Guceri, the singer for Philadelphia band East Hundred, is at the end of a long psychoanalysis of the music industry, its games of chance and illusions of choice. Take, for example, East Hundred’s brush with the record business in 2010 — a showcase at the Rockwood Music Hall in New York City attended by some A&R types, including a rep from Atlantic Records. The feedback, the band later learned, focused on a cringe-worthy analysis of the band’s supposed image crisis: The songs were great, but Guceri needed to decide whether to be Gwen Stefani or Karen O; guitarist Brooke Blair came across as Dave Matthews-ish; drummer Will Blair and keyboardist Susan Gager skewed indie; and bassist Dave Sunderland was termed “undefinable.”

“It was just so cliché,” says Guceri. “I understand that’s a conversation worth having down the line. But if that’s the first conversation we’re having? We were a band on a shoestring budget, playing a tiny, shitty, packed club, and they were making a marketing judgment call on how we presented ourselves. They didn’t know our band.”

And now, it seems, few ever will. After eight years, three EPs and one album, the band — its members all in their early 30s — has reached its end. Their story really isn’t a tale about the major label (or any label, for that matter) rollercoaster; it’s debatable whether anyone outside of a loyal, mostly local fanbase should care that a DIY alt-rock band from Philly is calling it quits. Bands break up all the time, for reasons that are easiest to talk about in simplistic, cynical terms. There’s always plenty of blame to go around, laid mostly at the feet of unresponsive record labels, incompetent managers, indifferent music journalists, the whims of the listening public and of course the band members themselves. Everyone moves on; the Earth hardly tilts on its axis.

And yet we’re here to argue that East Hundred is the band that should have been. Because, at one time, the pieces were falling into place, with radio airplay, song placements for TV and film, a gig opening for Jane’s Addiction last year, a cute and clever homemade music video, and whatever metric you want to use for being savvy on the Internet. Because there was no image problem — Guceri is a stone-cold fox (and more closely resembles an extroverted version of Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval than Karen O or Gwen Stefani, anyway). And because the songs, while always polished, were coming into greatness with the crystalline focus of The Spells EP, a stillborn beauty of a final recording.

Over beers and Bloody Marys at a semi-posh hotel in Center City Philadelphia, Brooke Blair and Beril Guceri spill the details of East Hundred’s eight-year existence. Drinking at a hotel bar in your own city has a way of making you feel like a tourist, peering out at familiar city streets from a visitor’s perspective, and in some ways, East Hundred has felt this way its whole career. The band stands on solid modern-pop ground, writing well-polished and anthemic songs with just enough sonic weirdness that, if you slapped a Vaughan Oliver design on one of their record sleeves, could pass for a classic 4AD dream-pop band. This, however, is not the sound of young Philadelphia, whose indie scene has recently been a haven for ethereal folk outfits such as Espers and shaggier rock band variations such as the War On Drugs, Man Man and Dr. Dog.

“We weren’t totally indie and hip and we didn’t look unshowered or whatever, but we also weren’t Coldplay,” says Brooke, the group’s studio wizard. “We’re right in the middle.”

“A lot of people told us to move to L.A.,” adds Guceri. “Everyone said we’d do well in L.A. It was bizarre.”

Producer Brian McTear of Weathervane Music, who worked on East Hundred’s self-released 2009 album Passenger and acted as a band mentor of sorts, saw the square-peg mentality as self-imposed.

“East Hundred had a bit of an identity crisis that resulted in an ongoing outsider complex,” says McTear. “They felt like they weren’t pop enough to be pure pop, and they weren’t cool enough to gain acceptance among the indie crowd. As someone on the outside of it all, I have to say much of it was in their head. I’ve seen this happen with a lot of young bands. As their friend, I tried to bring this to light but I’m not sure they could accept that.”

Wherever East Hundred ended up in the local landscape, its beginnings were well outside the usual alt-rock frame of reference. Brothers Brooke and Will Blair, along with bassist Dave Sunderland, came to Philadelphiafrom Alexandria, Virginia, initially serving as the instrumental backbone for a Roots-y, live hip-hop group called Infectious Organisms. Under the influence of turn-of-the-century electronica, Portishead and Kid A, the Blair brothers sought out a female vocalist for a different kind of band; it turned out that Brooke’s girlfriend,DrexelUniversity film student Beril Guceri, was available.

“I didn’t want to audition and get hurt,” says Guceri. “I just called him up one night and asked if he wanted to record this Turkish pop song that I’d been singing along to.”

The vocals seemed to fit, and after some hesitation — the stage-shy Guceri had never performed in public, not to mention the complications understood by having both brothers and romantic partners in a band — the job was hers. Sunderland eventually came aboard to fill out the live band, and keyboardist Susan Gager signed up after responding to an ad on Craigslist that read, in part: “Fans of Blonde Redhead,Denali, Radiohead, etc. would be a great fit. Please have pro-ish gear and a good attitude, and be OK with beer drinking.”

East Hundred spent its first year holed up in a stuffy warehouse space with a 16-track portable studio, and its 2005 self-titled EP reflects a more synthesized, drum machine-enabled start. An earnest, drunken email from Brooke convinced Tortoise’s John McEntire to mix 2007′s Copper Street Performer EP at his Soma Studios in Chicago. By the time full-length Passenger arrived, things were coming together for East Hundred — and yet simultaneously falling apart.

Midway through writing the album in 2008, Brooke and Guceri dissolved their romantic relationship; Will, who co-writes the lyrics with Guceri, was also going through a break-up. It was fuel for the fire, not only in terms of songwriting (Passenger effectively documents heartbreak happening in real time) but also in terms of creating a storyline for the band.

“It’s extremely fascinating,” says Justin Clowes, a photographer and filmmaker who befriended East Hundred and has made a band documentary titled Fools, Kings And Queens. “You’ve got the brothers and the boyfriend-girlfriend thing. And Brooke, Will and Dave have been together since they were babies. They seemed like a family. As I got to know them better, I saw that there were some cracks and things weren’t always what they seemed. Over the course of eight years, their relationships changed. Even after Brooke and Beril broke up, there was a connection between them. I think Beril would still look to Brooke for approval or help with songwriting or the way she was singing a part.”

“We’re all friends, we’ll all go out for drinks,” says Brooke. “But when you’re in a room being creative with one another and everyone has very passionate opinions about certain things, that can get tense. And I’ll be honest, a lot of the added drama in the band came from Beril and me breaking up, and fighting spills into the band. We’d fight differently in the band, in front of people. And then Will and I being brothers, we fight differently in the band. I was probably more respectful with Dave and Susan than I was with Will and Beril. Your communication is much more direct. You get to the point a lot quicker.”

“Certain band members got away with things that other ones didn’t,” concurs Guceri. “That happened a lot. Everyone says that bands are like platonic marriages, and some of that is true, but they’re unnatural relationships.”

What developed was a highly democratic way of doing business, an approach that more or less evenly divided the duties of booking shows, managing CD pressings, putting together artwork and photos, and tirelessly promoting themselves online.

“I’d spend Friday and Saturday nights on MySpace,” says Guceri, “finding people in the Philadelphia area who listen to the same kind of music we do and asking them if they wanted to come out and see our show.”

“We did everything,” says Will. “Except for a short few periods of time, we were self-managed, self-booked, self-promoted. That is a hard, near-impossible way to be efficient, maintain a day/night job, and still focus 100 percent on the music. But we managed to do so for quite some time. Perhaps we could’ve hounded the industry more and banged on more doors, but what was on the other side at times seemed a bit ugly, and although we aren’t the best business folks, we felt secure and comfortable in our autonomy.”

Although East Hundred ultimately sought to be signed by a label, the DIY model began paying dividends. There was airplay (notably, on local adult-alternative station WXPN) and song placements in programs on MTV and Showtime, as well as in a Disney film and the trailer for the Ben Affleck movie The Company Men. Mid-sized venues in Philadelphia were an easy booking, as were once-a-month bar shows in New York. Short tours were less successful — there was a particularly bad night in Cleveland — but the road grind was leavened by the occasional appearance of Will Kenny, an Alan Partridge-type TV host alter ego assumed by Will to document East Hundred’s adventures on YouTube.

“Right around the time of Passenger, it felt like it could really work out for them,” says Clowes. “Bigger venues were interested. I’d seen enough local bands to know they were up there. One of the things I noticed with East Hundred is the bigger the room, the more they bring it. They rise to those occasions. I see them as having a kind of Coldplay, Snow Patrol type of arena-ready sound. East Hundred’s sound is huge.”

“Passenger was the apex,” says Brooke. “There was a good buzz. The CD release show sold out, we were a WXPN ‘artist to watch.’ Things were really working.”

Just as the grassroots success of Passenger positioned East Hundred for prime time — or even simply to break out of the Philadelphia market — the music industry was curled up inside itself. Peripheral damage was everywhere: Record stores shuttered, summer festivals were canceled, music magazines folded. The recession was particularly cruel to record labels, which were tentative to make new signings based on precipitous declines in sales. But bad timing is just one of the puzzle pieces that doomed East Hundred’s chances.

“Bands still got signed after 2009,” says Brooke. “It’s not like we’re blaming it all on the music industry. The other part of the equation is that we should’ve thrown caution to the wind and been on the road more. This band got started when we were in our late 20s, and we were more cautious about things. Is it time to buy a van? I don’t know. I guess we could’ve been more prolific. We worked on things until everyone was happy — the font, what press photo we’re using. They were all big things for us. All five people had to be happy, which was great, but it slowed things down. We had a small stint with a booking agent, we had a small stint with a manager. But until someone was going to come along and do a better job of booking shows than we were doing, we were going to keep doing it ourselves.”

East Hundred’s stalled momentum, says McTear, was in some part attributable to their group-based songwriting. “It’s a very peculiar way of doing things, and particularly difficult for mature artists, I think,” he says. “They really should have taken more individual initiative and brought songs to the group more independently.”

East Hundred had plans to record a full-length follow-up to Passenger, but a combination of factors — real life in your 30s and the time consumed by band management rather than songwriting — forced a downscaled version. Turning to one of the last refuges of independent bands, the group initiated a Kickstarter campaign to raise $5,000 for the recording of The Spells EP in 2011. It took just two weeks for fans to raise the money. As investments go these days, the five-song EP makes a generous artistic return on capital.

“As tape started rolling for The Spells sessions, we heard something we hadn’t heard before,” says Will. “We were calm, comfortable and focused. Just days before, we almost cancelled our recording time due to internal conflicts. We promised each other to leave any baggage outside of the studio and just play our music.”

While recording vocals for the The Spells, Guceri insisted on a closed session, banishing her bandmates and their input. Her vocals — deeper and more subtle, fractured by emotion at the right moments — are just one of the elements that makes East Hundred’s big, stomping anthems seem as direct as whispers. The Spells is reminiscent of the National’s 2004 Cherry Tree EP, in that it seems to mark a turning point where a band finds its unique footing, slows down with confidence, and realizes a certain architectural elegance in songwriting.

“I’m not sure it was time to call it quits for East Hundred,” says McTear. “A major overhaul would be in order, sure — learning to write more quickly and efficiently, overcoming the outsider’s complex, etc. But for everything they had going for them, it’s sad that what I think are nothing more than ‘operations’ problems could keep the group from getting off the ground. Running a band is running a business. Writing songs is your production line. If what you make is good, then the most important thing you can do for the rest of us if establish some best practices — for your own psychological preservation if nothing else.”

Back in Philadelphia with Brooke and Guceri, a late night has turned to early morning, and we’ve downgraded from the hotel to a nearby dive bar, from Bloody Marys and chilled Pilsner glasses to $2 bottles of Yuengling lager. The reality of East Hundred’s denouement begins to dawn in the beerlight. The final show is set for this month, the band sharing the bill only with the premiere screening of the documentary Fools, Kings And Queens. We talk about life after the band, with Brooke and Guceri each in the early stages of making music on their own; Will writing a book about his experiences playing music; Gager in school for hairstyling; Sunderland enjoying normal life without band membership for the first time in 20 years. Despite tensions over the years, the bandmates remain friends. The official reason for the break-up has to do with the five of them not giving 110 percent anymore, which makes East Hundred sound vaguely like a basketball team.

Having exhausted the details of their own band, Guceri waxes nostalgic about Depeche Mode, and Brooke discusses Radiohead — they’ve studied rock’s sacred texts all their lives. There’s an unspoken realization that East Hundred traveled some of the same roads as their idols, that the 110 percent effort they used to give created something permanent, too. And then it feels like a record skips backward, that East Hundred is a new band excited by the prospect of the world hearing its songs as Guceri asks uncertainly, “Wait, do you really like our music? Why?”

eMusic’s Marissa G. Muller spoke with Scally and Legrand, individually, about their visual approach to music, their mutual love of Wong Kar-wai, and the moment Teen Dream ended.

You spent a long time touring behind Teen Dream and then working on Bloom. So I was wondering: What’s the strongest non-music memory you have from the past two years?

Victoria Legrand: That moment for me was the end of touring behind Teen Dream, after our last show in Washington, D.C. It’s a bittersweet feeling — you’re exhausted, you’re grateful, you need a break, but you want to keep being creative. You’re full of love because you had a great show. You just feel lucky, so many intensities happening all at once.

Alex Scally: One that really stands out in my mind was going to Japan to play a show. It’s a really mesmerizing, beautiful, and enchanting place. It wasn’t my first time in Japan; I went when I was much, much younger for school and I felt like I really understood it a lot more this time around. I think you get a lot more out of traveling when you’re older.

We spent a lot of time going to see temples and insane clothing stores. Everything there is informed by an aesthetic that is completely foreign to Western mindset. Even just the interactions between people, the unspoken agreements that exist within the society are all foreign and there’s an ancientness there that’s so beautiful. If you pay attention you can try to feel everything that’s going on. We love travel in general and feel super lucky about how much we travel and try not to take it for granted.

On Sub Pop’s site it says, “Bloom is meant to be experienced as an ALBUM,” whereas, you’ve said that Teen Dream was song-oriented. What prompted this shift?

Scally: I don’t think it was a change, really. We’ve always worked the same way and we’ve always been an album band. It feels sometimes like songs on an album don’t really go with one another but I think they go hand in hand more than ever on [Bloom]. As we wrote, each song affected the next.

What considerations were made when you were sequencing the album?

Scally: We wanted it to feel like a story and to have a certain feeling at the beginning, middle and an end. It’s all based on feeling so maybe it wouldn’t be a good sequence for someone else but for us it’s what felt right.

You mentioned a narrative within the album. Can you expand on that idea a little bit? What’s the general storyline?

Scally: I really think people should find what they want in it. We always try to avoid saying what the narrative is, because what a song means to us is irrelevant. You have a feeling, you have an idea, and it informs the song. But then once the song is created, it’s for everyone to take whatever it means to them. Trying to control people’s reactions is pointless, especially for the kind of band that we are: We work in abstractions so we just let something exist.

Who are some artists that you feel have the same approach to their work?

Scally: Every painter. When you go see a painter you don’t ask him what his painting is about, right? You just experience it. You look at it. Maybe that’s what it is: We think of music in a more visual way. Maybe it’s less of a narrative, like Bob Dylan singing about protests. [Our music] is just not simple like that. It’s more abstract.

Do you follow the visual art world closely?

Scally: Not as much as I’d like to but we both love film. Sometimes you find stuff that’s really exciting and inspiring.

Who are some of the artists and filmmakers that you and Victoria like?

Scally:Wong Kar-wai is someone we both love a lot. Victoria and I have watched In the Mood For Love three times together. That movie never stops being amazing. The narrative is actually not that important for his films, and I’ve heard that he shoots a lot of his films without telling the actors what’s going on in the scene. He just gets them to behave in a certain way and then pieces it together later.

Is there an ideal way to experience Bloom?

Legrand: In a variety of ways: in a group setting, as an individual, on headphones, in a car, on a train. Music has a lot of motion in it and music is also shape-shifting; there’s a myriad of experiences to have with it.

Compared to 10 years ago, things have accelerated so much in the Internet “world” — which is not reality — and so a lot of [music] is really expendable. I think people are missing out on a more physical relationship with music, not just with our record but with music in general. People who love music deserve to take time out for themselves to indulge, the way we used to do it when we were teenagers and would go to the record store, grab a CD and go home and spend hours just reading the lyric book. And don’t forget about your dad’s record collection — that stuff is awesome. I used to always believe that [track] eight on an album was the best song. It isn’t true, but it’s what you do when you’re young and obsessed. Nothing beats finding something special on your own and having that gestation time, like “I really got into this record this week,” and you give it to your friend or you make a mixtape. That stuff doesn’t have to go away. That doesn’t have to be replaced — it’s still there and it’s always going to be the most awesome.

What was the last LP you bought?

Legrand: I got a record at a show the other night: Ed Schrader’s Music Beat. Ed Schrader is from Baltimore and his lyrics are really amazing, I love him a lot, and I just bought his vinyl — a record called Jazz Mind. So I supported a friend. I basically try to buy fellow artists’ vinyl and I try to buy old vinyl. And I also like to give those as gifts if someone has been looking for something forever. The irony is that because of the Internet you can find vinyl that you wouldn’t be able to find in your local record store.

eMusic’s Marissa G. Muller spoke with Scally and Legrand, individually, about their visual approach to music, their mutual love of Wong Kar-wai, and the moment Teen Dream ended.

You spent a long time touring behind Teen Dream and then working on Bloom. So I was wondering: What’s the strongest non-music memory you have from the past two years?

Victoria Legrand: That moment for me was the end of touring behind Teen Dream, after our last show in Washington, D.C. It’s a bittersweet feeling — you’re exhausted, you’re grateful, you need a break, but you want to keep being creative. You’re full of love because you had a great show. You just feel lucky, so many intensities happening all at once.

Alex Scally: One that really stands out in my mind was going to Japan to play a show. It’s a really mesmerizing, beautiful, and enchanting place. It wasn’t my first time in Japan; I went when I was much, much younger for school and I felt like I really understood it a lot more this time around. I think you get a lot more out of traveling when you’re older.

We spent a lot of time going to see temples and insane clothing stores. Everything there is informed by an aesthetic that is completely foreign to Western mindset. Even just the interactions between people, the unspoken agreements that exist within the society are all foreign and there’s an ancientness there that’s so beautiful. If you pay attention you can try to feel everything that’s going on. We love travel in general and feel super lucky about how much we travel and try not to take it for granted.

On Sub Pop’s site it says, “Bloom is meant to be experienced as an ALBUM,” whereas, you’ve said that Teen Dream was song-oriented. What prompted this shift?

Scally: I don’t think it was a change, really. We’ve always worked the same way and we’ve always been an album band. It feels sometimes like songs on an album don’t really go with one another but I think they go hand in hand more than ever on [Bloom]. As we wrote, each song affected the next.

What considerations were made when you were sequencing the album?

Scally: We wanted it to feel like a story and to have a certain feeling at the beginning, middle and an end. It’s all based on feeling so maybe it wouldn’t be a good sequence for someone else but for us it’s what felt right.

You mentioned a narrative within the album. Can you expand on that idea a little bit? What’s the general storyline?

Scally: I really think people should find what they want in it. We always try to avoid saying what the narrative is, because what a song means to us is irrelevant. You have a feeling, you have an idea, and it informs the song. But then once the song is created, it’s for everyone to take whatever it means to them. Trying to control people’s reactions is pointless, especially for the kind of band that we are: We work in abstractions so we just let something exist.

Who are some artists that you feel have the same approach to their work?

Scally: Every painter. When you go see a painter you don’t ask him what his painting is about, right? You just experience it. You look at it. Maybe that’s what it is: We think of music in a more visual way. Maybe it’s less of a narrative, like Bob Dylan singing about protests. [Our music] is just not simple like that. It’s more abstract.

Do you follow the visual art world closely?

Scally: Not as much as I’d like to but we both love film. Sometimes you find stuff that’s really exciting and inspiring.

Who are some of the artists and filmmakers that you and Victoria like?

Scally:Wong Kar-wai is someone we both love a lot. Victoria and I have watched In the Mood For Love three times together. That movie never stops being amazing. The narrative is actually not that important for his films, and I’ve heard that he shoots a lot of his films without telling the actors what’s going on in the scene. He just gets them to behave in a certain way and then pieces it together later.

Is there an ideal way to experience Bloom?

Legrand: In a variety of ways: in a group setting, as an individual, on headphones, in a car, on a train. Music has a lot of motion in it and music is also shape-shifting; there’s a myriad of experiences to have with it.

Compared to 10 years ago, things have accelerated so much in the Internet “world” — which is not reality — and so a lot of [music] is really expendable. I think people are missing out on a more physical relationship with music, not just with our record but with music in general. People who love music deserve to take time out for themselves to indulge, the way we used to do it when we were teenagers and would go to the record store, grab a CD and go home and spend hours just reading the lyric book. And don’t forget about your dad’s record collection — that stuff is awesome. I used to always believe that [track] eight on an album was the best song. It isn’t true, but it’s what you do when you’re young and obsessed. Nothing beats finding something special on your own and having that gestation time, like “I really got into this record this week,” and you give it to your friend or you make a mixtape. That stuff doesn’t have to go away. That doesn’t have to be replaced — it’s still there and it’s always going to be the most awesome.

What was the last LP you bought?

Legrand: I got a record at a show the other night: Ed Schrader’s Music Beat. Ed Schrader is from Baltimore and his lyrics are really amazing, I love him a lot, and I just bought his vinyl — a record called Jazz Mind. So I supported a friend. I basically try to buy fellow artists’ vinyl and I try to buy old vinyl. And I also like to give those as gifts if someone has been looking for something forever. The irony is that because of the Internet you can find vinyl that you wouldn’t be able to find in your local record store.

But with the late-2000s lo-fi boom that launched the hissing careers of acts from Best Coast to Toro Y Moi sinking deeper into blog archives, a number of former noisemakers are stepping into the studio and polishing up their production. With Best Coast’s Jon Brion-produced, Capitol Records-recorded The Only Place out this week, we rounded up the band’s Bobb Bruno and four other acts with bright, Tide-clean new albums — plus a veteran indie producer — to find out why they’re leaving their bedroom days behind them.

How did you do your first recordings?

Bobb Bruno (Best Coast): Most of the early Best Coast stuff was done in my bedroom on a Zoom digital 16-track hard disk recorder…I could have made us sound clean and I already had a decent amount of gear, so it was always Bethany [Cosentino]‘s choice to make things more lo-fi.

Dylan Baldi (Cloud Nothings): The very first Cloud Nothings recordings were actually in my parents’ basement on my computer that I got for school. I was just going straight to GarageBand [software] with one microphone. I was excited to even be able to make music at all.

Frankie Rose (Frankie Rose & the Outs, ex-Vivian Girls, Dum Dum Girls): Everything that I’ve ever done has started incredibly lo-fi. A lot of it just had to do with what I had available to me, resources-wise. The first Vivian Girls record, we made that for $800, we spent two days in a studio. It was because we paid for it ourselves.

Chris Coady (producer, Beach House, Smith Westerns): When I was growing up there was a Tascam Portastudio and everyone got one…For a lot of people, what would ordinarily become a demo would become a band’s finished album. You had bands like Ween and Guided by Voices, who were doing self-made, home-recorded albums.

That lo-fi sound has gotten a lot of attention in the last few years with people like Ariel Pink, Wavves, Ty Segall…

Frankie Rose: That was music journalists, to be honest. I think during that time, a lot of people were making all kinds of different music, it was just something that people grasped onto.

Having done well with that style, though, why go more polished?

Frankie Rose: I realized I wanted to be doing something else. It became really clear that I had to rethink what I was doing, what was inspiring me.

Ramona Gonzalez (Nite Jewel): With [One Second of Love], we wanted this to sound beautiful on vinyl. I had been listening to a lot of instrumental electronic music…what I really liked about that was taking electronic instruments and recording them in the best possible way, so you really get all the textures from the instrument as opposed to a two-dimensional texture.

Evan Abeele (Memoryhouse): The plan was always to get into a studio. We were very set on waiting it out until we were able to really do that. I wanted it to sound like the records I loved when I was a kid, or the records I loved in college, like Fleetwood Mac.

Dylan Baldi: I just really wanted someone who would make the recordings sound like a band playing, because there’s not really a whole lot of recordings coming out right now that sound like that.

Has there been any backlash from doing something that might be considered less “indie”?

Frankie Rose: As far as I can tell, people who like the last record love this one more.

Bobb Bruno: We didn’t worry about staying true [to the older sound] at all. I’m a big fan of Jon [Brion's] and had spent a lot of time watching him work in studios before, so I knew what it was going to sound like.

Evan Abeele: I sympathize with people who really loved Memoryhouse as a lo-fi thing, and I really loved that too, but I think that that moment is past. And I know that that was a very, very divisive move, for a band that came from the roots that we came from, but I think that it was the right choice.

Chris Coady:  It used to be, in the ’90s, nobody wanted to sound too mainstream. People wanted to sound like the Pixies. I think because mainstream music is totally in shambles now, and you have Arcade Fire and Bon Iver at the Grammys… People are much more open-minded to making something that could be accepted by a large audience.

Ramona Gonzalez: The radio, the music doesn’t sound that great, production-wise. It’s actually like, what popular music is doing is doing indie kids a favor by sounding so crunchy and crappy that indie kids don’t have to be incredible producers to get noticed.

What’s next for you? Do you think we’ll see more bands steering toward cleaner recordings?

Ramona Gonzalez: We do have more at our disposal at this point in time. I’m excited to [get] a nice vocal mic.

Chris Coady: I think for now the pendulum is maybe swinging in the way of a polished sound. Every indie rock band there is is releasing an album this year and a lot of them have done the lo-fi albums already. I would guess we’ll be hearing a cleaner version of those bands.

Bobb Bruno: I don’t think of it as a trend, I feel like this happens because people get more confident in the abilities and want that to be heard: clearly. They realize it doesn’t need to be buried under a ton of distortion or reverb.

Frankie Rose: I really do believe that you can go spend $300,000 — [laughs] I couldn’t, maybe someday — and get the best producer in the world and you can make a piece of shit album. It doesn’t matter what the fidelity is if you have good songs.

Since then, he has given many reliably revelatory performances, recorded the Ives Sonatas and the Bach Partitas with clarity and tenderness, collaborated sensitively with the violinist Joshua Bell, and now, in his Nonesuch debut, paired two avant-garde visionaries from different eras: György Ligeti, who died in 2006 and, yes, Beethoven again. Denk points out that while Beethoven’s “heroic” middle period molded generations of 19th-century composers, it was the unsettling, extreme and disorienting music he wrote in his last years that haunted the 20th century. On this recording, he frames Beethoven’s last sonata (No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111) with Ligeti’s sweetly diabolical Etudes. The first is a masterpiece of disintegration, the second of obsession, but across two centuries the two composers share a radical imagination and the ability to keep you off balance in frighteningly beautiful ways.

To call Denk a thoughtful pianist seems faint praise — like relegating him to the ranks of preciously cerebral interpreters who calculate the value of each grace note and burden every chord with oppressive deliberateness. Denk’s playing is more fluid and flexible than that. But his writings in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books and on his own blog, Think Denk, have also made him a pianist/intellectual in the tradition of Charles Rosen, only wryer. “If you play a lot of Charles Ives,” he writes, “you have to put with the raised eyebrows of skeptics, who refer to him as ‘a crazy insurance salesman.’ This is frustrating. He was actually a spectacular insurance salesman.”

Denk’s writing is not incidental to his pianism. He plays as if thinking out loud — never hesitatingly, but always searching for a specific kind of wisdom, admitting the possibility of alternatives, and treating music as a fluid, uncertain art. In one blog entry on the Bach Violin Sonata, BWV 1017, he devotes a paragraph to four seconds of music, where the violin sustains an E-flat, while the keyboard shifts chords, turning the note into a dissonance.

I like the beat in-between: when the E-flat doesn’t know yet that it has been rethought. Where the melody’s and harmony’s tendencies clash, where the parts diverge, you get a kind of blurred double image of past and future. If you agree with me that Bach is a particularly profound essayist in the nature of time, you might agree with this leap of association: that dissonant beat is the present. It is neither here nor there. In its in-between-ness, it is the most beautiful, tastable moment of all. Why is it always the moment you want to hold onto, that is passing by?

That sort of sophisticated emotional analysis gives his recording of the Bach Partitas a rare humanism. The Sarabande in the Partita No. 4 is traditionally played at a tempo somewhere between slow and lugubrious, but he takes it at a startlingly brisk speed, so that ornaments become a garland of notes around a lilting dance. The result is a joy that seeps even into the most poignant moments. Denk has an optimistic sound.

He is also a connoisseur of chaos. There’s a famous moment midway through the second movement of Beethoven’s Op. 111 (at 6’28 in Denk’s recording) where the music tears away from its decorous melancholy and goes wheeling through a kind of crazy, syncopated Joplinesque proto-ragtime. In that moment, he draws the score from its chrysalis of convention to reveal its true wildness. There’s an unhinged giddiness to this passage that Denk doesn’t try to tame. He savors ambiguity, and when the music spins off into starscape trills and thin-air arpeggios, refusing to orbit back around to the opening theme, Denk is in his element. Whenever I read about climbers on Everest’s upper reaches losing their sense of urgency and self-preservation from lack of oxygen, I think of this ending, which Denk makes both inconclusive and terribly final.

While the comedy sketches and speed metal is to be expected, the switches in genre come as a surprise, especially the lust-driven mariachi track “Senorita” (which ultimately culminates with some go-to D metal) and the ’80s montage track “To Be the Best.” And of course, there’s a touching ballad called “They Fucked Our Asses.” So as the album art and song titles might imply, this LP is pretty much a challenge to see how much you actually love the D’s schtick. If you liked the movie, the HBO series, and the first record, the new one delivers, veiny phoenix and all.

While the comedy sketches and speed metal is to be expected, the switches in genre come as a surprise, especially the lust-driven mariachi track “Senorita” (which ultimately culminates with some go-to D metal) and the ’80s montage track “To Be the Best.” And of course, there’s a touching ballad called “They Fucked Our Asses.” So as the album art and song titles might imply, this LP is pretty much a challenge to see how much you actually love the D’s schtick. If you liked the movie, the HBO series, and the first record, the new one delivers, veiny phoenix and all.

Quintessential L.A. musician-about-town Jon Brion imbues Best Coast’s former fuzz with Fleetwood Mac’s crystalline sheen, though the celebrated film composer’s touch is lighter here than on his productions for Fiona Apple and Kanye West. The album is very nearly bookended by Southern California odes, from the boppy, babes/waves title track, which convincingly buys its own La La Land postcard, to penultimate charmer “Let’s Go Home,” which alludes to not one but two Beach Boys oldies. Even a seeming outlier like crunching waltz-time working-musician lament “Last Year,” with its barroom la-de-da outro, makes sense when you remember Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” was an L.A. song, too.

Brion’s clean production allows Cosentino’s blunt, forceful voice to shine, and it’s increasingly becoming an instrument that recalls Neko Case or newcomer Lydia Loveless. The Internet’s most notorious cat lady advances her anxieties, too, but can’t shake them, and she masterfully links her Urban Outfitters-people problems to more relatable romantic angst (“Why I Cry,” “How They Want Me to Be”). A “Valley Girl Patsy Cline,” in one outlet’s enviably perfect words, Cosentino can be old-fashioned about her heartache (“No One Like You”), but she rarely describes boys in terms she wouldn’t also use for her hometown. Fittingly, then, the album’s peak, the Phil Spector-lavish finale “Up All Night,” is about two people divided by geography. If Cosentino ever moves back east again, Best Coast’s next album could be one hell of a break-up record.

Which isn’t to say that Willie isn’t a wee bit contemplative on his latest. But if anything, Heroes is a barbecue, not a wake, with generations of friends and family gathered around to celebrate and reminisce. Elder statesmen like Haggard, Kristofferson and Ray Price are here, as are Billie Joe Shaver and Sheryl Crow, not to mention Willie’s sons Lukas and Micah, lending hands on songwriting, harmonizing and guitar-picking. For every vintage western swing number (from the prime ’30s/’40s era) there is a contemplative cover, be it a gospel-inflected shuffle for Tom Waits’ “Come On Up to the House” or a gentle take on Pearl Jam’s “Just Breathe.” Heck, there’s even a Coldplay cover, proving that this old dog has a few new tricks left in him yet.

Expressing his individual inner self in a pop machine designed to flaunt the interchangeably anonymous is the challenge he faces on Trespassing, the follow-up to his 2009 debut For Your Entertainment. That’s also the subtext of the Pharrrell Williams-collaborated title track, which examines obstacles put in the path of outsiders whose destiny is the mainstream. Kindred infiltrators like Bruno Mars, Nile Rodgers and Sam Sparro help Lambert create a masculine, more aggressive variant on the techno-pop that’s typically a girl’s game. His virile voice doesn’t need all the processing it undergoes in “Never Close Our Eyes” and other singles, but the sonic fortification affirms Lambert can be as be as vocally androgynous as he wants to be and still sound Top 40-friendly. Nevertheless, it’s the slower, more sensual cuts like “Broken English” and “Outlaws of Love” that best showcase his inimitable wail. “They say we’ll rot in hell, well I don’t think we will,” he groans in the latter, leaving no doubt what’s on his mind.

Expressing his individual inner self in a pop machine designed to flaunt the interchangeably anonymous is the challenge he faces on Trespassing, the follow-up to his 2009 debut For Your Entertainment. That’s also the subtext of the Pharrrell Williams-collaborated title track, which examines obstacles put in the path of outsiders whose destiny is the mainstream. Kindred infiltrators like Bruno Mars, Nile Rodgers and Sam Sparro help Lambert create a masculine, more aggressive variant on the techno-pop that’s typically a girl’s game. His virile voice doesn’t need all the processing it undergoes in “Never Close Our Eyes” and other singles, but the sonic fortification affirms Lambert can be as be as vocally androgynous as he wants to be and still sound Top 40-friendly. Nevertheless, it’s the slower, more sensual cuts like “Broken English” and “Outlaws of Love” that best showcase his inimitable wail. “They say we’ll rot in hell, well I don’t think we will,” he groans in the latter, leaving no doubt what’s on his mind.

World is conspicuously constructed: Its trio pieces are bracketed at the top by four more fully arranged tracks, and at the end by two more. It’s a smart way to bring in fans of larger Daptone acts like Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings and Menahan Street Band, with the trio at its core. The extra help sounds terrific, particularly guitarist Joseph Crispiano’s fetching chord-flecks on “Your Friendly Neighborhood Sugarman,” a showcase for the leader. Sugarman’s Boston home gets a nod with a cover of the Standells’ “Dirty Water,” but the best tracks — “Your Friendly Neighborhood Sugarman,” the bustling opener “Rudy’s Intervention,” the joyful “Mellow Meeting” — are originals. Ten years gives you time to do that.

Mike is a classicist, a real-talk rapper doing what in his view, song and dance men wouldn’t dare: “This is church, front pew, amen, pulpit, what my people need and the opposite of bullshit,” he boasts on the title track. Given how gifted he is, his own lack of commercial success serves as proof that the state of rap as popular music might be as fouled-up as he claims. Mike’s clever this way: What might’ve been interpreted as failure has been recycled as badge of integrity. It’s an angle he’s been pushing at least since last year’s Pl3dge: “I’m in positions that these other rappers envy/ They major-broke and I get-rich indie.”

Part of what makes R.A.P. Music better than Mike’s past efforts is its concision, but an even bigger part is El-P’s production. For all its throwback talk and references, R.A.P. is a wildly diverse album, mixing north with south and ’80s with aughts, an album so schizoid in its approach to time that it could probably only have been made now. As a lyricist Mike is, well, discontent — about politics, about black American life, about the state of the music he loves. At one point he manages to finagle two women into his garage and he still sounds pissed off. Whatever nuance is lost in his opinions is gained in how he delivers them — if for no other reason, appreciate Mike as a stuntman who, regardless of how long the jump, never falls. Despite all the wrist-slapping and heavy pretenses, it’s a great album, one so carefully calibrated to sound like a rap classic that someday it might actually turn out to be one.

Mike is a classicist, a real-talk rapper doing what in his view, song and dance men wouldn’t dare: “This is church, front pew, amen, pulpit, what my people need and the opposite of bullshit,” he boasts on the title track. Given how gifted he is, his own lack of commercial success serves as proof that the state of rap as popular music might be as fouled-up as he claims. Mike’s clever this way: What might’ve been interpreted as failure has been recycled as badge of integrity. It’s an angle he’s been pushing at least since last year’s Pl3dge: “I’m in positions that these other rappers envy/ They major-broke and I get-rich indie.”

Part of what makes R.A.P. Music better than Mike’s past efforts is its concision, but an even bigger part is El-P’s production. For all its throwback talk and references, R.A.P. is a wildly diverse album, mixing north with south and ’80s with aughts, an album so schizoid in its approach to time that it could probably only have been made now. As a lyricist Mike is, well, discontent — about politics, about black American life, about the state of the music he loves. At one point he manages to finagle two women into his garage and he still sounds pissed off. Whatever nuance is lost in his opinions is gained in how he delivers them — if for no other reason, appreciate Mike as a stuntman who, regardless of how long the jump, never falls. Despite all the wrist-slapping and heavy pretenses, it’s a great album, one so carefully calibrated to sound like a rap classic that someday it might actually turn out to be one.

The excellent news is that this follow-up returns them to their roots in garagey art-punk and strikes out in experimental new directions. In the Belly of the Brazen Bull, whose title hints at ambivalence towards their mass popularity, packs all the spiky, rowdy joy of their early albums while also introducing some more expansive and whimsical moods.

“Glitters Like Gold,” written and sung by Gary, showcases the polished, radio-friendly alt-rock at which the Cribs now excel. Listening to the graceful, intricate electric-picking in that soaring chorus, you might even be forgiven for thinking Marr’s still on board. There’s a sense in which this canny trio, who have also collaborated with Edwyn Collins, Alex Kapranos and Lee Renaldo over the years, have progressed by learning their alt-chops from proper masters. “Come On, Be a No-One,” by contrast, brilliantly highlights Ryan’s punkier leanings, with its endearing DIY-loser ethos and yowling, Pavement-meets-Oasis chorus. “Anna” and “Uptight” tilt more towards the melodic scruffiness of Teenage Fanclub and Dinosaur Jr in their acutely melodic scruffiness.  Laced between these adrenaline highs, dreamier moments like “Confident Men” and the acoustic “I Should Have Helped” uphold the off-centre vibe without breaking continuity.

Recorded at Abbey Road, with the Jarmans themselves handling production, the album’s finale is a four-track suite inspired, obviously, by the medley on Side Two of The Beatles’ Abbey Road. A discordant guitar lick and a military beat usher in opening section “Stalagmites,” before blooming outward into xylophone, strings and complex stacked harmonies. The result is as much the Cribs’ potted answer to Smile as a tribute to the Fab Four, and it makes clear that with or without their famous friend Mr. Marr, they have already written the next thrilling chapter in indie/punk/pop audacity.

Beach House, Bloom – If you don’t buy this record today, you will have failed to buy the best record of 2012. I don’t think you really want that on your conscience. Every bit as ripe and gorgeous as Teen Dream, but also darker, in a way that only grows apparent on, like, the 12^th or 13^thlisten straight through (I’ve been lucky to have been living with this one for awhile). A true classic. HIGHLY, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. 

Garbage, Not Your Kind of People– Shirley Manson, Butch Vig, and the rest are back, and they haven’t tweaked their sound all that much from their ’90s heyday. Not as powerful or memorable as their best record ever, of course (that would be Version 2.0) but it’s nice to have them back.

The Cribs, In the Belly of the Brazen Bull –Chunky, hooky, alt-rock mini-anthems from some kids who seem to have spent some time with the Buzz Bin. The ghosts of Superchunk, Nada Surf, and early Fountains of Wayne all make appearances.

Best Coast, The Only Place – Bethany returns, with Jon Brion on board, who doesn’t lard on the glockenspiels and toy pianos but gives this record a light dusting of 1970s-L.A. sunshine.

Electric Guest, Mondo –L.A. duo craft sumptuous, creative takes on the ever-present dusty-Daptone/Mark Ronson soul revival sound.

Squarepusher, Ufabulum– The reigning prankster of what used to be called “IDM” returns with another brainy, giggling riddle of an album.

The Imagined Village, Bending the Dark – The traditional folk/world music fusion collective branches out into new territories, penning their own tunes and refining their sound.

Will Dutta, Parergon - A graceful, glacial-landscape album of instrumentals. Chris Nickson writes:

Will Dutta’s music lies at the nexus where modern classical, New Age, and ambient electronica meet. He draws from all of them to create his own sonic geography: Sometimes it is lushly beautiful, other times it sounds as tortured and harsh as modern life, with textures that range from the stark purity of his piano to sounds heavily modified and manipulated by a bevy of producers.

Cornershop, Urban Turban – The coolest band of 1997 continues to make their unique, pre-millennial cocktail rock. This is actually pretty damn good. Fun fact: Cornershop have never really stopped being good.

Julian Cope, Psychedelic Revolution – Rocker and scholar Julian Cope dedicates this two-disc album to some of his favorite revolutionaries.

The Whispering Pines, S/T – Poppy, ambling, Jayhawks-style country-rock.

So it’s something of a relief to encounter Ufabulum. It’s being sold as Jenkinson’s return to electronic music, and it’s got many “classic” Squarepusher touches. His penchant for cheesy-queasy-listening synth tones, broken-zoom-lens breakbeat manipulations, and all manner of stretched timbres — the cracks in the seams of the vocal are what gave “My Red Hot Car” its edge — are back in full effect. The rhythms get really, really gone on “Drax 2,” but it’s not for a change, it’s the return of the stuff people loved about Squarepusher in the first place.

As usual, we get absurdly cheery fanfares cut, to varying degrees, with silly grotesquerie. The fanfares dominate “Stadium Ice” and “Energy Wizard”; the grotesquerie nearly undoes “Unreal Square,” whose very sound is both fascinating and repulsive, gooey like a CGI slime villain. It sounds like the work of someone in good spirits, seemingly moved to be his sillier self from within rather than forcing it upon himself. With a guy as fidgety and prone to lampoon as Jenkins, that’s all you can ask.

eMusic’s Jess Sauer spoke with Julavits about the skeptic spectrum, what writers and mediums have in common, and what never to do when toting expensive vodka.

In another interview, you mentioned a book by Dion Fortune about defending oneself from psychic attacks. Did you decide to write about psychics and start doing research, or did reading books about psychics inspire you to write about them?

It was a totally accidental discovery. I’m pretty sure that I was researching Madame Helena Blavatsky, who was a famous medium. I wasn’t even interested in her mediumship; I was interested in theosophy, which is a spiritual movement. To be honest, I just wasn’t smart enough to quite get my head around what theosophy was. I kept reading and reading and reading. I think the problem was that I went to source texts. Madame Helena Blavatsky wrote this book called The Secret Doctrine, and I just couldn’t figure out what it was about. I was Googling around to figure out if somebody had written something like “Theosophy is this” in a very clarified paragraph, and somehow through doing that I landed on Dion Fortune. She sounded like an interesting person, so I clicked on her, and pretty soon discovered that she’d written this book, and the notion of psychic attacks sounded really interesting to me. I ordered it, and that was it. I was so taken with the idea. Not only that, but Dion Fortune writes in the beginning of the book that the reason she was interested in writing about psychic attacks was because she was psychically attacked by her mentor when she was an initiate at one of these occult lodges. So, I was not just attracted to the idea, but I felt like, “Oh my God, I was just given the beginning of my book.” I was given the entry point. So yeah, I owe a lot to Dion Fortune, and in fact I did go to a psychic after the book was done and asked her to contact Dion Fortune to find out if she approved of my use of her story, because you can be psychically attacked from beyond the grave. So I figured it’d probably be a good idea to get her approval.

What was the verdict?

I got it. She said that she thought the whole thing was very funny.

There are a number of novels about the power dynamics between teachers and students, but it seems like adding the psychic element gives you a really concrete way of examining them.

Right, there’s something literal about it. It’s a literal attack, instead of these stealthy manipulations that happen under the surface.

“Instead of just destroying your ego, I’m going to give you an actual rash.”

Yeah, exactly. I think I’m always interested in the prickly dynamics that are fostered by smaller communities, and academia is a well-trodden territory in literature. There are a lot of books about it. I think that’s why the psychic attack lens appealed to me. It gave me a skewed, more unusual entry point to a world that otherwise would be a challenge for me to write about in any original way. Other people are more crafty than I am, but I’m not crafty enough.

There’s a parallel between creative writing MFA programs and the Workshop, the psychic grad program in your book, because while these programs are going to learn technique and craft, giftedness is also essential. In your book, if you’re not psychically gifted, they call you a “mortgage payment,” because your tuition is basically all you’re bringing to the program.

Yeah, you’re a mortgage payment, which interestingly enough I stole. I don’t even know that I told him I stole it, but that is what a friend of mine when I was in grad school atColumbiaused to call the people he perceived as being hopelessly untalented. So yeah, I borrowed that. No, I just stole it. I stole it. I think there’s so much overlap with the creative writing process. I was really struck when I went to see that psychic who talked to Dion Fortune. It was really interesting for me to watch her make contact. When you write fiction, you’re also making contact with another being. In some ways, I don’t know how different those two activities are.

By the same token, obviously in the psychic community these things are meant very literally, but at the same time, the idea of someone else making you sick requires no leap of faith if you think of it metaphorically. Everyone you know, you have some version of in your mind, and your idea of that person can affect you regardless of whether the actual person is doing something.

It’s true. You hear their voices; you hear the things they say to you. I was writing to somebody about this the other day. We were talking about different kinds of laughs, and I was saying how, years ago, 2003, somebody interviewed me for The Believer, because The Believer had just been published. They described my laughter as “nervous,” and I can’t get that description out of my head. That person has permanently taken residence in my head.

It’s like a mini clone of them that exists inside you.

It’s really true. And, also, not to sound all hocus-pocusy, but I really do feel that people emanate different energies. There are people — and it’s not because I don’t like them or that I think there’s something bad or ill-intentioned about them — who just give off a certain energy that makes me feel endangered. I mean, sometimes these people are just sad or depressed, but they somehow make me feel at-risk when I’m around them, and I just have to get away. Again, psychic attack was a way to literalize that sensation that we talk about in our culture. In our language we refer to people’s personalities, or something about them, this ineffable thing that people give off, we’ll say that person is “toxic,” or “that guy makes me sick,” or something like that. I don’t think that it’s a huge leap to be talking about how people impact other people in these ways.

That leads nicely into something else I was wondering. Where do you fall on the skeptic spectrum with regard to parapsychology in general?

I guess I would either describe myself as a skeptical believer or a believing skeptic. I think there’s no denying we all have really uncanny things happen to us. I’m thinking about Freud’s essay “The Uncanny.” He admits that he’s not the person to be writing about this because he doesn’t feel trained or suitable or open to this kind of thing, not in a belief sense, but more of an intellectual sense. Even he says there are these experiences, such as walking down a street you’ve never been down before, and you just feel this sense of familiarity, that you’ve been here before. It’s something inside of you, not even a memory, but a part of you you can’t explain. He’s trying to get his head around that. What is it, how do you explain that. I think we’ve all had experiences like that, that I think would make most people exist between these two places of believing and not believing.

I have had a sense of superstition my whole life, which maybe comes from growing up in a thoroughly religious-less household. It wasn’t even agnostic, or like anything was being rejected. It didn’t exist. It hadn’t existed on either side of my family for a very long time. There was just no residue of any kind of belief system. So, as a kid — and I really think this persisted far longer into my adulthood than it should have — I was superstitious, even about really clichéd superstitions, like “See a penny, pick it up.” I had this really funny thing happen to me the other day, which I feel was beating me over the head, saying, “You have to stop thinking this way.” I saw a penny on the street, and I walked past it, and then I was like, “You know what? You gotta pick that penny up!” So I turned back around, and I leaned down into the middle of the street to pick this penny up, and this very expensive bottle of vodka that I’d just bought for my husband — he’d just come home a trip, and we were going to have greyhounds together — this expensive bottle swung over my shoulder and just smashed on the street. While I was picking up my lucky penny. So yeah, maybe that’s the universe telling me not to be superstitious…which is another form of superstition, but whatever. I’m just replacing one with another.

In addition to the psychic element of your novel, there’s also a plotline involving this very transgressive form of performance art. What or who inspired that idea?

The artist who was the most inspiring figure for me was Sophie Calle, who’s a French artist who does these transgressive things, though she’s hardly as sinister as the performance-artist character I fashioned from her baseline. I’m really interested in these acts that can be construed as meaning totally opposite things. So, for example, in some of the performance-art pieces in the book, there’s the notion of being a “surgical impersonator”: taking on somebody else’s face, going to the house of the family of this person who died whose face you now have, and trying to alleviate their grief by being this person, bringing this person back from the dead kind of. That’s both the most selfless act, like you’re literally sacrificing yourself in order to fill a gap that these loved ones are experiencing, and it’s also just the creepiest, most invasive, disrespectful thing you could ever do. So I’m fascinated by acts that can be both of those things at the same time, and you can’t really tease it out. I think a lot of times, with the whole performance-art thread in particular, I’m expressing a desire to be another form of artist that I know I’ll never be. This is the only place I get to be one, in my own novel.

At the same time, writers do have enormous potential to affect people literally. You can write a biography of a dead person that reanimates them in the same false way these surgical impersonators do. It’s probably one of the artistic genres in which people are hurt most often.

I never thought of that, but of course that’s so true. Even if you use fiction as a way to deactivate that potential hurt, that isn’t enough. I just received an essay by Francisco Goldman, who wrote a novel about the death of his wife. She was killed in a surfing accident in Mexico. He wrote a novel about her death, his grieving process, her childhood. It was sort of this eulogy or homage to her life, and critics kind of didn’t know what to do with this thing. Some people accused him of being cowardly for not just writing it as a memoir. People still got mad about the portrayal, even though the portrayal was supposedly fictional. It’s very interesting territory: Is writing about real people in a fictional context more respectful, or less brave?

The fictional context also gives you latitude to be libelous without being libelous.

It’s true. This is so in the air, too, with the whole John D’Agata kerfuffle. Creative nonfiction is another boundary that’s become increasingly porous. Culturally, I think we’re having a hard time getting our heads around this porousness, and for good reason. Sometimes it does seem to be violating some kind of contract you come to rely upon, and then other times it can seem so churlish to be patrolling that boundary. This is another one of those situations that is both really freeing and wonderful and potentially really dangerous and deceitful. So, I love that. Two sides, two very different sides.

So rest assured, you can be a writer and still mess with people like Sophie Calle.

Yes, someday us writers will get to be the artists we never thought we could be. You get to dress better, too! That’s kind of what the jealousy is. There’s not a long line of sartorially talented writers, although that’s changing. Maybe because writers are becoming more public, they’ve realized they’ve got to knock it up a notch in the fashion department. But, you know, artists have always looked really good. I guess I’m envious of that, too!

It’s impossible to avoid the shadows of modern pioneers like Philip Glass and Brian Eno here, and Parergon (the word, by the way, means subordinate work) carries strong traces of the minimalism and atmospheres that are their hallmarks. But Dutta is a new generation, and his own man, used to working with producers and turntablists; collaboration is a vital part of his compositions. On both the opener, “Distance” and the disc’s centrepiece, the epic “Overcolour,” for example, he works with Warp veterans Plaid; they put their strained edges on the music, so that in a moment it can move from filigreed delicacy to the jaggedness of razor wire. It’s intense, roaring like a roller coaster until “Incarnation 11″ brings the breathing space of Dutta solo, but even that veers between the formal gentility and the dark, dramatic intensity of repeated chords played harder and harder, a deliberate study in contrasting emotions. Then Max de Wardener (who’s currently composing a concerto for Dutta) adds his frantic energy to “Aerophobia,” overlaying the soft notes of the piano with a disorienting scramble of beats and sounds and drones. It helps bring the closer, “Avril 14th,” into sharp focus, the music stripped down to just piano, the quiet romanticism coming as a soft exhalation of breath before quietly leaving.

With Parergon Dutta has created a daring debut, crammed with ambition but carried off with unerring vision and ability.

“Waves” and single “The Head I Hold” are such archetypal examples of the form that they could pass for unreleased Gnarls Barkley tunes, but singer Asa Taccone nimbly distinguishes himself with a girlish, Southern-accented delivery to nimble effect, which Danger Mouse graces with an evocative touch of period-detail static. Midtempo versions of the same neo-Motown sound crop up in “The Bait,” “Awake” and “Under the Gun,” with swelling backing vocals adding some anthemic heft to the gently earworming tunes. It’s almost Disney Channel in its wholesomeness, but the band’s fleet-footed drum fills and puckish piano chords keep the vibe sprightly rather than bland or saccharine.

Slower numbers aim at the lulling psychedelia of Danger Mouse’s Broken Bells project with varying success, but this style yields the album’s strongest track in “Troubleman.” Taccone takes the cock-rock cliché of its central lyric, “She’s got it bad for me,” and makes it cool and ambiguous amid a tale of arid courtship; the beautiful melody is allowed to ebb in and out across nine minutes. This is the duo and producer at their best — the former bringing timeless and tangibly Californian songwriting, the latter turning the base metals of acoustic guitar, handclaps and voice into sonic gold.

“Waves” and single “The Head I Hold” are such archetypal examples of the form that they could pass for unreleased Gnarls Barkley tunes, but singer Asa Taccone nimbly distinguishes himself with a girlish, Southern-accented delivery to nimble effect, which Danger Mouse graces with an evocative touch of period-detail static. Midtempo versions of the same neo-Motown sound crop up in “The Bait,” “Awake” and “Under the Gun,” with swelling backing vocals adding some anthemic heft to the gently earworming tunes. It’s almost Disney Channel in its wholesomeness, but the band’s fleet-footed drum fills and puckish piano chords keep the vibe sprightly rather than bland or saccharine.

Slower numbers aim at the lulling psychedelia of Danger Mouse’s Broken Bells project with varying success, but this style yields the album’s strongest track in “Troubleman.” Taccone takes the cock-rock cliché of its central lyric, “She’s got it bad for me,” and makes it cool and ambiguous amid a tale of arid courtship; the beautiful melody is allowed to ebb in and out across nine minutes. This is the duo and producer at their best — the former bringing timeless and tangibly Californian songwriting, the latter turning the base metals of acoustic guitar, handclaps and voice into sonic gold.

“Waves” and single “The Head I Hold” are such archetypal examples of the form that they could pass for unreleased Gnarls Barkley tunes, but singer Asa Taccone nimbly distinguishes himself with a girlish, Southern-accented delivery to nimble effect, which Danger Mouse graces with an evocative touch of period-detail static. Midtempo versions of the same neo-Motown sound crop up in “The Bait,” “Awake” and “Under the Gun,” with swelling backing vocals adding some anthemic heft to the gently earworming tunes. It’s almost Disney Channel in its wholesomeness, but the band’s fleet-footed drum fills and puckish piano chords keep the vibe sprightly rather than bland or saccharine.

Slower numbers aim at the lulling psychedelia of Danger Mouse’s Broken Bells project with varying success, but this style yields the album’s strongest track in “Troubleman.” Taccone takes the cock-rock cliché of its central lyric, “She’s got it bad for me,” and makes it cool and ambiguous amid a tale of arid courtship; the beautiful melody is allowed to ebb in and out across nine minutes. This is the duo and producer at their best — the former bringing timeless and tangibly Californian songwriting, the latter turning the base metals of acoustic guitar, handclaps and voice into sonic gold.

The album is dedicated to Fujiwara’s Japanese grandparents — his grandfather Josho, a Zen Buddhist priest who died in 2010, is pictured on the album cover — and while only the opening track “Lineage” specifically addresses them (its opening section is inspired by the tones produced by a Buddhist bell-bowl from his temple in Sajiro) the whole collection conveys a sense of meditative calm in the midst of turbulence. The drummer favors episodic tunes, assembling discrete passages given seamless articulation by his excellent band. The stuttering groove of “Double Lake, Defined,” a piece inspired by a classic track by the hip-hop duo Black Star, is peppered with a staccato unison horn bleats, but it’s the terse, fiery solos by Halvorson, Settles, and Finlayson that turn it out, while “For Ours” opens as a serene ballad, with plangent horns caressed by clean, ringing, vibrato-rich guitar chords, but when Settles begins his solo, but his lines and the groove of Fujiwara and Dunn accelerate and intensify into something else altogether.

“Cosmopolitan (Rediscovery)” opens with brooding intensity, Halvorson unleashing post-Derek Bailey tangles, while the horns shape dark long tones. But before long, the horns pull apart and the mood chills out, with an ambling groove and beautifully full-bodied lines from Settles and sweet-toned comping from Halvorson. In the liner notes the drummer credits Bjork, Henry Threadgill, and Michael Formanek with inspiring this tune, and that unlikely grouping says a lot about Fujiwara’s wide-ranging sensibilities. The album covers a lot of ground and presents many dualities, but the leader never loses his firm grip.