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Deer Tick, Negativity

2013 | Label: Partisan Records

By Hilary Saunders eMusic Contributor

10.01.13 If 2012′s Divine Providence was Deer Tick’s last-call bar-romp, Negativity is the Rhode Island quintet’s bleak morning-after. Much more introspective and subdued, Negativity largely ditches the group’s trademark drunken swagger for emotional and musical depth.

Singer John McCauley wrote Negativity in the course of a year in which he suffered a broken engagement and his father’s incarceration for tax fraud, all while alternating between smoking cocaine and trying to clean up. As such, the lyrical content of Negativity is appropriately abject: The quasi-ballad “Mr. Sticks” addresses McCauley’s dad and “The… more »

HAIM, Days Are Gone

2013 | Label: Columbia

By Barry Walters eMusic Contributor

10.01.13 The Los Angeles sister band HAIM — their last name, one that rhymes with “time” — employ rock’s instrumentation, but chop it up so finely it stutters like R&B. They’re not the first to do this, of course, but HAIM’s blend, a mix of bright, brittle percussiveness and soft sisterly harmonies, feels unique, a sound that’s both nervous and resolute. It feels like youth, that knowledge that everything’s already been done before, but that you’ve nevertheless got to make your own mark. Providing most of the instrumentation as well as… more »

Kings of Leon, Mechanical Bull

2013 | Label: RCA Records Label

By Ryan Reed eMusic Contributor

09.25.13 The make-or-break moment on Kings of Leon’s sixth LP is “Comeback Story,” a grandiose, slow-burning arena-rock anthem built on lonely guitar twang, a ghostly choir, and (what?) pizzicato strings. Depending on what kind of fan you are, it’s either the band’s syrupy tipping point — or their maximalist masterpiece.

Really, it’s both. The Followill boys aren’t the same scrappy backwoods teens who once earned the title “Southern Strokes,” haphazardly garnishing their power chords with hormonal rebellion. Their evolution has been subtle, but substantive: They’ve embellished their sound with bits of fractured… more »

Janelle Monae, The Electric Lady

2013 | Label: Bad Boy/Wondaland

By Barry Walters eMusic Contributor

09.10.13 Behind all the cameos, the sci-fi allegory, the eclecticism and the nearly cult-ish Wondaland collective that creates these ultra-intricate jams, Janelle Monáe specializes in generosity. Where others serve up instant-gratification earworms, this Kansas City-born, Atlanta-based dynamo delivers sprawling futuristic funk-rock operas that dazzle on impact yet sustain protracted pleasure. Three years after The ArchAndroid, a long-playing debut that’s still revealing carefully buried treasure, she now releases a sequel equally dense with byzantine sparkle.

The Electric Lady is much more than a monument to maximalism, though. It’s a testimony to the power… more »