriters of all time — truly one of the most underrated songwriters of all time.

Speaking of tortured geniuses — you wrote “AD RE:IAN” about the suicides of both Ian Curtis and Adrian Borland of The Sound. What attracted you to them as subjects?

I wrote that song on the death anniversary of Ian Curtis, which is always a really sad day for me. As silly as it is, Joy Division was one of the first bands that I ever heard that really moved me when I was a teenager, and I always get kind of sad, because he was so young. He’s become a mythical figure at this point, but I wanted to humanize him and his memory and connect with that feeling in the moment when a person decides to kill themselves

And then Mark told me something I didn’t know. I knew Adrian had also committed suicide about 10 years ago. But I didn’t know that Adrian was a huge fan of Ian Curtis and Joy Division and was really traumatized when Ian killed himself. So it just became this story about suffering artists trusting other suffering artists, and the kind of domino effect people have on each other.

You put yourself in the song. You talk about wishing you could have stopped him.

I do wish I could have stopped him. That’s kind of egocentric of me, but those two people in particular are people I think had more left to give. And I wish that they had found another way to deal with what was going on. It makes me really sad.

There’s also that myth of the tortured artist, where you have to be miserable in order to do good work. Do you worry about that, now that you’re married?

Well, if you’re married to someone who’s boring and stagnant and makes your life comfortable, that might affect you as an artist. But I’m married to someone who’s a fucking nutcase, so — [laughs]. He’s a fantastic person — he’s sweet as hell, he’s wonderful, but he is just as insane as I am and just as twisted as I am. He may be even a bit more so. So being married to him is actually hugely inspiring — it’s opening all kinds of new doors for me. I’m already working on a new Wax Idols record called Loss, so you can tell it’s not exactly a honeymoon record [laughs].

What do you think the biggest misconception about Hether Fortune is?

That I’m mean. I’m really not. I’m mean if you give me reason to be mean, I suppose. But I feel like a lot of people think that I’m this hardened, angry, bitter, mean, selfish asshole and that kind of hurts. Because I’m like, ‘Man, why does it have to be one or the other? Why does being outspoken and being honest and being tough have to automatically equate to my being a bitch?’ Because I’m not. I feel like I’m a total softie in a lot of ways. I’m a very loving person. I’m real sensitive. I cry all the time. I think that’s probably the biggest misconception. I feel like I’m expressing love constantly.

The Strokes, Comedown Machine – The former avatars of NYC-rock cool dig deeper into their synth gew-gaws and endearingly geeky starched-stiff Cars imitations. Who would have thought these guys would hang around long enough to feel like America’s answer to Sloan? Not me, that is for damn sure. Barry Walters had this to say:

The world — the indie rock one, at least — divides into two camps; those who believe the Strokes should stick to infinitesimal variations on Is This It, and those who’d rather have them do anything other than that. Comedown Machine has the goods to satisfy — and piss off — both camps, and that’s exactly as it should be. As suggested by the album’s pre-release tracks “All the Time” and “One Way Trigger,” the quintet’s fifth album is both classic Strokes and the furthest thing from it yet. “50/50″ offers a heavier variant on the distorted vocals and nervous guitars that drove the kids crazy on “Last Night,” while “Partners in Crime” borrows that song’s caffeinated Motown beat even if it sneaks in a crazed, nearly Van Halen-esque guitar solo at the end.

Wax Idols, Discipline and Desire – Dramatic, menacing post-punk exploring the darker side of devotion. Hether Fortune, the leading force behind the group Wax Idols, has one of the world’s most berserker-entertaining Twitter feeds, and in general seems to be a kind of impossibly charismatic person; on this record, some of that primal intellectual and physical heat translates directly into her music.

Wavves, Afraid of Heights – Nathan starts to gesture winsomely at entertaining the possibility of starting to consider the possible ramifications of maybe thinking about growing up. Eventually. Andrew Parks has the review:

The self-proclaimed “king of the beach” doesn’t relinquish his crown on Afraid of Heights, but he does seem in serious danger of losing his mind. Not that you’d notice immediately, what with the way Nathan Williams masks his melancholy with sunstroked hooks and hummable melodies. It’s when you listen to what he’s saying that dude’s dark side emerges. We’re not talking simple woe-is-me love songs, either. More like an unhealthy obsession with death and demons — personal and otherwise — coupled with bummertown references to just how hopeless the Wavves generation is

Kleenex Girl Wonder, Migration Scripts: If Kleenex Girl Wonder had put out Ponyoak like 5 years ago, they would have been adored, Best New Music-receiving indiepop darlings. It’s the perfect realization of a very particular aesthetic, nestling sugary hooks inside no-fi production. Unfortunately, KGW was way ahead of the curve, and released the album in 1999 instead. Let It Buffer should be their move to reclaim the grubby crown that’s theirs, but on this one they’ve cleaned up and are playing nice, writing polite power-pop that blows the dust from the corners but still focuses on catchy refrains.

Milk Carton Kids, The Ash & Clay – Softly quavering and sweet indie-folk. Jim Farber reviewed it for us, saying this:

You can’t get far into writing a review of The Milk Carton Kids without mentioning Simon & Garfunkel. (I managed to make it just 14 words). Like S&G, they’re an acoustic duo that sings pristine ballads in tightly entwined voices of velvet and lace. But so facile a comparison sells these “Kids” short: Kenneth Pettengale and Joey Ryan have delicate, distinctive timbres, and the lyrics on this California duo’s second studio CD aren’t nearly as effete as they first seem.

Georgiana Starlington, Paper Moon: Hip-Hip-Hooray for HoZac Records! Georgiana Starlington are Jack and Julie Hines from the K-Holes, but this doesn’t sound anything like the snarling, menacing music they cook up in that group. This is spooky and dusty and sinister — kinda maybe like the HoZac version of Neko Case? Some twang, some sway, some Mazzy Star-ish crooning and, like everything HoZac does, it’s Recommended.

Black Bug, Reflecting the Light: What’s that you say? You want more HoZac? FEAR NOT. This is another new one — it’s nastier that Georgiana, with a sort of primitive-industrial grind. Lots of synths and static, doomy, droney vocals and danse macabre rhythms for you to twitch and shake to.

Julian Lynch, Lines: Umpteenth new one from Julian Lynch, which sounds like a dis, but the music here is so lovely and engaging that it’s, in fact, a blessing. This is more rickety soundtracky type stuff; to call it art rock played on children’s instruments doesn’t really get at it. There’s some lovely, layered, helium-filled vocals, plinking nylon-stringed guitars, wheezing mellotrons… This is the kind of music you get lost inside.

Steve Coleman & Five Elements, Functional Arrhythmias – Jazz that draws funk and friction from the competing pulses in our bodies. Peter Margasak writes:

On his latest effort with his ever-shifting, adaptable Five Elements, veteran innovator and alto saxophonist Steve Coleman draws inspiration from overlapping rhythmic patterns found in the human body: nervous, respiratory, and circulatory systems. In the liner notes he credits the drummer Milford Graves, who’s devoted himself to studying those internal human rhythms, and Coleman’s latest batch of compositions were created by superimposing these various pulses on top of one another. Still, for most listeners digging all of the conceptual underpinnings isn’t necessary to enjoy the propulsive, funky sounds.

Kvelertak, Meir: Kvelertak are a Norweigian band who pull off a pretty unlikely hybrid, counteracting throat-shredding vocals with sweet-as-candy choruses for a final product that’s visceral and irresistible. It doesn’t seem like it should work, but man, does it ever. It’s like if Skeletonwitch had Andrew WK’s choruses or something. Kinda motorcycle rocky, but way more hardcore than that. Recommended

Dido, Girl Who Got Away – The former superstar gracefully retreats. Barry Walters writes:
As suggested by its title, Dido’s fourth album is almost entirely about escape — from bad relationships, the pressure of fame, back-stabbing business associates, even quotidian responsibilities. Like Madonna at her world-weariest, it’s the kind of album that only someone who experienced unexpected monumental popularity could make.

Papoose, The Nacirema Dream: This album was supposed to come out forever ago! When I first moved back to NYC 9 years ago, they were talking about it then. That’s when Papoose was supposed to save NY hip-hop. That didn’t really happen! So here’s The Nacirema Dream. Papoose has a tough flow vaguely reminiscent of Golden Age hip-hop, and the production mostly aims to replicate the same. I have a theory that I cannot prove and is based on no fact that says that this has been held up for so long that they lost the rights to the actual original production tracks so they had to replace them with facsimiles. Again, I have no facts to support that assertion. It’s just one of my weird theories.

CHVRCHES, Recover: First EP from one of the buzziest bands at SXSW. This is spooky electropop, with pouty, dramatic vocals and billowing sheets of electronics. Imagine a poppier version of The Knife, maybe, or a spookier Robyn and you’re on the right track. For those of you keeping track: this band is probably going to be a thing.

The Black Lillies, Runaway Freeway Blues: Splitting the difference between the old-timey music that’s been en vogue (for better and for worse) lately and contemporary country, Black Lillies kick up a rollicking ruckus, delivering stomping country built to move boots.

Little Green Cars, Absolute Zero: This is really lovely, sunny, guitar-based indie pop with a few moments of epic grandeur thrown in for good measure. Slightly timid vocals counteract any bravado that generally accompanies that.

Her best record, bracingly clear-eyed and unafraid

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 like The 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.

Part of that is due to its keen focus. The name Marnie Stern rarely appears in print without the phrase “guitar virtuoso” somewhere close behind it, and while that descriptor is accurate, it often felt in Stern’s past work that the songwriting was second to the string-searing. Chronicles remedies that, offering Stern’s most assured melodies to date and burning out the dense thicket of guitars that previously ran wild. In interviews promoting the record, Stern has referred to this process by producer Nicholas Vernhes as “clearing out the clutter,” but the result is that Stern’s playing actually feels more astounding because it’s less obscured. The title track, with its alternating broad slashes and giddy squiggles, feels like an outtake from gone-too-soon Baltimore band Ponytail, and “Noonan” seems set on creating some strain of avant-Tropicalia, a jittery, dancing guitar providing its sinuous spine. The construction of the songs throughout is ornate without being gaudy and, if such a thing is possible, subtly spectacular.

But it’s more than that: As the title implies, Chronicles feels deeply personal, Stern as a 36-year-old cataloging the last few years of her life and assessing what she sees with a combination of pride and panic. Advancing age has a way of stripping the romance from adolescent dreams, and Chronicles is bracingly clear-eyed and unafraid, staring down what happens when the thing you’ve spent your life doing no longer feels like the thing you can spend the rest of your life doing. It’s also one of the most honest assessments of what it means to be a full-time musician — and, specifically, a full-time indie musician — ever written, translating intangibles like “critical acclaim” and “artistic integrity” into real-world things like rent payments and the price — and worth — of personal stature and reputation. It’s not for nothing one of the songs is called “Nothing is Easy”; Stern mingles determination with defeat, consistently refusing to come to clean conclusions or to sink into bland reassurances. When she sings “Don’t you wanna be somebody? Don’t you wanna be?” it’s clear the “you” in that sentence is herself, and the line feels less like an exhortation and more like a chastisement.

All of this makes Chronicles sound like a drag, which it absolutely is not. It is, instead, a nervous, leaping record, where high-wattage guitars illuminate songs that don’t fear the darkness and where a new economy of sound results in music that feels thrillingly infinite. Stern spends much of Chronicles concerned about her legacy; fittingly, it is also the record where she secures it.

All the tender beauty of her previous efforts — this time in English

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.

The Men, New Moon – Brooklyn’s most dynamic young rock band of the moment returns with its third expectations-raising/confounding record in as many years. Austin L. Ray writes:

Each of the last three years has produced a new album from Brooklyn’s The Men, and each of those albums has only increased the cultish glow of adoration for the fervent rock band, which has proven itself both capable and uncompromising. Like the subjects of Michael Azerrad’s ’80s-underground bible, Our Band Could Be Your Life — a book The Men would’ve been featured in had they been making music 30 years ago — this is a band that believes in the saving grace of a sweaty, anthemic rock song … New Moon is exciting transition, an anticipatory vision of how we’ll describe whatever’s next.

Waxahatchee, Cerulean Salt – This record. We are in love. A record that could have come out in 2003 on Saddle Creek and changed my life. Here’s Carrie Battan with more:

American Weekend, Katie Crutchfield first under the name Waxahatchee, felt like a whispered sacred document of youthful discontent and loneliness, the kind you could curl up and live inside for days. On the follow-up, Cerulean Salt, Crutchfield has plugged in the amplifiers and slightly glossed up the production. That might initially disappoint American Weekend fans, but the decision not to attempt to reproduce the holy rawness of her debut ultimately serves Crutchfield well. Her subtle gut-punches translate just as powerfully once the volume’s been dialed up.

Youth Lagoon, Wondrous Bughouse – Trevor Powers’ second full-length as Youth Lagoon expands outward from the internal Year of Hibernation to explore the big, bad, beautiful outside world. Shades of Sparklehorse, Mercury Rev, the Flaming Lips and Built to Spill abound in this colorful and textured guitar-rock suite. Ryan Reed says:

If The Year of Hiberation, Trevor Powers’s debut album under the name Youth Lagoon, felt like riding a slow-moving, psychedelic county-fair carousel, then his sophomore effort, Wondrous Bughouse, is like being strapped into the spinning teacups at Disney World while on psychotropic drugs. This woozy, slightly out-of-focus aesthetic is a sharp U-turn, arriving after the pixie-dust electro-pop of Hibernation — it’s as if Powers grew disinterested in idyllic prettiness and purposely decided to uglify and intensify his trademark sound.

The Replacements, Songs for Slim: A benefit EP for former Replacements guitarist Slim Dunlop, who was hospitalized for a massive brain stroke last month, Songs for Slim reunites Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson under the Replacements name. The results are loose and kinda bar-rocky, perfectly unpolished and surprisingly toothy.

Rhye, Woman­ – Quietly gorgeous, Sade-influenced chamber pop. Our own Jayson Greene wrote the review on this one, and here’s a sample:

You will discern the primary influence behind Rhye roughly 0.00002 seconds after singer/producer Mike Milosh opens his mouth: in his creamy, untroubled contralto, edged with lingering hurt, you will hear Sade materialize in front of you. Like Sade, Rhye seeks higher energies in the intermingling of the masculine and feminine. The full-length debut, tellingly titled Woman, it follows through on the fusion proposed by those early songs – chamber pop and Lovers Rock, poised with their mouths inches apart, whispering.

Olof Arnalds, Sudden Elevation –Our favorite Icelandic folk singer’s first English-language album. This is as light and pretty as we’ve come to expect from Olof, her voice curling around the notes like smoke from an incense stick. RECOMMENDED

Jimi Hendrix, People, Hell, & Angels - eMusic’s own Lenny Kaye wrote a beautiful, elegiac piece about the latest to be unearthed from the Jimi vault. It will be up and live a little bit later today, but here is a taste:

Out of a foreshortened lifeline and a relatively small body of work, it seems there is no end to the many miracles wrought by Jimi Hendrix to feed our insatiable hunger to hear every lick he played. For someone who did his fair share of burning the candle at both ends, as well as in the middle, he never lost sight of his work ethic and fascination with music’s byways — ceaselessly experimenting, recording and jamming with his peers. The level of commitment in the studio is high, and really, no matter whom he’s interacting with, Jimi doesn’t change so much as usher the chosen players into his spatial universe.

Josh Ritter, The Beast in Its Tracks – A wry, rueful divorce record from the country-folk singer Josh Ritter. Annie Zaleski writes:

In the artist notes for The Beast In Its Tracks, Josh Ritter wastes no time establishing the premise of his sixth album: “My marriage ended on November 1, 2010. It was a cold, blustery morning in Calgary, Alberta, and I was on tour. I hung up the phone and looked around me.” But while the impact of his divorce certainly hovers over The Beast In Its Tracks — the longing and regret coursing through the whispery acoustic opener “Third Arm” is breathtaking — the record smartly frames the breakup through the lens of optimism, not bitterness.

Caitlin Rose, The Stand-In – Confident, powerful pop-country voice comes into her own. Here’s Stephen Deusner with more:

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?

Young Dreams, Between Places – Yearning, dramatic, fresh-faced indie rock, somewhere between Fleet Foxes and Vampire Weekend. Laura Studarus writes:

On their debut Between Places, the Norwegian collective Young Dreams rounds out a subgenre in your music collection you didn’t even know existed: well-adjusted coming-of-age anthems. As evidenced by the driving album opener “Footprints,” Young Dreams isn’t lacking for scrappy enthusiasm, and Between Placesbrims with youthful vigor and energy. Like Vampire Weekend of Fleet Foxes, they work in a light, retro-pop style that came to prominence that came to prominence years before they were born, updating it with lyrical signifiers of modern life: cell phone chargers, drinking games, and the otherworldly quality of summer vacation.

How To Destroy Angels, welcome oblivion – First full-length from new Trent Reznor project. Jon Wiederhorn says:

Welcome oblivion, the first full-length album with Trent Reznor’s new band How to Destroy Angels, is both totally familiar and unlike anything Reznor has ever done. It’s dark, brooding and filled with angst, but the anger that drives Nine Inch Nails is mostly absent, replaced with a sense of urgent desperation, as if Reznor knows time is passing and he wants to explore new, challenging sonic avenues, much like his idol David Bowie.

Rotting Christ, Kata Ton Aaimona Eaytoy – Athens, Greece-based black metal outfit continue to push hard at their chosen genre’s boundaries. Jon Wiederhorn writes:

After 25 years together, many metal bands settle into a comfort zone and stick with a sound they’ve developed over the decades. Not Athens, Greece’s Rotting Christ, who continue to discover new approaches to sonic blasphemy. The band’s 11th full-length, Kata Ton Daimona Eaytoy (which translates to the Aleister Crowley motto “Do what thou wilt”), takes its title seriously, not just from a lyrical perspective but also from a creative standpoint … A natural evolution from the band’s last two releases, 2007′s Theogonia and 2010′s Aealo, Kata Ton Daimona Eaytoy should be a welcome addition to the collections of those that have enjoyed listening to the band develop over the past half-decade.

Autechre, Exai – The electronic act, entering its third decade, continues to find way to blow synapses. Andy Battaglia wrote the review:

One way for a long-running electronic-music act to ensure their listeners stay freaked out and confounded — two emotional qualities that have been Autechre’s specialties since their dawning IDM days — is to release a double-album that clocks in at a little over two hours. Melodies snake and swerve through almost every track, taking their time to develop and resolve, when they resolve at all. And the beats — well, they bristle, bray, lean back, zoom forward, break up, and beam out toward the outer edges of the cosmos, where music so serious and austere might provide a suitable soundtrack.

Stubborn Heart, Stubborn Heart – Today is the US release of this indie Brit-pop/soul hybrid, about which Barry Walters writes:

One could be forgiven for at first believing there’s little about Stubborn Heart that sets this pair apart from their London EDM contemporaries. There are aching vocals from Luca Santucci, electronic backings from Ben Fitzgerald, and a sleek noir sensibility shared with James Blake, Jessie Ware and the xx. Eschewing sunlight, the duo favors shadows no longer radical. Their distinction is a frisson that aligns them with a highly specific offshoot of ’80s Brit-soul — the smooth-but-tortured AOR of the Blue Nile, Black and Danny Wilson.

Son Volt, Honky Tonk – The latest from Jay Farrar continues down his well-traveled road. Richard Gehr writes:

“There’s a reckless side of tradition, a push of the tide having its way,” sings Jay Farrar above a guitar, harmonica and accordion wailing plaintively in the background of “Livin’ On,” the centerpiece of Son Volt’s ambivalent seventh album. Farrar’s sense of tradition is hardly reckless as he celebrates both the wild and down sides of honky-tonk life — and its resident angels — through alternating midtempo waltzes and shuffles played by a stately country sextet.

Kate Nash, Girl Talk – In which Kate Nash gets impressively, spitting mad. Annie Zaleski writes:

When British singer-songwriter Kate Nash said that Girl Talk consists of her “blood, sweat, emotional puke and tears,” she wasn’t just being dramatic. Her third full-length is a messy chronicle of post-breakup grief that veers between relief (“Fri-end?”), soul-searching (“Conventional Girl”), wistfulness (“Are You There Sweetheart?”), sadness (“Lullaby For An Insomniac,” “O My God”) and anger (“All Talk”). Appropriately, Girl Talk‘s music is also all over the place; styles covered include wobbly, girl group-inspired indie-pop, brash punk, stormy post-punk, grimy new wave, sparkling Britpop and vulnerable acoustic pop.

Helado Negro, Invisible Life – Bewitching, endearing multiculti pop. Richard Gehr writes:

According to Invisible Life‘s credits, Helado Negro, the stage name of Ecuador-born Roberto Lange, “played the computer synthesizer to make this music.” That sounds about right. Invisible Life may be the most coherent of Helado Negro’s three albums of electronics con vocals, but it still has a distant, abstract quality to it even though it features, for the first time, four English-language tracks.

Daniel Amos, Kalhoun, BibleLand and Songs of the Heart: A trio of ’90s albums from this underrated California alt-rock band. Of the three, Kalhoun is not only the strongest, but arguably one of the best of the band’s career, a collection of finely-wrought rock with razor-sharp lyrics that are, by turns, scathingly satirical and startlingly sensitive. It’s start-to-finish perfect. The rest are a mixed bag: BibleLand was the group’s response to grunge that was polarizing when it came out (I was always a defender). Songs of the Heart was a well-intentioned misfire.

Jamaican Queens, Wormfood: Coy little band from Detroit proffers buzzy, nerdy indie rock with yelping vocals, sputtering drum machines and electronic crackle and fog.

Lady, Lady: Lady is a duo comprised of Terri Walker from London and Nicole Wray from Atlanta, but their combined effort recalls the slinky, high-gloss R&B of the late ’70s. There are big, bright horn charts, limber grooves and assured vocals. They’re balanced right on the precipice where R&B started to give way to funk; there’s been a deluge of retro-soul lately, but by shifting their reference point up a decade or so, Lady manage to give some shine to a part of soul history that has been heretofore ignored.

The Cave Singers, Naomi – The raw, intimate backwoods rock of The Cave Singers grows a little bigger. Ryan Reed writes:

On their sprawling fourth studio album Naomi, Seattle’s Cave Singers continue to expand their brand of rootsy, psychedelic rock. Now officially a quartet (with the addition of former Blood Brothers bassist Morgan Henderson), they sound more like a legitimate “band” than ever before: Henderson brings a funky virtuoso edge to these groove-heavy anthems, punching up the high-octane soul of “Early Moon” and anchoring the jittery, two-chord pulse of “Have to Pretend” with deep-pocket propulsion.

SUUNS, S/T – Grooving, hypnotic, Clinic-style rock.

I’m going to be candid about the inspiration for this list: In 1995, Alternative Press published a list of the 99 best records to be released since they began publication 10 years prior. As an amateur student of rock music, by that point I’d consumed dozens of lists like this, all of them in established, respectable music publications, and all of them bearing an eerie similarity to one another. So you can imagine my surprise when I scanned the Alternative Press list and came across not familiar glorified workhorses, but names like The Dwarves and PJ Harvey and the Fastbacks.

That list was revolutionary for me. It was the first list that dared to say the canon was wrong. It was the first list that redefined which records mattered and why, and the first list to present popular music through a decidedly defiant perspective. Most importantly, it was the first list to suggest that maybe you don’t really need to own all those James Taylor records. It is in the spirit of that list that we present eMusic’s Crucial 100: 100 albums that we think it’s important you own. These are the albums that rearranged our brains, and influenced the music that we care about. And for you lucky winners of our $500 credit contest: This is where we think you should start spending.

As the group was preparing for an in-store at a London record shop, eMusic’s editor-in-chief J. Edward Keyes talked with drummer Grant Hutchison about scaling up, staying grounded and learning from your mistakes.

Reading a few interviews with you guys in advance of this record, it seems like every single one of them opens with someone asking you about signing to a major label. Why do you think that idea continues to be such a big deal to people?

Well, I think, we reached a certain level on an independent — we grew up a fanbase ourselves, with help from the label. And I think [as a result] a lot of people feel like we’re they’re secret, and that they don’t really want to share us with the masses — which I guess a lot of people were afraid of happening. So signing to a major, I guess, has been a talking point for that reason. I mean, we felt that Atlantic were the right choice, we felt that their ethos is quite indie for a major label, but at the same time, you’re always kind of waiting for a fight, almost. We were expecting them to swoop in at any point and say, “Where are the singles?” or “We need more hits.” But that moment never came. I mean, we were definitely ready for it — and maybe even tried to pick a fight without them even wanting it.

[Laughs] How did you do that?

Well, it’s been quite a long process from the last record and we, at certain points, got a little bit worried that they were never going to release the album. But really, all they were doing was giving us the time to write what they wanted to be the best Frightened Rabbit record to date. But there were occasions where we did get a bit frustrated and a bit concerned that it was taking too long, and that maybe that was all some sort of plan. But as it turned out they, more than anyone, recognized what we’d done and the fanbase that we’d built up, and they were more aware than anyone of [the danger of] ruining that. They don’t want to be blamed by all of our fans for ruining the band.

The fact that you are on a major, and now potentially have a platform to reach a much larger audience — how did that impact the way you approached this record?

Actually, [the way we approached this] had a lot to do with the last record more than anything, and how that came out — the process of making that record and the outcome not being what we wanted. We looked back at ourselves and what we’d done in the past and thought about how we could improve on that, rather than thinking, “Well, now we’re on a major label, things are gonna have to be different.” We wrote the songs together as a group this time, rather than Scott coming to us with fully-formed songs and saying, “This is it, these are the parts.” That, from the outset, made a big difference.

I want to back up for a second — you said the last record [The Winter of Mixed Drinks] didn’t come out the way you had intended. What were some ways you thought it fell short?

It’s kind of weird, because I feel like we were trying to achieve a major label sound on an indie label — which we now realize was not the right thing to do. We realized with the recording of this record, which is on a major label, that you don’t need to push yourself to achieve that. You don’t have to force it or write in a style you feel is more “major label” or more “mainstream.” It’s really just, this time, we just wrote the record. We wrote the songs we wanted to write. With Winter of Mixed Drinks, we tried to make it sound big, and the way we tried to make it sound big was by adding layer upon layer of guitars and keyboard, because we thought that would give it more strength. We’ve come to realize that there really is no quick fix or easy way to do that — it has to start with the songs.

That’s really tough to do, though. Bands tend to get praised for writing these big, ornate, anthemic songs, but it’s always seemed harder, to me, to exercise restraint and to know how to scale back.

That’s exactly it. We didn’t have that when we recorded the last one. We didn’t work with a producer until we got to the mixing stage, so there wasn’t anyone controlling what we were doing. It was basically just kids in a sweet shop: “Let’s add this and add this and add this!” [Laughs.] And it is more of an art form to know when not to put something in. With the last record [producer] Peter Katis surmised that at the mixing stage. That’s one of his great talents — knowing when to pull back. But I think by the time it got to the mixing stage, it was a little too late. So this time around, from the very beginning, that mindset was there, and Leo Abrahams, who produced it, that’s something he’s very good at as well. He knows how to make the more subtle changes that have a greater impact.

You mentioned earlier that this record was more collaborative than your past records. What were some songs that changed the most as a result of you guys working on them together?

Well, we went away two or three times to write. We went to a couple of different houses just to get away and spend time together. A few days ago, we went back and listened to some early versions of the song “Nitrous Gas,” which started out with this weird Western sort of thing to it. I have no idea where that came from. That one really didn’t have a structure — there was no direction, really. But when we came back to it and stripped it way back, that’s when we realized, “Wow, there’s a beautiful song in here that doesn’t actually need a lot added to it.” We re-did “Woodpile” four or five times from the beginning to the end. “Woodpile,” we actually went a bit too far with trying to make it sparse. When we presented that to the label, they said, “Well, you actually might have taken too much away. You can put a few of those guitars back on.” Because it was collaborative, it took us a while to figure out where we all sat in the writing process. Scott was unsure as to how much he did want to hand over responsibilities. I personally thought, “In theory, it’s nice of Scott to say this, but when it comes to actually doing it, whether or not he’ll actually let go remains to be seen.” But he did, and it was a really great experience for all of us.

You talk about redoing “The Woodpile” four or five times. Is there a point, after you’ve reworked a song so many times, that you can’t even see straight anymore and you begin to lose perspective on it altogether?

The last recording we did of “Woodpile,” we said, “This is the last one. If you don’t like this one, that’s it!” You get to that stage and it gets to be like flogging a dead horse. We knew the right version wasn’t far away — and that’s the point where it almost becomes more frustrating. If you know something’s completely wrong, you can scrap a lot of it. This, though, every time we did another version we were like, “We’re getting closer, but I don’t know what it is that’s going to make this song finally right.”

Did the collaborative process extend to the lyrics, too?

No, we stayed away from the lyrics [laughs]. I mean, we weren’t looking to completely change direction. We weren’t looking to change the sound or the lyrical content, and I think it’s important that there’ll always will be that thread, that spine of it, lyrically, that belongs to Scott, because his lyrics are unlike anyone else’s, and it’s something that people, in the past, have really made a huge difference between us being a band they liked and us being their favorite band. So for us to come in and start trying to write lyrics, it wouldn’t add anything. If anything, it would take away. I think with the last record, Scott masked his lyrics a little bit too much to avoid directly referencing points in his life that might upset people that were involved. The lyrics last time were a bit clumsier, if you like. This time, he made a conscious decision to go back to the kind of honesty that he wrote on Midnight Organ Fight, which I think is a brave decision, but a necessary one, because the lyrics are a lot of the reason that people fell in love with the band. The name of the album alone, Pedestrian Verse, Scott had that written on his notepad from the very beginning, and he saw that as a sort of challenge, almost, to avoid writing lyrics that anyone listening could describe as “pedestrian.” In my opinion, it’s the strongest lyrics that he’s done to date.

One last thing I wanted to ask you: I know you guys spend a lot of time on the road. What are some things you do to help you maintain your sanity?

It’s funny, we’re about to embark tomorrow on tour, actually. I think it’s important to keep in touch with people back home so you’re not completely stranded. Because you are in a bit of a bubble and you’re not really aware of what’s happening in the real world. Phone Mom, I think, is probably the best idea. Mom will always bring you back to reality.

Veronica Falls, Waiting For Something To Happen: The second charming, surprisingly durable record from this wonderful jangle-pop band subtly deepens their sound. Annie Zaleski writes:

Veronica Falls set the bar high with their 2011 self-titled debut, an exemplary collection of foggy indie-pop with rambunctious guitars, cartoonishly gothic sentiments and a restless heart. On their charming second album, Waiting For Something To Happen, the U.K. quartet stands up even straighter and smooth out any lingering wrinkles. Produced by Rory Attwell (The Vaccines, Male Bonding), the record is a confident and clear-eyed throwback to a time when strummy ’80s college rock ruled the underground.

Pissed Jeans, Honeys: Not the nicest or happiest record you’ll hear this week, but maybe one of the most potent: The sneering, baleful, confessional purge-punk of Pissed Jeans is back. Austin L. Ray reviewed it for us, and he had this to say:

Snarling and spitting, growling and kicking, Honeys won’t surprise those who love Pissed Jeans, nor is it likely to attract those that deplore the band. “Write what you know,” as they say, and Pissed Jeans knows pummeling, antisocial punk.

Adam Again, Perfecta: True story, no joke. I woke up this morning thinking about this record, for no clear reason. It stuck with me so much through the morning that I googled a bunch of information on it just to see what the internet had uncovered in the 18 years since its release. I even, on the way in, thought, “Weird that I thought about this record for the first time since it came out. Wouldn’t it be even weirder if it showed up in Freshly Ripped today?” Friends, this is definitive proof: I am a psychic. Adam Again were a California group who operated from the late ’80s until 2000, when alarmingly gifted frontman Gene Eugene died of a heart attack. They started out making synthy, passable New Wave, but took a huge step forward on 1987′s Homeboys, which chronicled Eugene’s childhood in South Central Los Angeles, and then another massive step forward with 1992′s dark and churning Dig. Perfecta, the record that followed it, was another shift in direction. It was groaning and grim and moody, full of slashing guitars and big, wall-of-sound distortion freakouts. A chronicle of his divorce from bandmate Riki Michele and the subsequent emotional aftermath, Perfecta is an unflinching look at imperfection, loud, clawing and feral. “Strobe,” the one concession to the band’s funk-rock roots, hasn’t aged well. The rest is still cold terror. RECOMMENDED

Fear of Men, Early Fragments: The Brighton group Fear of Men began the way many great groups began: when its founding members began swapping mixtapes of favorite songs. You can hear some of those influences, like the Chills and the Byrds, in their debut, a light and lovely collection of guitar-pop topped with light-as-air melodies.

Kelly Willis & Bruce Robison, Cheater’s Game: A lovely duets record from this husband-and-wife team that has, until now, done very little recording together. Peter Blackstock surveys the results and asks, What too so long?
Married for 17 years, Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison have kept their recording careers separate, aside from a low-profile Christmas album. HearingCheater’s Game, it’s hard to fathom why, because their talents are so perfectly matched. Robison, writer of country chart-toppers for the likes of George Strait, the Dixie Chicks, and Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, would be hard pressed to find a more sympathetic duet partner for his lyrics than Willis, who earned acclaim in the ’90s as an exquisite singer with a keen appreciation for left-of-center material.

Lisa Germano, No Elephants: I love Lisa Germano. This is a weird, spooky, chilling record, lots of strange arrangements and Germano’s oddball ghostly voice fluttering and floating above and between. If you ever had any love for Chelsea Wolfe or super early Kristen Hersh, you really need to hear this. RECOMMENDED

The Deer Tracks, The Archer Trilogy Pt. 3: The third volume of otherworldly, affecting experimental pop. Laura Studarus wrote the review, and it is one of my favorites, as it contains the phrases “arsonists” and “oversized Yule goat” in its first sentence:

The Deer Tracks (David Lehnberg and Elin Lindfors) hail from Gävle, Sweden, where arsonists regularly celebrate Christmas by burning down the city’s oversized Yule goat. Every year, the goat is rebuilt with the knowledge that, like its forefathers, it too will end up in ashes. It’s that same casual acceptance of the surreal that permeates the experimental pop of The Archer Trilogy Pt. 3 … Like Sigur Rós coated with the debris of an extended pub-crawl, The Archer Trilogy Pt. 3 is anchored by a layer of grit — be it electronics that echo the sinister undertones of Fever Ray or Karin Park, lyrics that revel in sweat and frequently break into glossolalia, or Lindfors’s quirky vocal phrasing.

Foals, Holy Fire: Foals specialize in sweeping, melodramatic British guitar rock, washed in starlit reverb and sent heavenward by Yannis Philippakis, a singer with a neon exclamation point of a tenor voice. On Holy Fire, they score their rafters-aiming anthems with itchy, pinprick guitars provide the music’s caffeinated heartbeat.

Psychic Friend, My Rocks Are Dreams: New outing from Will from Imperial Teen (featuring Patty Schemel of Hole on drums), this bright and bounding pop music, with just a hint of the theatrical. If you want to like fun., but feel that they lay it on a bit thick, this is the record you’ve been waiting for.

Various Artists, Cajun Honky Tonk: The Khoury Recordings, Vol. 2: I mean, this is great. You don’t even need me to say it. Amazing Texas Honky Tonk recorded from 1947 – 1957 that’s full of stomp and twang and bravado, sawing violins, boot-stomping rhythms and bristling banjos. I mean, it’s just super good. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Ulrich Schnauss, A Long Way To Fall: The long-running producer steps delicately away from his longstanding Loveless fixation to let a grit onto the canvas. Andy Beta has more:

Schnauss’s previous two albums, 2003′s A Strangely Isolated Place and 2006′s Faraway Passing Trains drew heavily from My Bloody Valentine’s glorious smeared mascara sound, but aside from it taking him six years to follow up Trains(rather than 22), there’s little in common with that old template of his … Schnauss favors clarity on A Long Way to Fall, which you can tell from the opening coruscations of “Her and the Sea,” the vocal haze he previously favored (and at times got lost in) has evaporated. The synth pads are clearly defined, the modular synth lines contrast against the ambient washes.

The Weather Station, Duets 1, 2 and 3: We are super huge fans of Tamara Lindeman, who records as The Weather Station, on eMusic. These are a trio of singles she recorded — one with Daniel Romano, one with Marine Dreams and one with Baby Eagle, all of them firmly within her time-tested weathered Americana, and all of them RECOMMENDED

The Flowers of Hell, Odes: Here’s a weird one. The Flowers of Hell are a UK/Canada group (naturally) consisting of about a dozen and a half members (naturally) who play lush orchestral music (as you might expect). This is an album of covers of everyone from Joy Division to Bob Dylan, all of them treated to swirling, swelling orchestral reads.

Ivy Dye, Continuations: Chicago group brings on the doomy electro-goth (sorta), blending thumping rhythms with buzzy synths and sub-basement vocals for an intoxicatingly moody final product.

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, In Cambridge: Still alone! Umpteenth Casio record continues his time-tested blend of moody vocal melodies and charmingly shambolic arrangements.

We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic is equal parts “so obnoxious, it’s excellent” and “so excellent, it’s obnoxious,” functioning as a warped retro-rock mixtape, blurring the line between parody and tribute. Like their fellow musical provocateurs MGMT, Foxygen clearly don’t take their grab-bag revisionist approach too seriously: With their bratty vocal stylings, goofy genre juxtapositions, and fondness for surreal wordplay, their songs carry an off-hand, tongue-in-cheek charm, even if the eclectic complexity of the arrangements suggests they’ve studied the vinyl of their ’70s forefathers with religious zeal.

The Joy Formidable, Wolf’s Law – New record from Welsh rock group conjures an even bigger roar. Kevin O’Donnell writes:

“I had a reason but the reason went away,” Ritzy Bryan, frontwoman of Welsh rock group Joy Formidable, sings on “Bats,” amid dense cluster-bombs of distorted riffs and clanging drums. “We keep hanging on, we keep hanging on, we keep hanging on…” It’s a deeply poignant moment for Bryan, and one of the most striking on her band’s terrific, noisy follow-up to their breakout debut The Big Roar.

Nightlands, Oak Island – Lovely pastoral psychedelia, shades of Beach Boys and Grizzly Bear. Laura Studarus says:

Dave Hartley’s second album under the Nightlands moniker opens with a reverb-drenched invitation for the listener to join him in “a place I used to go when I was only 17.” Like a Where the Wild Things Are-styled manifest destiny, the thesis weaves itself through Oak Island‘s 10 tracks. Hartley, also of Philadelphia’s War On Drugs, constructs his escapist fantasy out of multi-layered vocals, Afro-rhythm beats, analog synths and a ghostly brass section.

Ra Ra Riot, Beta Love – Strings are out, synths are in for this durable band of buttoned-down indie rockers. Kevin O’Donnell writes:

When Ra Ra Riot broke out with their debut album The Rhumb Line in 2008, they fashioned themselves as a brainy, bright-eyed chamber-pop group, freshly armed with university B.A.s and carefully curated record collections featuring heroes like Talking Heads and Kate Bush. My, have things changed. After releasing 2010′s somewhat underwhelming Chris Walla-produced The Orchard, the group is down to a quintet (cellist Alexandra Lawn has left) and they’ve overhauled their sound from sweet, string-soaked rock into electronic-pop explorations on Beta Love.

Toro Y Moi, Anything In Return – The crown prince of chillwave leaves the sandbox behind. Bill Murphy has more:

To this point, Chaz Bundick, aka Toro Y Moi, has worn most of his influences on his sleeve — tapping deeply, for instance, into the Beach Boys’ labyrinthine Pet Sounds and the J Dilla school of hip-hop deconstruction. His 2010 debut Causers of This was a promising suite of quasi-psychedelic dream-pop sketches, while the follow-up Underneath the Pine continued the thread with left turns into quirky Casiotone electropop and French hip-house.Anything in Return radically expands the scope, oscillating between minimalist techno (“Rose Quartz”) and trippy guitar-fueled soul (“Studies”) in smooth and effortless leaps, with lyrics that take a hard look at relationships, break-ups and breaking away.

Widowspeak, Almanac – Brooklyn indie-pop duo get darker, smokier, and more ambitious on their latest. Alex Naidus writes:

Almanac, the second album from Brooklyn’s Widowspeak, features full, traditional rock-band instrumentation, but at the core, the band remains a duo: Vocalist Molly Hamilton’s commanding coo and guitarist Robert Earl Thomas’s sinewy, layered playing comprise the weathered beacon around which the twangy sweep of their sound eddies. The style from their self-titled debut — lush, sultry, laced with a strangely dark touch of ’50s nostalgia — remains largely intact on Almanac. The first time around, though, the pair took a more stripped down approach, whereas Almanac steps forward confidently with a fuller sound and more ambitious arrangements.

Mountains, Centralia – Enormous slabs of mind-melting drone. Andy Beta tells us what to expect:

Despite nearly a decade spent in the industrial confines of their North Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint, the sound that Mountains — a duo comprised of Koen Holtkamp and Brendan Anderegg — evoke is positively bucolic. And while the name itself suggests something dominant and looming, across five albums, Mountains favor the smaller sensations of nature walks: gurgling brooks, cricket crescendos. At times, it approaches the aural equivalent of magic hour light on wheat. Centralia balances the finger-picking and field-recording roots of their debut with the analog components that throbbed on their last album, Air Museum, adding a few new timbres to their palette.

Torres, Torres - Rangy, powerful, loosely arranged folk-rock reminiscent of early Cat Power and Songs:Ohia at sparer moments, and EMA and PJ Harvey at other, more full-throated ones. A new artist, a woman from Nashville named Mackenzie Scott, with a heart-quickening voice and a take-no-prisoners emotional intensity. Highly recommended.

Buck Owens, Honky Tonk Man – A long-lost covers album by a country legend sees the light of day! Stephen Deusner tells the story:

Originally recorded for the notoriously corny hillbilly sketch comedy series Hee Haw, the covers on the new Buck Owens comp Honky Tonk Man represent nearly 50 years of country music, from Jimmie Rodgers’s 1928 hit “In the Jailhouse Now” through “Rednecks, White Socks and Blue Ribbon Hit,” a hit for Johnny Russell in 1973. Owens pioneered the Bakersfield Sound, which amplified the primarily acoustic genre of country music, andHonky Tonk Man shows just how wide ranging that sound was, how easily it could adapt to various other strains of country music.

Henry Wagons, Expecting Company – Former cow-punker skews more spaghetti western on this EP. Peter Blacktock says:

If your introduction to Australian artist Henry Wagons came via his eponymously named alt-country ensemble Wagons, his solo debut may come as a bit of a surprise. A seven-song EP consisting mostly of duets,“Expecting Company?” represents a distinct departure from his former band’s aesthetic. Eschewing cowpunk, Henry steers more toward spaghetti-western territory, recalling the moods and textures of Ennio Morricone soundtrack fare or perhaps Canadian band the Sadies. These darker, jazzier turns help to spotlight Henry’s voice, a rich baritone that drips with personality.

Camper Van Beethoven, La Costa Perdida – The reunited, beloved college-rock oddballs keep finding new ways weird. Thankfully, there are no David Lowery-penned odes to Emily White on this one. Annie Zaleski had this to say:

During the ’80s, Camper Van Beethoven were violin-toting college-rock oddballs who dabbled in everything from ska and world music to fractured country and psych-pop. The David Lowery-led group took most of the ’90s off after a bitter breakup, but when the band reunited in 1999, its music was as gloriously askew as ever. Thematically, La Costa Perdida — Camper Van Beethoven’s first album since New Roman Times — is steeped in the cultural history, weirdo aesthetic and laid-back vibe of Northern California.

Bad Religion, True North – Punk lifers’ sixteenth album. You know what to expect. Andrew Parks lays it down:

If you’ve ever heard any Bad Religion songs, you’ve heard ‘em all. And that’s really saying something, considering they’ve been around for 16 records and three decades. Here’s the thing, though: Bad Religion’s basic formula — the breakneck tempos of hardcore, cut with call-and-response choruses, hummable melodies, and lots of “hey”s, “whoah”s and “oh”s — has stuck around since the Reagan administration because it works. Like most punk worth its weight in back patches, keeping it simple (stupid) has proven its worth with the L.A. vets time and time again. That said, the group’s latest has its standout selections, from the juvenile but jubilant “Fuck You” to the crowd-riling “My Head is Full of Ghosts.”

Blockheads, This World Is Dead – Brutally succinct, cinder-block-meets-face grindcore. Jon Wiederhorn writes:

It’s amazing how much expression and emotion certain grindcore bands can pack in the timespan of a couple television commercials. Take Blockheads, a French quartet whose fifth full-length, The World is Dead, compresses 25 songs into a mere 40 minutes. Though they’re not as well known as many of their younger peers, Blockheads have been together since 1989 and have pursued a single-minded path to demolition that rivals the careers of peers such as Napalm Death, Nasum and Blood Duster.

FaltyDL, Hardcourage – Dubstep scene leader veers a little left, into minimal techno territory. Here’s Nate Patrin with more:

Anyone going into FaltyDL’s new album Hardcourage expecting a continuation of the old-school dubstep and UK-garage inflections of You Stand Uncertain could be in for a shock. In less than two years since he released that previous album, Drew Lustman has pared down the elaborate drum programming and aimed an already airy sound even further into the territory of minimal and tech house.

Nosaj Thing, Home – L.A. beat-scene producer Jason Chung returns with sensual, tactile, pared-down productions:

Jason Chung is among the lower-profile producers to emerge from Los Angeles’s late-’00s abstract beat scene, but that doesn’t make him invisible. His production work as Nosaj Thing — including his 2009 breakout debut Drift — suggests a lot by doing a little, making ambient minimalism that warmly swoons its way into propulsive rhythmic shape. Home takes that austerity one step further: Beats are built off shuffling clicks, chords float like jellyfish, and bass is more nudged than dropped.

The Traditional Fools, S/T – One of two Ty Segall reissues hitting today. This one is from one of Ty’s many, many projects, and it skews skuzzier and more Black Lips. Austin L. Ray writes:

“Oooooohhhhhhhhhaaaaaahhhh!” go the very first lyrics here, and you’d be forgiven for assuming an early Black Lips record snuck its way into the rotation. Spiritual brethren for sure, The Traditional Fools enjoy piling on shouted vocals (“T.L. Defender”), surf riffage (“Shredstick”) and inspired covers (Red Kross’ “Kill Someone You Hate,” Thee Headcoatees’ “Davy Crockett”). They also keep it brief, rarely bothering to top the two-minute mark on any song. As far as dive-bar party rock goes, you can hardly do much better.

Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin, Reverse Shark Attack – And here’s the other! This one finds Mikal Cronin playing the “with him always is Garth” to Ty’s Wayne. Austin L. Ray got this one for us, too, and here’s what he thinks:

Reverse Shark Attack, a 2009 vinyl-only release getting resuscitated by In the Red this year, is the product of Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin, who have been partners in rabble-rousin’ for about as long as either have been making music. In their respective (prolific) discographies, they have captured, perfected and riffed on what it means to be a garage rocker in the aughts, and this sorta-early gem catches them in fine, pre-notoriety form.

Pillowfight, S/T – Trip-hop from Dan The Automator and Emily Wells. Barry Walters tells us:

Dan the Automator and his new collaborator Emily Wells, an Amarillo-born singer-songwriter, are both trained violinists who’ve been combining street beats, classical chops and conventional song structures either on their own or, in Dan’s case, with Handsome Boy Modeling School, Gorillaz and other genre-bending studio projects. With turntable wizardry from kindred soul Kid Koala and background vocals from Oakland MC Lateef the Truthspeaker, the pair align forces on an album that recalls trip-hop’s melodramatic ’90s heyday via Portishead and DJ Shadow.

Arbouretum, Coming Out of the Fog – Long-running Thrill Jockey act tip further into full-on stoner-rock beast mode for their latest. Laura Studarus had this say:

Arboretum’s fifth full-length sees the Baltimore-based quartet painting their desert doom tunes black. Drawing from a wellspring of nature-based imagery, and sludgy walls of rock guitar, the band has created another wide-sweeping meditation on damnation and redemption.

Barbara Hannigan, DUTILLEUX: Correspondances – Spectral, gorgeous, and haunting pieces from the French composer Henri Dutillieux, shaped by the alert hand of Esa-Pekka Salonen under the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, with rapt solos from soprano Barbara Hannigan and cellist Anssi Karturen.

Alexander Tharaud, Amour – The concert pianist who stars in the latest Michael Haneke film Amour also provides the wonderful, elegiac soundtrack. Seth Colter-Walls reviewed the record for us, and also spoke with the charming Tharaud about his unlikely turn as a leading man. Colter-Walls writes:

In the film, Tharaud offers a more-than-serviceable turn as a famed international piano recitalist, a surprising move that only confirms the musician’s range as an artist. You can hear the same range in this soundtrack — from his stark reading of two iconic Schubert Impromptus to the controlled surges of energy present on the three bagatelles by Beethoven (his first official recordings of that composer’s writing for piano). And while Tharaud recorded all of Schubert’s “Moments Musicaux” for another label in 2000, the third of the series has greater clarity in this new version.

Adam Ant, Adam Ant is The BlueBlack Hussar Marrying The Gunner’s Daughter: I’m going to be honest and say I’m kind of interested to hear this. Adam Ant has the reputation of a one-hit wonder in the US, but that feels unjust to me. The odd bits of press I’ve read about him in the years since his ’80s New Wave breakout have revealed him to be consistently fascinating. This guitar-driven record, produced by Morrissey’s guitarist Boz Boorer, seems to bear that out. eMusic’s Andrew Perry says:

Mostly recorded with Morrissey’s long-serving sidekick Boz Boorer, its 17 tracks largely spurn the tribal pummel of Adam’s early-’80s hits. Now, as then, this inveterate fan of David Bowie and Roxy Music loves a good makeover, and clearly relishes making his grand re-entrance with “Cool Zombie,” a swampy Tennessee blues which nobody might remotely have expected of him…Elsewhere, Adam rekindles the energy of his punk roots, venting his anger over his treatment by the medical profession on unreconstructed blasts like “Shrink,” while “Stay In The Game” evokes the sleazy post-punk rock of his pre-fame Dirk Wears White Sox era. In the (partial) title track, there’s even a strong whiff of electro — overall, it’s a fabulously varied bill of fare.

The Night Marchers, Allez Allez: Your first indication that this is going to be awesome is the fact that it’s on Swami records, home of Hot Snakes. The second indication is that this band actually is Hot Snakes. More or less. John Reis, and Jason Sinclair are joined by Thomas Kitsos on bass for a batch of songs that (somewhat) power-down the in-the-read freakout the Snakes were known for, sticking mostly with a bunch of bruising rockers that display a clear fondness for melody while still retaining plenty of ragged edges. Recommended

Guided By Voices, Down By the Racetrack EP: Oh, come on, guys. I intellectually acknowledge that I should be psyched about how much music the newly reconstituted GBV are putting out, but this is getting a bit crazy. Anyway. I digress. This is a new EP, which actually sounds a bit nastier and more experimental than the group has been in a while. Lots of hiss and static and deliberately obtuse songwriting (“Standing in a Puddle of Flesh,” a sandblasted bit of drunk stumbling with a piano, is pretty excellent).

Hilly Eye, Reasons to Live: Hilly Eye is the great Amy Klein, aka Amy Andronicus, aka Amy the former guitar player in Titus Andronicus. Amy is a terrific writer and was a magnetic presence onstage with Titus, to the point where I almost have no interest in seeing them now that she’s out of the band. This is her first outing as Hilly Eye, and it’s pretty dreamy. Amy’s voice is pushed far in the backrgound and buried in echo, and the guitars are spindly as skeleton’s fingers, clawing and splaying. The songs are mostly wintry and slow-moving, brittle indie for brittle moods.

Gary Allan, Set You Free: Gary Allan has been making records for 17 years now, all of them full of carefully-crafted commercial country that deftly undermine the assertion that the genre is too high-gloss to be interesting. Allan’s voice is warm and rich, and it provides a nice contrast to the sterling production. There’s a couple of missteps (the reggae-tinged “No Worries” is certainly one), but overall this is airtight, unabashedly tuneful country.

Daniel Romano, Come Cry With Me: Those looking for a more traditional take on country music should check out the latest from Daniel Romano. Romano is the co-owner of You’ve Changed Records, the label that put out that Weather Station record we loved so much. As the fantastic cover implies, what you’ll find here is old-style country done right. Think Townes Van Zandt or Hank Williams Sr and you’re on the right track. The instrumentation is pretty spare — acoustic guitar, drums and the occasional lap steel, leaving plenty of room for Romano’s great, twangy voice to cry out a heartbreaking melody. Recommended

The Growlers, Hung at Heart: The Growlers are a California band who have termed their music “Beach Goth,” which means that term is going to be showing up in every piece of writing about them for the nest 20 years. I appreciate their sense of humor — though the description is not that far off. The Growlers kind of sound like The Coral, if The Coral were a good band. Reverb-drenched sea shanties and surf songs make this one sound like it’s bubbling up from Davey Jones’ locker.

Speck Mountain, Badwater: Chicago psych band centered around the core of Marie-Claire Balabanian and Karl Briedrick deliver more shimmering songs that put Balabanian’s mellow alto in the center of a tangle of twangy, echoing guitars.

Alpine Decline, Night of the Long Knives: Pretty great outing from West Coast duo that casts a gauzy sheet across sturdy, guitar-based indie rock, giving the music here a strange, illusory feel. There are some nods toward shoegaze — the guitars on “Alligator” are particularly filmy — but this mostly sounds like prime Archers of Loaf rehearsing deep in a damp cave.

Föllakzoid, II: There are a few things here that are worth knowing. First, and most importantly, this is out on Sacred Bones, so already you know it’s great. Second, Föllakzoid are a psych band from Chile, which is mostly just interesting trivia. There’s nothing particularly Chilean about the sound of the songs here, they are instead just the latest in a long line of Chilean psych bands, though their take is dronier and doomier and krautier. There’s a sense of dread in these songs that is almost palpable. Like everything on Sacred Bones, it’s Highly Recommended.

Petra Haden, Petra Haden Goes to the Movies: Famed experimentalist Petra Haden recreates famous film scores using only her voice. The results are as weird as you might expect. It sounds kind of alien and ambient — her voice is heavily treated in spots to sound like instruments, in other spots it’s just her doot-dooing away.

Rotten Sound, Species at War EP: Alright! New EP from grind punishers Rotten Sound delivers everything you might expect and then some. Cranial-drill riffing, acid-in-the-face vocals and percussion that sounds like 58 amplified coronaries happening at once. God bless these guys. Or Satan. Or whoever. Recommended

Paroxsihzem, s/t: Canadian brutalists deliver sub-basement death metal. Deep, dark, barely-audible growls get smothered by riff after searing riff. It’s the sound of an avalanche — sudden and pulverizing.

Hellige, s/t: Creepy as hell. This is an Argentinian group that combines black metal riffing and howling with doom metal’s inhumanly slow crawl. The result feels like a long, meticulous, agonizing torture session — pincer-like guitars doing their foulest for 10 minutes at a time.

Head of the Demon, s/t: Here’s more slow-moving doominess, but unlike Hellige, the gunk is scraped out of the corners and the vocals are cool and crooning. They’re from Sweden, which accounts for some of the melodicism, I suppose.

A$AP Rocky, Long.Live.A$AP: FINALLY. Eternally-delayed full-length from justifiably buzzed-about NY rapper A$AP Rocky delivers on the promise of his early mixtapes. A$AP’s flow is the draw — it bounds and bounces and skips across the beats, which are mostly icy and digital and vaguely ominous. Jayson Greene talked to A$AP for us, and the conversation detoured into some pretty unexpected places (like the fact that A$AP’s favorite Bowie song is “Lady Grinning Soul”). The record is Highly Recommended. In his review for us, Jordan Sargent says:

The album sticks to the cold, melted-down sound that helped push Rocky to prominence — a combination of screw music and the blown-out, haunted instrumentals of Internet stew-stirrer Clams Casino — while folding in productions from industry heavyweights like Hit-Boy (“Goldie”) and T-Minus (“PMW”). But even those beats are dunked into a double-cup and emerge steeped in Rocky’s aesthetic. There’s often so much going on — from the ghostly, gasping vocals of “LVL” to Skrillex stomping through “Wild for the Night” — that it may seem like LONG.LIVE.A$AP is about everything except A$AP Rocky. Yet, that’s the point — Rocky argues that there is virtue in being a magnet for the ephemeral world.

Christopher Owens, Lysandre: Former Girls frontman casts out on his own with a concept record about his first tour, the breakup of his band and a misbegotten relationship. Barry Walters talked to Owens for us, and got him to reveal the true stories that inspired the album. Of Lysandre, Walters says:

Every song except the final, elegiac one that waves goodbye not just to the album’s title character but also to Owens’ own bandmates is written in the key of A, and musical themes reoccur across its compact 28 minutes, as if the album was one sustained composition. Tempo, volume, and intensity fluctuate: The sax-driven “New York City,” for example, evokes Lou Reed’s Transformer, the dirty, sexy flipside to the immaculate folk paid homage to elsewhere. There’s a unreasonable amount of florid flute tooting supplied by Vince Meghrouni, former leader of SST’s ’90s jazz-punk oddballs Bazooka; the arrangements are gentle but excitable as its narrator, who looks at the world wide-eyed and besotted.

New Order, Lost Sirens: You know, the advance billing really undersold this thing. Songs recorded for, but not used on, 2005′s (underrated!) Waiting for the Siren’s Call, Lost Sirens is actually just a few minutes shy of being a proper album. The songs here emphasize the group’s moodier side – which probably explains why they were excised from the album – but they also sound weirdly in step with much of what’s going on in indie rock that’s informed by electronic music. It’s Recommended, as is the excellent interview Barry Walters conducted with the group, which you really should have read by now.

Holopaw, Academy Songs, Vol. 1: Latest outing from Florida band is full of the spare, melodic indie for which they’ve become known. In his review for us, Eric Harvey summarizes it thusly:

The album evokes all the yearning, emotional tumult and poetry one would expect from a young man who has left home to become an adult. The six-piece band’s earthy, shape-shifting sound recalls the melodrama of Shearwater, but the album’s real attractions are John Orth’s lyrics and delivery. He has written 10 songs with the detailed scene-setting and novelistic phrasing of Sufjan Stevens’s Michigan and Illinois, and he sings them with practiced delicacy.

Lee Fields, Let’s Talk it Over: Long-overdue reissue of Fields’ 1979 album, rounded out with singles and B-Sides. Fields, as you may know, has risen to some level of prominence lately — and rightly so — thanks to his rediscovery by the great folks at Daptone and Truth & Soul (the latter of whom have reissued this). This is a smoldering collection of funk vaguely reminiscent of James Brown, but with nods to disco and gospel as well. Recommended

Adam Again, Ten Songs By Adam Again: There was a time when CDs of this album were selling in the high hundreds on eBay. The second effort from Los Angeles dream-funk band Adam Again, the album betrays a clear influence of classic soul artists like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder (“Who Can Hold Us” even cops Wonder’s “Pasttime Paradise,” but it funnels those through a decidedly New Wave framework. Admittedly the album, with its layers of synths and thumping drum machine, sounds dated now and bears little indication of the heights the group would hit on their bleak swamp-funk masterpiece Dig, but it’s still a fine curio for collectors.

Fig Dish, That’s What Love Songs Often Do: Blast from the past! My first exposure to Fig Dish came via one of those CDs that used to come with CMJ Magazine, back when CMJ was a magazine that used to come with CDs. I am not sure how this one has aged! For the uninitiated, Fig Dish were a band from Chicago in the mid ’90s that delivered a brawny take on melodic indie rock that was very much A Thing at the time, but might not be much of a thing anymore. Other bands of this ilk included Buffalo Tom. It is weird that now I am hearing this as a precursor to the Foo Fighters.

The Brooklyn What, Hot Wine: Roughed-up and rollicking blue collar punk rock, this combines the heart-on-sleeve passion of early Springsteen with the loose-and-messy aesthetic of contemporary groups like The Men. Solid songcraft with enough rough edges to keep things interesting.

Jessie Ware, If You’re Never Gonna Move EP: Jessie Ware was one of my personal favorites from 2013 (I spoke about her at length on this edition of NPR’s On Point last week). This EP, weirdly, seems to just gather up a few songs from her excellent debut plus one new one and a remix. Probably a good place to start for the curious first-timer.

Datahowler, The Crystal Gazers:New one on the excellent California label Velvet Blue, this one from Texas producer Datahowler. The cover telegraphs exotica, but this is some dreamy, bucolic, electronic dreamscapes, soothing and surreal — not entirely unlike that Gayngs record from a few years back, without the vocals.

Cornell Campbell, King Jammy’s Presents: The Best of Cornell Campbell: Cornell Campbell has one of the most beautiful, soothing voices in all of reggae. A high-set, impossibly tender falsetto, it’s perfectly suited to the gentle style of Lovers’ Rock he’s spent his career exploring. This compilation gathers up songs Campbell recorded for the King Jammy’s label, and it finds his gorgeous voice acting as a nice contrast to the restrained, electronic production.

The Lost Dogs, Scenic Routes: Reissue of long-lost alt-country cult classic. The Lost Dogs were a ‘supergroup’ made up of the frontmen of California bands Daniel Amos, The Choir, Adam Again and the 77′s and bringing out the best in all of them. Smooth country-pop brushes up against rugged blues, gentle elements of psych float up and fade away. Final track, “Breathe Deep” was a minor alt radio hit. Recommended

Deux Filles, Double Happiness: The first thing that caught my eye is the fact that this is being issued by the great LTM Records who, in the early ’00s, were responsible for reissuing the better part of the Factory Records catalog (which, until that time, had been woefully out of print). The back story on these spooky records from the early ’80s is that they’re the work of French orphans named Gemini Forque and Claudine Coule. The truth, though, is that Deux Filles are an alias for Simon Fisher Turner and Colin Lloyd Tucker. The music here is great — spooky ambient synth compositions that feel ominous and sinister. It’s terrifically skin-crawling stuff. Recommended

Bvdub, A Careful Ecstasy: Really lovely new effort from Brock Van Wey, A Careful Ecstasy is full of keyboards that blink like buttons on the control panel of a deserted spaceship. Alternately soothing and unsettling, the songs here feel like ghostly lullabies, a soothing song sung in the midst of an apocalypse.

Aura Noir, Dreams Like Deserts: 1995 debut EP by the infernal Norwegian metal band Aura Noir, gets reissued and, er, fleshed out with outtakes and rarities. Aura Noir walk an unholy path between black metal and thrash, and most of the songs here land squarely between both genres. It’s primitive, to be sure, but that also makes it feel more dangerous and demonic.

Pickwick, Covers: Seattle soul/folk outfit Pickwick dashes off an EP of covers of Damien Jurado, Richard Swift and Lou Reed. Sharon Van Etten guests!

That state of destitution is the starting point for I Predict a Graceful Expulsion, Spx’s stark, stunning debut and eMusic’s Best Album of 2012. Like “Sugaree,” it’s also sung by a lost child, one who has moved from a place of great abundance to a place of great need. And, like Cotten, Spx also writes in sense imagery that has volumes of emotional resonance, but resists all attempts at literal parsing. Its few moments of clear meaning come suddenly — illuminated by lightning-flashes before disappearing once again into darkness. Despite this — or, perhaps because of it — Expulsion is, by a good distance, the year’s richest and most enveloping record.

Musically, it’s almost ruthlessly spare. Most of the songs are barren as skeletons — just waltzing acoustic guitar and the occasional solemn piano — and all of them benefit from Spx’s bruised, pleading voice. Interviewers never tire of pointing out to Spx that she once termed her music “doom soul,” but they consistently miss the other label she gave it, Gothic Gospel. That’s no accident: Though she’s not especially forthcoming with the details, Spx comes from a deeply religious family. Al Spx is not her real name — it’s a pseudonym she came up with to keep them from finding out about her music. While it’s hard to accurately assess the particular brand of Christianity that her parents practice, suffice it to say it’s severe enough that their daughter would rather come up with an alias than have them know that she’s a singer. Spx has said in interviews that one of the album’s themes is “loss of faith”; many of the lyrics on the record are Bible verses, but nearly all of them are wrested — almost angrily — from context.

In “Holland,” which flutters like dry wheat in a hot breeze, Spx sings, “We are many, we are many,” which makes it seem like it’s an anthem of solidarity until you realize she’s quoting the demon-possessed man of Mark Chapter 5, whose infernal inhabitants answered with that sentence when Christ asked what their name was before He cast them into a herd of swine. She quotes Scripture again in the song’s transcendent finale, asking: “Oh death, where is thy sting?” but she sings it not as it appears in the Bible, as a mocking question, but as someone waiting to physically learn the answer (the next line is, “Does it feed on eager limbs?”). “Hector” opens with the lines, “I’ve walked behind you/ assumed power in the dead of night.” When asked, Spx has said that Hector is the name of a demon. The song crests with Spx singing, “Lower it down, kill all my faith.” One of the albums most potent lyrics comes in “Blank Maps,” where Spx defiantly declares, “I am a goddamn believer” — both proclaiming and renouncing faith in a single breath.

At first blush, that line seems sarcastic, a way for Spx to distance herself from her heritage, blasphemy being the greatest among the sins. But with each listen, it becomes clear such a callow interpretation is wrong. There’s a defiance in Spx’s voice as she delivers it, a set-jawed, leaning-into-the-wind kind of obstinacy that feels too resolute and too deeply-felt to just be a middle finger to the Most High. And it starts to become clear that she’s getting at something else — at the belief that comes after belief, at the understanding that passes peace, at the thing you do when everything you have is down in pawn.

All of that comes racing to the fore in “Elephant Head,” which arrives deep in the album’s second half. Spx has downplayed the song’s meaning (at a concert at Mercury Lounge in New York she dismissed any subtext by saying its title was “just a name my brother used to call me”), and initially its lyrics seem to follow the album’s pattern of mystic riddling. But something alarming happens about a minute and a half in. After spending the bulk of the record speaking in parables, Spx suddenly forgoes her complicated lyrical Esperanto and delivers, in clear, direct language, what might be the album’s summary statement: “It’s a strange year, and it appears that I am stuck.” It’s a bracing moment of candor, deepened by the fact that Spx follows that naked expression of despair with the rejoinder that gives the record its title: “But I predict a graceful expulsion.” And in that split-second, the lens suddenly twists into focus; the vapor crystallizes. In those two lines, Spx skillfully spins a deft, clever appropriation of the religious theory of salvation. Christians see pain as a virtue because it provides a passage to heaven, and so they endure it in the hopes of reaping an eternal reward; Spx — a “goddamn believer” — is singing about something bolder and scarier: the bravery and determination that comes in the absence of faith, without the promise of reward. She’s singing about the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen. And when you unlock that riddle, you fall suddenly into the song’s deep, beautiful message.

It’s a song that says heaven is here right now and it’s for anyone who can push through death and can keep on pushing until they can hear the harps. It’s a song for anyone bold enough and brave enough to stare full-on into the darkness and see only the celebration on the other side — someone, as Spx beautifully puts it, “Who’ll dance around martyrs and sing at caskets.” It’s a heathen’s spiritual and, like all spirituals, it carries a bullheaded message of redemption in the face of insurmountable odds. It says that life is difficult and that it can be defeating, and that sometimes, bad things happen and then keep on happening; that the meaning can be difficult to decode and the blows too brutal to absorb. But it also says that There’s A Great Day Coming. And it may be hard-won, and it may be so far off that it seems like just a twinkle in the distance; and it may feel like fantasy, and your resolve may buckle, and it may take every ounce of courage and strength and belief you have to envision your escape. But this one thing is certain: You will get out.

File under: Windblown, way-out-west R&B that builds a driftwood bridge between country and soul

For fans of: The Band, Bill Withers, Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson, Bobby Charles

From: Virginia Beach, Virginia

Sometimes breakthrough albums capture attention because they are sonically arresting — big, blaring albums with huge crescendos and canyon-sized choruses. Big Inner, the debut from Matthew E. White, went in exactly the opposite direction. Its title is an indication of its content: exploring the vast reaches of a small, interior space. There are nods to Randy Newman, Bill Withers, the Band and Jorge Ben, but the result is distinctly White’s. His tender croon nestles deep into sumptuous string and brass arrangements, and the entire record feels like a musical update on Song of Solomon: deeply sensual lyrics that have an undeniably spiritual dimension. (A healthy helping of the album’s lyrics are reconfigured Bible verses).

It’s no surprise to learn that he is a devoted, meticulous student of popular music. He sought out Sex Mob trumpet player Steven Bernstein simply because he was a fan of his music, and the two met regularly to talk about the craft of album making, and to dive deep into the history of rock music. “I just thought that having as deep an understanding as a 30-year-old guy who grew up in Virginia Beach can have about popular music was important,” White explains. His close attention is immediately evident in each of Big Inner‘s carefully-placed notes.

eMusic’s Editor-in-Chief J. Edward Keyes talked with White about Jesus, Randy Newman and the ghost of slavery in the South.

On stalking Randy Newman:

When I was on tour with my old band [The Great White Jenkins] we had a day off in LA. I’d found Randy Newman’s address on this weird Star Search-type website. It was so old, like a Geocities website or something, so we didn’t even know if it was still his address. But we drive around the corner, and there’s the exact view that’s on the cover of The Randy Newman Songbook, and I was like “Holy shit! This is it!” I’m so not brave, so I’d never really done anything like that before. But I was there, and I had two of my CDs, so I wrote him a note like, “Hey man, you really meant a lot to me. Here’s my contact info.” And I went to his door — he didn’t answer, but his housekeeper answered. I was like, “Is this Mr. Newman’s house?” She just laughed out loud. She was probably thinking, “Who comes to find Randy Newman in L.A.? That’s ridiculous. You’re a 25-year-old man and you’re trucking around L.A. trying to find Randy Newman? What are you doing with your life?” So I was like “I love his music, he’s meant a lot to me, I just wanted to give him these CDs.” I never heard from him or anything. But that started a pattern of me just reaching out to artists that I wanted to learn from. I’ve just always believed in trying to get to the source of something. There was a time when I would send Ken Vandermark like three emails i week. I was just like, “Tell me this, tell me this, tell me this.” I was on his shit.

On treating record-making like an artisan craft:

There’s only been like four generations of people who have made records. I mean, there are hundreds of years of making music, but not that many generations of making records. But even still, a lot has been learned. There’s a whole 100-year history of how to do this — things that work, things that don’t work. There’s a lot to learn, you know? A lot of times people are like, “I’m just gonna go in and make my record,” without any sort of awareness of how you might do things better. It’s a deep, deep craft, and I care a lot about making it as good as I can. When I was studying with [Sex Mob saxophonist] Steven Bernstein, most of our time was spent listening to music and listening to him point out, “Did you notice this? Did you notice this?” Sometimes it’s technique thing — “Did you notice the trumpet is in this register?” — and sometimes it’s history things. He talked a lot about Sly Stone, he talked a lot about the Band, he talked a lot about Jack Nitzsche and Phil Spector. He taught me a lot about American music, and how jazz and blues and rock are all kind of one thing. They are related in a special way.

On growing up a missionary kid:

My dad still runs a mission, and my parents are born-again Christians. And that was very important to me at one time. Which is not to say that it’s not important to me now, though I’m a little bit more removed from it. My brother-in-law is a pastor, and my brother’s a Christian author — he wrote a book called Postmodernism 101: A First Course for the Curious Christian. So it’s a heavy family in that sense. And I wanted to put some stuff on the record that represented that part of my path. I think [Christianity] is something songwriters tend to shy away from. I don’t know if that’s unconsciously, or just the way the culture is now, but I wanted to be up front about the fact that, one, this is something that’s a part of my past, two, this is something that I think about, and three, this is something that I don’t know the answers to.

I get so many of these questions. There’s a huge population of kind of “ex-evangelical” or “ex-born-again Christian kids” [in the indie subculture]. I think it’s the kids of, like, the rise of Christian culture in the ’70s and ’80s. And I don’t mean to overly politicize it, but with the rise of that, there’s gonna be a backlash to that. So there’s just a shit-ton of kids our age who were raised in that culture and who are either in the game, way out of the game or somewhere in the middle. And I am one of those people.

On spending his childhood in Manila:

I was young, I wasn’t there that long, but that’s where all my first memories are from. I just remember the community being great. I remember we were there during the coup in the ’80s, and I remember tanks turning around in our driveway. It wasn’t scary — as a kid, it was like “Let’s go play on the tank.” I mean, you don’t know that that doesn’t happen everywhere else. So you’re like, “Oh, there’s tanks. That’s cool.” My dad’s like an adventurer to the max, so we basically went to every Southeast Asian country during that time. We spent a lot of time in Thailand and Singapore and Hong Kong. He took us around all kinds of places, and we went on all kinds of adventures. I want to make a record over there — I kind of want it to sound like Theres a Riot Goin’ On, real minimal. I think it would be fun to get in touch with that side of my world.

On Big Inner‘s enormous minimalism:

I just wanted to see if it could work. Could we make a record like this, that was big in scope, that leaned on people’s skill sets, but in a new way? Can we pull this off? So we put a date on the calendar, and I was like “OK, now I gotta write some songs.” I feel like I’ve seen a lot of people write about the record and say, “It’s big, but it’s not cluttered.” And it’s not cluttered because there’s not a lot of things happening. We worked for a long time to make sure there was space in the songs for all of the arrangements. I do that in advance — that’s not happening the night before. It’s just worked out and worked out again and thought about and tweaked. We recorded the record in seven days. When you make a record, there’s a certain amount of things you have to accomplish — you have to get lead vocals, you have to get the bass, you have to get the drums. So it’s like, “If we can make the decisions [about those elements] beforehand, we can get all that done in the first three days, and then we have four days to just do whatever the fuck we want to.’”

On “Brazos” and the lasting impact of slavery:

Basically, it’s about an escaping slave couple. And the man is talking to the woman and trying to comfort her, as well as talking to himself about how shitty his situation is. He’s being introspective. I’ve tried to be as knowledgeable as I can about the civil rights movement — I think being from Virginia, you’re a little more aware of race relations to some degree. It’s just so easy to forget. We think of slavery as 300, 400 years ago, but Martin Luther King was killed in 1968, and that was not that long ago. All kinds of viciously racist behavior has happened and still happens. The tentacles are way longer than we think. As a kid who grew up in a white suburban family, I look back on pictures of, like, the food counter sit-ins, and white people are pouring ketchup and stuff on the protesters — just horrible, horrible shit. I just wanted an opportunity to be like, “Hey, if we can be more aware of this, maybe that will help a little bit.”

There’s a spiritual part of the narrative, too. The “Jesus Christ, he is our friend” part is from a Jorge Ben song. I heard it and thought, “That’s cool — I like that melody.” And then I thought, “You know, that adds a kind of third dimension to the song.” And it’s also to me invoking a very specific religious figure that is part of my life. When I talk about religion, it’s not a faith or mysticism or a vague religious thing, it’s Jesus Christ. So it forces you to ask, “What’s going on in the narrative of these people as they’re escaping? What just happened? Did they die? Is this a prayer? Is this an ironic — like, white culture is telling them “Jesus Christ is your friend,” but they’re still slaves?” There’s all of that in there. It just felt like it was a really interesting way to end it.

Ke$ha, Warrior: Here are a few important facts: 1. I love Ke$ha and 2. I am apparently not alone. There has been a noticeable uptick in the number of Ke$ha-friendly pieces appearing in places like The Atlantic and the New York Times, and with good reason. Ke$ha is genuinely cannier and funnier than most pop stars and is fully, 400% in-on-the-joke (she cites Jay Reatard, the Pixies and Sonic Youth among favorite artists and speaks about them enough to prove she’s not bluffing). That said, despite the fact that it features cameos from Iggy Pop and Julian and Fab from the Strokes, Warrior is not the rock record the mighty K had been promising. Instead, to quote Barry Walters:

“I’m sorry but I am just not sorry” is but one of many Ke$ha-isms on parade in Warrior, her second and against-all-odds excellent album. If you’re not favorably disposed to stadium-sized Europop synth riffs and beats, you might not immediately come to the same conclusion: An acoustic guitar opening on “Crazy Kids” and some patches where the drums drop out for a few dubstep diversions only partially disguise the fact that the first six tracks have more or less the same BPMs, same party-like-it’s-the-last-night-of-our-lives desperation, same Auto-tuned choruses alternating with suburban sass-rapped verses, and same swag of her Animal debut and Cannibal EP ramped up one woo-hoo notch higher. As her 100 percent-OTT-in-an-almost-John-Waters-kinda-way video for “Die Young” proves – complete with upside down crosses and Illuminati semiotics – Sebert takes dance-pop cacophony to a new level of blatancy. Complaining that she’s crass is like suggesting that the Ramones should’ve used a fourth chord.

Memory Tapes, Grace/Confusion: For those not as interested in taking a ride in Ke$ha’s Gold Trans Am, there’s the beautiful new record from Memory Tapes. Annie Zaleski says:

Grace/Confusion distinguishes itself in Memory Tapes’ catalog because of its sophisticated arrangements, which deftly merge dense musical ideas and wild mood swings. “Thru The Field,” on which Hawk sounds uncannily like Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes, boasts humming keyboards and abstract crowd noise before adding layers of Depeche Mode-style accents, a flurry of strident guitars and a mournful instrumental coda. And “Sheila” stitches together brief swatches of sound – Fleetwood Mac-esque pastoral folk, debauched disco, lonely solo piano and zippered funk, among others – to create a surprisingly cohesive narrative tinged with increasing amounts of regret and loneliness.

Wiz Khalifa, O.N.I.C.F: Second album from last year’s breakout rapper is full hazy, woozy synths, stuttering tempos and laid-back rhymes about weed and ladies. In other words, it is a Wiz Khalifa record.

Smashing Pumpkins, Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness Reissue: The record on which Billy Corgan fully realized all of his grandiose impulses in a way that was actually enjoyable to listen to. “Tonight, Tonight” and “1979″ are unstoppable. No bonus material here, just the album, all cleaned up for the digital age.

Blissed Out Fatalists, s/t: This album came out in 1987 to little fanfare, but if you didn’t know any better, you’d think it was recorded last week. Doomy little record featuring members of Blue Daisies. Grizzled guitar and real stern, imposing vocals make this perfect lights-out listening. This one is on Body Double, a new imprint of Captured Tracks focused on reissuing albums like this. To that point…

Half Church, 1980 – 1986: Another one from Body Double, this international band (they ping-ponged from the UK to California and back again) captures the same dour, doomy mood of other pre-New Order Factory Records bands like Stockholm Monsters and (early) Section 25.

The Jayhawks, Music from the North Country: Another anthology, but this one from a more familiar source. This one came out in 2009 and gathers up some of the band’s best moments.

Dungeonesse, “Drive You Crazy”: Dungeonesse is Jenn from Wye Oak getting her pop groove on. Her smoky voice sounds fantastic bouncing between these limber dance beats.

The best parts of '90s R&B mixed with current trends in UK dance

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 Plane”-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.

Hyperliterate punks cast a jaundiced eye on a rotten culture

Anyone looking for a shorthand to describe the devil-may-care attitude pervading Light Up Gold, the irresistible debut from Brooklyn band Parquet Courts, will find it 24 seconds into the first song, when Austin Brown first sneers the album’s most indelible hook: “Forget about it!” It’s meant sarcastically — he’s playing the part of a privileged one-percenter looking down his nose through his monocle at the unwashed masses — but it’s a good indication of the jaundiced eye through which Parquet Courts view our troubled times. Like the most beloved cult movies, the thing that makes Light Up Gold so addicting is its infinite quotability. On regional cuisine? “As for Texas: Donuts Only. You cannot find bagels here.” On the value of wisdom? “Socrates died in the fucking gutter.” And on the job market? “The lab is out of white lab coats/ ’cause there are no more slides and microscopes/ But there are still careers in combat, my son.” They drop these bon mots between jagged guitar lines that sound like they were lifted from Wire’s 154 — bent-coathanger leads that teeter on the steep incline between punk and post-punk. But Light Up Gold‘s greatest irony is that its creators aren’t ironic at all. In their interview with Douglas Wolk, they stressed the importance of emotional honesty, and as the album goes on it becomes clear their acrid wit isn’t the result of disaffection but deep-seated alarm. Sarcasm is the scalpel they use to dissect contemporary culture, turning its ambivalence against itself and exposing is rotten core. Insight like that is as rare as a bagel in Texas.

Opulent hooks in buckets of scuzz

Like a John Singer Sargent trapped beneath a greasy glass frame, Pop Zeus – the project of one Mikey Hodges – smothers opulent hooks in buckets of scuzz. It’s no surprise he nicked the project’s name from a Bob Pollard song; like the Fading Captain himself, Hodges cuts sweetness with sand, nodding lazily towards ’80s jangle pop but ruthlessly chipping off the high-gloss, making what’s left feel as raw and as twitchy as an exposed tendon. But don’t be fooled: The attention to melodic detail – the graceful melodic slopes and canny moments of counterpoint between vocals and guitars make it clear Hodges is no yawning, indifferent de-composer. “Devil’s in the Details” is the album’s dollar-store “Lust For Life,” its rangy guitars and busted-jalopy percussion doing its best impersonation of Pop’s raw thunder. “It doesn’t even matter to me,” Hodges hollers over and over as the song winds down. That he sings it with such conviction is proof that he’s lying.

A roaring debut from Down Under

In the end, it all comes down to Shogun’s voice, a ragged rasp that falls somewhere squarely between young Rod Stewart and sad Otis Redding and infuses every one of the songs on Royal Headache’s roaring debut with a big old battered heart. It’s easy to miss the first few times: The songs whoosh by like vintage funny cars whipping around a red-dirt race track, antic and spitting flames. But look a little closer and it’s clear the driver is crying: On “Girls,” he howls, “Didn’t I tell you over and over I want the key to your heart?” and on “Really in Love,” which kicks and struts like a rough demo from the first Jam record, he asks, “Maybe you think you’re smart…but are you really in love?” It’s as if Shogun got lost en route to a Stax cover-band audition and ended up sitting in on a Buzzcocks tribute instead. His searing yelp and full-body delivery make Royal Headache’s songs feel instantly vital. Call it the Sound of the Young Down Under.

An irresistible reggae collaboration

After six installments of Johnny Cash’s American series and well-received late-career efforts by Mavis Staples and Jimmy Cliff, there’s very little novel about a weathered pioneer musician teaming up with a younger admirer in the hopes of lending a bit of the old fog-and-polish to their artistic reputation. The results are, broadly speaking, similar: a restrained, tasteful facsimile of the artist’s best work, prim as a pressed suit and comforting as a cup of afternoon tea. Which is what makes the thoroughly batshit, opium-gobbling collaboration between reggae legends The Congos and the Austin musician Sun Araw so irresistible. Rather than focusing on the sound of their legendary Heart of the Congos, Araw set about to recreate the mood: murky, mysterious, vaguely occult and more than a little spooky. Like Heart, the songs still center around glassy-eyed, endlessly-repeated choruses, but on Icon Give Thanks they’re distended and wobbly, strange voices drifting eerily through some narcotic hallucination. And though it can’t rightly be called a resurrection – it’s stranger and spookier than anything the band did in their prime – Icon Give Thanks undeniably feels like the work of the undead, coming back for a final haunting.

Manchester kids obsess over the Universal Questions of adolescence

Sex, the second EP from the Manchester, UK, group The 1975, takes a little while to get off. The first two songs are pleasant but nondescript daubs of ambient electronic music – gauzy layers of synthetic sound wrapping up frontman Matty’s pleading vocals; they drift along sleepily, never pausing at anything that looks much like a chorus or a hook. And just when you’re wondering if we really, truly need another bedroom synth band, the title track arrives, and it’s as if the sheepish local opener spontaneously rip off their masks and reveal themselves to be Jimmy Eat World circa Bleed American – which, if for some reason you need to ask, is a very good thing.

Thematically, the 1975 obsess over the Universal Questions of adolescence – chiefly, not getting laid enough and getting laid way too much. The former is the subject of “Sex,” a full-boil three-minute case of pent-up, jean-bursting frustration where the angel on the protagonist’s shoulder keeps yelling, “She’s got a boyfriend, anyway,” while the devil coolly assures him that this is no one’s idea of a deal-breaker. The next song, the gently-spiraling “You,” is almost the spiritual sequel, with Matty defensively insisting, “It’s not my fault I’ve fucked everybody here” as he and his date fumble their way through a loose tangle of silvery guitars. The album-closing “Milk” blends the snowy synths of the EPs first two songs with the throb and thrash of the middle two, building to the kind of needy crescendo that characterizes the best Frightened Rabbit songs. Its hook, of course, is “She’s doing it all the time.”

All of this would be awfully caddish except that the 1975 manage to convincingly sell meaningless sex as true romance, investing their pants-pawing basement makeouts with deep meaning and dogged determination. They are the Ben Gibbard of the dry hump. If there is any drawback to Sex, it’s that it wastes its first six minutes idling before finally delivering a tidy batch of perfect guitar pop. The 1975 belong to a rare group of young men: the kind who spend too much time on foreplay.

Bleak, nihilistic minimalism

The debut from the Gothenberg act Lust for Youth – essentially the alias of one Hannes Norvide – feels like it’s set deep inside some ice cave in the outer reaches of the uninhabited arctic. The synths are as chilly and rigid as stalactites, and Norvide’s voice – a crude, teenage-Robert Smith holler – bounces up from somewhere deep, dark and unseen.

The minimalism is as much a pragmatic matter as an aesthetic one: Norvide recorded the album in his bedroom on borrowed equipment, and the record doesn’t waste time with unnecessary flourishes. The songs are built on fat, steel-cold synth bars and usually consist of little more than a drum track and a single melody line. Sonically, it rivals the primitivism of early minimalists like The Normal, but it feels bleaker and more nihilistic. That such relentlessly despondent sounds were inspired by, to quote Norvide directly, “new love,” feels like some philosophy major’s perverse joke.

Growing Seeds refuses to acknowledge the existence of any notes on the Casio above middle C. “Always Changing” chugs robotically, like a runaway train in a Westworld outtake, and “It’s You” sounds like “Blue Monday” played on a Speak & Spell – both using big, blocky notes as blue as the numbers on a digital calculator. Despite its title, “We Got Lust” is almost defiantly sexless – Norvide emotionlessly reading off lyrics like they’re some kind of expressionist haiku as a primitive keyboard jerks and lurches like a Murnau zombie in the foreground. If this is Norvide in love, imagine his idea of a breakup album.

Dirty Projectors, About To Die EP: A short, lovely EP that follows up on their sunray of an album Swing Lo Magellan, which remains one of the best and most life-affirming records of the year. [JG]

Prince Rama, Top Ten Hits of the End of the World: Scrappy dance-rock duo Prince Rama play Halloween-style dress-up with their latest. Laura Studarus explains:

The conceit for Brooklyn art-duo Prince Rama’s sixth album goes like this: Life as we know it finally ends in the long-promised apocalypse. But lucky for us, Prince Rama has provided a glimpse into the future: Top Ten Hits of the End of the World, which is billed as a compilation of the 10 most popular songs on the day everything came screeching to a halt, are written and performed — not by band members Taraka and Nimai Larson — but by the various musical alter egos that they’ve channeled. What the complex mission statement ultimately translates to is a headlong dive into the sisters’ hedonistic brand of dance music.

James Ferraro, Sushi: Experimental electronic musician James Ferraro offers a playfully glitchy, retro-futuristic music that feels lit softly by the cathode rays of old, flickering televisions. Comforting in mood and disturbing in texture, it’s full of clonks, bangs, zips, squelches and other vaguely cartoony sounds, beneath which he has laid some softly sighing vocals that bring everything back into human focus. If Heaven were a pinball machine. [JG]

Isis, Temporal: Beloved Boston art-metal band releases a vault-clearing two-hour survey. Andrew Parks says it is as essential as any of their recordings:

On paper, the nearly two hours of rarities and previously unreleased material on Temporal looks more like an attic-clearing exercise – the proverbial nail in the coffin of ISIS’s 13-year career – than a must-listen .. Temporal paints a different picture, hinting at the five very different voices that were vying for attention at every turn. Meanwhile, the Melvins/Lustmord remix of “Not In Rivers, But In Drops” and Thomas Dimuzio’s widescreen take on “Holy Tears” show what kind of creative wells ISIS tapped in other acts.

Ne-Yo, R.E.D.: if you’ve been paying any attention to contemporary R&B lately, you’ve no doubt noticed a trend towards something we’ll loosely call “auteurism” — artists with a singular vision, voice and approach fiddling with the boundaries of the genre and figuring it out a way to brand it with their distinctive character. Well, Ne-Yo was already on that came years before any of these newcomers arrived. Secretly one of R&B’s strongest songwriters (he wrote Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable”), his voice has only gained depth and texture over the years, matching his always-mature songwriting. [JEK]

Aerosmith, Music From Another Dimension: This is Aerosmith’s first studio album since 2001. They sound exactly the same, and I mean exactly: “Can’t Stop Loving You” is a textbook histrionic, Alicia Silverstone-era AeroBallad, with Carrie Underwood providing radio-country trimmings on the side. Ditto “We All Fall Down,” their bid to stay on Lite-FM radio; it could have been on any Aerosmith album of the past twenty years untouched and sounded of its era. And rockers like “Lover Alot” and “Legendary Child” are as rubbery and lean and bluesy (ahem, “Bloozy”) as anything they’ve done. They are an ageless band, and honestly? God bless the institution that can keep itself this consistently preserved in cheap whiskey. [JG]

Sugar Minott, Sufferer’s Choice: 1983 record from the classic reggae vocalist features the kind of easy-rolling rocksteady for which he became famous. Minott’s got a light, sweet vocal tone, which makes him the perfect vehicle for these lover’s rock-style bouncers. A classic. [JEK]

Too $hort and E-40, History: Function Music: Two Bay Area rap titans team up for a dual album celebrating their 20-year dominance; two old guys who still sound young. [JG]

Mr. MFN Exquire, Power & Passion EP: The rough-edged Brooklyn rapper Mr. Muthafuckin Exquire cleans up his name ever-so-slightly for his major label deal but still manages to call his first single “Telephuck.” [JG]

Teen Daze, The Inner Mansions: Glowing-obelisk synths and breathy vocals power this wisp of a dream-pop record. [JG]

Flying Burrito Brothers, Last of the Red Hot Burritos: 1972 album from one of the bands that basically invented alt-country. This one is post-Parsons, which is going to lose some people, but there’s still enough rollicking, boot-stomping country to satisfy those who are looking for it. [JEK]

Lil Fame and Termanology, Fizzyology: Lil Fame of M.O.P. and indie-rap stalwart Termanology team up for the grey-toned rough-stuff NYC rap that they remain lifelong devotees of. [JG]

Kylie Minogue, The Abbey Road Sessions: No one here really has any kind of axe to grind with Kylie, right? Cuz that’s crazy. This one features Kylie backed by a full orchestra and revisiting some of her best-known hits, including “The Locomotion” (!), “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” and her duet with Nick Cave — who reprises his role on this recording — “Where the Wild Roses Grow.” That list alone shows Minogue is a pop performer of alarming versatility. Don’t fight it, people. [JEK]

Laibach, An Introduction to Laibach: Opening with a bizarro German language cover of “Warm Leatherette,” this comp is intended to help folks who always wanted to get into these Slovenian industrialists but were not sure where to start. I am genuinely curious to know how many people that might be. In any event! I was a Laibach fan back in the days when I was painting my nails black and putting on a cape and going to Long Island goth clubs, and hearing some of these again filled me with a sense of, let’s say, “nostalgia.” [JEK]

Califone, Sometimes Good Weather Follows Bad People: Beloved Chicago group emerges with another record full of moody songs that blend country and folk impulses with a decided experimental mindset. The tone throughout is hushed and perfectly restrained. [JEK]

Underoath, Anthology: 1999 – 2013: I was a pretty massive fan of this band a few years back. Their strength is in combining blistering hardcore with moments of alarming melodicism, chainsaw riffs suddenly opening into pained, pelading choruses. They often got lumped in with more commercial screamo, which I thought was a terrific disservice. These dudes had chops. They’ll call it quits next year — this compilation rounds up their best. [JEK]

Megadeth, Countdown to Extinction Reissue: This was Megadeth’s fifth and most commercially successful record, and its reissue comes bundled with a vicious, hyper-clear live set. [JG]

Anaal Nathrakh, Vanitass: YES. Sickening (in the best way) British metal duo uncork another unholy batch of filthcore, with sword-sharp riffs and helicopter-blade rhythms and songs called “Of Fire, and Fucking Pigs.” [JEK]

Barb Wire Dolls, Slit: Bug-eyed, brawny punk rock that reminds me of early Distillers. Which is a good thing, since God only knows what Brody Dalle is up to these days. This Greek group puts an emphasis not only on furious riffing but furious lyrics, restoring to punk rock a spirit of defiance. [JEK]

Featureless Ghost, Personality Matrix: I’ve really been getting into the stuff on the Night People label lately. This is some dead-eyed, minimal synthy stuff — appropriately spooky and stripped back, but with fully-developed, eerily melodic songs. [JEK]

Goldendust, Goldendust: More from Night People, this one even more minimal than Featureless Ghost. It kind of reminds me of The Normal in a way — nasal male vocals and only the barest essential musical instrumentation. [JEK]

Graveyard, Lights Out: Man do I love these guys. Swedish melodic metallers come yowling from beyond the grave with another batch of relentlessly melodic metal. Don’t believe me? Check that second song. It’s basically a ballad, you guys. This is for anyone who is still suffering from the affliction that The Darkness is a legitimate metal band. Meet Graveyard and see what you’ve been missing. [JEK]

Horseback & Locrian, New Dominions: Reissue of 2011 recording by black metallers Horseback and obstinate experimentalist Locrian. Though is there any other kind of experimentalist? Is there an accomodating experimentalist? Or is that just the name of an old Peter O’Toole movie? Regardless. This is 41 minutes of blackened drone, suitable for freaking out your roommates/parents/spouse. [JEK]

Dragged into Sunlight, Widowmaker: Good week for metal, man! Miminalist metal group splits their latest into three 10-plus-minute segments that go from spare to punishing to brutally slow and sludgy. This probably has more in common with classical music than metal in terms of structure if not sound. It demands deep, patient listening. [JEK]

Games, Games: Lovelorn psych-pop from HoZac with a slick of hot-rod-rock grease on it. [JG]