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Discover: Cascine

Laura Studarus — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 18:21:41 +0000

[Dive into Cascine's catalog with this free sampler, featuring tracks from Keep Shelly in Athens, Shine 2009, Selebrities and more. — Ed.]

Originally founded in 2010 as an arm of Service, the now defunct Gothenburg, Sweden, label that was once home to the Tough Alliance, the Embassy and Jens Lekman, the New York and London-based label Cascine doesn’t stray far from its roots. Owned and operated by Jeff Bratton (with assistance from Publicist/Girl Friday Sandra Croft), the label has cast its lot with electro pop — the slicker and hookier the better.

“What I’m drawn to is pop music,” explains Bratton, “very musical and melody-inflected pop music. A little bit of bounce and some electronic production. All I can do as a label is put out exactly what I like. I don’t trust myself when I start dipping outside of that sweet spot — especially when it comes to putting real money into it and asking people to pay attention to it.”

Though he originally focused on the Scandinavian music scene, Bratton has since expanded his efforts to include bands from across the world. Since opening shop three years ago, they’ve put out releases from a notable slate of pop up-and-comers, including Kisses, Chad Valley, Shine 2009 and Keep Shelly in Athens.

“I’m constantly taking it on the chin for releasing as much music as we do,” he laughs. “In our first three months we had four releases. We’ve always moved at a really brisk pace.”

Here, Bratton walks us through some of his favorite Cascine releases.

Ladies Man Effect EP

Selebrities
2012 | Cascine / Redeye

There was a French blog, and the guys that ran it were friends with a lot of people. It was good. I don't think the readership was more than a couple hundred people. He found a Selebrities demo on MySpace and posted it. It was awesome. I was flying from California to New York and I heard this track, and I was totally floored. Within 20 minutes I had reached out to... the address that was listed on their MySpace. I ended up meeting up with the guys in the band a few days later in New York. They had these five tracks called Ladies Man, and they were fucking awesome. I was just obsessed with the material. They were one of our first proper signings. Being a part of a band's process in the early stages is the most exciting thing.
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Pure Wet EP

Jensen Sportag
2012 | Cascine / Redeye

They're total jokers. They sent some crazy message to us. It was an unsolicited email, it said something like "Wanna Party?" I opened the email, and it was nothing more than a sentence, something provocative and raunchy about wanting to party. There was a link to this FTP, where there must have been 30 plus demos and sketches. It all looked really old and antiquated. This was in the fall of 2010,... and we had gotten so few unsolicited emails that we were listening to everything at that point. Their tracks were brilliant. It didn't take us long to realize that something really special was happening. From the 30-something sketches they sent us, we chose five for Pure Wet. Then we gave them a bunch of notes and went back and forth for months to get the tracks tight. An EP emerged out of all of that. We felt really proud about that. They were one of the few bands we worked with on an old school, A&R level. I have such a good relationship with those guys it was more like a conversation.
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Realism

Shine 2009
2012 | Cascine / Redeye

In a lot of respects, I credit Sami Suova from this band as the reason the label was founded. Sami was the very first artist to believe in the label. He believed in it, he said yes. We have a new album coming out with them in October. That'll mark three years of working together and three formal releases with a couple of singles in between. I feel such a deep connection... with them and a whole lot of gratitude. From a sound standpoint, if I had to pick one album to represent the label, that's as close to Cascine as possible. It's such a good definition of what we aspire to sound like.
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Young Hunger

Chad Valley
2012 | Cascine / Redeye

He's such a pro. Speaking of artists where I'm able to offer feedback with tracks, Chad Valley [aka the recording alias of producer Hugo Manuel] is one that I don't ever do that with. He turns in material and we put it out. He always hits the mark. He never misses. I'm a perpetual fan. I've got a handful of sketches and things that he's played around with on keyboards. It's all... jaw-dropping. You either really like what Chad Valley does, or you don't. For me, it hits the sweet spot. He's also a total gentleman. He's not putting it on for anyone.

Keep Shelly in Athens and Chad Valley are actually going on tour this fall. It'll be a co-headlining tour. Hugo's working on new material right now. We're going to try to roll out a new track or two prior to the tour.
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Erika Spring EP

Erika Spring
2012 | Cascine / Redeye

Erika is awesome. We were all such over-the-top fans of [her band] Au Revoir Simone. I remember, prior to even being involved in music, listening to Au Revoir Simone and loving it and being so stunned by the music. You conjure up these images: three beautiful girls traveling around, playing this really wistful, well-produced electronic pop. Then you fast-forward several years and you get to work with one of those artists. It... was really gratifying process for us, to work with someone we really respected for years prior. The material was so spot-on for us. Her manager sent over those demos. Instantly, they worked. They were so much fun.

It was a little bit of a surprise. But Erika has her hands in so much stuff. She's such a renaissance woman in that sense. She's such a fixture in the New York community. Every time I turn around, she's doing a fun, collaborative thing with taste-making artists. She's a great musician and really talented. You can't pin her down too much. She's told me that she has new material that she's developing. So I know we'll do something else with her for sure.
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Caught the Breeze

Boat Club
2013 | Cascine / Redeye

It's our first reissue. Those guys are from Gothenburg. It was one of the times I was first going to Sweden, knocking around and hanging with some of those guys. I was going around meeting with the Embassy guys and the Air France guys, these dudes that I had idolized for so long. Every one of these artists would name-check that Boat Club release. Everyone would say, "Oh you've got to hear... Caught the Breeze by Boat Club." One of the first conversations I had with [Service owner Ola Borgstrom] was when he told me I had to listen to the album. It's funny that all these really established dudes were nuts about this seven-song release.

I heard it and loved it. It came out on CD and digital. It came out on a small label. It was never really rolled out in a grand way. I wanted to give it its day in the sun. I wanted to roll it out in a way that it deserved to be. It was released in 2007 — it's not like we dug back into the '70s or '80s. It's totally timeless and tasteful. It's one of those releases that I know I can come back to decades from now and feel confident in the material. Talk about an effortless style. I honestly think that's what makes the Swedish music scene so awesome. There's this sense of non-urgency. No one is in a rush to get the material out. There's not this hunger to capitalize on success or leverage popularity or go gunning for that next release. It's so refreshing. Nobody is hiding behind a musical wall.
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At Home

Keep Shelly In Athens
2013 | Cascine / Redeye

They released a couple of EPs a couple of years ago. Since then, it's been nothing. They wanted to sign to a more permanent label home. We're really excited about this. It's really straightforward. They're not trying to invent new genres. It's a fun release. They do something simple very well. It's great, really confident electronic pop music. They play in that space that we really like. It's stylish, but it's a... little rawer than the Scandinavian breeziness. Sarah P's a damn good vocalist. Some of the melodies that they pull into this album are so good. Really warm, thoughtful, driving, musical stuff that really takes you to where you want to go.
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Discover: Paradise of Bachelors

Stephen M. Deusner — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 13:00:59 +0000

In April 1855, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine published a curious short story by Herman Melville titled “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids.” It’s one of his more experimental pieces, a narrative diptych set among an enclave of attorneys in London (the bachelors) and a regimen of female mill workers in Massachusetts (the maids). It’s loosely about industrialization linking disparate worlds on both sides of the Atlantic. Writes Melville: “Sweet are the oases in Sahara; charming the isle-groves of August prairies; delectable pure faith amidst a thousand perfidies: but sweeter, still more charming, most delectable, the dreamy Paradise of Bachelors, found in the stony heart of stunning…”

North Carolina?

155 years after its publication, the phrase “Paradise of Bachelors” graced the spine of the first album released by a couple of Tar Heel Staters — Brendan Greaves and Jason Perlmutter — who had no idea they were launching one of the most promising labels in the Southeast, arguably the entire country. “What a title for a story, especially one by an author we consider to be a paragon of American literary excellence,” says Greaves, co-founder and Melville fan. “I just thought the title was so compelling and humorous. That was my primary justification.”

It might seem like an odd literary reference for a label so focused on American — specifically North Carolinian — regional music, but Greaves says the name has taken on new weight and significance since its first release, a compilation of homegrown soul songs written, produced and originally released by a stereo salesman named David Lee. “It’s a story about labor,” he says. “That idea appealed to me because when I was in grad school, I wrote a bit about labor lore and occupational booklets — the culture and everyday experiences of work among Americans. And in retrospect, the fact that half the story is about lawyers has become particularly relevant. You deal with lawyers a lot in this business, and that can be both educational and extraordinarily frustrating.”

Neither Greaves nor Perlmutter (who runs the site Carolinasoul.org) had high expectations for their 2010 maiden release, Said I Had a Vision: Songs & Labels of David Lee, 1960-1988, but surprisingly, it sold out before it even hit stores. “We thought maybe we’ve got something here,” recalls Greaves, “maybe we can do another project.” Next on the docket was Poor Moon, the new album by the Durham-based band Hiss Golden Messenger.

As the label grew and matured, Greaves and his new partner, Christopher Smith (late of the band Espers) would work to maintain a sharp balance between intriguing new music (such as the self-titled debut from Nashville folk-rock upstarts Promised Land) and fascinating archival releases (such as Chance Martin’s Music Row obscurity/absurdity In Search). “I’d like to braid the two together in a compelling way,” says Greaves. “I’m interested in older music to the extent that there’s more of it. There’s a lot yet to be discovered.”

Based in Durham, Greaves — a New Englander who moved to North Carolina to study folklore — handles copyright research, oversees most of the graphic design, and writes liner notes. His wife Samantha handles the bookkeeping, and Smith (based in Philadelphia) is in charge of A&R and artist management. “That’s his background. Through Espers, he has had intensive tour experience and understands these matters from the artist’s perspective. I don’t really have that. It’s a shared burden.”

Despite the many miles in between Greaves and Smith, Paradise of Bachelors remains entrenched in the culture and traditions of North Carolina and is becoming an increasing presence in the bustling Tar Heel scene. “One could argue that North Carolina is the birthplace of country music in a broad sense,” says Greaves. “There were a lot of important early country recordings in Charlotte before Nashville took control of everything. All the old-time banjo music string-band traditions, all the bluegrass traditions came from here. And then there’s this amazing wealth of African-American musical traditions, both secular and sacred.” He sees local acts like Hiss Golden Messenger, Megafaun, and Horseback as continuations of those traditions.

Even so, as Paradise of Bachelors grows, Greaves understands that its scope will transcend state lines. In fact, the label is planning a new set of reissues for a UK artist, which would fulfill the transatlantic nature of its namesake story. “We’d like to maintain and even accelerate our pace,” he explains,” without losing attention to detail or our ability to represent our artists effectively and accurately.”

Speaking by phone from his home in North Carolina, Greaves elaborated on some the label’s small, but growing catalog.

Said I Had a Vision: Songs & Labels of David Lee, 1960-1988

Various Artists
2013 | Paradise of Bachelors / Redeye

I studied folklore at UNC and one of my first freelance folklorist gigs was consulting for the future Earl Scruggs museum in Shelby, North Carolina — about 40 miles west of Charlotte. The idea was to celebrate Scruggs's contributions to bluegrass but also to document the musical contributions from Cleveland County at large. It's an amazing place — home to a lot of incredible country, gospel and soul traditions. David Lee ran... three little independent record labels out of his stereo supply store in Shelby, North Carolina. He had one big hit with an Ann Sexton song; she's a singer from Greenville, South Carolina, who went on to some fame and now tours Europe all the time. David wrote her biggest hits from that era and recorded them. I interviewed him for the project and met Jason Perlmutter. Jason and I decided to do a compilation of Mr. Lee's recordings over the years. We did it to honor him and his accomplishments. We both were impressed by his work and felt like he had gone unrecognized.
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Poor Moon

Hiss Golden Messenger
Tompkins Square

Beyond that original project with David Lee, we had no real plan or strategy for Paradise of Bachelors, and the next thing that crossed our paths was the Hiss Golden Messenger record, Poor Moon. It was very different from the David Lee compilation in many ways, except that it was another North Carolina artist who had navigated the industry in a similar way as Mr. Lee. Mike [Taylor, the creative force behind... Hiss Golden Messenger] was fiercely independent and had been frustrated by his experience in the music industry. He was already a friend, and we both went through the folklore program at UNC.
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Over There ... and Over Here

The Red Rippers
2013 | Paradise of Bachelors / Redeye

The Red Rippers was a guy named Ed Bankston, who served in the Navy on an aircraft carrier in Vietnam and wrote about the experience on this record. It's one of the most brutally honest pieces of music I've ever heard about the experience of war. We're used to, even inured to, musical statements about the Vietnam War from the perspective of onlookers. Some of it is very powerful, but there's a... lot less music written from the soldier's perspective. Of that very small body of music, there is very little that is as unflinching and as frightening as the Red Rippers album. It is bathed in the blood of that conflict without glorifying anything. It's a very conflicted piece of music — not easy to listen to, but fascinating. Ed had had difficulty talking about those years. He did the album, then stopped playing music. It was like he needed to get those songs out of him. His children have told me that the reissue has offered him some access to those memories so that he can discuss that understandably very wrenching period in his life. I hope it's helped him be proud of that music.
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In Search

Chance
2013 | Paradise of Bachelors / Redeye

Chance's story is an incredible one, and I think it's a story about Nashville and its strange, dark underbelly. Chance was on the fringes of the inside of the Nashville music machine, but he made this incredible outsider's statement. It's a strange and difficult, but really fascinating piece of music — kind of a private triumph of the imagination and a deeply personal document for Chance. It was unknown not only to... the world at large, but also to his friends and family. I was down in Nashville a few weeks ago, hanging out at Chance's house by the pool, and a number of people who worked with Chance at Sirius XM — where he DJs — dropped by. I was really excited to meet them, and they kept saying, "Oh yeah, Chance's record…we didn't know anything about that." It's not like he's kept it a secret or anything. He's proud of the album, as he deserves to be.
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Promised Land Sound

Promised Land Sound
2013 | Paradise of Bachelors / Redeye

Like most of the work we've been engaged in, this was really the product of serendipity. Chris and I were in Nashville this past fall, spending some time with Chance, and we DJed at the Stone Fox, which is our friend William Tyler's club. We were on a bill with James Toth of Wooden Wand, and opening up for him was this band that was known at the time just as Promised... Land. We were blown away. They were all between 19-22, but they sounded like they had torn through the history of Nashville and Los Angeles country rock. And they're developing so quickly, so what they're playing now is very different from what's on the record. They're moving more into West Coast and European psych territory. The songs are getting swampier and longer and more biting. So their next record is going to be very different.
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Haw

Hiss Golden Messenger
2013 | Paradise of Bachelors / Redeye

Haw was the first record Chris and I did collaboratively. Mike's songwriting continues to develop in fascinating ways, especially how he's exploring notions of faith and spirituality in what is a highly secular musical form. This record has become a lot more relevant and powerful to me in the last few months, as my wife and I are preparing to have a baby in October. Haw is basically about children: having babies... and raising them. That experience is one Mike was really able to capture. I find myself listening to it a lot lately as we're making these preparations for this new phase in our lives. I think Hiss Golden Messenger makes music for adults, which is refreshing. There's a lot of adult music out there that is incredibly pasty and anemic and inconsequential. But his is adult music that gets at what it means to be terrified of being a grown-up.
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Time Off

Steve Gunn
2013 | Paradise of Bachelors / Redeye

Steve grew up with my label partner Chris. They're from the same Philadelphia suburb of Landsdowne, which is also where Kurt Vile grew up. So Chris has been able to watch Steve's artistic development. I've always been impressed by his playing, but thought he was beyond the purview of Paradise of Bachelors for some reason. When I heard the rough mixes for Time Off, though, I knew we needed to do this... record. I was exciting to hear this turn inward from his more exploratory solo guitar work. He was already headed in that direction, but this was just a huge leap forward. It's the opposite kind of career narrative from previous generations. You think of John Coltrane beginning as a phenomenally skilled bop saxophone and then take it further and further into the realm of free improvisation. Steve started in that realm, with a very free and largely improvised style that could be quite beautiful but also very challenging. He's gradually restrained himself and honed in on his skills in service of songcraft.
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Billy Bragg Picks His Favorite Albums

Andrew Perry — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 13:00:31 +0000

To celebrate Billy Bragg’s being honored for his Outstanding Contribution to Music at the Association of Independent Music awards 2013, we invited him to burrow through eMusic’s vast catalog and pick out some of his own favorites. What follows are Billy Bragg’s favorite records on eMusic, with some commentary from the man himself. He also nominated the soulful Tennessee singer/songwriter Valerie June for an interview and sat down with Andrew Perry for a long interview himself.

Pushin' Against A Stone

Valerie June
2013 | Concord Records

Snakily be-dreadlocked chanteuse raised in Memphis, Tennessee, brings the gospel/country/blues roots for 2013.

What an incredible record. I've been listening to it every day for the last two weeks. I bored the band with it on the way to Belgium. My understanding is, she's from Tennessee. I heard her playing the first track live on "Woman's Hour" [on BBC Radio 4] in the car, would you believe, and I was just like, I... must remember — Valerie June. They didn't have it in the local store, so when I got home — I don't often just download things immediately, but I did, 'cos I liked the bits I heard.

I think the playing's amazing, the singing is great, the songwriting is just impeccable — great hooks, with echoes of all sorts of different styles. I don't even know if she wrote all the songs herself, or if someone else helped her write them. But a really great record, my favorite record of the year so far! I'm hoping I'm gonna get the chance to see her play at the Electric Picnic in Ireland in a couple of weeks, because she's on the bill. Just amazing.
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The Show Goes On: Songs Of Ronnie Lane

Slim Chance
2012 | Fishpool Records / The Orchard

Erstwhile backing combo for Faces/Small Faces legend Ronnie Lane keep his memory alive with a brand-new, barnstorming live set of his tunes.

I was a huge Ronnie Lane fan. I still am. He's probably the only artist whose CD never left my car, and that's saying something — I had this best-of under the dashboard. I was a big fan of the Faces, but when he left I thought they lost something that... they never found again. He just managed to bring together something really special ¬— he takes me to that sweet place somewhere between English music and American country music.

His old band Slim Chance have just got back together recently, I saw them at Glastonbury, and they've put an album out. Obviously Ronnie had an iconic voice, which is kind of irreplaceable, but keeping those songs alive, they're doing us all a favor by doing that, so more power to them.

So this is something contemporary, they're still out there doing it, and the fact that it harks back to the famous travelling show that Ronnie did, the picture on the cover, no-one's ever really done that thing — taking rock 'n' roll round in a tent, just setting up and playing — without permission! It's a crazy hippie type thing to do, but I'd love to do it. They did it in some old diesel van — there's great stories in that Faces biography about him doing it in the '70s — totally crazy, but you have to do those kind of things.
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One True Vine

Mavis Staples
2013 | Anti/Epitaph

This year's second hook-up with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy for gospel-soul icon and sometime Staples Singer.

Since Mavis signed up with Anti-, she's made some great records. I'm a huge fan of The Staples Singers. Their album Soul Folk in Action — I mean, talk about folk-punk [as Bragg himself has been categorized], what a record that is. So to see her be reborn, initially working with Ry Cooder, now with Jeff Tweedy, I... think they've both been really sympathetic to what she does well. I did some shows with her in 2011, and she's still got the spark. She let me get up and sing [The Band's song] "The Weight" with her, in Los Angeles — how incredible is that? It blew my mind.
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Zoom

Rachid Taha
2013 | naïve / Naive

54-year-old Franco-Algerian maverick, this year blending North African raï with Western rock, funk and blues with typical garrulousness.

Rachid did an Arabic cover of "Rock the Casbah" [by the Clash], didn't he? I think I may have played with him at Glastonbury one time, when I was doing [Damon Albarn's] Africa Express. That thing tends to be a whole lot of people onstage all playing together, so we didn't hang out as such,... but he was a dude, an amazing guy. For someone from Algeria, he seemed to be pretty rock 'n' roll to me.
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Barbed Wire Blues

Wilko Johnson
1989 | Jungle Records / The Orchard

Proto-punk R&B guitar-mangler from Canvey Island, in mid-'80s, post-Dr Feelgood solo majesty.

He was down here [in Dorset] a couple of years ago; I took my son along to see him. It just blew his mind. Wilko was very important, coming from Essex, as I do. Much more important than that even, the Feelgoods were the British Ramones, in the sense that they woke everybody up to the possibility of going back to... basics. Wilko is our Johnny Ramone. He's the guy who says, "You can look like a dork, and still be cool." And for those of us that already looked like dorks, that was visionary!

I remember seeing him on the television, and it just did my head in, as a guitar player who at the time was being fed images of Peter Frampton as a guitar hero. You know? Wilko Johnson invented punk just by doing up the top button of his shirt — that's all he had to do, to invent it. He pointed us the way. I didn't ever see him in Canvey back in the day, sadly, but I did see him in Bridgeport last year. That was pretty good.
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Satan Is Real

Louvin Brothers
1996 | CAPITOL NASHVILLE

Ira Lonnie Loudermilk and Charlie Elzer Loudermilk, aka the Louvins, were one of country music's finest old-time duos — here, in fine, god-fearing mood in '59.

One of the greatest country records ever made, if only for the cover — it's a picture of them standing in front of the flaming coals of hell. I love the Louvins for their pure harmony style. They were very influential on the Everly Brothers, and Simon... & Garfunkel. Their songs are just so sad. Someone usually dies in the first verse, or the second, or sometimes they save it right until the end.

But for me it's that high lonesome sound that they've got, which still resonates. If you ever spend any time driving round Appalachia in the United States of America, the Louvin Brothers provide the ideal soundtrack. And there's some crazy Christian songs, too, like "I Love the Christian Life," as covered by the Byrds in Sweetheart Of The Rodeo — that's on here.
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Wassaic Way

Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion
2013 | Rte.8 Records / Redeye

Scion of the Guthrie folk dynasty strikes out in more alt-rockin' direction for 2013, in team-up with her hubby Johnny.

Sarah Lee I know, obviously, from working with the Guthrie family [on Bragg & Wilco's 1997 collection of unrecorded Woody songs, Mermaid Avenue]. She's a great songwriter as well, and this record, I think, really speaks for her talent as herself. She's moving away from being Woody Guthrie's granddaughter, and coming into her... own now, and I think that's really great to hear. Broadly, I guess it's Americana, and Woody's almost like the father of that, but she's getting her own spin on that now, getting an edge on it, moving out of the shadow of her parents' generation, which includes Arlo Guthrie of course, and into something altogether her own.
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Imidiwan: Companions

Tinariwen
2009 | World Village / The Orchard

Malian Afro-blues troupe, who wield electric guitars with the same defiance as they do AK-47s, in their sideline as political freedom fighters.

They're great. The rhythmic aspect to what they do is so hypnotic, I really, really like that. There's a tiny little bit of that griot playing in the first track on that Valerie June record — she does this weird little rhythm that made me think I must go back and... rediscover some of that stuff, like Tinariwen.
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Big Smash

Wreckless Eric
2007 | Stiff Records / The Orchard

The irrepressible Eric Goulden, wildcat songsmith of New Wave-era proto-indie Stiff Records, as-was in 1980.

A great album, one of my favorite releases on the old Stiff label. Wreckless Eric, again, is almost forgotten now in the pantheon of punk songwriters, and if remembered at all, it's usually for his first album, rather than this, which is his second. But this has got some great songs on it: "Broken Doll" is an amazing... song — I've always wanted to do a cover of it. In fact, Cliff Richard did a version once, I read somewhere. I don't think my flabber could be more ghasted than by the idea of Cliff covering Wreckless.

He's maybe best known for "Whole Wide World," off the first record — I hear my son playing that some nights on his guitar. I saw him play a few times, he was in vogue at Go! Discs [Bragg's old label] for a while, under his real name, Eric Goulden, so I knew him in that period. He was pretty hairy — pretty out there. He didn't have the same self-control, that knotted, chip-on-his-shoulder sensibility that early Elvis Costello had. He kind of let it go. He started out like that, but then he had a few too many drinks, and slept in his clothes. But we've all done that — I certainly have! He's still out there somewhere, still gigging.
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Electric Landlady

Kirsty MacColl
2012 | Union Square Music / The Orchard

Bawdy Anglo-Irish chanteuse, whose cover of Bragg's "A New England" charted high in '85. Tragically, she died at sea in 2000.

A brilliant, brilliant record. You have to understand, Kirsty was the real deal. She was an incredible songwriter, but also an amazing singer. When she makes a record that has both "Walking Down Madison" with Johnny [Marr] on it, and "My Affair," which sounds like something Bette Midler would record — there's... an amazing mind at work there. I know she wasn't a confident performer, she didn't like going out on the road, but when she did, it was amazing.

By the look of things here, it also has me and her dueting on a song called "Darling, Let's Have Another Baby." Hang onto your hat here — it was the B-side of a Johnny Moped single on Chiswick, back in the '70s. Kirsty and I both had our first records out on Chiswick, at the same time — me with Riff Raff [Billy's punk combo], and she was part of a group called the Drug Addix. Chiswick put three EPs out at the same time, and called it Suburban Rock 'n' Roll, all people from outside London. It was the Duke, Riff Raff and the Drug Addix.

Because she'd been on Chiswick, she was familiar with Johny Moped. We were on the Nicky Campbell Show, and we decided to have a go at "Darling Let's Have Another Baby," which is a great song. [Quoting lyric] "Let's make one soon, on our second honeymoon." [Calls it up on computer, song plays in background] Yeah, this is the stuff! [Quoting again] "Darling, if you ever leave me, I'll cry a million tears/ I'll go to the nearest boozer, and drink 10 pints of beer."

There's a Johnny Moped movie? A biopic, with Johnny Depp playing Johnny Moped? That would be so fucking great. Oh, it's a documentary. [A little disappointed.] Oh, OK.
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New Boots And Panties (Deluxe Edition)

Ian Dury
2007 | Demon / The Orchard

Utterly classic, none-more-English album of New Wave-era observations of East London, set to visionary, Clash-influencing blend of jazz/funk/reggae/blues.

Again, the "Essex man" thing. That really came totally out of leftfield. I'd always locked into Stiff via Elvis Costello, who was a hero of mine. But when you're coming out with stuff like "Billericay Dickie" and "Plaistow Patricia" and "Clever Trevor"…Yeah, it was a world I knew.

That's what punk was all about. It... brought rock 'n' roll home. It was away from the stadiums and the glitter. That shop he's standing outside of on the cover, we had shops like that in Barking — big shop fronts, with loads of hand-written signs. His love of place, I found that really inspirational. That's something I tried to connect with, both in my songwriting, but also in my book, The Progressive Patriot.

Are you familiar with the song, "England's Glory," that's on this Deluxe Edition? He originally wrote it for Max Wall [slapstick comedian]. It's a great song, amazing. It should be our national anthem, really.
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Discover: The Dungeon Family

Hua Hsu — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 20:40:11 +0000

Before there was a family, there was the Dungeon — otherwise known as Rico Wade’s mom’s basement. It was in the magically stank Dungeon — described by Cee-Lo as “a crawl space with a bench that held a stack of blankets” — that Wade and a crew of friends smoked, slept, passed days without showering, traded rhymes and perfected an alien funk aesthetic that revolutionized what one could/should aspire to express within a single bar. This was music full of pride, personality, desire and a casual, hospitable wisdom, anchored by the earthy production work of Organized Noize (Wade, Ray Murray and Sleepy Brown). That was back in the early ’90s, and the out-of-nowhere emergence of first-wave Dungeon representatives like Outkast and Goodie Mob helped vanquish hip-hop’s coastal chauvinisms.

Those early years set a high bar, yet there was something original and exciting about every new, battle-tested rapper or singer who went from a cameo verse to their own record. Those collective dreams eventually outgrew the basement; they had to. The dozens of directions the Dungeon Family took — and, notably, still take — were part of their shared, hypercreative DNA. “Rhyme got strong/ Mind got blown,” and it’s hard to stay family when you’re no longer sleeping head-to-toe next to some keyboards and a mic stand. From Outkast, Goodie Mob and Joi to Killer Mike, Janelle Monae and Future, the family tree is a sprawling and complicated one. Started from a basement; now they’re everywhere.

Early Days

Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik

Outkast
1994 | Arista/LaFace Records

Andre and Big Boi met, as many teenagers do, at the mall. They were 16, aspiring rappers in a city brimming with talent but few opportunities to be heard beyond it. The Dungeon became their after-school hangout and practice space and, in 1992, they signed a deal with LaFace to become the label's first rappers. Following a well-received anti-Christmas single ("Player's Ball") and a guest verse on a TLC remix, they... released their daring debut album in 1994. The tongue-twisting title foretold its fiercely leftfield thrills: It was proudly Southern; it was filled with colorful new tropes and characters; and, at a time when samples and penitent sneers ruled rap, it was built on patient, live grooves and Dre and Big Boi's amiable charisma. Suddenly, New York and the West Coast sounded a bit provincial, as Dre and Big leaned into their country drawls one moment and then broke land-speed records the next. "Git Up, Git Out" (featuring Cee-Lo and Big Gipp) was the emotional center, a seven-minute all-in-the-Family statement of class and purpose.
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Soul Food

The Goodie Mob
1995 | Arista/LaFace Records

According to Cee-Lo, the first record from Goodie Mob ("the Good Die Mostly Over Bullshit") was originally conceived as a compilation. At the time, Cee-Lo and Big Gipp were solo artists and T-Mo and Khujo called themselves the Lumberjacks. The four of them formed a bond in the Dungeon, however, and they decided to become a group. Their 1995 debut showcased their diversity of voices, something you realize within minutes of "Thought... Process." These aren't boys passing around a crown, trying it on for kicks. "Frustrated, irritated, sometimes I don't/ Know myself, I be too numb" Khujo grunts, finding solace in his brothers, a blunt and the Dungeon. Meanwhile, the cherubic Cee-Lo pokes his head up from the grind and realizes, "I kinda like bein' poor/ At least I know what my friends here for." These aren't just great songs, they were the building blocks for movements to come: the local pride of "Dirty South" and "Soul Food," the paranoia and spiritualism of "Cell Therapy" or "Live at the O.M.N.I." If Outkast's stories promised fantasy and escape, Goodie Mob was trying to describe the feeling of visiting someone at the county jail, the micro-triumphs and aches of everyday life, the sound of a swinging screen door.
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The Pendulum Vibe

Joi
2012 | CAPITOL

Breaking Through

ATLiens

Outkast
1996 | Arista/LaFace Records

Emboldened by the success of (and perceived slights toward) Southernplayalistic, Dre and Big Boi put a great deal of thought into their follow-up. It had only been a couple years since their debut but they were no longer kids, and they tweaked their personas accordingly, as "Two Dope Boyz (in a Cadillac)" — with its "Welcome, earthlings" robot intro — showed. If Atlanta was too exotic and strange for the hip-hop establishment,... then why not embrace your alien status? ATLiens was a far more confident and ambitious record than their debut, full of the unafraid, almost absurdist swagger ("I'm cooler than a polar bear's toenails," Big Boi famously bragged on the title cut) and quiet pensiveness that would power their next few albums. No longer recording exclusively in the Dungeon, Dre and Big began making their own beats, including the singles "Jazzy Belle" and "Elevators." Despite its futuristic imagery and feel, there was already a sense of nostalgia and appreciation for where they'd come from. "Every day I sit while my ni — a be in school/ Thinkin' bout the second album at the Dungeon shootin' pool," Big raps, describing just a couple years before.
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Set It Off - Music From The New Line Cinema Motion Picture

Set It Off
1996 | EastWest

Soundtracks have always provided opportunities for labels and crews to test new artists or play with unorthodox styles between projects. For example, it's where you'll find some of Outkast's strongest ("Benz or a Beamer" for the New Jersey Drive soundtrack) and most experimental stuff ("Speedballin'" for Tomb Raider and "Land of a Million Drums" for Scooby Doo). The soundtrack for the 1996 heist flick Set it Off featured a few... classic Organized Noize moments. They collaborated with Queen Latifah on a really imaginative cover of Strafe's "Set it Off" and Goodie Mob, Cool Breeze and Backbone contribute the haunting, graveyard banger "Angelic Wars." But the biggest moment here — the one that helped the Set it Off soundtrack go platinum — was undoubtedly En Vogue's world-conquering "Don't Let Go (Love)," the Oakland quartet resplendent over Organized Noize's tamed swamp funk. (Random trivia: the song was originally written for Mick Jagger.)
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Brainchild

Society Of Soul
1996 | Arista/LaFace Records

While it remains an overlooked moment of the Dungeon oeuvre, Society of Soul's sole release captures much of what made it such an exciting movement. Released a few months after writing and producing TLC's hit "Waterfalls," Organized Noize collaborated with Dungeon guru Big Rube and singer Espraronza "Roni" Griffin" to make Brainchild. From the opening drag of "E.M.B.R.A.C.E." and the "Waterfalls"-isms of "Changes" (featuring T-Boz) to the psychedelic soul of "Peaches n'... Erb" and dubby funk of Cee-Lo and George Clinton's "Blac Mermaid," it's an album that captures the Dungeon Family at their diverse best: tight, thoughtful songwriting; moments of adventure and play; a sense of collective struggle. Perhaps that lack of a single, distinct personality is why Brainchild — driven by Sleepy Brown's charming falsetto, but far from an autobiographical record — is rarely recognized as one of the best R&B (or, if you prefer, "neosoul") records of the '90s — because it certainly deserves to be.
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The Dungeon-as-Playground

Still Standing

The Goodie Mob
1998 | Arista/LaFace Records

Cee-Lo, T-Mo, Khujo and Gipp followed up their 1995 debut Soul Food with the looser, wider-ranging yet no less absorbing Still Standing in 1998. Success hadn't changed Goodie Mob much — "What they know about the banana and mayonnaise?/ Slices of toasted bread on the nap-kin" Gipp goads on the slinking "Fly Away"; later, Cee-Lo reminds doubters they're still proudly from the "dirty, filthy, nasty dirty south," land of "silky drawls" and... gold fronts. They tinkered with some different sounds here — the rock snarl of "Just About Over," the minimalist, crystalline crunk of "Beautiful Skin" — but the highs were familiar ones. "Black Ice (Sky High)" was one of the Family's finest moments together, a Goodie Mob-Outkast relay run over a broken-down organ wheeze. A sense of desperation resounds through the chain-gang march of "Distant Wilderness," the "chill cold south" of "See You When I See You." The album closed with "Still Standing," a stirring, piano-backed reminder of why they've chosen to walk the righteous path, even as everyone else is "running out of things to say." "Unscathed, cause this is pain," they rap together on the chorus, "This is for soldiers to feel."
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Aquemini

Outkast
1998 | Arista/LaFace Records

Released a few months after Still Standing, Outkast's third album marked a turning point for the duo. They produced most of the album themselves and it feels intimately "theirs." This was an album obsessed with balance, equilibrium, how righteousness and evil complemented one another — even the title was a play on their increasingly unlikely partnership (Big was an Aquarius, Andre a Gemini). This embracing of difference resulted in a record that... was both celebratory ("Rosa Parks," which sounded like nothing ever before) and paranoid (the George Clinton-assisted "Synthesizer"), futuristic yet rustically local, hungry for love yet still untrusting. You could get lost in Aquemini's worlds — the intersecting lives of "SpottieOttieDopaliscious," the back-in-the-day folks Dre and Big left behind on "Da Art of Storytellin' (Part 1)." In retrospect, perhaps this was the beginning of the end, this intense exploration of the-playa-and-the-poet chasm. At the time, though, that space-between represented — and sounded like — vast, open possibility.
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Stankonia

Outkast
2000 | Arista/LaFace Records

The approach toward the year 2000 was an ominous one: the techno-paranoia and doomsday millenarianism of Y2K, that mythic string of zeroes finally upon us. Whether it was this forward-looking urgency or not, it was a truly profound moment for pop music. In early October 2000, Radiohead released Kid A, a paradigm-shifting reset of arena rock. And on Halloween, Atlanta's Outkast released Stankonia, still one of the strangest and most ambitious hip-hop... albums ever made. The Outkast duo of Big Boi and Andre had already prepared us for artful contradictions, most notably on their masterpiece Aquemini. But the Stankonia moment was announced by "Bombs Over Baghdad," a triumphant, jungle-influenced oddball of a single that was nearly twice as fast as anything else on the radio. By the time Stankonia arrived, it was clear that the always-improving duo had crafted a true masterpiece. The album was like a history of the future in about an hour, and with all due respect to Aquemini it is probably the greatest distillation of the Outkast vision. There were hits that sounded instantly familiar, like the ice-water swagger of "So Fresh, So Clean" and the complex, grown folks earnestness of "Ms. Jackson." There were moments of nasty, reckless abandon, like "Gangsta Shit" or the coquettish "I'll Call Before I Come." And there were songs that yearned for or described a better world, like the post-Hendrix wail of "Gasoline Dreams" or the skyward, Erykah Badu-assisted "Humble Mumble." That Stankonia could accommodate such a range of images attests to its power. It is swampy and thick and earthy and funky; it is sleek and cold and futuristic. It is as complicated as everyday life.
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The Dungeon Diaspora

A S.W.A.T. Healin' Ritual

Witchdoctor
1998 | Interscope

Witchdoctor's 1997 debut remains one of the strongest examples of how far one could take that early Dungeon aesthetic. Judging by his guest spots on Aquemini and Soul Food, it was hard to discern whether he was a fierce, eyes-agog rapper or a blissed-out gospel crooner. When it came time to compose his brilliant head-trip of a debut, he split the difference. He's an absorbing host, lazily stuttering through his verses and... then singing the cloud-high hook on "Island Koneelalee." "Lil' Mama's Gone" is stunning, Witchdoctor strumming an acoustic guitar and singing sweetly about love lost. S.W.A.T. clearly descends from the lineage of Outkast and Goodie Mob, but it takes that world-weary outlook in a different, distinctly God-fearing direction on tracks like "Heaven Comin'" and "Dez Only 1." "Atlanta got a bullet with yo name on it," he warns on "A.T.L. the Great Big Lick." For Witchdoctor, though, redemption won't come from fighting back.
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Deliverance

Bubba Sparxxx
2003 | Beat Club

When Outkast and the Dungeon Family first broke in the early 1990s, Bubba Sparxxx was just a country kid scheming for a way out of remote LaGrange, Georgia. Timbaland handled the bulk of his successful 2001 debut Dark Days, Bright Nights but Bubba brought Organized Konfusion in for a few tracks on his acclaimed and more introspective 2003 follow-up, Deliverance. Bubba tried to rebrand the region over a din of electric guitar... on "New South" — "Inspired by the efforts y'all made to pigeonhole me/ I rose from the pig shit without a smidgen on me," he scoffs, laughing off all the Yank haters. The swinging horns, jittering drums and Sleepy Brown falsetto of "Like it Or Not" captured the poppier side of the early-2000s Dungeon sound, while the speed-rush pogo of "Back in the Mud" showed their more adventurous side. Bubba ended up making his allegiance to the Dungeon Family official by signing with Outkast's Purple Ribbon imprint for his third album, The Charm.
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The Killer

Killer Mike
Grindtime Official Inc. / INgrooves

There have been a lot of great solo rappers — or rappers with great singles — who have been part of the Dungeon Family: Witchdoctor, Cool Breeze, Slimm Calhoun, Backbone. Killer Mike is the one who has emerged as the most successful. Groomed to be "next" just as Outkast was dissolving, Mike was the gruff foil to the dexterous duo on late-career tracks like "Snappin' and Trappin'," "The Whole World" and "Flip... Flop Rock." Mike's best solo moments capture a young rapper slowly mastering his mentor's playbook and paying homage at every turn. He was poised to follow his 2003 debut Monster with the forceful and politically charged Ghetto Extraordinary. It was shelved indefinitely, but some of its better moments surfaced on his 2006 mixtape, The Killer. On "Bad Day Worst Day" he talks trash about Creflo Dollar, Adolph Hitler and everyone in-between over some flickering organ, while "Ni---as Down South" is a majestic, sweltering planting-of-the-flag classic. Always the dutiful disciple, "Dungeon Family Dedication" pays tribute to the ones who made it all possible, the rise and the fall.
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Divisions and Diversions

Speakerboxxx/The Love Below

Outkast
2002 | Arista

It was a break-up record without any real allusions to the break-up. Instead, they holed up in their separate corners and emerged with radically distinct versions of the Outkast legacy. Andre's half tried to establish him as some kind of twisted pop auteur, and the massive success of "Hey Ya!" brought the "group" an unprecedented kind of popularity. Despite its occasionally heavy-handed conceptualism, there were some truly gorgeous tunes here — the... melted thump of "Prototype," the showtunes-soul of "Roses," the IV-drip desperation of "Pink and Blue." Weirdly, Speakerboxxx is probably a better indicator of how extreme Outkast could have gotten had they stayed a mere rap duo. Dre deserved praise for his bewitchingly strange pop but Big's side was just as adventurous: the electro-onslaught of "Ghettomusick," the barnyard funk of "Bowtie," the brutally sweet melancholy of "Unhappy." The strange thing about the final "proper" Outkast album was that it yielded so few clues about Dre and Big's deteriorating relationship over the course of its two hours. They had already moved on, past where anyone could catch them.
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Mutant Mindframe

Big Gipp
2004 | In The Paint / Entertainment One Distribution

Goodie Mob wasn't in great shape circa 2003. Cee-Lo had left a few years earlier and found success as a kind of hippie-funk charismatic. There'd always been surplus energy spilling from the goofy hard rock Gipp and that year he took a sabbatical from the group to release Mutant Mindframe, a collection of the trippier moments that outstretched the Goodie aesthetic. The daredevil flow of "Make the People Say," the bottom-heavy crawl... of "Make it Happen" and the Neptunes-tinged "Wildout" (featuring the underrated Slimm Calhoun) were all solid slabs that drew from Gipp's past. But it was the spaced-out moments that brought out the best in him. He and Andre 3000 try to out-style each other on "Boogie Man" while "Creeks" (featuring Witchdoctor) sounds like an inside-out P-Funk tune. The Sleepy Brown-powered "Steppin Out" is pure ecstasy, an irresistible steppers' classic.
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Mr. Brown

Sleepy Brown
2006 | VIRGIN

With his bugged-out shades, Bic-clean dome and flashy threads, Sleepy Brown was always the most visible member of Organized Noize. Released in 2006, Mr. Brown was his third attempt at developing a solo profile, after neither the Society of Soul nor Sleepy's Room projects found the audiences they deserved. By now Sleepy was well known for his appearances on hits like Ludacris's "Saturday" and Outkast's "The Way You Move," and the festive,... romance/freak-centric Mr. Brown takes a more direct route to stardom. Big Boi and Pharrell — honors student at the Sleepy Brown School of Falsetto — show up for the joyous, buoyant "Margarita." Sleepy nicks a Jackson 5 tune for the majestic, carefree "Me, My Baby and My Cadillac." While they were no longer the go-to producers for their former disciples, Organized Noize showed that they were still full of ideas on the slow-motion writhe of "Oh Ho Hum."
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Strength in Numbers

Even In Darkness

Dungeon Family
2001 | Arista

Expectations were unreasonably high for the Dungeon Family album, and it's a compliment to the crew's high quality of output that 2001's Even in Darkness left most fans unsatisfied. There were some great songs — Cee-Lo's spine-tingling lead-in to the anthemic "Crooked Booty," Andre 3000's cavalier stroll through the Kraftwerk-tweaking "Trans DF Express," the celebratory reunion vibes of "6 Minutes," the punch-drunk funk of "Rollin'." Maybe too much of a good thing... was the problem. Organized Noize and Earthtone III (Outkast and Mr. DJ's production moniker) were in top form — Even in Darkness features some of the strongest crew productions of the era. But there was a sense of collaborative play lacking in some of the posse cuts, all these moments of individual brilliance at the cost of a larger struggle.
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Big Boi Presents... Got Purp? Vol. 2

Big Boi Presents...
2005 | VIRGIN

After the dissolution of Outkast, Big Boi attempted to recreate the Dungeon Family with Purple Ribbon, a loose collective of local survivors and Family stalwarts. The only prerequisite was style and Big's approval, which helps explain why Got Purp? Vol. II can be so simultaneously absorbing and exhausting. There's a lot going on here — limber, pristine-sounding singers (Scar, Janelle Monae), old friends (Sleepy Brown, Cool Breeze) and new allies (Bubba Sparxxx,... who contributes the excellent "Claremont Lounge"). Still, the highs are a reminder of Big's adventurous spirit, especially the funhouse thrills of the posse cut "Kryptonite" to the deconstructed old-school of Big, Bun B, Big Gee and G-Rock's fantastic "808."
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Kinfolk

Ali & Gipp
2007 | Universal

Slowly, the circle widened. In 2007, with Goodie Mob broken up, Gipp collaborated on an album with Ali of the St. Lunatics, who had helped do for the Midwest what Gipp and the Dungeon Family had done for Atlanta. It was a surprisingly good pairing; then again, Gipp's lumbering drawl sounds good alongside anyone. There was nothing conceptual about Kinfolk. It was heavy on features and a kind of newfound, multi-region solidarity:... Nelly and the irrepressible Pimp C show up for "Hood" while Cee-Lo and Bun B bring some menace to "I Told Ya." They were all drawn by the lowest common denominator, so to speak. "Work Dat, Twerk Dat" comes across as some stripped-down, country-fied Miami Bass, a spiritual companion to the minimalist thump of the rump-toasting "Go 'Head."
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The Legacy: Leftfield Pop (version 1)

St. Elsewhere

Gnarls Barkley
2006 | Downtown Recordings

Cee-Lo always had star power: his pesky scampering rapping anchoring Goodie Mob's songs, the bright, inspired moments on his 2002 and 2004 solo albums. He finally broke through in 2006 with St. Elsewhere, the first of two collaborative albums he recorded with DJ and producer Danger Mouse. Here, Cee-Lo showed off his versatility as a singer rather than a rapper, commanding his partner's quirky pop arrangements with class, wit and just a... bit of grit. "Crazy" conquered the world and inaugurated the third act of Cee-Lo's astonishing career. Fitting that their first encounter was in the late 1990s after a Goodie Mob concert, Danger Mouse still and up-and-comer, pressing a demo tape into the hands of his heroes.
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The Odd Couple

Gnarls Barkley
2008 | Downtown Recordings/Atl
The Lady Killer

Cee-Lo Green
2010 | Radiculture/Elektra

The Legacy: Leftfield Pop (take 2)

The ArchAndroid

Janelle Monáe
2010 | Bad Boy/Wondaland

"I grew up on Outkast," the visionary singer Janelle Monae recently explained. "I grew up on Goodie Mob, I grew up on Dungeon Family." When Monae moved to Atlanta as an aspiring singer, she was drawn to the lineage of chart-topping iconoclasts the city had produced. She became part of Big Boi's Purple Ribbon collective and she featured on a couple Outkast songs for the Idlewild soundtrack. It was Big who recommended... her to Diddy, who signed her to Bad Boy and — somewhat shockingly — afforded her the space to make The ArchAndroid, a dizzying and meticulous hour of post-everything, hooks-and-provocation soul that was clearly indebted to the Dungeon Family. Maybe it's a sign of how successful and mainstream Outkast et al became that Monae was afforded the freedom to create her galaxies in peace. She hasn't forgotten where she came from — Big Boi guests on one of the album's brightest cuts, "Tightrope," and she recently guested on the Goodie Mob reunion single, "Special Education."
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Metropolis: The Chase Suite

Janelle Monáe
2008 | Bad Boy Records

The Legacy: Still Grinding

Pluto

Future
2012 | Epic

The family business is in good hands: Janelle Monae's freak flag flies on behalf of the Dungeon, while Killer Mike continues to put out fantastic, bracing records. And then there's Future, whose 2012 debut Pluto was one of the year's best albums, a captivating mix of psychedelic highs and strange, bluesy wails. It opened with a voice familiar to anyone who had grown up on the Dungeon Family: "The future is now,"... crackled Big Rube, whose soft, grizzled voice and inscrutable adages have been a constant over the family's twenty year run. There are plenty of current-day Atlanta rappers who grew up on Outkast and Goodie Mob, but few grew up in their presence. Future experienced it all firsthand thanks to his cousin, Rico Wade. He got the name "Future" as a kid hanging out at the studio with Wade and his friends, back when they were all working their way up. He's proven their prophecy right.
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Label Profile: Northern Spy

Dave Sumner — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 13:59:39 +0000

[Get a taste of Northern Spy's catalog with this free 16-track sampler — Ed.]

Northern Spy Records is the baby of co-owners Tom Abbs and Adam Downey, birthed after both left their jobs at the legendary ESP-Disk, a label with a similarly solid reputation for releasing music on the fringes. At ESP, free jazz legends like Albert Ayler, Guiseppe Logan and Frank Wright shared space with noise and psych-rock bands like The Godz and Fugs. For Northern Spy, the diversity of these idioms was merely a launching pad.

Jazz is still represented at Northern Spy by free jazz giant Charles Gayle and modern experimentalists Chad Taylor and Rob Mazurek (aka Chicago Underground Duo). But the label has an impressively broad definition of “Something Different.” Guitar minimalist Rhys Chatham offers up seaside tranquility. Old Time Relijun barks out punk-rock rattle and twang. Charlie Looker’s outfits Extra Life and Seaven Teares spotlight his “Morrisey’s-Dangerous-Twin” persona — a chanteur whose dark side has a dark side. There’s room for the hypnotic rhythmic intensity of the tribal Foot Village to sit side-by-side with the cheerful-drunk back-porch pop of the Colin L. Orchestra and the embraceable shape-shifting of noise savants Zs. Relative unknowns like Home of Easy Credit, the duo of Louise Dam Eckardt Jensen and Tom Blancart, get just as much juice from the label as guitar legends Thurston Moore and Marc Ribot.

Their bands tour religiously — they’re expected to. But the label puts in work, too. With two annual Spy Music Festival events under their belt, they’re already preparing for the 2013 edition, establishing relationships with NYC venues that serve disparate segments of music fans.

Which doesn’t mean the label doesn’t have its share of difficulties — even with something as seemingly banal as band names. “They’re all great names, artistically, but marketing wise, man, they are just god awful,” Downey laughs. “It’s kind of a joke. How in god’s name can people Google that? I mean, ‘Home of Easy Credit’ is just screaming to enter your spam folder. And Neptune — first off, there are probably five or more bands with that name that are bigger than our band. And it’s completely un-Googleable.”

This good-natured sense of humor is a job requirement when you’re releasing weird, difficult-to-market music for a living. Downey has it in spades, and the music on Spy reflects this temperament: It’s a costume ball of extravagant outsider music, where everything is a little bit scary and a whole lot of fun. Here, in his own words, are some of Northern Spy’s most memorable releases.

R.I.P.

The USA Is A Monster
2013 | Northern Spy / Redeye

While at ESP-Disk', we put out a new Talibam! recording. They were one of the first new artists signed to ESP-Disk' since the post-2000 reboot. We developed a friendship working with [Talibam's] Matt Mottel, and since Colin [from The USA is a Monster] and he are good friends, there was this sort of natural suggestion that brought us to USA is a Monster. We loved the band already, and when we put... on the master [recording] for R.I.P., we knew instantly that this should be our first record. It was subversive. It's rife with the Native American mythos the band is known for, including songs about Ranald MacDonald, the first Native American English-speaker to teach in Japan, and about Grey Owl and his wife Anahareo, who were known for their nature writing and animal rights activism. It also fit in [the same] weird trajectory [as] Fugs and Godz, who released records with ESP. So it seemed like a natural fit.

At the time, we didn't know this was USA's last record, but we thought we could sell records based on the band's reputation — essentially that the incredible, intense music would speak for itself. They had done awesome records with Load and toured their asses off, playing in every basement in every town in America. So, yeah, our first record was all about being fans of the band, ignoring the business aspects. Essentially, we wanted to make an awesome statement. Our first releases were really our calling card, our intro to the world.
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Dream Seeds

Extra Life
2013 | Northern Spy / Redeye

A favorite Northern Spy release. We were very enthusiastic about Charlie Looker's songwriting. Dream Seeds is a real concept album, one that rewards multiple listens. The album seems to have secrets in it. As a fan, I want to keep listening, entering into the world the band created. As a label owner, I really wanted to share this music. One thing Charlie always said was that, as he toured, there would quite... often be light attendance at shows, but there would always be three or four people that drove far to see the band — the ones that would sorta creep up on Charlie, fascinated by his persona. That really struck me as interesting, that Charlie was connecting with fans intensely, even if it was just a small number.

Seeing that band live at [Brooklyn's] St. Vitus was a game changer for us. We listen to Dream Seeds all the time — that final chorus in "First Song" still sounds totally fresh. Their first record on NSPY for them ended up being their last. The band broke up six months after the release. I think the darkness from touring got to them.
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The Home of Easy Credit

The Home of Easy Credit
2013 | Northern Spy / Redeye

An oft-forgotten album in our catalog. And it's a shame, because there are some incredibly wild things going on here. At points, you feel like you're floating endlessly in the sounds and at others you feel you're being thrown around the room. The whole team came to love the record. Tom Blancarte and his wife Louise D.E. Jensen brought us this record. They planned to tour heavily, playing to adventurous audiences throughout... the US and Europe.

After almost 40 records, we've had it all…bands made up of divorced couples, bands breaking up during the tour, bands with members that used to date. We'd already released two albums from bands that had broken up. So around the time we were considering signing The Home of Easy Credit, we brought up the fact that this was a husband and wife duo. We discussed this internally, partially kidding around, but we didn't want to be responsible for breaking up a marriage. We knew they were going to be heading out on the road really hard. They did a couple tours I think of 40 or so shows each, all across the US. That's a lot of time together driving in a car. And they toured just as much in Europe. Their tour plan was laid out before we signed them, so we knew they'd be spending all this time together. And yeah, we got nervous. It's always a little scary.
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Grain

Zs
2013 | Northern Spy Records / Redeye

The Zs came to with the most expansive [ideas], sculpting this two-year plan to create an arc. It was exciting. We released Zs solo projects, then we collected the band's sextet records that were all out of print and housed them in a box set. It pulls together an immense amount of music, the entire output of the band during their sextet period along with an entire disc of unreleased material. One... of the discs features a live show [where] an audience member yells out "Slayer!" and "Sheet music rules!" It highlights the kind of punk venues Zs were playing in — setting up in dingy punk clubs with sheet music.

In order to highlight this release as something new and vital, the band came up with a remix idea to breathe new life into the work and avoid canonizing the early work. The former resulted in an installation in an art gallery setting. People could come in, download tracks from [the box set] and remix them right there in the gallery.
The box set was mastered by Ben Greenberg, who was in Zs for the post-sextet period. We released Ben's solo Terry Riley-like guitar project called Hubble. Ben is now a primary member of The Men. Tracks from Arms were played on Howard Stern's radio program. Howard did a couple segments on Zs, which included the entire Howard Stern family creating their own "avant-garde" jam. So, in a way, Zs are central to Northern Spy because we've done the most work with them, which has all been amazing and very rewarding.
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Streets

Charles Gayle
2013 | Northern Spy / Redeye

Charles called [Northern Spy co-owner] Tom up out of the blue. He just called and said, "I want to do a record with you guys." Right away, we knew we had to get him playing tenor. Just being around him, for me, was humbling. He's a very special guy, very smart, just a real jazz musician. This was the first recording of Charles playing tenor in probably a decade or more.

Charles... talked a lot about Streets [a clown character he first developed 20 years ago — Ed.]. He told me about being influenced heavily by Emmett Kelly, a famous pantomime clown. He loved the idea of a clown being a tragic figure, a performer that could make a crowd laugh, but also garner sympathy. While performing live as Streets, Gayle has been known to pantomime the catching of a fly only to accidentally kill it, which would lead to him playing sad notes on a piano.

Wire magazine sent a photographer named Chris Verene to shoot Charles for a spread in the magazine that was published around the release of Streets. I attended the photo session, and we ended up walking around the East Village in Manhattan shooting Charles playing in the streets and subway stations. Charles used to busk in the subways and such, but he didn't talk too much about that. He doesn't do that anymore, though he did it for the photo shoot. He had a lot of fun, too. I remember watching him and realizing how much the city's sounds correlated to the free style of jazz. Charles even did a call-and-response with the horn and a passing bus and police siren.
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Outdoor Spell

Rhys Chatham
2013 | Northern Spy / Redeye

Most people know Rhys's minimalist guitar pieces, but when he came to us with this layered trumpet concept, we saw it as an opportunity to try to market him a in a different way. The record is really mesmerizing, and I encourage everyone to smoke a joint and let the layer of sound wash over you.

We had Rhys and [his manager] Regina over for dinner. We made a home-cooked meal and opened... wine. We got along really well. During an early meeting, Rhys gave the Northern Spy family lessons on trumpet over a couple bottles of wine.

You feel kinda lucky just to be in the same room with Rhys. He's got a big personality, very funny and sharp. Rhys wrote us complaining that someone had plagiarized his music, and sent us a link to the would-be-thief's video. Tom immediately wrote back that we would do whatever it took to remedy the situation. Then we watched the video and saw that it was just a homeless man doing armpit farts for his friends. Rhys was just joking around after reading a reviewer's comment that Rhys' trumpet sounded like flatulence.
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Make Memories

Foot Village
2013 | Northern Spy Records / Redeye

Foot Village's new record was super exciting for us. We fell in love with it right when we heard it, and that love has only grown. Last summer, Adam played this record in the office, without any introduction. About five or six minutes into the first track, I go, "Wow, this sounds like Foot Village if they became the best band ever." And Adam, in a very Adam way, responded, "This is... Foot Village. They want us to put out their new record." Needless to say, this sent me in a frenzy. I saw the band at ATP in 2011, and their live show was electric. I just felt like they were missing a certain element — maybe it's the darkness, which I feel they tapped into on this record, particularly on "1600 Dolla Bill" and "The End of the World."

It was also tied into the whole "end of the world" Mayan calendar thing that made the social media buzz cycle last year. Just in case the world really did end, we announced the phone number so people could hear the record before imploding. By calling their Emergency Hotline (951-262-2552), you could hear over the phone playbacks of the record. An automated voice would allow you to hear each track by pressing a number. You could also leave the band a message.

It was a big step for the band, and they worked super hard, promoting themselves and coming up with ways to engage the audience and build fans. Their live show is incredible and fun, people circle around them, much like a Lightning Bolt live set. The band's friend served as the model for the photos on the packaging. They covered her in day-glo paint and took photos of her jumping on a trampoline with a huge, rainbow backdrop.

As opposed to some of our other band names, I like the name Foot Village. We made a joke about Googling the band name and getting some spurious, sexual results, but all of the disturbing things that come up when you Google "foot village" are actually due to the band.
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COL

Colin L. Orchestra
2013 | Northern Spy / Redeye

When Colin ended The USA Is A Monster, I think people were excited to see what he did next. Turns out, he started a country-fried acid-y jam band to play super-long, Rhys Chatham-inspired minimalism. There was a month-long residency at Zebulon, and then Northern Spy put out the record. Since then, the Orchestra (which is two to three keyboardists, two percussionists, a bass player and usually five guitar players) has been playing... tons of shows in Brooklyn and beyond. They toured both coasts too. A song from the album actually got used for a climactic montage scene in the film I Do and I Don't, which starred Jane Lynch.
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Your Turn

Ceramic Dog
2013 | Northern Spy Records / Redeye

Marc Ribot is a guitar god. In New York City, Ribot is a legend. And when we heard he was working on a new Ceramic Dog record, five years since his last, we got in contact and really fought for this record. The trio includes Shahzad Ismaily and Ches Smith, who both contribute a tune and rock out. Before going to the album release show at [Manhattan's] (Le) Poisson Rouge, a track... from [Tom Waits's] Rain Dogs came on my shuffle while I was driving, and I thought, "Holy hell, we're putting out an album by Marc Ribot. That's him on this record, this legendary record."
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10 Essential Damaged Goods Albums

Stuart Turnbull — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 13:22:37 +0000

“Trends come and go, but we just get on with what we do and what we like,” says Ian Ballard, who founded Damaged Goods Records in 1988 and still runs the label from his East London home. To celebrate the label’s 25th anniversary, we asked its most prolific signing, Billy Childish, to pick his favorite 10 albums from its vaults.

Stuart Turnbull interviews Billy Childish about his own drive for music-making — read that here.

A Flame From The Fen - The Complete Fire Dept.

Fire Dept.
2010 | Damaged Goods / state51

Everything you need by this straight-up punk rock band formed in Cambridge, England in 1987.

"Absolute pop clarity, I'd call this. Fire Department were often on the same bill as my band Thee Headcoats, and they were one of the best groups I've ever seen. And nobody got them. They had a very unlikely fellow on the lead vocals, Neil Palmer, who looked like he'd stepped from behind a bank till. People didn't... get it because he was not 'cool'. But the world's version of cool isn't cool. It's shit. Neil was absolutely on-the-money — a fantastic vocalist and performer."
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All Our Forts Are With You

Wild Billy Chyldish & CTMF
2013 | Damaged Goods / state51

2013 album from Billy Childish, featuring his American wife, Julie Hamper, and friends including Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond of The KLF.

"This fulfils everything that I want in a group. The songs are written in the studio, they're basically one-takes; they sound like they've been made by a bunch of 15 year olds, and it's nice and effortless and carefree."
The Complete Bootlegs Vol I & II

Johnny Moped
2007 | Damaged Goods / state51

A hard-hitting 26-track mid-'70s monster by the band from Croydon, England, featuring Ray Burns (aka Captain Sensible).

"Johnny Moped were doing stuff with Captain Sensible pre-punk and this is effortless, proper rock 'n' roll. The Damned and the Mopeds were punks from a strictly rock 'n' roll background, without the glam bit. Which is where I come from. It's got free spirit and a lack of worry that I like."
In Blood

Billy Childish
2008 | Damaged Goods / state51

On which Mr Childish duets with East London's horse ridin', rockin' chanteuse. Billy and Holly strip the blues down to its raw bones.

"I wanted to include something with Holly here. In Blood was an idea I had to do an LP with one chord — E — and no add-ons. We recorded it over a couple of days. In Blood reflects a lot of my interest in blues music and the straightforwardness... of people like John Lee Hooker."
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Takin' The Piss

Armitage Shanks
1993 | Damaged Goods / state51

Debut LP from the punk enthusiasts named after a brand of lavatory pans. Produced by Billy Childish.

"Dick Scum, the guitarist of Armitage Shanks, drove for my band Thee Headcoats. He had a group, and wanted to do some recordings so I went along and produced an album with them. They were really big fans of early punk although they're quite a lot younger than me. They really had a feeling for... it and I wanted to help with that; they were such aficionados of the real thing that I wanted to be involved."
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Dreggredation

Wild Billy Childish
2012 | Damaged Goods Records / state51

Raw garage rock with a primeval edge as Billy hooks up with Neil Palmer of The Fire Dept., Nurse Julie and Wolf Howard.

"I'm a massive fan of Neil Palmer. We recorded three albums because we decided the world didn't need one, so let's do three. The songs are about pre-history and are a celebration of that Troggs pop ethic. It's what prog rock could have been if it was prog pop. We... invented prog pop."
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Beware the Ides of March

Thee Mighty Caesars
2013 | Damaged Goods / state51

British garage rock at its best: raw, immediate and unpolished. The band features Billy Childish, Bruce Brand and John Agnew.

"I like refining things ridiculously, and refining influences down to particular tracks. Thee Mighty Caesars are based on the tracks "From Home" and "Come Now" by The Troggs. I love three-piece bands, because you can't hide behind another guitarist. And that means you are continually vulnerable and it's always funny when someone makes... a mistake. That's why we don't rehearse as well — to increase the levity."
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In Tweed We Trust

Thee Headcoats
1996 | Damaged Goods / state51

The best album from the deerstalker wearing three-piece comprising of Billy Childish (guitar and vocals), Bruce Brand (drums) and Johnny Johnson (bass).

"Bruce, our drummer, did the graphic on that sleeve. I'd say Thee Headcoats are based on "Why Don't You Smile Now" by '60s band Downliners Sect, one of the greatest rock 'n' roll groups of all time. My god, the Downliners Sect's first few LPs — now that was British beat... music at its height. They had that Bo Diddley quality of being able to laugh about themselves while doing something seriously."
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Walking off the Map

Pete Molinari
2006 | Damaged Goods / state51

Debut album by the Chatham-born singer-songwriter that takes in soul, country, blues and rockabilly. Neat, uplifting pop from the Medway Delta.

"Pete was a local kid who was in some sort of Oasis band called Slipstream and then he started doing his own thing, standalone acoustic pieces. He wanted to do some recording and had already done some in a studio that was bit studio-ey. So I said, 'You should record it 'round... my house on the old Revox G36 in the kitchen, and I'll get the performances out of you. It'll be a performance-led record.' With the G36 there's no hiding and no hiding is the way that we work when we record, without a mixing desk in the way."
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The Complete and Utter

Singing Loins
2000 | Damaged Goods / state51

In their own words: "The Loins' songwriting is steeped in the British and European traditions of punk, folk, music hall, character, cabaret, melodrama and buffoonery. Singing tales of underdogs, suicides, circus freaks, the bereaved, frustrated and heart-broken, the washed up and mentally ill."

"My mate Chris Broderick was writing some poetry and I run a small press, Hangman Books. He came to me and asked me to help him publish his poetry. Then... he got a group together doing English folk and asked if I could record it, and The Complete & Utter was recorded in my old bathroom on a tape recorder. If people need to know how to get a record out, they know who to come to. But they don't necessarily return. Let it be noted. They don't necessarily return. Once they've stood squarely on my face, then they move on."
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Free eMusic Samplers

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

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

Who to See at Lollapalooza 2013

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

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

Nine Inch Nails

The Downward Spiral

Nine Inch Nails
1994 | NOTHING

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

Battle Born

The Killers
2012 | ISLAND RECORDS

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

good kid, m.A.A.d city

Kendrick Lamar
2013 | Top Dawg / Aftermath / Interscope

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

Chief

Eric Church
2011 | EMI RECORDS NASHVILLE

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

Lightning

Matt & Kim
2012 | FADER Label / The Orchard

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

Fear Fun

Father John Misty
2012 | Sub Pop Records

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

Devotion

Jessie Ware
2013 | Interscope/Cherrytree

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

Iconic EP

Icona Pop
2012 | Big Beat Records/Atlantic

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

Infestissumam

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

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

No Time for Dreaming

Charles Bradley
2011 | Daptone Records / The Orchard

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

Lianne La Havas

Is Your Love Big Enough?

Lianne La Havas
2012 | Nonesuch

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

Baroness

MS MR

Secondhand Rapture

MS MR
2013 | Columbia

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

Barry Walters — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 18:24:39 +0000

Like Krautrock and Northern Soul, Balearic Beat is a genre not recognized by those who created it. And, like the aforementioned musical categories, it was the Brits who bestowed this name on the sound they “discovered.” As the story goes, UK DJs Paul Oakenfold, Danny Rampling and Trevor Fung holidayed in Ibiza, one of Spain’s Balearic Islands, in 1987. Chicago’s thumping house beats were sweeping clubland’s most forward-leaning dancefloors while aggressive, four-to-the-floor house remixes started streamlining and homogenizing records originally recorded as R&B, Latin freestyle and synthpop.

But in Ibiza, dance music was still all over the board: Quirky recent Europop hits, New Wave oldies, early house, offbeat disco, art-rock, jazz-funk, world music, dub reggae, near-ambient cuts — nearly any ’70s/’80s style with a syncopated rhythm that felt good in warm weather and got tourists dancing — were all being played at clubs like Amnesia, which sported an open-air dancefloor that heightened the free-spirited Mediterranean vibe.

Oakenfold, Rampling and Fung then brought Ibiza’s eclectic programming philosophy back to London. Unlike other genre trends favored by the DJ cognoscenti, the resulting Balearic Beat didn’t take hold because it was intrinsically pan-genre and anti-trend — like Northern Soul, the name referred to the region that claimed certain records as its own, and not to their place of origin. Balearic’s embrace of anything-goes grooves slower and gentler than house’s pounding 120-and-up BPMs paved the way for massive international hits by Soul II Soul, Enigma and other acts that went on to inspire chillout and trip-hop. As the current wayward programming of Lindstrøm, Aeroplane and other recent EDM fusionists have proven, Balearic is arguably hipper than ever today.

We’re explaining all this because we’d like to share our enthusiasm for a ridiculously entertaining series of compilations that have been in our library since last fall but feel particularly right for this summer. Compiled in Sweden by EMI staffer Jens Peterson Hällefors, the Balearic series is arguably the most out-there digital-only collection of music ever presented by a major label. At 11 volumes specializing in house, rock, soft rock, leftfield dance, electronic, world, reggae, pop, ambient, progressive rock and “blend” (an introductory sampler), Balearic goes deep, deeeeeep into the aesthetic to embrace both familiar cuts and oddities that will delight even the most dedicated diggers. Some are bona-fide Ibiza classics while many are choice cuts presented in the same boundary-crossing spirit, yet with a Scandinavian slant: This is the first time that most of the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish acts presented here alongside their American, English, German, Jamaican, Japanese, Brazilian, French, Belgian, South African, Australian and Spanish brethren have ever snagged a legitimate international release. (We’re crossing our fingers that Hällefors’s latest three Scandinavia-specific Balearic comps will sometime soon be released here.)

So pour a cool beverage, dance around the pool, throw a roof party, head to the nearest beach or simply imagine yourself on vacation with similarly inclined celebrants, and stretch out with these everything-but-the-kitchen-sink collections. If you’d just like to dip your toe (or even shake them), may we suggest our own 30-track playlist that’s sequenced like a Balearic DJ set? Prepare yourself to hear everyone from Simple Minds to Peter Tosh in a way you may never have heard before.

Balearic Blend

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

The most eclectic of EMI staffer Jens Peterson Hällefors's Balearic collections serves as an introduction to the Balearic series. Encompassing the folky classical minimalism of Penguin Café Orchestra, various permutations of UK New Wave and art-rock (Simple Minds, Spandau Ballet, Kajagoogoo, Roxy Music/Bryan Ferry), funky prog from Germany's Eloy, funky EDM from Japan's Logic System, Marcos Valle's Brazilian jazz with Bond-like strings, Working Week's gentle bossa nova, and much more, Balearic Blend... emphasizes that Ibiza's dancefloor aesthetics are far more concerned with mood than beats. Much of it is happy: You can't get more light-hearted than Sly Dunbar's reggae variation on the Sesame Street theme. But other tracks aren't exactly perky, as the "Death Disco" of Public Image Ltd. makes abrasively clear. The warmly inclusive result is only nominally club-friendly, and that's as it should be: This is what people dance to only when they're on vacation and/or very, very drunk.
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Balearic Leftfield

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

Balearic Leftfield focuses on offbeat dance records of the '80s, which is basically what this Balearic series is about. It's where the eccentric and disco-centric circles of UK New Wave (and their European cousins) overlap. Of course that includes Thomas Dolby's biggest hit, Duran Duran's first Giorgio Moroder-aping single, oft-overlooked Human League (and their pseudonymous spin-off, the Men), and Simple Minds at their most hypnotic. But it also includes Laid Back's club... classic, buried disco-not-disco treasure from Belgium's Telex and Allez Allez, Germany's Deutsch Amerikanische Freudschaft spoofing anti-immigrant phobias, a strikingly erotic UK hit from Hot Chocolate and some arty funk from prog guitarist Steve Hillage. And if you're looking for Swedish dancefloor esoterica, Diggy Tal & the Numbers, Micke Hagström and Ragnar Grippe have your number.
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Balearic Electronic

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

Although much of the Balearic series is a forerunner to today's EDM, Balearic Electronic is where its sounds are most pointedly synthetic. This is synthpop, unabashedly robotic for its time, yet also elegant in its emphatically European, quasi-symphonic alienation: '80s dance music doesn't get more estranged than Anne Clarke's poetically pained cult club hit "Our Darkness." An apt remedy to the summer heat, nearly everything else here is refreshingly chilly: OMD's 1980... early UK breakthrough "Messages" remains the coolest in its long discography. As with most other installments, there's a US pop smash here, When in Rome's deeply romantic 1988 single "The Promise," but a lot more from the margins, courtesy of B-sides, album cuts and should-have-bit-hits by early Heaven 17, China Crisis, Ultravox and other staples of the decade's alternative dancefloors.
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Balearic House

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

Leaving behind the synthpop era, Balearic House focuses on the late '80s and '90s to explore how the sound of Ibiza changed after it initially captured the UK imagination. House music may have ultimately lost much of its early quirks, but this installment of the Balearic series still packs plenty of diversity. There are the requisite divas — Judy Cheeks, Inner City's Paris Grey, Kym Mazelle, Soul II Soul's Do'reen, Loose Ends'... Jane Eugene and, of course, Adeva — but there is also plenty of textural, tonal, melodic and harmonic variation that far exceeds the house norm. Norway's Mental Overdrive goes on for 15 minutes in "About Erot," but the ever-evolving cut builds like a mini DJ set, encompassing ambient, jazz-funk, Afrobeat, and other flavors along the way. The Land of Oz mix of Frazier Chorus's "Nothing" captures Paul Oakenfold at the early '90s peak of his remixing powers, and Sasha's Quat Mix of Cheeks' "So in Love (The Real Deal)" is similarly shaded with emotional nuance. There's so much passion here.
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Balearic World

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

Given Ibiza's status as a tourist destination, one that was decidedly more esoteric in the '80s before its nightlife reputation exploded, it's totally appropriate that its club-music approach would be emphatically international. Balearic World combines two distinct takes on world music — native expressions of local styles, and appropriations from outside. Recorded under his short-lived Jesus Loves You moniker, Boy George's "Bow Down Mister" celebrates the Hare Krishna spirituality that helped the... star overcome his heroin addiction; it's wacky, but oddly moving. The Brazilian acts on the other end of the authenticity spectrum — Quarteto Em Cy, Os Borges, Evinha, and Elza Soares — all combine indigenous vibes and language with boundary-crossing sounds. The rest embrace exotica that's sometimes campy, sometimes sincere, but nearly always soothing.
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Balearic Reggae

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

A defining feature of the Ibiza DJ-ing approach is individuality through diversity, so it makes sense that Balearic Reggae is not only of the broadest collections of Jamaican (and quasi-Jamaican) music you'll hear, but also one of the most idiosyncratic. This is probably the only place where roots reggae, dub reggae, reggae-disco, reggae hip-hop, reggae trip-hop, a chart-topping reggae-ska smash and a Culture Club B-side all come together. As the inclusion of... the Mighty Diamonds, Burning Spear, Culture and other purists attest, there are plenty of authentic island sounds — no Swedish reggae here. But Sly Dunbar, Peter Tosh and Keith Hudson all mix their grooves with angular funk to rump-shaking effect. As their song goes, one-hit-wonders Althea & Donna are "strictly roots," but that didn't stop this female teen duo from topping the UK pop chart in 1978 with an unpolished gem that unjustly flopped in the US, "Uptown Top Ranking."
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Balearic Pop

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

Flaunting some ultra-mainstream names ordinarily anathema to other exhaustive catalog exhumations, Balearic Pop combines the familiar with the obscure to make the point that great music is great music, no matter who sings it or how it's marketed — a key tenant of Ibiza's club philosophy. Adult contemporary queens Kim Carnes and Sheena Easton rub shoulders with the far artier likes of Talk Talk and It's Immaterial, yet the whole set flows... smoothly from start. Don't be ashamed — you know you love Kajagoogoo's "Too Shy," particularly in Mark Kamins's 12" mix. Eighties pop doesn't mix sonic sophistication and psychological rawness better than the Blue Nile's "Tinseltown in the Rain," a taster from an album waiting to be rediscovered by today's fans of Rhye and Jessie Ware.
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Balearic Rock

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

Combining glam, punk, post-punk, New Wave, Neue Deutsche Welle, space rock, alt-rock and several spaces in between, Balearic Rock is way hipper than its title or even its lineup implies. The oft-bootlegged "Theme from Great Cities" is a genuine Ibiza classic hailing from those pre-Breakfast Club days when Simple Minds proved themselves unlikely masters of trippy quasi-Eurodisco — just listen to that rattling bassline rip. Suzi Quatro gets sultry on an overlooked,... keyboard-led cut from her otherwise rowdy 1974 debut album while late '90s Norwegian surf rock revivalists Kåre & The Cavemen aka Euro Boys here suggest caffeinated Air.
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Balearic Soft Rock

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

Much of what's here isn't exactly soft: Would someone tell that guitarist in the Little River Band's otherwise lovely opus "It's a Long Way There" to just knock it off already? But there are mellow cuts from typically more anxious acts (Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music, Billy Idol, Kevin Ayers), funkiness from the otherwise folky (Julie Felix), a ridiculously catchy ditty from Shakespearian actor Brian Protheroe ("Pinball"), the Waterboys' horn-blasting hit ("The Whole of... the Moon"), and striking sensual balladry from the usually corny (Bobby Goldsboro). As usual, Scandinavians generate the most alien cuts: The voice of Woody in the Swedish edition of Toy Story, Blue Swede leader Björn Skifs steals the show with his jazzy translation of Carole King's classic "It's Too Late."
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Balearic Prog

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

With the exception of Babe Ruth's "The Mexican," a DJ staple on NYC's disco and hip-hop scenes, this brazenly esoteric set wanders furthest into murky areas of the European EMI catalog where the US could not follow. It also strays significantly from the smooth and sunny sounds commonly understood as Balearic; it's hard to imagine most of this unsteady stuff generating much action on any dancefloor. But even the gnarly bits sometimes... give way to unexpected grooves — dig that savage drum break in Swedish band Storm's crazy "Lt. Calley Bjuder Upp," a sonic blueprint for today's indie freakout favorites Goat.
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Balearic Ambient

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

Dance music for the very confident and/or very stoned, Balearic Ambient is, of course, low on beats and high on underwater vibes. Slow, sustained notes abound, and although there's often still too much going on here to qualify for Brian Eno's strict sense of what's ambient, much of it comes pretty close. Japan's brooding and strikingly beautiful "Ghosts" was a No. 5 pop hit in 1982 England; Talk Talk's even more abstract... "The Rainbow" signaled the band's 1988 break from its New Wave past. The rest is all instrumental and more minimal. Klaus Schønning and former the Soundtrack of Our Lives member Björn Olsson supply the Scandinavian connection; the former's 1982 cut "Cygnus" suggests the smoother side of current Daft Punk.
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Hidden Treasures 2013

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

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

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

Bleak Visions

Lang: Death Speaks

David Lang
Cantaloupe Music

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

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

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

Kvelertak
2013 | Roadrunner Records

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

The Haxan Cloak
2013 | Tri Angle Records / SC Distribution

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

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

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

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

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

Alexander Spit
2013 | Decon

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

Portal
2013 | Profound Lore / Revolver

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

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

Helen Money
2013 | Profound Lore / Revolver

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

Crosss
2013 | Telephone Explosion / The Orchard

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

Out of View

The History Of Apple Pie
Marshall Teller Records

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

Milk Music
2013 | Fat Possum Records

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

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

Colleen Green
2013 | Hardly Art / Sub Pop Records

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

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

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

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

Georgiana Starlington
2013 | Hozac / Revolver

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

Ex-Cult
2012 | Goner / Revolver

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

Young Galaxy
2013 | Paper Bag Records / The Orchard

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

Peach Kelli Pop
2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

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

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

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

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

French Films
2013 | GAEA Records

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

Sing to the Moon

Laura Mvula
2013 | Columbia

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

Thundercat
2013 | Brainfeeder

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

Serafina Steer
2013 | Stolen Recordings / PIAS Digital

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

Flume
2013 | Mom & Pop Music / The Orchard

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

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

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

My Gold Mask
2013 | Goldy Tapes / CD Baby

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

Nadia Sirota
New Amsterdam

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

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

Fat Tony
2013 | Young One

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

Ceramic Dog
2013 | Northern Spy Records / Redeye

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

Jace Clayton
New Amsterdam

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

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

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

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

Mykki Blanco
2013 | UNO NYC

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

Sudden Elevation

Ólöf Arnalds
2013 | One Little Indian / The Orchard

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

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

Aceyalone
2013 | Decon

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

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

Luke Winslow-King
2013 | Bloodshot Records

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

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

Caitlin Rose
2013 | ATO Records

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

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

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

Broadcast
2013 | Warp Records

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

Samantha Crain
2013 | Ramseur Records / The Orchard

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

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

Mohammed Fairouz
Naxos

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

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

Eluvium
2013 | Temporary Residence Ltd. / SC Distribution

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

Lloyd Cole & Hans-Joachim Roedelius
2013 | Bureau B

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

Lady, The Band
2013 | Truth & Soul Records

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

TORRES

TORRES
2013 | TORRES / TuneCore

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

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

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

Bilal
2013 | eOne Music / Entertainment One Distribution

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

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

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

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

Maxmillion Dunbar
2013 | RVNG INTL. / SC Distribution

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

Ugly Heroes
2013 | Mello Music Group / The Orchard

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

Hiss Golden Messenger
2013 | Paradise of Bachelors / Redeye

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

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

Bazooka
Slovenly Recordings

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

Daniel Romano
2013 | Normal Town Records

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

Jay Arner
2013 | Mint Records / Revolver

Jay Arner's self-titled solo debut begins with a low bass groove that sounds like an engine idling, ready to rev "Midnight on South Granville" into high gear. To say the song never bolts away is no complaint, though, as the lyrics recount a night spent catching the bus, missing your stop, getting lost and wandering aimlessly. Set against that chugging bass line, those buzzy synths and that stoner guitar, half-drunk anomie has... rarely sounded quite so epic. A Vancouver-based musician who has helmed album by Mount Eerie, Apollo Ghosts and Rose Melberg, Arner recorded these new songs during lonely sessions at his practice space, recording straight to laptop to emphasize a DIY mid-fi sound, and the resulting Jay Arner mixes mopey postpunk instrumentation with power-pop song structures. Even though the unhurried tempos are far too laidback to sell the "power" in the pop, that spacey, narcotized vibe can be deceptive: The music reveals new sonic and lyrical details with each listen, whether it's the M.C. Escher hook on "Broken Glass" or the world-weary cautions of "Nightclubs," which finds a tricky balance between wry and romantic.
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Who to See at Pitchfork Music Festival 2013

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

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

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

Bjork

Biophilia

Björk
2011 | Nonesuch

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

Write Me Back (Deluxe Version)

R. Kelly
2012 | RCA Records Label

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

True

Solange
2012 | Terrible Records / The Orchard

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

M.I.A.

MAYA

M.I.A.
2010 | XL Interscope

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

Muchacho

Phosphorescent
2013 | Dead Oceans / SC Distribution

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

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

sorry

White Lung
2012 | Deranged Records / The Orchard

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

Last Splash

The Breeders
2008 | Rhino/Elektra

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

R.A.P. Music

Killer Mike
2012 | Williams Street Records

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

Cancer 4 Cure

El-P
2012 | Fat Possum Records

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

Cerulean Salt

Waxahatchee
2013 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

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

Swans

The Seer

Swans
2012 | Young God / Revolver

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

The Invisible Way

Low
2013 | Sub Pop Records

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

Change Becomes Us

Wire
2013 | pinkflag / state51

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

Interstellar

Frankie Rose
2012 | Slumberland Records / The Orchard

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

Mac DeMarco

2

Mac Demarco
2012 | Captured Tracks / SC Distribution

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

Coastal Grooves

Blood Orange
2011 | Domino Recording Co

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

METZ

METZ

METZ
2012 | Sub Pop Records

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

Luxury Problems

Andy Stott
2012 | Modern Love / Revolver

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

Light Up Gold

Parquet Courts
2013 | What's Your Rupture?

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

Half Way Home

Angel Olsen
Bathetic Records

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

Anna Bond — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 14:01:07 +0000

Is it the gimmicky, sheepskin-covered guitars? The movie appearances? The beards? Why haven’t contemporary rock audiences, with their seemingly insatiable craving for anything resembling “authentic” roots and blues-rock, yet reassessed ZZ Top, the “little ol’ band from Texas,” whose allegiance to Southern musical traditions is undeniable, and whose early career included gigs opening for Fats Domino, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf?

Instead the Top — always and still the trio of Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard — are regularly grouped in popular estimation along with the novelty “Southern-fried” one-hit wonders of the ’80s. But unlike the greasy, indigestible pan-flash of, say, the Georgia Satellites, ZZ Top offer a slow-smoked barbecue, their pop-crossover blues-rock richly marinated by acknowledged devotion to the guitar-driven soul and subtleties of Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Jimmy Reed.

While lead guitarist Billy Gibbons has been invited onstage and into the studio by many of the leading lights of the current rock revivalism — Jack White, the Black Keys, Queens of the Stone Age — ZZ Top’s catalog continues to be overlooked by a record-buying public who can’t get enough of their Alabama Shakes, their Old Crow Medicine Show. And — it must be said — the Top are the original “beardos,” though the story that they grew their impressive facial hair in the early ’80s in order to compete with good-looking New Wavers on image-heavy MTV has been proven apocryphal. (Instead, like real-life rock mystics, they all grew them in the late ’70s during a soul-searching break from touring.)

The members of ZZ Top, themselves, certainly aren’t obsessed with the appearance of authenticity — because they don’t have to be. The synthesizer-laden, machine-drummed radio candy of their ’80s megahit Eliminator is pop, but it’s virtuosic blues pop; even their least-crucial records thrum with the brilliance of the trio’s musicianship, especially Gibbons’s guitar work, which can only be called surreal; and 2012′s Rick Rubin-produced La Futura is genuinely one of the top five albums of the band’s 40-plus-year-long career, its single a blues-screwed homage to Houston rap classic “25 Lighters” by DJ DMD.

ZZ Top take their inspiration where they will, and we have no reason to disbelieve Gibbons when he mentions trading stories and talking records with the Geto Boys, with the Cash Money crew. Notwithstanding 1990s missteps (several dismal LPs, appearances in both Back to the Future III and George W. Bush’s inauguration concert), ZZ Top have been, for the past 40-odd years, a reliable source for electric blues and boogie-rock tunes that are always serviceable, and very often brilliant.

“La Grange”

Tres Hombres [Expanded & Remastered]

ZZ Top
2006 | Atlantic Records/ATG

Where else to start? "La Grange" is ur-Top. That rim-tapped drum intro, Gibbons's low-register mutter, imprecations to "have mercy" and his punctuating hums and growls, the way the thick and relentless boogie-blues onslaught kicks in, and of course the titular reference to the Texas brothel made famous by Dolly Parton in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. But lyrical innuendo is an afterthought, as Gibbons's jacked-up blues guitar work, bolstered by that... driving rhythm, is all-consuming, his "licks" a sensory metaphor: We're new kittens, tongue-bathed by Gibbons's loving, persistent, mother cat of a Stratocaster. The virtuosity displayed here and throughout Tres Hombres feels less ego-driven than compassionate; Gibbons offers up his chops as a gift.
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“I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide”

Deguello

ZZ Top
1979 | Warner Bros.

In which our heroes, after a three-year hiatus, introduce the thematic triple enthusiasm for cars, women and flashy clothes that will carry them through their career — and, hell, make them millionaires a few short years down the road. Simpler in construction than many Top songs — verse, chorus, solo, rinse, repeat — "I'm Bad" is sing-along catchy, and Deguello's production is slicker than past efforts, but Gibbons's dusty-sunlight guitar lines and... the arpeggios he trades with Hill's bass give the track the tar-stick of hot asphalt.
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“I Gotsta Get Paid”

La Futura

ZZ Top
2012 | Republic Records

Rick Rubin's production builds the rhythm section into a loading dock for the ramped-up crunch and lumber of Gibbons's guitar; the chorus, cribbed from the Houston Screwed-Up Click rap classic "25 Lighters," showcases his burnished shaman's voice, punctuated by Hill's impressive backup wail. What could be better (or weirder) for ZZ Top's comeback single than this anthemic Houston genre-crossing? How about debuting it in a malt-liquor commercial? Done.

“Sharp Dressed Man”

Eliminator

ZZ Top
1983 | Rhino/Warner Bros.

The apex of 1980s ZZ Top. A furious, thickly-produced rhythm drive undergirds one of the hottest, simplest riffs in rock history, upon which Gibbons lays some of his wittiest lyrics. Hill punctuates with synthy Dolbian vocal accents, the era being what it is, but the whole thing resolves into a walking guitar solo so fine that it's possible to overlook the fact that those women in the video never would have really... gotten away with wearing leotards and jeans to all those black-tie events.
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“Just Got Paid”

Rio Grande Mud

ZZ Top
2011 | Rhino/Warner Bros.

Barely more than a handful of verses thrown around an astonishing slide guitar solo, "Just Got Paid" is checklist blues — hitting the marks of lyric themes here, shuffling rhythm there — but sped up to double and triple time, the structure stretched to breaking point, folded back onto itself, and finally allowed to disintegrate completely to serve the raw, sweet glory of that guitar. Famously covered by both Rapeman and Ministry;... Steve Albini and Al Jourgenson are both avowed Top fanatics.
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“Heard it on the X”

Fandango [Expanded & Remastered]

ZZ Top
2006 | Atlantic Records/ATG

A tribute to the midcentury radio pioneers stationed south of the border who, unfettered by U.S. wattage limits and commercial concerns, blasted a wide range of country, blues and rock into the radios of impressionable young Texans, "Heard it on the X" finds Gibbons and Hill trading vocals while an infectious, repeated rhythm figure careens like a Mustang driven by a teenager in body-thrall to his favorite late-night DJ.

“I Thank You”

Deguello

ZZ Top
1979 | Warner Bros.

Notable for threading sexual innuendo throughout the Sam and Dave classic by switching around some pronouns ("You didn't have to squeeze me" becomes "You didn't have to squeeze it," and so on), the Top's cover is nevertheless spiritually, if not sonically, faithful. Gibbons's straining, gravel-scarred vocal delivery here is among his best ("Gibbons sings like a zipper," Lester Bangs wrote, praising the track in Rolling Stone), and his liquid-toned, meandering guitar solo... resolves into a tight, soul-revue a cappella breakdown before wandering off again.
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“Just Got Back From Baby’s”

ZZ Top's First Album

ZZ Top
2011 | Rhino/Warner Bros.

The highlight of a debut album flawed by its overreliance on the mid-tempo groove, "Just Got Back From Baby's" is smooth and cool, with Gibbons's throaty, scraping vocal almost a croon; but the fuzzed-out insistence of his mournful, dust-bathed guitar wind-down exposes the grit underneath all that gleam.

“Ten Dollar Man”

Tejas

ZZ Top
2013 | Rhino/Warner Bros.

Some of the most gloriously scuzzy guitar sounds ever laid to tape can be found on this highlight of 1976's Tejas, which owes as much debt to Zeppelin (better yet, AC/DC, though unless Gibbons and co. were importing records from Australia, probably not) as to Lightnin' Hopkins.

“Alley-Gator”

Mescalero

ZZ Top
2003 | RCA Records Label

A swamp-stomp "Maneater" inexplicably bolstered by an accordion, "Alley-Gator" would be throwaway if it weren't for the lovingly dirt-damaged production and Gibbons's warm-as-Rio-Grande-mud guitar tone, lying down — in this deep album cut — the kind of licks that must keep Jack White up at night.

Beards: A Guide

Andy Beta — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:27:10 +0000

In most other cultures, the beard is a sign of maturity, wisdom, an indicator of “yang” energy; but in America, the bearded are pushed to the fringe, to the brambled outskirts of a well-groomed, highly manicured society. The beard has come to be the marker of the unwashed, the degenerate, the dangerous. Think of the striking portraits of Abraham Lincoln or Ulysses S. Grant: is it possible in this day and age that we will have a woman president sooner than a bearded one? (And, while we’re on the subject, do you think we will ever have a bearded lady as president?)

And yet despite waxing, laser technology and Mach 3 shaving razors, the beard persists, not just as symbol of a Luddite or simply a lazy, perhaps unemployed dude but as a symbol of stark defiance. Note the revolutionaries who double as cults of personalities, due (surely in no small part) to their facial hair, like Fidel Castro, Nikolai Lenin, Malcolm X, Hailie Selassie and the Smith Brothers. Or more to date, 2004 World Series champs the Boston Red Sox, who struck back against the Evil Empire typified by George Steinbrenner’s clean-cut Yankees. Remember: When beards are outlawed, only outlaws will grow beards.

But can there really be a musical genre based solely on a secondary sex characteristic? Well, as we’ve seen, the decision by an adult Western male to grow out his facial hair has profound societal repercussions, so it makes sense that it has musical ones as well. Sure enough, the hirsute artists listed here do indeed work along the margins. Such unshaven gents appear throughout the world of music — be it in the fields of jazz, folk, rock, blues, or reggae, their music renders such genre tags obsolete, as their individualistic art regards few boundaries.

Scruffy, nonconformist, symbolic, idiosyncratic, survivors or survivalists, that is what a beard implies in these nicked-up and razor-burned times, suggesting persons that trailblaze and follow paths less traveled. This is what truly characterizes and unites these artists, even more than their imperials, goatees, van dykes, soul patches, fu-manchus, handlebar moustaches and straight-up thick, verdant beards.

Bushy Black Imperial

Hot Rats

Frank Zappa
2012 | Zappa Records

His curly thatch of hair and beard an instant identifier on nearly every record cover over his four-decade career, Frank Zappa has been that rare breed: an outsider to the music biz grind that has been able to pursue any and all avenues (snark rock, orchestral mayhem, tape jumble, absurdist doo-wop, goofy prog opera, oft times within a three-minute span) while keeping a rabid fanbase foaming. Hot Rats, his second album under... his own name (after the experimental Lumpy Gravy), Zappa gets grease from goateed musical ally Captain Beefheart crowing on the sleazy "Willie the Pimp" and multi-instrumentalist Ian Underwood on the "The Gumbo Variations," warping jazz and rock (and classical and funk and...) in his own image.
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Hep, Modified Van Dyke

Here And There

Eric Dolphy
2006 | Fantasy Records

Multi-reedsman Dolphy is one of the rare jazz players to serve as sideman to three giants of modern jazz, working with Charles Mingus, John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman on their groundbreaking works. Dolphy mastered not just alto sax but the far more obstinate bass clarinet and flute and made their tonalities work in the post-bop vernacular. Culled and collected after his untimely death in 1964 from an untreated diabetic condition, Here and... There draws from three different sessions, though there's no reason to consider them shavings. Opener "Status Seeking" comes from a stand at the Five Spot with the similarly doomed Booker Little and second-line timekeeping whiz Ed Blackwell, and it remains lightning-quick and ferocious for its 13-minute duration. At the other end of the spectrum, Dolphy's solo bass clarinet reading of Billie Holiday's "God Bless the Child" stops the earth spinning on most days.
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Striking, White-Blemished Tuft On Otherwise Jet-Black Goatee

Spiritual Unity

Albert Ayler
2002 | ESP'Disk

There will come a day when Albert Ayler's visage will become as prevalent and defiant an image as that of Che. Call him a freedom fighter, a revolutionary, a fire brand, seeking the ecstatic essence at the core of all music, not just jazz. Through the '60s, Ayler's fervent breathing and circular huffing through the simplest of children songs and New Orleans marches revealed the ecstatic and cathartic beneath the song's surface,... and he brought forth such energy so that each phrase flared like a comet through the cosmos. His fellow spacemen, drummer Sunny Murray and bassist Gary Peacock, provided a foundation that both tethered Ayler's mungo vibrato and launched him further into the stratosphere. On "Spirits" and the two versions of "Ghosts," such ethereal entities can be felt coursing through Ayler's music.
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Alternating Soul Patch & Goatee, Dyed Pink/Purple/Maroon

Monorails And Satellites

Sun Ra
Evidence Records

How to encapsulate the sonic universe of extraterrestrial jazz pianist and arranger Sun Ra? It's as impossible as to calculate his exact trajectory through this terrestrial life. From polyrhythmic space chants to all out skronk and blat, from Ellingtonian swing to experimental electronic noise, from Africa to Saturn, Sun Ra and his disciples rocketed through it all. Rare was the man's solo outings though, and this one stands out in the vast... discography. While already employing ARPs and Moogs in his live set-up, Monorails and Satellites finds Ra focusing on his piano straight-up. Whether it's a standard like "Easy Street," playing the blues or boogie-woogie, Ra reveals that despite the foil-wrapped solar crown, sequined gown and cosmic dogma, he was first and foremost a working-stiff swing pianist from Alabama that knew his roots enough to eschew them for outer space.
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Dreader Than Dread

Open The Iron Gate 1973-1977

Max Romeo
Blood And Fire / Virtual

Randy rude boy (and pretty boy) Max Romeo started off spouting X-rated skanks before growing out both his dreads and beard, putting down the lad mags for Marx's Das Kapital. Righteous Rastafarianism aside, Iron Gate encompasses the two Romeo records that bookend his outright classic, War Ina Babylon, but are fantastic in their own right. Communist dogma ("Revelation Time"), cries for repatriation and an outlook that's both F*#$ tha Police and f*$#... the Pope ("Fire Fe the Vatican") brunt up against a Romeo obsessed not just with Marley and Marx but also with Manson. Hear how he prophesizes the blood of the rich flowing freely down the hill on the violent "Warning Warning" and shiver at its smoothly crooned cry for Helter Skelter.
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Scruffy, Ginger-Tinged

Live At Leeds Deluxe Edition

John Martyn
2010 | ISLAND RECORDS

Scottish guitarist John Martyn deftly melded American blues to British folk with his wife Beverly early on in his career. He then veered off the road taken by his more pensive and poppy contemporaries like Nick Drake and Al Stewart in favor of something more vague and disquieting. With the nimble shadow play that longtime upright bassist Danny Thompson brings to the table, the two utilized jazz's improvised openness on this live... outing at Leeds University to plunge down into the netherworlds implicit in songs like "Solid Air," "Outside In" and Skip James' menacing "I'd Rather Be the Devil," doubling (or even tripling!) their album lengths. Out at the edges, with Martyn's heavily echoplexed guitar thickening the snaking lines, the two players writhe and worm into very dark areas of the psyche here, something the record label wasn't too keen on loosing. Hence Martyn pressed the first 10,000 of these himself.
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Jet Back, With Optional Whiskey Slobber

Closing In On The Fire

Waylon Jennings
1998 | Ark 21 Records / The Orchard

Waylon Jennings is not the Man in Black, unless it means he's swimming in black label Jack with a mind humming from a handful of Black Beauties. Too miscreant for Nashville's countrypolitan scene in the late '60s, Waylon rode off on his own, growing out a beard as greasy, grungy and black as his raven tresses. He spearheaded the "Outlaw" movement in country along with drinking buddies Willie Nelson and Billy Joe... Shaver in the early '70s, emphasizing hard loving, living and substances (not necessarily in that order). Making a comeback in the grunge era, Waylon casually creaks about such times and cronies on "Best Friends of Mine." His throat fissured, every bit the grizzled elder, Waylon still wades deep into the swamp of the title track and the Stones' "No Expectations" to stare down the blackness.
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Neatly trimmed, manicured, blonde

Hand Of Kindness

Richard Thompson
2006 | Ryko/Rhino

A fiery-locked, guitar-prodigy lad back in his days with British folk-rock luminaries Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson left the classic group to make music with wife Linda in the early '70s. As both delved deeper into their newfound Sufi Muslim faith, Richard's long hair was replaced by a beard and headwrap. While the turban (and the missus) would be left behind in the early '80s, the beard stayed. His first album after the... couple's demise, Hand of Kindness veers from piercing bleakness (a quality of Thompson's pen, no matter how content) to jaunty. "Devonshire" and the title track are sullen and rueful in heavy doses, but get cut by the accompanying fiddle and button accordion on careening, Acadian-flavored tunes like "Both Ends Burning" and "Tear Stained Letter."
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Woolly, salt and pepper, matched w/ever-present shades

God, Time And Causality

John Fahey
2005 | Shanachie / Entertainment One Distribution

Whether punching out director Michelangelo Antonioni or being grateful for the death of Jerry Garcia, John Fahey seemed less like the grandfather of new age music and more like a cantankerous grouch. Which he is, aside from being the most stunning and beatific of steel-string guitarists, connecting country blues to classical music structure, creating what would could be called "American cosmic folk" (though Fahey would contend with the last two words). Gone... missing most of the '80s, Fahey returned as grandfather to alternative music, finding his kin among Sonic Youth, Sun City Girls and Tortoise (named after his publishing company). This album from the early '90s found Fahey in a subliminal mode, intertwining traditional hymns with his own songbook to create epic medleys both entrancing and meandering, and as always, sublime.
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Grandfatherly, Zeus-like

Shleep

Robert Wyatt
2009 | Domino Recording Co

What does it speak of Wyatt's paternal stature in the UK prog/ art-rock scene to have Brian Eno in his employ only as a backup singer on "Heaps of Sheep"? Or for asking free music master Evan Parker to honk a dizzying soprano sax solo on the already off-kilter "The Duchess"? Throughout his sixth solo album, Shleep, Wyatt has guitarists from Roxy Music and the Jam at his disposal, each and every... gent gratefully repaying their debt to Wyatt by adding gossamer leads and discreet layers to the man's ambient washes and pensive songcraft. The culminating effect is equal parts whimsy and wistfulness, mirroring the subconscious as well as the stream-of-consciousness (see his "Blues in Bob Minor"). As dreamy as such a name would suggest for that sleep-walking state.
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Curly, black, slightly speckled and long at chin

Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions

James Blood Ulmer
2003 | Hyena Records / Entertainment One Distribution

While he would've always been a post-bop guitarist of some regard, James ‘Blood' Ulmer took his craft further by bringing Ornette Coleman's revolutionary Harmolodic ideas to his instrument, imbuing labyrinthine funk and frenzied rock to his jazz chops. An influence not just on jazzmen like John Zorn and Bill Frisell but post-punks like Public Image, Ltd., Ulmer returned to his roots in the new century with a stop off at Sun Studios... for Memphis Blood. Here, with Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid in the producer's chair, Ulmer dives into the muddy Mississippi to play blues like "Dimples" and "Little Red Rooster." Of course, all distinctions melt in Ulmer's hands, the variants —be it gutbucket, barrelhouse, or Chicagoan electric-juke— played sloppy or clean-toned, all have their primordial root dug out by the guitarist.
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Bushy, thick, soft

Nino Rojo

Devendra Banhart
Young God Records / Revolver

Devendra Banhart, the barely-legal baby-faced wunderkind that babbled his surreal song slivers onto answering machines for 2002's lo-fi Oh Me Oh My… grew up quickly in a two year period. Banhart spearheaded America's free-folk resurgence that also uplifted his hippie cohorts Joanna Newsom, Vetiver and Coco Rosie. He released two stunning albums in that calendar year, Rejoicing in the Hands and its follow-up, Nino Rojo. For these 16 songs, Devendra re-pays his... debt to Ella Jenkins with her "Little Sparrow" and other furry creatures in the woodland. Yes, there are some capricious songs ("We All Know" and "Little Yellow Spider") but also a serious attention to craft. Banhart can fingerpick and sing with the best of them, and he touches on everything from American blues to campfire jamborees to South American tristes to the stark sound of UK folk, yet nimbly evades being pinned down in the end.
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My Life In Philly Soul

Elizabeth Isadora Gold — Fri, 31 May 2013 14:40:06 +0000

I was born into the Sound of Philadelphia family in 1974. My father, Larry Gold, was a cellist in TSOP’s house band, MFSB (the letters stand for Mother Father Sister Brother, or Motherfucker Son of a Bitch, depending who’s asking). Later, he wrote string and horn arrangements for Teddy Pendergrass and McFadden & Whitehead, sitting at our Yamaha upright with his friend Jerry Cohen, the brilliant keyboard player — and co-writer of “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now.” I fell in love with this music listening to that piano, and going to sessions at Sigma Sound Studios when I was little.

Songwriters, producers and soul music impresarios Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff and Thom Bell had been working together long before founding Mighty Three Music in 1973. They’d known each other since they were teenagers, singing and playing together in the Romeos, a prototypical ’60s R&B band. With little more than a song in their hearts and local garmento Ben Krass as investor, the Three began producing local acts such as the Soul Survivors (“Expressway to Your Heart”), as well as older stars looking for a comeback (Jerry Butler, Wilson Pickett). By the time Gamble and Huff signed their groundbreaking deal with Columbia in 1971, Philadelphia International Records, was already a sure thing artistically. But their vision was bigger: they wanted to retain both creative and financial control of their company — something that no black-owned label had ever been able to do. Gamble and Huff ended up not only changing soul music; they changed the face of the record industry.

With its combination of gutbucket soul vocals, orchestral strings, and jazz rhythms, Philly Soul ruled the charts through the seventies and early eighties. Gamble and Huff wrote and produced a record-breaking number of smashes, making Philadelphia International Records one of the most successful companies in the city, as well as one of the most profitable black-owned businesses in the country. The hits didn’t stop: Billy Paul’s “Me and Mrs Jones,” the O’Jays’ “For the Love of Money,” and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes’ “If You Don’t Know Me By Now,” to name a few. The iconoclastic Thom Bell stayed independent, writing and producing for the Delfonics, Stylistics, and the Spinners.

The Sound of Philadelphia is the sound of home to me. Growing up on the edge of North Philly, it was almost impossible not to hear “The Love I Lost,” wafting over my family’s back fence, or “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” blasting from a passing car Caddy. Hanging out with soul singers clad in head-to-toe lizard skin, feeling my family’s fortunes rise and fall with the charts… Well, it might not have been a typical childhood, but it was mine.

The Best Of Philly Soul - Vol. 2

Bunny Sigler
2006 | That Philly Sound / CD Baby

Whether growling like Sam and Dave, operatically thrilling and trilling like his hero (and fellow Philly native) Mario Lanza, or crooning like Smokey Robinson, Bunny Sigler — aka Bundino Sigilucci, Bunny Siglowitz, and Bunny O'Sigler (depending on the holiday) — is Philly Soul. Not to mention that he used to wear a Dracula cape and/or a Moses robe in the studio, drove a car called the Bunnymobile, and will break into Ave... Maria at the slightest provocation.

A successful songwriter for PIR artists including the O'Jays, and Wilson Pickett, Bunny's own albums too often languish in vinyl-only obscurity. While this disc may not be his wild seventies funk, these Jackie Wilson-style soul burners will get you dancing around the house singing into your hairbrush. Confidential to Paul McCartney: listen to Bunny singing "Yesterday." And eat your heart out.
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The Philly Sound Get Down - Funky Philly Instrumentals

Various Artists
Funkadelphia Records / The Orchard

The cover for these rare Philly instrumentals might seem weird. Who is that old guy, and why is he holding a (record freaks, chill) ridiculously rare Gamble label 45? Ben Krass was a purveyor of cut-rate suits, locally infamous for starring in his own Benny Hill-style TV commercials. Oh, and for being the only person in Filthy-delphia willing to invest in barely-out-of-his-teens Kenny Gamble's first foray into the record biz.

As for extended... info about these mostly mysterious songs…Even my trusty bible of early Philly Soul, Tony Cummings's The Sound of Philadelphia, has little to offer other than that the Panic Buttons are a "blue-eyed" (white) group. It is also safe to assume that the funkiest of these tracks — i.e.: all the stuff by the Interpretations — is actually the MFSB rhythm section. The guys had to do something in the 45 minutes a day they weren't playing on PIR tracks, right?
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The Early Greatest Hits

Patti Labelle and The Bluebelles
1993 | Brookside Records / The Orchard

Patti Labelle, Nona Hendryx, Sarah Dash and Cindy Birdsong must be about 15 years old on these tracks. While these doo-wop/R&B twisters don't give any obvious indications that the 'Belles would one day sprout bronze lamé wings and voulez vous their way to funk history, that's okay. The group's early hits are all accounted for on this collection, and Labelle's voice is already eerily powerful -- "Please Hurry Home" will give you... chills. Even on the more typical tracks, there are seriously special only-in-Philly moments. Check out the piano solo on "Itty Bitty Twist" (an uncredited Leon Huff or Thom Bell?), and Patti's break-the-glass finish on "Bridal Gown." Local faves "I Sold My Heart to the Junkman," and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," will remind listeners how much the early sixties were still, culturally, like the fifties. Bring on the lamé.
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Philly Soul Girls

Various Artists - Distortions Funkadelphia
Distortions Funkadelphia / The Orchard

These songs are just adorable, holding their own next to early sides of other girl groups out of New Orleans or Chicago. Unfortunately, as with every early compilation listed here, there are no personnel listings for the songs, but I can happily guess that every musician on these cuts went on to record with MFSB. That's probably the legendary rhythm section of Ronnie Baker on bass, Earl Young on drums, Vince... Montana on vibes, and (depending on the day) Norman Harris, Roland Chambers, and Bobby Eli on guitar. Any track listed as written by Huff most definitely means Leon, which indicates he's also playing keyboard — and that Gamble and Thom Bell are probably somewhere around as well. Lucky us.
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13th And Pine

Nazz
2004 | Its About Music.com / The Orchard

If 13th and Pine seems an odd choice for this list, just listen to the opening bars of "Loosen Up/Under the Ice" — a Philly-style take off on Archie Bell and the Drells soul classic "Tighten Up." Before front man Todd Rundgren rocketed to psychedelic rock stardom (and his future as Liv Tyler's step-dad), he was in a Philly blues/R&B band called Woody's Truck Stop — along with my dad. Which I... tell you not as much to brag, as to illustrate yet again how interwoven the City of Brotherly Love's music scene was, is, and always will be. By the way, 13th and Pine is the Center City corner where Todd and the boys lived back when they started the band. Sorry, those stories are classified.
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Drowning In The Sea Of Love

Joe Simon
2013 | Ace Records / PIAS Digital

One look at Drowning in the Sea of Love's supa-dupa soul-psychedelic cover in my parents' record collection, and of course I threw it on the turntable immediately. What I heard surprised me. Philly Soul goes country? In fact, Drowning is a great example of what Gamble and Huff did best: taking a "mature" singer whose hit-making potential seemed tapped-out, and then playing to his strengths. While the title track hit No. 3... on the Billboard R&B charts, the whole record deserves a lot of listening. About half the tracks are penned by the songwriting team of Bunny Sigler and Phil Hurtt, the others by Gamble and Huff themselves. "If" is an especially poignant social-ills ballad, and Simon's cover of "You Are Everything" takes the Stylistics to church way below the Mason Dixon line — and brings the Philly strings along on the field trip.
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The Sound Of Philadelphia (Live In London) (Digitally Remastered)

Various Artists
2009 | CW Music / EMG / The Orchard

The Three Degrees' breathy repeated mantra of "People all over the world," and "Let's get it on, it's time to get down," on their No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hit "TSOP" exemplifies latter Philly Soul to me: refined yet raw and sugar-sweet. Even more than with most girl groups, the Degrees' sound was a sum-of-their-parts blend; they're sirens, not soloists. Though the line-up switched almost as many times as the ladies changed... their diaphanous get-ups, you're hearing Fayette Pinkney, Valerie Holiday and Sheila Ferguson on the cuts from the group's '70s heyday. "When Will I See You Again?" with its heartbreaking lyric and gorgeous music, is understandably their most famous single. Other highlights: a cool cover of the Spinners' "I'll Be Around," and the saucy "Dirty Old Man."
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Philly Golden Classics

First Choice
2006 | Synergie OMP / The Orchard

Young, fresh and bursting with seemingly relentless disco optimism, First Choice were natural dance floor queens. Sometimes posited as rivals to the supposedly smoother Three Degrees, First Choice's Rochelle Fleming, Joyce Jones and Annette Guest hardly sound rough-edged. If the grooves feel familiar, it's because many of these tracks boast MFSB guitarist Norman Harris as producer. The Afrobeat opening and street-yet-silly title of "Newsy Neighbors" is pure TSOP, and "This is... the House" is Martha and the Vandellas-esque. Fans of sound-effects heavy soul will appreciate both the gunning engine on "Hustler Bill," and the sexy soul song convention-reversing masculine moaning on "Don't Fake It."
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Divorcing Neo 2 Marry Soul

Jaguar Wright
IndieBlu Music / Entertainment One Distribution

Warning: Jaguar Wright is one of the best soul singers in the world, with a voice that melds the ferocity of Patti Labelle with the depth of Chaka Khan. I have stood three feet away from Jag while she was singing, feeling as if the top of my head was going to blow off; I've also heard her take down the stadium at Jones Beach while supposedly acting as a side act... for the Roots.

Fave tracks on the cleverly titled Divorcing Neo include the cover of soul classic "Woman to Woman," and Jag's own bone-chilling composition, "Do Your Worst." Both tracks exemplify the singer as sort of the next generation-Philly Soul "devil" to Jill Scott's angel (check out Who Is Jill Scott? (Words And Sounds Vol. 1) if you don't know what I mean). As Jaguar herself explains, "Please just throw it down before I have to go and buy your moms a new black gown."
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Love Train: The Sound of Philadelphia

Various
2008 | Philadelphia International/Legacy

This box is not only one of the best values on eMusic, it's also a perfect intro to Philly Soul. The four discs cover PIR basics ("Love Train" and "If You Don't Know Me By Now," to name two obvious choices), and this is also the only place on eMusic to hear such crucial artists as the Spinners ("Rubberband Man" and "I'll Be Around" are standouts), and Dusty Springfield (yes, she... cut a whole record in Philly, and yes it is as good — maybe better? — than Dusty in Memphis). You also get early Gamble/Huff/Bell confections including 1967's "Expressway to Your Heart," by the Soul Survivors (complete with honking horns), and 1968's tragi-comic "Cowboys to Girls," by the Intruders. And be sure to check out a couple of famous career revivers: Jerry "the Iceman" Butler's "Only the Strong Survive" — pre-Elvis, mind you — and the almost ludicrously funky "Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You" by Wicked Wilson Pickett.
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Collectors' Item

Harold Melvin & the Bluenotes
1987 | P.I.R.

Purists may scoff that I've chosen a Best Of compilation for this group, rather than the more obvious Wake Up Everybody. I guess I can't resist that vinyl-sounding dusty opening on "The Love I Lost": solo organ (Leon Huff, probably), and then each member of the rhythm section joining in, one by one, until Earl Young swishes his way through what could be the first disco back beat on record. The... Bluenotes personnel can be confusing. Harold Melvin founded and led the band, but that's not his gruff voice singing lead — it's onetime drummer Teddy Pendergrass, before he went solo. What a voice he has here. Listen to "If You Don't Know Me By Now" after a fight with your lover and if you don't weep, you are made of stone. And be sure to check out looong versions of "Bad Luck" and "Miss You." Between McFadden and Whitehead's lyrics and Teddy's extended vamps, the songs are perfect vignettes of inner city life.
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Teddy

Teddy Pendergrass
2009 | Legacy Recordings

How do I describe this record? Take Barry White's unselfconscious love-man persona, add a dash of Al Green's gospel roots, mix with full-on last-days-of-disco hedonism, add a paper umbrella, and sip while lying in a Jacuzzi. There is just something about listening to a man instruct you to rub him "down with hot oils, baby!" I mean, gosh. It's no surprise that at Teddy's Ladies Only concerts in the '70s, fans showered... the singer with panties and stuffed bears. Heavy breathing aside, this is a fabulous record that most (younger) soul freaks don't seem to know too well, though back in the late '70s, Teddy was Gamble and Huff's premier solo act. This is probably because his career was cut short after he became paralyzed in a car crash in 1982. Check out the later records as well — his voice is still miraculous — but also be sure to listen to the amazing "Love TKO" on 1980's TP.
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MCFadden & Whitehead

McFadden & Whitehead
2007 | Legacy Recordings

John Whitehead and Gene McFadden were both dear friends of my family, and both passed away in recent years. I was lucky enough to interview them and hear them sing in the studio many times. Therefore, it's tremendously difficult for me to capture this record in a blurb. They sang together from the time they were teenagers, backing Otis Redding on his last tour and then coming home to Philly to write... hits for Teddy Pendergrass and the O'Jays, among others. They wrote "Back Stabbers," PIR's first No. 1 hit in 1972. In 1979, their "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now" was the label's last. That song is known as the "unofficial black national anthem" (as opposed to the "official" genteel hymn, "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing"). See Colson Whitehead's Sag Harbor for a longer riff on the tune — John and Gene would have loved it.
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The Jacksons

The Jacksons
1987 | Epic

It's always shocking to me when even die-hard soul fans don't know that, after leaving Motown in the mid '70s, and before Michael made Off the Wall, the Jacksons took up musical residence in City of Brotherly Love. This lack of awareness is probably because The Jacksons (1976) and Goin' Places (1977) were not monster hits in the vein of, say, ABC. But really, who's counting? The world's most famous siblings hardly... waited out their awkward adolescences in silence. Instead, they recorded Gamble and Huff tracks, hung with writers/producers Gene McFadden, John Whitehead and Dexter Wansel, and — for the first time in their already formidable careers — played their own instruments and penned some of their own songs. My personal faves here are "Show You the Way to Go" and "Enjoy Yourself." However, how can my heart not drop to hear Michael, voice almost cracking, sing his own lyric, "Circumstances have me in a terrible fix," on "Dreamer"?
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That's How I'll Be Loving You

Bunny Sigler
2008 | Legacy Recordings

I've already said my piece about Bunny, so I think I will take this opportunity to let the man speak for himself: "I was the seventh child born with a tooth on the day after Easter, plus they heard me crying in my mother's womb before I was born. So they knew I would sing." As tempted as I may be to leave you with that, and just let you listen to... this fabulous record, I have to add that the title track, with its churchy chords and caramel-sweet vocal is one of those dream "lost" classics. "Shake Your Booty" somehow brings Sesame Street to Studio 54. And mere words cannot describe Bunny's slowed-down street-preacher cover of the O'Jays "Love Train." Switch off the lights, turn up the volume and get ready for goosebumps.
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Love Is The Message

MFSB
2008 | Legacy Recordings

When Kenny Gamble wrote the theme for Soul Train, PIR's rhythm guys had been playing together for years. "T.S.O.P." showed that the group was the tightest rhythm section north of Memphis, and the best (yes, I'm biased) pop strings and horns anywhere. MFSB's core included (but was not limited to): Norman Harris, Roland Chambers and Bobby Eli on guitars, Ronnie Baker on bass, Vince Montana on vibes, Earl Young and Karl Chambers... on drums, and Leon Huff and Lenny Pakula on keyboard — not to mention violinist Don Renaldo leading the strings and horns. Like Motown's Funk Brothers and Stax's Booker T and the MG's, the group named themselves, but with a Filthydelphia twist. MFSB stands for Mother Father Sister Brother, or Mother Fucker Son of a Bitch, if you're in the loop. Most of Love is the Message's arrangements are by Bobby Martin, but I would be remiss if I didn't add credits for Vince Montana and first flute Jack Faith.
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Here To Create Music

Leon Huff
2007 | Legacy Recordings

If Kenny Gamble is the voice of the Sound of Philadelphia, Leon Huff is the body — actually, make that the hands. Born in Camden, New Jersey, Huff taught himself to play by listening to the radio, and to his mother accompanying their church choir. Eventually, he became a session player on songs by the Ronettes, and other bubblegum acts. He and Gamble met in their teens, and the... rest, as they say, is history. When I went to interview Huff, he invited me to meet him at the PIR office on North Broad Street. As a young assistant led me through the labyrinth of gold and platinum record-hung hallways, I heard boogie-woogie piano playing, it seemed, all around me. I didn't realize it wasn't a recording, until I got to the studio. There, at the instrument, sat Leon Huff. As I approached, he finished with a glissando. "So what would you like to know?" he asked. Now you, too, can experience something like that amazing moment.
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Travelin' In Heavy Traffic

Don Covay
2008 | Legacy Recordings

Gamble and Huff's makeovers were always strokes of production genius. They'd sign up artists who'd been huge pre-British Invasion, and Philly-fy them with songs custom-written for their specific vocal chops — and maturity. This gave new professional life to Wilson Pickett and Jerry Butler, so why not try it with the lesser-known soul man Don Covay? Covay's musical life could give Bunny Sigler and McFadden & Whitehead a run for their money.... He was a behind-the-scenes southern soul legend, writer of smashes for, among others, Aretha Franklin ("Chain of Fools"), and small but beloved hits for himself ("Mercy, Mercy," also covered by the Rolling Stones). The Dexter Wansel-produced Travelin' is an odd record. Covay channels Mick Jagger on the title track — though reportedly, Mick's whole sound is based on copying Don — and doesn't always hold a tune. But "No Tell Motel" is pure funk fun, and "Six Million Dollar Fish" is weirdly stirring.
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Ebony Woman

Billy Paul
2008 | P.I.R.

Another anomaly from the Philly International vaults. Everyone knows Billy Paul for the illicit love ballad "Me and Mrs Jones." While Paul sang the hell out of that song, he was, in a sense, cheating with it on his own true love: jazz. Before signing with Gamble and Huff, Paul played with jazz greats from Charlie Parker to Nina Simone. Ebony Woman showcases the singer's elastic tenor voice, with pared down jazz... combo arrangements on some truly inspired covers. Any version of "Windmills of Your Mind" is amazing, and who knew "Mrs. Robinson" could get so beatnik cool? Billy Martin did the bigger arrangements here (unfortunately I cannot locate the identities of the players on most of these tracks).
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Gonna Take A Miracle

Laura Nyro & LaBelle
2002 | Columbia/Legacy

I am ashamed to say that I didn't know about this record until recently. Where had it been all my life? Miracle is one of the most feminine records I have ever heard, but it refuses to conform to "women's music" stereotypes. It's not Labelle at their sexy Nightbirds funkiest, or Nyro at her most girl-singer introspective. Instead, here is a collection of covers, sung by a still-young New Yorker who grew... up with her ear pressed to the R&B station on her transistor radio. Meanwhile, home in Philly, Patti Labelle, Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash were selling their hearts to the junkman, and teasing out their bouffants. Then came the Women's Movement, without which this record would have been impossible. Miracle feels more like the early-'70s coming-of-age feminist novels — Fear of Flying or Memoirs of an Ex Prom Queen — than it does like other records of the era. And that's a beautiful thing.
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Ship Ahoy

The O'Jays
2003 | Epic/Legacy

It was ridiculously hard to choose one O'Jays album for this roundup. How could I pass over Back Stabbers? I mean, "Love Train," come on! Or Family Reunion, with its cover of the band surrounded by a multi-culti throng including a Hassidic man and a blonde girl holding a Raggedy Anne? Or So Full of Love, with "Used to be My Girl" and Bunny Sigler's raunchy "Strokety Stroke"? I ended up picking... Ship Ahoy because is it my favorite Philly Soul record, period. But why? Is it the Roots-reminiscent title track, the eco-disco "This Air I Breath"? Or "For the Love of Money," one of the most sampled songs ever? No. It's "Hooks In Me," another Bunny composition. When I first heard it as a teenager, I thought: This song is life. Even now that I understand the best relationships are peaceful, hearing Eddie Levert lead-up to the chorus makes me remember that revelation. Which, in the end, of course, turned out to be about the music.
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Presents Don Cello and Friends

Larry Gold
2003 | Rapster Records / !K7 Records

Don Cello is my father, and the hilariously appropriate nickname is from Jay-Z. When he told me he was doing this record, I knew it was a phenomenal idea. He was already collaborating with these amazing artists. How could he not get everyone together? Even if this collection/collaboration did not represent my DNA, I would still include it. It's a time capsule of Philly Soul's second golden age. Back in the '80s... and early '90s, it was hard to tell if Philly Soul would rise again. We should have known: of course it would. The older players and singers were still around — New Jack just hadn't played to their strengths. And there was a younger generation on the way, honing their chops the way musicians always will, in church and school choirs, piano lessons, their parents' basements and living rooms. I obviously love everything on this disc, but several songs are bittersweet. John Whitehead, Gene McFadden and Eddie Levert all passed away in the last few years. They are missed.
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Discover: Burger Records

J. Edward Keyes — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:44:01 +0000

Hear the sound of Burger Records while you read: Download our free 20-track sampler here, featuring tracks from White Fang, The Go, Jaill and more.

Before you even got inside the sprawling, ramshackle Austin venue known as Hotel Vegas on Saturday, March 16 — the final day of South by Southwest 2013 — it was possible to suffer a crippling case of sensory overload. Taped to the front of the building, which is part bar, part flophouse, part weather-beaten barn, was a billboard-sized piece of paper crammed, end-to-end, with the names of hundreds of bands, all of them written in the same bold, 16-point font and all lined up in tidy, symmetric columns. From two in the afternoon until two in the morning, the club was home to Burger Mania, a celebration of both bands signed to the California label Burger Records as well as bands that orbit loosely within its peculiar universe. If there were 200 bands performing over the course of the afternoon, it’s only because there wasn’t enough time for 400.

This is the world of Burger Records, the California label that’s spent the last six years breathlessly building a dense, comic-book catalog of albums that cross hundreds of genre byways, but are unified in their rickety production, wide-eyed worldview, serrated edges and sugary, sugary centers. That the poster outside the Hotel Vegas resembled nothing so much as an oversized shopping list was appropriate. Skip over any one entry, and you risked omitting a crucial ingredient.

Sean Bohrman and Lee Rickard founded the label in 2007 as a way to satiate their own insatiable musical hunger. Though they’d both been in bands before — most notably, the mucus-covered-Raspberries sugar-punk outfit Thee Makeout Party, they quickly realized their energies were better spent shepherding other bands to stardom rather than pursuing their own. They gained a gaggle of early disciples by manufacturing and selling $6 cassette releases of albums by Ty Segall, King Tuff and others, but the label’s own roster quickly eclipsed those they were distributing. And while there isn’t specifically a “Burger Sound,” all of the bands owe something to both punk and pop, but all of them refract those influences in different ways, some of them veering off into unsettling psych, some into radiant power pop, still others into glittering keyboard pop.

Above all, Burger has managed to generate and sustain something that few other labels manage — the incredible compulsion to purchase. Seeing a table full of Burger releases laid out side by side, with their matching Burger logos, their similar look and feel and their stunningly affordable price tag (at the Hotel Vegas showcase, all of the vinyl LPs were $10), it’s almost impossible to not to reach for your wallet. You want to collect them in the same way a kid wants to blow his allowance on every different kind of candy at the deli. The sensation is the same: You don’t know what exactly you’re going to get when you open the wrapper, but you know it’s going to be sweet and satisfying. And as soon as you’ve gotten through them, you basically want more almost immediately.

Because Burger feels not so much like a record label but some enormous cartoon universe, and all of the bands are its inhabitants, it makes sense that there would need to be some kind of physical manifestation of Burger — which became a reality when Rickard and Bohrman opened the Burger Records store in Fullerton, California in 2009. And while selling records in 2013 can be a grim business, what comes through more than anything else when talking to the duo is their breathless enthusiasm: They cut each other off, finish each other’s sentences, talk over each other and try to outdo each other with superlatives about each Burger artist (or “Burger Star” as Rickard calls them). It becomes apparent that the Burger roster is so brain-breakingly big because Richard and Bohrman couldn’t bear the thought of leaving anyone behind.

eMusic’s editor-in-chief J. Edward Keyes caught up with the duo by phone to talk about ’60s bubblegum, Dick Clark and the merits of The Secret.

On how they met:

Sean Bohrman: I made fun of Lee for having long hair.

Lee Rickard: It was October of ’98, I believe Sean was in costume.

Bohrman: We met and immediately hit it off and started hanging out and smoking weed and going to movies and going to Wendy’s. And all of our friends were in shitty bands, so we were like, “Fuck it, why can’t we be in a shitty band?” So we started The NOiSE!.

Rickard: From the very beginning, Sean and I had a vision. We wanted our logo to have a lowercase “I” and an exclamation point — little subtleties. Just little things. Like repetition — we were like, “If we just put our sticker up [at all these different places], people are gonna know that we’re a band.” So we put stickers everywhere, People were talking about how we put stickers on their silverware and shit.

Bohrman: Well, we didn’t do it, but somebody did. I mean, you make enough stickers, they just get out of your control.

Rickard: Sean went to school in 2000 and I still had two more years of high school, so when he left, I started [the band] Thee Makeout Party. When Sean came home, after he graduated college, he joined. We started Burger to put out our own record, but once the band ended, both of us went crazy and put all of our energy into [growing] Burger. So for the last four years, we’ve just been hustling Burger non-stop.

On how ’50s and ’60s bubblegum pop informed their aesthetic:

Rickard: We love bubblegum music. My thing is cartoon bands — bands that didn’t really exist. I’m all about that. I love the idea of it. Half of them are uncredited, and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, that’s ["Yummy Yummy Yummy" singer] Joey Levine!” you just hear his voice and you know it’s Joey. You start deciphering who’s who. We love pop music and bubblegum music. It’s fun — that’s the part we take to heart: the playfulness, the childlike sense of a good time. Even though we’re stressed out and pulling our hair out trying to work out all the logistics of running multiple businesses, deep down that’s what we’re doing with Burger. We’re trying to create an alternate reality for us to exist in, and bringing in all our favorite records. That’s why we reach out to our idols and see what we can get away with and who we can work with and how much fun we can have. And as far as marketing and branding? [It's all inspired by] bubblegum music. We don’t have any shame in our game. You wanna make a pillowcase? Candy? A record? It doesn’t have to be a record or a tape — it can be anything, as long as it makes you excited. That’s what pop music’s all about.

On their commitment to putting out cassettes:

Rickard: I don’t wanna be pigeonholed into being a cassette label, but because we’ve put out so many cassettes, it overshadows the LPs. We’ve done over 400 cassette tapes. Cassettes are affordable and they’re analog and they sound good. It’s just, “These are cheap enough that we can each put in $100, generate a couple hundred tapes, give the band a box of tapes, and let them go on the road and spread them out like calling cards.” I mean, tapes rule. They’re hand-held, it’s tangible — you can touch and feel and read and get as much artistic enjoyment from your favorite Burger star as you possibly can at that moment. You can listen to the tape and have some art to read. All the first pressings are hand-numbered. I still have to assemble all these tapes in the middle of everything else we’re doing. So actual effort goes into putting the tapes out. We touch and sweat and bleed and Lord knows what else is oozing out of us at any given time.

Bohrman: Seriously! I feel really attached to every release. Just by looking at them, I can tell you who numbered them — things no one else cares about. This is our little world, and we take pride in it.

On the fact that people buy Burger records just because they’re on Burger Records:

Rickard: We’re building a brand you can trust and identify with. “It’s on Burger, so it’s gotta be pretty fucking good.” Or weird. Especially the LPs I feel are top-shelf. You can stand them up next to any other record, and there’s a reason why it’s a Burger record. The cassettes we can be a bit more lax with putting out demos, or things that are a little rough around the edges or long-lost live tapes from bands that don’t exist anymore. I take pride in the tapes, too, in that sense. We’re documenting the teen scene. And they’re gonna cringe in 20 years, but at least right now they have a tape out and they can generate gas money or hamburger money after the show just because they sold a handful of tapes. It gives them a sense of worth and community. I really want it to be a family thing — the Burger family.

On using group tours to build that family:

Bohrman: Dick Clark is a big inspiration. If you want me to talk about Dick Clark for an hour, I will. What I learned from Dick Clark was that he could get all these crazy artists on the same bill, put them on a bus and tour around. Like, the Zombies, the Ronnettes and the Crystals on the same tour. It’s unbelievable — you do some research and you’re like, “How did they get these tours together?”

Rickard: So we were like, “Alright, we’re gonna book a tour and call it Caravan of Stars and take out a bunch of bands that have never been on the road before.” Because another thing we love doing is booking shows. Because you’re making history. You’re predicting the future, and you’re putting time and energy into manifesting your fate. It’s cosmic, but it’s also really practical. You look into the future, you pick a date, you say something’s gonna happen and then you follow through on it. That’s rewarding.

Bohrman: And we put all the Burger money back into the label. That’s how we’ve put out over 50 records and 400 cassettes in less than six years’ time. We’re probably one of the fastest-growing independent labels of all time. If everyone put [all the money they made] back into what they do, who knows what would happen?

Rickard: I wanna be, like, the most artist-friendly label of all time as far as creative control and compensation. I want everyone to be able to eat. I want to eat. And that’s not too far off. We’re gonna be doing it right.

On where Burger will be in 2023:

Rickard: We just opened Burger Outer Space.

Bohrman: We want to be the first person to sell a record on the moon. If there’s an alien that has a band, we want to put that out.

Rickard: Or a time traveler. Either one.

On the true, cosmic inspiration for Burger:

Borhman: Lee’s mom gave him the video of The Secret. Lee watched half of the video, and then he came and explained the half of the video that he watched to me. And then for the next three years, we ran [the business] on an explanation of half of the video of The Secret.

Rickard: The stars are aligned. This is our time and place to make shit happen. Just being aware of our power — I wish I was as spiritual as I am now when I was a teen. I was horny and weird and goofy. But if I had a little more of this cosmic insight, who knows where we’d be right now.

Borhman and Rickard’s Burger Picks

Power Drowning

Audacity
2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

Bohrman: This album is the reason we started getting bands and expanding past bands we knew or were in. We did a couple of tapes and then we did this album. It was like "We're here!"

Rickard: Audacity are just an amazing band. They were teenagers who had just graduated high school and they had so many amazing songs, so we told them, "Let's do an album." So we went in the... studio and recorded it with them, and that became our first LP. This album is all first takes, 17 songs recorded in a day.

Bohrman: They've talked shit about it, but you know what? For a teen punk record, it's a fucking classic. Ty Segall will tell you the same thing.
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Salutations

Fletcher C Johnson
2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

Bohrman: We were turned on to Fletcher by King Tuff. He grew up with Fletcher they were in a band together at one point, and he'd been recording these same songs over and over — he had multiple recordings of these songs. Finally he had it all done and he gave it to us, and we fell in love with it.

Rickard: We were like, "You gave this [record] to Sub Pop and... they didn't want to do anything with it? OK, we'll take it."

Bohrman: It's a masterpiece, it really is.

Rickard: He just moved here. He left New York and now he's living next to me — we're both living in our vans. He's one of us. He'll probably go home, eventually. He just hooked up our stereo for us. We've been rearranging [the store], getting our feng shui funky and straight.
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If You Wanna Die Then I Wanna Die

The Cosmonauts
2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

Bohrman: They're great. Cameron from Audacity turned us on to them. They jumped on to one of the Burger shows that we had — it was New Year's '09. So we started working with them and did some tapes, and this album is their second full-length.
Peach Kelli Pop

Peach Kelli Pop
2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

Rickard: [Principle member] Allie [Hanlon] is also in White Wires. We met her at SXSW one year, and she was really awesome. I followed her around all weekend. She and her sister, they just rule.

Bohrman: [JEFF the Brotherhood's label] Infinity Cat put out her first LP and we really liked that one, so we put it out on cassette. When the second one was done, she asked if we wanted to do... it, and we were totally down. It's definitely on the poppier side, but it's all lo-fi, DIY-recorded. It's very playful.
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Gap Dream

Gap Dream
2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

Rickard: Gabe from gap Dream just moved out here. He lives in our storage space and just recorded his new album which is even better than the first one. That's a Burger success story if ever there was one. We met at the first [Burger] Caravan of Stars in 2010, and he wasn't even really aware of the Burger thing. I was like, "You gotta watch this band" — it was Conspiracy... of Owls. That blew him away, changed his life, so he started writing songs and he became a big Burger fan. And we just fell in love with the songs, so we turned those songs into a tape, and the tape eventually turned into an album. And then he moved here and lives here and is making his next record here. So, there you go: just meeting a kid on the street and asking him where the weed's at, next thing you know I'm smoking weed with a kid in front of the club, he's inspired, turns his weird energy into a song — that all unfolds because of a chance meeting. From "Hey, how's it going?" to "Dude, I live with you now." It's crazy, but amazing.

Bohrman: From the moment we posted the first Gap Dream song, it took off like nothing else we put out before. I got hit up buy a guy who works at 4AD asking me to buy a record.

Rickard: People were trying to sign him and he was like, "Nope. I'm a Burger Boy for life."

Bohrman: He even got his Burger catalog number tattooed on his arm.
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Love is the Law

Memories
2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

Bohrman: Kyle from Audacity showed us the video for their song "Higher," but then they took it offline so you couldn't watch it anymore. On Easter two years ago, Uncle Funkle [from Gnar Tapes] posted a Christian song [they wrote] and that was really, really good. And not jokey in any way. The whole time you're expecting him to say something funny or make a joke, but from the beginning... to the end, it's just a solid Christian rock song. I just fell in love with it, and I was like, "Guys, you have to make a whole album like this and create the persona of a Christian band." Then I was like, "You know I also want to see that 'Higher' video again." So they sent me a private link so that I could watch it, and then started sending more [Memories] songs, and then immediately we fell in love. What's good about them is there's no filler — they just get straight to the catchiness of the song. There's no boring solo you're sitting through. It's just pure pop and pure hooks and pure fun and love and…

Rickard: …and weed. They're a big inspiration. They run Gnar Tapes and they're really prolific. Before I was even aware of their music my friend Christian from Mean Jeans was telling me, "You're really gonna like my friend Eric who runs Gnar Tapes." When we finally did meet, we were like, "Oh, yeah, you guys put out music just because you love it."

Bohrman: When our two crews met, we just immediately hit it off.
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Crummy Desert Sound

The Resonars
2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

Bohrman: We were on tour driving from Chicago to Milwaukee with our friend Addie and we're talking about power pop, and she's like, "Have you heard the Resonars?" and we were like, "No." It was like three in the morning, we got to her house and she puts on Lunar Kick and I was just like, "Oh my god, this is an amazing record." The day I got home, I bought everything... I could by the Resonars. It's just one guy doing everything. He records in his mom's garage. He bounces two cassette four-tracks off each other. Crummy Desert Sound is his sixth record. He's been in bands since the '80s. His old band, the Knockout Pills, Estrus put out a record by them. He's one of the most kind, friendly people — he's like, angelic. He's a rock god.
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You'll Never Walk Alone

Burnt Ones
2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

Bohrman: [Burnt Ones] passed out a ton of free copies of their last record at SXSW a few years ago. I don't know how they got all these free copies, but everyone I know had one. So we brought it home and we listened to it, and it ruled.

Rickard: It looked cool — William Keihn, who does the art for Thee Oh Sees records, did the art. It was super trashy —... kind of T. Rex, glitter rock & roll. And then we met them and they were really sweet and rad. Sean went on tour with them.

Bohrman: The van was infested with ants. I was sitting in the back seat covered with them.
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Papa Cremp

Cherry Glazerr
2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

Rickard: Cherry Glazerr is my favorite teenage band at the moment. Steele O'Neal, who now does Burger TV, was just this weird kid who'd come and dig through bargain 45s and buy, like, one Michael Jackson record or something. So he comes in one day and is like, "You should check out Clementine Creevy." So we checked her out, and it was awesome. We started digging deeper and tracked her down.

Bohrman:... I sent her an email and was like, "I really like your music." We just fell in love with her songs. They're songs for teenage girls, by teenage girls, about teenage girls' life, captured so perfectly. I've never been a teenage girl, but after listening to Cherry Glazerr, I can kind of start to get what it's like. They're sophomores in high school, they're all 15 years old. Right now, they're the youngest band on the label. She's so good at writing pop songs already, at 15. Who knows what the future is gonna hold. When she first told me, "My band is called Cherry Glazerr", we assumed that she did that because she's saving her own name for when she gets really big.
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Conspiracy Of Owls

Conspiracy Of Owls
2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

Rickard: This is actually The Go. For some reason they couldn't use their real name. We've been Go fans since before the label — superfans, the guys who were first to get on line and buy [new albums] immediately and listen to them 10 times as soon as we get them. We became friends with them and they hit us up in 2010 and were like, "We've got this new project and... we want to do it with you guys." We didn't even hear it, but we were like, "Yeah, of course."

Bohrman: The first pressing had spray-painted cover, it had different artwork. Then there was a version that was just black, there was one that was glow-in-the dark. There was one that was gold. There was a red one, there was a white one…
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i

Mmoss
2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

Rickard: I actually discovered them. It was a Sunday, Sean was out dealing records. I was in the shop cleaning up, and there was a demo by the boombox. And I was like, "I can't believe this band sent us this" — because it had, like, a screenprinted cover, and it was nicer than anything we'd done before. So I was like, "Why are they sending us their shit? They've got it... all figured out!" Then I listened to it, and listened to it again, listened to it like three times, and when Sean came in my jaw was on the ground. I was like, "Listen to this!"

Bohrman: Four-part harmonies, guitar, flute, bass, organ, drums, a million other instruments. We were listening to it for hours and I remember one night at like one or two in the morning we were like, "We should call them right now and tell them how much we like this." It was like four in the morning where they were. But we called them anyway, woke them up, and were like, "Hey! We're listening to your tape!"

Rickard: I remember talking to Sean and saying, "If they dig our wacky cold-call stuff, if they can handle this weirdness —" And they loved it. They came out here and lived with us for about a week or so, and we took them on a West Coast tour in our van, and they lived here without showers — they're good sports, they're down for whatever. I love 'em.
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Raw Romance

Nobunny
2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

Bohrman: This came out after [Nobunny's breakthrough debut] Love Visions, but a lot of the stuff was recorded before Love Visions. It's demos and live recordings — it's a hodgepodge of stuff.

Rickard: We became friends in 2007. We were in New York [with Thee Makeout Party], we were both playing fringe shows of this power pop festival. He was by himself in a big-ass van that he sold his entire life to... buy just so he could go on tour. It ended up catching fire in NYC.

Bohrman: Love Visions was blowing up, and he dropped this tape on everybody. And no one was releasing tapes back then, so everybody was like, "A tape?! What is this?! You're releasing your new album on tape?!" And people bought it because that was the only way you could get it. He really helped start the tape movement that's happening right now.

Rickard: That was our first real hit. We did 500 tapes in a week and a half. And [Nobunny] really wanted some money to go back to the kids, and that's when Sean found Katenge.

Bohrman: We adopted a kid from Children International named Katenge Mduduzi, from Zambia. We charged an extra dollar for the first 500 Raw Romance cassettes and we were able to increase his family's income by 50 percent for two years after just a week and a half of selling that one cassette. We continue to support him and his family — he's a part of the Burger fam now.

Rickard: [Nobunny] is just so wide-eyed and kind and sweet and loving and really genuinely cares. He's one of my favorite people. He's Burger family. He really is far out. He likes to hang out behind dumpsters when he's on tour just to get away from it all.
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FIESTA

The Go
2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

Rickard: I was on tour with The Cuts in 2004, and they were constantly talking about The Go being the best band in America and all that shit. And I was like, "Really?" I just remember reading about them in, like, magazines previewing their first album on Sub Pop. I was barely aware of them. The Touch were my favorite band at the time. So we're on tour, we're in Detroit, and... we wind up sleeping at [Go frontman] Bobby Harlow's place, and he was playing us demos for what became the next Go album, and the shit was just amazing. I was like, "Whoa, this crazy little guy's playing these pop songs?" When we left, he gave everyone stickers, and he gave us all a CD EP, the Capricorn EP, and so I came home and played them for our friends. They're just this weird off-again on-again band, but they're our favorite modern rock band.

Bohrman: They were gonna quit music altogether. Bobby was like, "I'm gonna push carts for grocery stores and Zen out. I'm not interested in making music anymore. I'm done with it." And me and Lee just grabbed him and were like, "There is no possible way that's gonna happen. You're gonna continue making music, and you're gonna make awesome music." And he was like "Yeah! I am gonna do that." And that perked him up.
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Get Out Of My House

The Pizazz
2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

Rickard: Another awesome Detroit band that Bobby Harlow turned us on to. It's one of the greatest records of our modern rock 'n' roll era. It's catchy, it's pop — Bobby produced it, and he's a great producer.

Bohrman: If you listen to the demos and then the stuff that's on the record, he definitely put is stamp on that band.

Rickard: They're a good band, he turned it into a classic record. This... is an early Burger, too — it's in the 30s. It's like, Burger 35 or 36.
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Careful Houndy

The Hound Of Love
2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

Rickard: This is Andrew [Bassett] from Mean Jeans. It's really fucking awesome, he's been working on it for years.

Bohrman: This is a collection of songs he's been working on for years and years. At the beginning of the year we started working with Gnar Tapes, co-releasing a bunch of stuff. We listen to this all the time — we're addicted to it. It's so catchy and weird and good and all over... the place.

Rickard: He's a fun guy. We took the Mean Jeans on their first West Coast tour. They're East Coats dudes, so they're all wound up. Then they come out to the West Coast where there are all these laid-back vibes and they're, like, drinking Jager bombs.
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The Stooges’ eMusic Essentials

Andrew Perry — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:00:37 +0000

To celebrate the new Iggy & The Stooges album Ready To Die, we invited guitarist James Williamson to rifle through eMusic’s catalog and talk us through some of his favorite albums. You can read about the legendary guitarist’s choices below.

Andrew Perry interviews the band about their remarkable comeback album here.

The Complete Plantation Recordings

Muddy Waters
1993 | Geffen

I love Muddy Waters, he'd always have a couple entries in my Top 20. I saw him play in Detroit. I actually liken that scene to The Stooges, because at that time all the British guys were coming over and playing the blues back to us [Americans], and at some point, you go, "Well, that's good, but it ain't the real thing," so then we'd start going [back] to the old guys... and listening to them, and in a way that's what happened to us: people are coming back to watch us, because we did the original work. We're kind of the old blues guys of rock!

Iggy went to live in Chicago, pre-Stooges, to check out that scene. He was the drummer for a band called The Prime Movers, and they were very much a Chicago Blues-style band. They were quite good actually.
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Charley Patton: The Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order, Volume 1

Charley Patton
2013 | Document Records / The Orchard

There's a lot of real esoteric original delta blues — Robert Johnson and all those guys — and you just can't touch them. I haven't tried to play it much, but I love to listen to this stuff.
Most Things Haven't Worked Out

Junior Kimbrough
2000 | Fat Possum Records

I didn't ever see him myself, but Iggy took him out on the road, and I think they made a record, or at least a couple of songs together. I initially got in contact with Fat Possum because RL Burnside, Junior and all those guys were on that label. I started looking at their catalogue, and I said, "Hey you guys, I'm this guitar player, could you send me some of your... stuff?" and they ended up sending me this huge boxful of almost everybody that was interesting on their catalog. So I'm quite familiar with their stuff!
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El Camino

The Black Keys
2011 | Nonesuch

I like the Black Keys, especially this later stuff. It's some of their best songwriting.
Talking Book

Stevie Wonder
2000 | Motown

All this Motown stuff was in the air while we were growing up in Detroit. Stevie Wonder would actually play at the state fair, which was just an open field basically with a bunch of equipment, and he'd be on a stage which wasn't more than two feet high, with four guys around the edges so he wouldn't fall off, and he'd play "Fingertips," right up close and personal. I love "Superstition"... too — it's a great song.
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A Love Supreme

John Coltrane
2003 | IMPULSE!

Coltrane was a master. A Love Supreme, that's also an amazing record. He was completely plugged into something.
The Köln Concert

Keith Jarrett
1999 | ECM

My favorite is the Köln Concert by Keith Jarrett, which would've been in the mid-to-late '70s, but Spheres is pretty good, too, from around the same time. He's an improvisational pianist, and some of the things he's done are just incredible, very free, almost jazzy sometimes, but very melodic. He's also played with a ton of very good musicians.
Roger The Engineer / Over Under Sideways Down

The Yardbirds
2009 | The Yardbirds / Cadiz

I was a huge Yardbirds fan, I saw them play both with Jeff Beck and with Jimmy Page. That was prominent in my evolution. They were so exciting. They had a big hit over here with 'For Your Love', and then that attracted a lot of people to get their albums and stuff, and those albums were incredible, like Over Under Sideways Down — all those songs. Jeff Beck is one of... my very top guitar heroes. A couple of years ago, we were in France, but we came over to the UK to see an artist, and he was playing with her, so I got to meet him backstage, and that was a big thrill for me.
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Are You Experienced

The Jimi Hendrix Experience
2010 | Legacy Recordings

Before I joined The Stooges, we had a friend in common: Ron Richardson, who was the manager for the first band I helped found, called The Chosen Few. He was someone Ron Asheton knew, and he went out to California for the Monterey pop festival, and brought back home Are You Experienced? It was just a game-changer for all of us — after that, nothing was the same.
Bringing It All Back Home

Bob Dylan
1987 | Columbia

I was into Bob Dylan even more than Iggy was. I patterned my whole life around Bob Dylan. He would be No. 1 on my list, every record he made except for a few, I like 'em all! Bringing It All Back Home is a great album.
Kick Out The Jams

MC5
1999 | Rhino

The MC5 were well established at the time when The Stooges started. I wasn't in the band at that time, but I saw all those guys play at the Grande Ballroom and so forth. They were pretty mindblowing, I always liked them. They were quote-unquote, high-energy. Kick Out The Jams was a great tune, but the thing about the 5, though, was that they were all caught up with this political thing,... too. They had that Trans-Love thing going on, and lots of hippie politics. That aspect of the band didn't really resonate with me, but they were good guys, and great players, and they still are, the ones that are left. Fred Smith was a really good songwriter — real simple.
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Loaded

The Velvet Underground
1987 | Atlantic Records/ATG

I loved that Loaded album [final Velvet Underground album, from 1970], I used to play it all the time. A couple of years later, the Raw Power Stooges played Max's Kansas City [legendary rock 'n' roll club] in New York, and Lou came in and sat down at our table and was trying to pitch us to do a couple of his songs. Because of course he was in the last wave... of the Tin Pan Alley music writers. I had to inform him, "We write our own songs, Lou, we don't want any of yours!" Maybe in hindsight we were stupid, because he does write good songs.
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Radio Ethiopia

Patti Smith Group
1996 | Arista

She's a good friend. When I first went to New York in The Stooges, we always would stay at the Chelsea Hotel, and they had coffee makers in the room. I was making coffee, and in those days I was using sugar, so I knocked on Ig's door and said, "You know anybody around here? I need some sugar." And he said, "Well, I know this girl upstairs," so I went knocking... on her door, and I said, "Hey, I'm here in the hotel with the Stooges, and, er, do you have any sugar?" So that was the first time I met Patti Smith. She lived there of course, so she had sugar!
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New York Dolls

New York Dolls
1987 | Island Def Jam

We were contemporaries of The New York Dolls, and I really liked those guys. We'd see them on tours and stuff, and hang with them sometimes when we were in New York. I knew The Ramones a little bit as well. When they'd come out to Hollywood, they'd hang with me. They were nice guys!
Double Nickels On The Dime

Minutemen
SST Records / The Orchard

This album was the heyday for those guys. It's a good record. They were great players unlike some bands in the punk era, and Mike's really a talented musician. Today, in his own band, he's writing what he calls operas, but they're basically a huge string of one-minute songs, and they play them back to back [à la vintage Minutemen], and it's amazing to see how they can remember all that stuff... — there's maybe 30 or 40 of those things back to back. He's a very astute student of the industry as well, so he an interesting guy to work with.

I didn't pay attention to any of this kind of music when I was out of the business. At first I didn't even believe that all these guys were copying my style. I'm like Rip van Winkle, I just left everything and went to sleep.
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Push the Sky Away

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds
2013 | Bad Seed Ltd / AWAL

We played in Australia with them. I do feel that Nick's live act — I think he's taken a few pages out of Iggy's book. There's nothing wrong with that — I mean, even The Boss [i.e. Bruce Springsteen] crowd-surfs now. You gotta go with what works, right?

A Beginner’s Guide to Donald Byrd

Hua Hsu — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 18:18:46 +0000

“I knew damn near everybody,” the late trumpeter and bandleader Donald Byrd joked during a 1987 Pacifica Radio interview, reeling off names like Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis. What’s striking is that, at this point in the interview, he’s still talking about his high school years. When the Detroit-born and bred Byrd passed away in February at the age of 80, it was a reminder that “damn near everybody” was, at some point, touched by the trumpeter, bandleader, producer and teacher. Few artists’ careers so neatly embody the various stylistic turns of postwar music, from jazz to soul to funk to disco and beyond. It’s a tribute to Byrd’s eternally open mind that when the British DJ and jazz hound Gilles Peterson paid tribute to Byrd’s life, he did so with two distinct mixes: “The Acoustic Years” and “The Electric Years.”

And few artists were so comfortable with such constant change — a true rarity in the world of jazz, where form is virtue. While his creativity and dexterity as a trumpeter never quite paralleled the talents of Clifford Brown (who he replaced in Art Blakey’s band) or Miles Davis (a fellow early convert to a more electric, fusion-driven jazz sound), few figures can claim an influence as diverse or longstanding as Byrd’s. He played with Nat King Cole, Eric Dolphy, Monk and Coltrane. He appeared on over a hundred albums as a bandleader and sideman, and his 1973 breakthrough Black Byrd remains one of Blue Note’s all-time best sellers. He was a mentor to Herbie Hancock, giving the young pianist one of his first big breaks, and, as a college professor, his protégés would form bands like Blackbyrds and N.C.C.U. (“Super Trick”). He collaborated with Isaac Hayes on a disco classic (“Love Has Come Around”) and appeared on the first installment of Gang Starr rapper Guru’s Jazzmatazz series.

What follows are some of the defining moments of Byrd’s career, during which he was unafraid to try damn near anything.

Donald Byrd, “Jeannine”

At The Half Note Cafe: Vols 1 & 2 (The Rudy Van Gelder Edition)

Donald Byrd
2004 | BLUE NOTE

Donald Byrd assembled a great band in the late 1950s, and At the Half Note Cafe captures them in sizzling form. There's a vigor and energy to this live recording that's lacking in some of Byrd's early Blue Note studio sessions. On the joyous "Jeannine," Byrd is economical and restrained, willing as always to give ground to those around him. In this case that includes Pepper Adams's nervy, wild sax and Duke... Pearson's spritely piano.
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Donald Byrd, “Hush”

Royal Flush

Donald Byrd
2006 | BLUE NOTE

By 1961, the 29-year-old Byrd had established himself as a hard-bop cornerstone, recording five studio albums for Blue Note and guesting on many more. Few listeners who dropped the needle on Royal Flush could have guessed they were witnessing the debut of a legend. The breezy, bluesy gem "Chant" introduced the world to Herbie Hancock, who Byrd had mentored throughout the early 1960s. Years later, Hancock would remain grateful for Byrd's belief... in him, as well as this piece of advice from Byrd that the young, struggling pianist wouldn't understand until years later: never give away your publishing rights.
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Donald Byrd, “French Spice”

Free Form (The Rudy Van Gelder Edition)

Donald Byrd
2004 | BLUE NOTE

By 1962's excellent Free Form, Byrd was beginning to stray from the bop-derived formulas that had long defined mainstream jazz. His band was evolving, thanks to an increasingly confident Hancock, and here they're joined by Wayne Shorter, in one of his last freelance gigs before signing on with Miles Davis. Byrd's role as a connector of ideas is particularly evident here on the moody, abstract title cut, the funky "Pentecostal Feelin'" and... the playful, elegant "French Spice."
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Donald Byrd, “Christo Redentor”

A New Perspective (The Rudy Van Gelder Edition)

Donald Byrd
1999 | BLUE NOTE

Byrd was entering a fruitful, adventurous phase of his career by the time of 1963's A New Perspective. But if the album cover suggested a turn toward the modern — Byrd leans against the door of a curvy sports car — his experiments would have to plumb the distant past first. This was one of Byrd's best "spiritual" records, essentially a hard bop record featuring a gospel choir. Fantastic and life-affirming from... start to finish, the choir's textures and exhortations perfectly complement the band's rhythms and effervescent solos. It's highlighted by "Christo Redentor," Byrd's mournful trumpet rising above a chanting din.
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Donald Byrd, “Fancy Free” and “The Dude”

After cutting a few solid, if straightforward, Blue Note sides in the mid ’60s, Byrd began moving away from acoustic jazz in the later part of that decade. Miles Davis had gone “electric,” and soon others were following suit. For Byrd, it began with Duke Pearson’s electric keys, which radically shaped the texture of 1969′s Fancy Free, lending everything a freer, more felicitous feel. In 1970, he released Electric Byrd and there was no going back. In retrospect, plugging in suited Byrd’s accommodating style. “The Dude” isn’t radically different from some of his more rhythm-driven numbers from the early 1960s, only the groove is front and center. Fusion remains a dirty word among some jazz devotees, but it was more than a tweaking of the jazz sound. It was also a new approach to composition and recording. Electric Byrd‘s “Xibaba,” for example, is an absorbing, almost shapeless piece that finds Byrd and his new band — featuring Brazilians Hermeto Pascoal and Airto Moreira — concerned more with ambience and energy than structure.

Fancy Free

Donald Byrd
1993 | Blue Note Records
Electric Byrd

Donald Byrd
1996 | BLUE NOTE

Donald Byrd, “Black Byrd”

Black Byrd

Donald Byrd
1992 | BLUE NOTE

Electric Byrd and 1971's Ethiopian Knights had formalized Byrd's turn toward the funkier, fusion sound then sweeping the jazz community. It was 1973's Black Byrd that turned jazz's civil war into a popular phenomenon. Thanks largely to production from Larry and Fonce Mizell — a member of the Corporation, Motown's hit-making production squad — Black Byrd didn't sound like anything else around. "Black Byrd" was a groove, but one you could sing... along to. While Miles was flirting with avant-garde classical composition and psychedelic chaos, Byrd and the Mizells were turning toward radio-friendly rhythm and blues. To the horror of traditionalists, Black Byrd — with its attention-grabbing synths, funky percussion and vocals — was one of Blue Note's best-selling albums of the decade.
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Blackbyrds, “Blackbyrds’ Theme”

The Blackbyrds

The Blackbyrds
2007 | Fantasy Records

Byrd held a series of university teaching posts throughout the 1970s, and at least two bands formed out of his classes: North Carolina Central University's N.C.C.U. (which later became his backing band in the late 1970s) and Howard University's Blackbyrds. Byrd and the Mizells produced the first few Blackbyrds records, but they were never just a Byrd vanity project. They always seemed like a very creative funk band with jazz chops, especially... on their trio of classic early albums — 1974's self-titled debut ("Funky Junkie," "Summer Love"), Flying Start ("Walking in Rhythm," "Blackbyrds' Theme") and 1975's City Life (featuring the B-boy classic "Rock Creek Park").
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Donald Byrd, “Think Twice” and “Wind Parade”

The partnership between Byrd and the Mizells peaked on these two albums from the mid ’70s, Stepping into Tomorrow and Places and Spaces. It was on tracks like the sensual “Think Twice” or the genial funk of “Dominoes” that they began distinguishing their sound as more than just jazz with R&B characteristics. The compositions are sophisticated and atmospheric, as indebted to the instrumental interplay of Byrd’s past as to the technology of their present. There’s an open, spacey feel to the albums, a sign of Byrd and the Mizells’ growing confidence within this new jazz idiom. Occasionally, the songs from this era are also ridiculously catchy, as on the adventurous, frequently sampled classic “Wind Parade.”

Stepping Into Tomorrow

Donald Byrd
2000 | BLUE NOTE
Places and Spaces

Donald Byrd
1997 | BLUE NOTE

Donald Byrd and 125th St. N.Y.C., “Love Has Come Around”

Love Byrd

Donald Byrd And 125th Street, N.Y.C.
2008 | Rhino/Elektra

By 1981, Byrd could safely claim some kind of connection to every significant jazz musician of the previous 30 years. The only thing left, obviously, was to record an album with soul man Isaac Hayes. Backed by 125th St, N.Y.C. (previously known as N.C.C.U.), Love Byrd is a fairly snoozy effort highlighted by an unlikely gem: "Love Has Come Around," a dancefloor scorcher (and playlist staple of legendary DJ Larry Levan).

Black Moon, “Buck em Down (remix)” and Guru and Donald Byrd, “Loungin’”

Hip-hop and dance music made jazz relevant to kids in the early ’90s. Not everyone cared for the repurposing of their old sounds, but Byrd embraced it. After all, Byrd’s jazz-funk had been divisive in the ’70s, but decades later it was these intrepid works that producers like DJ Premier of Gang Starr or the Beatminerz gravitated toward. Byrd was sampled countless times, but I’ve always loved how the Beatminerz’s Evil Dee rearranged “Wind Parade” for Black Moon’s “Buck ‘em Down” remix, lending the steely original a bit of grace. For Guru, Gang Starr’s other half, his Jazzmatazz series was essentially a way to give back. “Donald Byrd — word/ On the track, quite exact,” Guru hails, and Byrd matches the rapper’s gruff monotone with some playful, old school riffing.

Diggin' In Dah Vaults

Black Moon
2005 | Nervous Records
Jazzmatazz Volume 1

Guru
1993 | NOO TRYBE

J Dilla, “Think Twice”

Welcome To Detroit

Jay Dee aka J Dilla
2003 | BBE Music / !K7 Records

Jay Dee made a name for himself as one-third of A Tribe Called Quest's beat-making faction (the Ummah). Thanks to his work on Common's critically acclaimed Like Water for Chocolate and Q-Tip's post-Quest endeavor Amplified, Dee has also established himself as a hip-hop super-producer. While Dee's stock continues to rise (working with Janet Jackson, Erykah Badu, and Macy Gray), his underground projects have been less fruitful. Reason being, when it comes to... enlisting new MCs to collaborate with, Dee has yet to locate a lyricist capable of augmenting his sublime production. This fact became apparent during Dee's short-lived stint as a member of Slum Village, and the trend continues with his first solo outing, Welcome 2 Detroit. Here, Dee continues to showcase a diverse assortment of sensuous melodies and booming funk samples. The Detroit-bred MCs who Dee chooses to highlight -- Phat Kat on "Rico Suave Bossa Nova" and Beej on "Beej-N-Dem, Pt. 2" prove to be very mediocre lyricists. Yet Dee did manage to round up a few hometown prospects, as Frank N Dank liven up "Pause" and Elzhi rips a few furious verses on "Come Get It." Though Dee flips a few clumsy bars as well, Welcome 2 Detroit really takes off when he sticks solely to an instrumental script, retouching trumpeter Donald Byrd's "Think Twice" and transforming Kraftwerk's indelible "Trans-Europe Express" into the strippers'-anthem-in-waiting "B.B.E. (Big Booty Express)."
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Discover: Vampisoul

Richard Gehr — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:09:44 +0000

For Vampisoul founder Iñigo Pastor, it all began as a fanzine that mutated into a label with global aspirations. At age 15, Pastor began publishing La Herencia de los Munster (The Legend of the Munsters) from his home in Spain’s Basque region. Following flexidisks featuring Spanish garage bands, Pastor’s first vinyl release on his Munster label was an EP containing one track by Spacemen 3 and “two Spanish bands nobody outside of Spain knows.” Although it was essentially a label devoted to singles and albums from the fringes of punk, DIY and psych-rock culture, Munster’s most successful release turned out to be what Pastor believes to be the world’s first compilation of tracks by mildly raunchy R&B diva — and short-term Miles spouse — Betty Davis.

By 2002, Iñigo had traveled and listened widely enough to realize the need for a parallel label for his new international enthusiasms. “My musical friends made me listen to stuff and enlarged my spectrum. I got into Latin music, black American music, African music, everywhere’s music.” Assisted by his widening network of contacts, “We built up a nice catalog in a short period of time,” he says. Vampisoul’s first release was Back to Peru, a mixture of underground rock and tropical tracks from the 1960s and ’70s. Vampi slipped under the wire and managed to cut a deal to reissue classic albums by Joe Bataan, Joe Cuba, Pete Rodriguez and Ray Barretto shortly before the legendary Fania salsa label was sold again (and then once again). “It was kind of a dodgy label,” he recalls, “but you could somehow get a license from someone in New York City.” Releases of Nigerian afrobeat and highlife, Italian library music, vintage jazz from the Czech Republic, and Iranian underground rock soon followed.

Hits from the Vampisoul catalog include afrobeat co-founder Tony Allen’s albums with Nigeria ’70 and Latin boogaloo star Joe Bataan’s 2003 comeback, Call My Name. The latter, written and produced by the Phenomenal Handclap Band’s Daniel Collas, was one of the first Daptone studio projects and has the 1967 vibe to prove it. Other reissues include Peruvian cumbia from the Amazon, aka chicha, reconstituted from labels that haven’t existed for more than thirty years (which makes royalty payments difficult). Vampisoul has even spawned its own protégé label, Light in the Attic. Matt Sullivan, its founder, interned with Pastor while studying in Spain. “We became very good friends,” Pastor says. “He took the concept back to the United States, where he has surpassed us in many ways because his releases are so fantastic. Now he handles the Betty Davis stuff.”

Here’s Iñigo Pastor on some of his favorite, and odder, Vampisoul and Munster releases.

Los Pirañas,Toma Tu Jabón Kapax

Toma Tu Jabón Kapax

Los Pirañas
2012 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

These three young guys from Bogotá had the same backround as I did in rock, punk and DIY, and they decided to bring back cumbia in their own manner. They recorded this live studio album in a very free, experimental way. When their recordings came into the office, we had to figure out how to tag them for distributors: Basically, it sounds like Krautrockers playing experimental cumbia on bass, guitar, and drums... with no overdubs. Their main sound is cumbia, but it's a natural sort of fusion that really works. Their other bands are Frente Cumbiero and the Meridian Brothers.
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Cumbia Beat, volumes 1 & 2

We did this in collaboration with a good Peruvian friend who turned me on to his country’s music. He brought all his records to Europe and played me stuff every time I was at his place. This Amazonic psychedelic stuff was totally unheard and really vibrant. He said, “Let’s put them out. No one else is and I know the labels and musicians. I saw some of these bands with my father as a kid. On Sundays we’d go to a park and drink beer, eat food, and dance.”

Cumbia Beat Vol. 1

Various Artists
2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard
Cumbia Beat Vol. 2

Various Artists
2012 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

Back to Peru, volumes 1 & 2

When you open a music book in the occident, it says things like, “In the ’60s, rock ‘n’ roll turned into the British invasion, then psychedelia, then progressive and then blah blah blah.” Peru has a similar progression but it’s not so clearly defined: It’s very mellow and mixed and special. Back to Peru is provides a general introduction to Peruvian music of the ’60s and ’70s. There’s some dance music, like the Gozalo compilations, but there’s a lot that’s moodier, midtempo and more psychedelic, like good Badfinger or late Beatles. They’re also good with melodies, like the Brazilians; maybe it has to do with their weather, food and education. Most of them are self-taught but were serious about making it sound good in the studio. You can find stuff like We All Together or Telegraph Avenue, who make a terrific sound comparable to any American band of the time.

Back To Peru Vol 1

Various Artists
2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard
Back To Peru Vol 2

Various Artists
2009 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

¡Gózalo!, volumes 1 & 2

Gozalo means “enjoy” in Spanish, and these compilations focus on tropical dance music for partying and good times. Like Colombia, Peru is like a little continent unto itself. So much was happening there in the ’50s, ’60s and early ’80s, before the military took over in South America and everything turned a bit grayer. Listening to this music makes me jealous of anyone who lived there during that time because it was very open.

¡Gózalo! Vol 1

Various Artists
2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard
¡Gózalo! Vol 2

Various Artists
2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

¡Saoco! The Bomba and Plena Explosion in Puerto Rico 1954-1966

¡Saoco! The Bomba and Plena Explosion in Puerto Rico 1954-1966

Various Artists
2012 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

We got in touch with Yannis Ruel, a French journalist. His wife is Puerto Rican, so he spent a lot of time there and found out about all this music. It was like when we started reissuing Fania stuff: You could find it in markets on cheaply done CDs with no liner notes. He thought it should be done right, and very few albums in Puerto Rico are like it. He wrote... an incredible essay that reads like a sociological and musicological dissertation. We're at work on volumes two and three.
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Rangarang: Pre-Revolutionary Iranian Pop

Rangarang

Various Artists
2011 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

A guy based in Washington, D.C., claimed to be the grandson of the guy who recorded these tracks. His grandfather was killed by the Iranian revolutionaries. He sent us a bunch of material to select and compile. It was very difficult. We couldn't find much information about some of the artists. We went by the music rather than by famous names or big hits. It's fascinating to think about this music in... the context of where it was being made and what came before it — a musical explosion in a strange social moment.
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Bola Johnson, Man No Die

Man No Die

Bola Johnson
2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

The guy representing Nigeria's Premiere label sent us a batch of 1960s and '70s material this trumpeter and bandleader recorded for Phillips. We learned that Bola has even more recordings out, but we don't know how many because even though he's on Facebook, he never replied to us for information or pictures or anything. He's still playing but doesn't seem to care. The world may seem much smaller these days, but there... are still big holes everywhere. Bola's a complete performer who can play all kinds of African music. This compilation has everything from soft highlife to hard funk like Fela Kuti's, who influenced him.
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Flipper Psychout

Flipper Psychout

Various Artists
2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

This was compiled by Alessandro Casella, a record collector and DJ who runs Rome's Micca Club. He got deep into Italian library music and was hired by Flipper to go into its vaults and find material to offer to labels. Mainly, it's music done for publicity, films and television in the early '70s, and the number of different moods and styles was endless. Alessandro came to us with tracks that are psychedelic,... sexy and quite incredible. That kind of music was being produced in Britain, of course, but it was also being done in southern Europe — France, Italy and even Spain. There's a lot more on the way. We're working on a project with the Spanish library music of Warner Chappell, which has something like 15,000 recordings. But it's too much. You need an expert or else you'll spend half your life on it.
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Los Saicos, ¡Demolición! The Complete Recordings

¡Demolición! The Complete Recordings

Los Saicos
2010 | Munster / The Orchard

This is the most significant Munster release at the moment for me. Los Saicos recorded six singles in 1964 and '65, but no albums at all. It was very mysterious. I used to play them for all my friends. I'd put the needle down and they'd say, "What is this?!" The band only played its own stuff, no covers. Their themes were a bit sinister: cemeteries, jails, executions, bombings and demolition. They... even had their own Peruvian TV show. They were stars, and then they split up, quit and didn't play any more music. The bandmember we got in touch with lives a very wealthy life in Washington, D.C., where he works for NASA. He became an engineer. We've gotten many licensing requests for them. I'm very proud of this because we may never see anything as unique as Los Saicos again.
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Lyres, Lyres, Lyres

Lyres Lyres

Lyres
2012 | Munster / The Orchard

I really worshipped the Lyres during my formative years when I was doing the fanzine, and I saw them live a few times. A gap opened between the punk explosion and grunge, and the Lyres were one of the more interesting bands to appear. It was not easy to deal with Jeff Connolly; he's a bit of a perfectionist [laughs]. But it's very good music and I'm glad we did it. No... one else had reissued them except for Matador more than 15 years ago. I'm happy we've made them wider-known.
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Discover: Finders Keepers

Sharon O'Connell — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 21:23:59 +0000

An enthusiasm for sounds lost, unknown, ignored or brain-meltingly weird is the principle behind Finders Keepers, the reissue label Andy Votel founded in 2005 with Doug Shipton. A mainstay of Manchester’s music scene, Votel made his name as an electronic musician, respected DJ and the man behind the Twisted Nerve label, which first brought Badly Drawn Boy to the public’s ears. Votel is a long-term enthusiastic crate-digger and his early love of hip-hop taught him to be interested in — and to buy — records wherever they came from, irrespective of the strictures of “youth culture.”

Finders Keepers is a horizon-broadening enterprise, the success of which relies not only on the interests of a curious record-buying public, but also on the passion, in-depth knowledge and deep love of its curators. The catalogue ranges far and wide — from Welsh folk music and ’70s horror-film scores to ’60s Turkish psych-punk and “Lollywood” (from Lahore, Pakistan) movie soundtracks. “Making global sound local” is the label’s motto, and Finders Keepers, which Votel describes as “pretty much genre-less” is supported in its aim by various sibling labels, each with their own focus: the on-going Twisted Nerve (contemporary releases only), Bird (music by female artists), Cache Cache (punk, new wave, ’80s electronic music), Battered Ornaments (Shipton’s own label) and a new imprint called Cacophonic (jazz — “but it’s almost like a noise label”). Votel is clearly committed to pressing forward — however much time he necessarily spends looking back.

Sharon O’Connell spoke with Andy Votel about running a true label of love.

What was the initial spur to launching Finders Keepers?

Working within the mainstream music industry got me down. It became very stringent. A lot of the records we put out on FK are 35-40 years past their sell-by date, so a desperate, four-week promotional campaign is not going to make any difference to sales. Most of the artists on FK now are — and I mean this in the most positive way possible — failed pop musicians, whether for political reasons, through a miscarriage of justice, the failure of the music industry or because they were ahead of their time, so you’re already creating a new music industry. When we set up FK, that’s exactly what it was. It was starting anew, so there was pretty much no rulebook. It was very, very refreshing.

What does the FK motto, “Making global sound local,” mean?

It’s making old records feel young, I suppose. These records were so ahead of their time that they’ve not dated, even after 40 years or so. They were never middle-of-the-road, so they still feel as fresh as the day they were created. It’s virtually impossible to be really experimental nowadays, because everybody knows you can make any sound you could possibly want, no problem. So it’s hard to experiment without restrictions. A lot of the records we’re releasing now are from the ’70s or ’80s, which was the heyday of experimental pop music.

Does a lot of the archive work you do involve playing detective?

For me, the most exciting thing about it all is meeting these artists and going round to their houses, spending time with them and meeting their families; the records are just the by product. But two things are insulting from the outset: one is when people say, “What are these weird records?” A lot of the time, they only think they’re weird because they’re sung in a foreign language, so that’s…almost racist. The other is people think that these records are from primitive industries, so you get a lot of bootlegging by various companies. And you can’t think like that. Everything that we do is on a very human level, and a lot of it is personal hero worship. Luckily, because I’d been working with Twisted Nerve when the internet was still in its infancy, I was able to contact people quite quickly and find a lot of my heroes. The question was what do you do from that point? So, we decided to reissue old records together.

What’s coming up next for FK?

Recently, I’ve been working with a tape engineer from Manchester called Andy Popplewell. He worked for the BBC for a short time, and has been baking [restoring] tapes for people in Manchester and London and all over the world, for a very long time. But it seems like I’m the only person to ever have asked him if he made music himself — and it turns out he did. He built his own synthesizer when he was 17. He has this unreleased album, TRASE and it’s the best thing I’ve heard in about five years. It’s amazing.

Andy Votel Shares 5 Treasures from the Finders Keepers Trove

L'enfant Assassin Des Mouches

Jean Claude Vannier
2007 | B-MUSIC

Orchestral, psych-rock concept album by Gainsbourg's right-hand man, and FK's first release.

When we set up Finders Keepers, I'd already had this record for about four years. There was a rumour going around that there was a sequel to Histoire de Melody Nelson by Serge Gainsbourg, who I'm a big fan of, but it soon became evident that I was more a fan of his arranger, Jean-Claude Vannier, as most of the stuff... I like was between 1968-73 — their years together. Nobody could find this album because there's nothing written on the sleeve — no title or name — but after years and years, I just found a copy in a shop. Everybody in France put me off speaking to Vannier — they told me he was arrogant and that he couldn't speak English — but it was like they were protecting him, really. When I finally met him I discovered he was a polite, encouraging and influential man who has since become a good friend — and he can speak English better than I can. No one dared release this record in France, but I just thought, it has to be out there.
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Minor White

Emma Tricca
2010 | B-MUSIC

Spare and timeless, finger-picked folk-blues from John Renbourn-approved singer-songwriter.

One of the key attractions of music for me is its femininity and sadly, you don't get that much in Manchester. All I ever talk to Emma about is Italian horror films, because she's Italian. I never talk to her about music, because I'm really not qualified; she's almost like a genius. Jane [Weaver, recording artist and Votel's wife] and I saw her at... the Green Man Festival in 2006 and couldn't believe how brilliant she was, but you could put her up a tree and she'd be amazing. Emma could have existed 300 years ago and she could exist in 300 years time. What she does is 100 per cent honest.
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Possession

Andrzej Korzyñski
2012 | FINDERS KEEPERS

Polish composer's previously unreleased, experi-chestral OST for the 1981 horror classic.

Korzynski was a mainstay in my record collection for years, but I didn't know anything about him. It's hard to find out about anything Polish, really, but I've been collecting Polish records since I was about 18, when I went to there on an art-school trip. Soundtracks were never released as records in their own right in Poland, and as Korzynski was... primarily a soundtrack artist, he wasn't a household name. But he did go to Paris in the late '60s and that explains everything about Korzynski's sound — people always say he's like the Polish Jean-Claude Vannier.
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Selda

Selda
2007 | B-MUSIC

Debut Anatolian folk/psych-rock album from acclaimed Turkish singer/ songwriter and musician.

Selda's a folk heroine, but super-militant; she'll wear Gucci sunglasses and a Fendi handbag, with a parka and a bullet-belt. I discovered Turkish music when I was in Germany and there was a really heavy, fuzz guitar sound on this record that blew my mind. Then I realized it was actually a saz, put through a fuzz pedal. People say The Beatles... are the most influential band in the world, but they're not. The Shadows are, because they're instrumental, so language isn't an issue. That's how the Andalou rock scene started and Selda was one of its earliest female musicians. She has this incredible voice, full of pain that's just unrivaled.
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Man Chest Hair

Various Artists
2012 | FINDERS KEEPERS

Compilation of hirsute and avowedly male '70s rock from the Mancunian underground.

Manchester has got a habit of approaching music with its elbows out, pushing to the front of the queue; it's very male-oriented. But the stuff that didn't force its way to the front got forgotten. It sickens me that people think music in Manchester just went straight from The Hollies to The Smiths, like the '70s didn't exist. In the '60s... when all the clubs in the city centre got shut down, the music went to satellite towns like Bolton and Stockport. There was a German record I'd been after for years and years, and then I found out the band were from Stockport and that blew my mind.
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eMusic Editors’ Finders Keepers Picks

Pomegranates: Persian Pop, Funk, Folk and Psych of the 60s and 70s

Various Artists
2010 | B-MUSIC
Sarolta Zalatnay

Sarolta Zalatnay
2009 | B-MUSIC
Paint a Lady

Susan Christie
2007 | B-MUSIC
Well Hung

Various Aritsts
2009 | B-MUSIC
Selda

Selda
2007 | B-MUSIC
Absolute Belter

Various
2010 | FINDERS KEEPERS
Solla Solla

Ilaiyaraaja
2011 | FINDERS KEEPERS
The B-Music of Jean Rollin

Various Artists
2012 | FINDERS KEEPERS

Discover: Don Giovanni Records

Douglas Wolk — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:53:44 +0000

[Introduce yourself to Don Giovanni's roster with a free 11-track sampler, featuring Screaming Females, Waxahatchee, Shellshag and more.]

A handful of the most impressive labels in the history of American independent rock have focused very closely on a single local scene: Dischord in Washington, D.C., Dangerhouse in Los Angeles, Sub Pop (for a while, at least) in Seattle. That list has a new contender: Don Giovanni Records, which, for the past decade, has been the voice of the underground rock scene of deeply unglamorous New Brunswick, New Jersey. Founded in 2003 by Joseph Steinhardt and Zach Gajewski to release a single by their own band Talk Hard, Don Giovanni has built itself up, slowly and steadily, into an indie-rock powerhouse, releasing records by bands like Screaming Females, The Ergs! and Waxahatchee, and building a national following for the scene Steinhardt and Gajewski grew up in.

“We never planned on being a label,” Steinhardt laughs. “But as soon as we put out our own 7-inch, some other friends of ours in a local band wanted to put one out, and we said, ‘If we sell ours and get our money back, we’ll put out yours.’ And it still kind of works that way, even though we’re bigger in scale. When we put out the Ergs!’ record” — their 2005 album dorkrockcorkrod — “we thought it was the end of the label. It was our first full-length album, and we figured if our money goes down to zero, we’ll just stop. We did it on vinyl. At first it didn’t really sell. And slowly, after a while, it blew up.”

The label’s founders both have day jobs that have nothing to do with music — Gajewski works in publishing, Steinhardt is a graduate student — which allows them to put the label’s profits back into releasing more projects. “I think, honestly, Zach and I believe in the New Brunswick scene more than anything,” Steinhardt says. “A lot of the Don Giovanni bands might have been bad financial decisions at first, but in the long run, that focus has paid off. We don’t think of what’s going to make us money, we think of what’s going on right now in our scene, and how we can document that.”

Don Giovanni’s roster is very much a community — the bands have mostly known one another for many years, and wave the flag for one another. (“Everyone on the label is a little obsessed with Brick Mower and Black Wine,” Steinhardt says.) Both of the founders are still in Don Giovanni-associated bands: Gajewski plays bass in the headbanging punk band Nuclear Santa Claust, and Steinhardt occasionally plays under the name Modern Hut. “It’s a really a solo project,” he notes, “but there’s a lot of people who keep it going, because I’m honestly not very talented. My friend Marissa from Screaming Females is really what made it happen — I’ve actually been working on a Modern Hut record with her for, like, six years.”

Since 2008, Don Giovanni has also put together a big concert for its bands every February. The annual showcase has expanded to increasingly large venues; this year’s showcase was a three-day, 15-band blowout. “I always liked the idea of really big shows,” Steinhardt says, “and when I started it, none of our bands had ever played places like Maxwell’s. I thought if we could do a show there that was successful, those bands could get on the radar at those venues. We did, and it sold out, and it’s just kept growing — every year we try to push the limit.”

We asked Steinhardt to tell us a bit about the history of Don Giovanni’s relationship with half a dozen of its most significant artists.

Waxahatchee

Cerulean Salt

Waxahatchee
2013 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

I was a huge, huge fan of [Waxahatchee singer/songwriter Katie Crutchfield's former band] P.S. Eliot — they were an incredible band. They were from Alabama, but they were a Don Giovanni band that wasn't on Don Giovanni. We just didn't do their records, because they weren't local. Katie and her sister moved to Brooklyn, and they did this project called Bad Banana. I e-mailed Katie and told her I wanted to do... a Bad Banana record. By that time, they were barely around, but she told me, "But I'm doing this new thing, Waxahatchee." We put out their first album [American Weekend] in January of last year, and no one cared — and by the end of the year, it was like the biggest record ever. You don't know what's going to happen, sometimes. We would do records like that if they never picked up, but it's always really nice when they do.
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Hilly Eye

Reasons to Live

Hilly Eye
2013 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

They're one of the most recent bands to join the label, and a band that sort of came into the scene through the label. They played with Shellshag and Screaming Females a lot; I bought their demo at one of their shows, and I just really liked it. Until this year, we really only worked with local bands. But I booked them on shows, and at some point I told them, "Just... so you know, we would do your record if you want — I like your band." They got back to me when they were doing a record, and it was just a natural fit: They fit with all our ideals, they fit with all our bands. They're great people.
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California X

California X

California X
2013 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

I'm working on a Ph.D. right now, and I live in Ithaca, but before I was in Ithaca I was in Syracuse. And in Syracuse, I met this guy Josh who moved to Amherst and was in California X, and was going to put out their record. I heard them and I thought, "I love that band." I booked them for shows — I usually book bands I like, it's not, like,... a label thing. Josh left the band on really friendly terms, but he wasn't putting out their record, and they were kind of in a quandary. I talked to Zach about it. We'd kind of cemented our "only doing local bands" thing, but we thought, "Fuck it, the record's awesome, it's the kind of thing we'd do anyway, we can help the band, let's do it." And then it was easy. They're part of the scene anyway — Waxahatchee played the first California X show.
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Shellshag

Rumors In Disguise

Shellshag
2011 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

They're my favorite band. They're a really important band, not just to me but to the world, and I hope someday the world realizes that. I remember when they moved from California to Brooklyn — they were famous to me and my 10 friends. I don't like playing favorites, but Shellshag are probably my favorite band on the label, and I don't think any of the others would be upset to hear... that. Any label that was thinking about the bottom line would never do some of the things we do for Shellshag, but I think it's really important that their records exist and get noticed. The lyrics they write — they're old but they're young. The fact that they just keep doing what they're doing, and damn the music industry, is really inspirational to me. I got married in August, and we only had two bands play: a Misfits tribute band, and Shellshag.
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Big Eyes

Hard Life

Big Eyes
2011 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

Big Eyes have just been around our scene forever. I met Kate when she was 14, and when she was 18 she started a band called Cheeky, who were maybe the best band ever when they were around. We were supposed to do their album — there's even a feature on YouTube about the making of the album for our label — and then they broke up and didn't finish it. I... said, "Kate, let me do your next band," and that was Big Eyes. They relocated to Seattle at a certain point, which is partially why we're not doing their records any more. But there's no bad blood. I love them. I'm booking a Don Giovanni show for them right now.
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Screaming Females

Ugly

Screaming Females
2012 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

They were one of my favorite bands in New Brunswick, and we didn't work with them until their third album because they were doing their own records. I thought that was really cool — I love it when bands put out their own records. Then, one day, a mutual friend of ours played matchmaker: "You know, Screaming Females really like your label, Joe, they want you to put out their records…" And... he told them, "You know, Joe really likes you guys…" So we talked, and I think I said something like that I was going to kill myself if they didn't let me put out the next record, and thankfully they didn't call my bluff on that. At the time, for all I knew, that would be all we ever did: Most of our bands, at that point, did one record and broke up and that was that. But I can go back and see that that was a huge thing — we've ended up working with them for six years. A lot of the way Don Giovanni functions is because of working with Screaming Females and figuring out how to do new things: licensing, royalties, booking agents, all these things we didn't know about and they didn't know about, and we've figured everything out together. I don't think Marissa realizes her own talent sometimes. There are things she can do so effortlessly that she's so modest about. Everyone thinks she's really serious and scary, but people don't know that she's really silly and funny.
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Discover: 2013 Grammy Winners

eMusic Editorial Staff — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 14:52:41 +0000

fun., Gotye and Mumford & Sons came away with some of the 2013 Grammy Awards’ biggest honors. See who else took home golden gramophones and catch up on what you might have missed last year.

Album of the Year

Record of the Year

Somebody That I Used To Know

Gotye
2012 | EP/SINGLE

Stepping out from behind the piano/drums of Melbourne indie pop three-piece the Basics for the third time, Belgian-Australian multi-instrumentalist Wally De Backer, aka Gotye's first solo record in five years, Making Mirrors, reveals a love of the '80s pop scene, which extends far beyond the usual influences of the current nu-synth brigade. Unexpected chart-topper "Somebody That I Used to Know," a collaboration with New Zealand vocalist Kimbra, is an oddball break-up song... whose stuttering rhythms, reggae hooks, and hushed vocals sound like the Police as remixed by the XX.
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Song of the Year

We Are Young

fun.
2011 | Fueled By Ramen

fun. is one of those bands that came seemingly out of nowhere to ascend to the top of the charts. Usually, those groups piggyback the steez of some other currently radio-ruling act. fun. doesn’t. On its breakout second album, the New York trio draws from hip-hop, power-pop, emo, ’70s art-rock, singer-songwriter balladry, contemporary R&B and Broadway; a combo you’ll likely only find right here. Singer Nate Ruess — who also writes the... ardent lyrics and highly sing-able melodies — has a Freddie Mercury thing going on vocally, and Some Nights opens with a flurry of Queen-y harmonies and symphonic gallantry. But after that, all bets are off. The runaway success of “We Are Young,” the first substantial rock song in ages to not only top the pop charts but also put a justified critic’s darling, avant-R&B diva Janelle Monae, on the radio where she belongs, is particularly amazing considering that Ruess’s first band, the Format, was dropped by the same major that now distributes both fun. and Monae.
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Best Pop Vocal Album

Stronger

Kelly Clarkson
2011 | RCA Records Label

It's been nine years since Kelly Clarkson was crowned as the inaugural American Idol, and in that time she's remained the show's ideal; she's a technically gifted singer with charm to spare, an inviting smile, and a knack for inhabiting hooks like they're barnhouse lofts squirreled away on Texas farm. Even the most Idol-allergic music consumers have embraced the combination of melody, perfectly calibrated guitar grit, and wailing that made up her... 2004 hit "Since U Been Gone"; other songs in her catalog, like the sassy "Walk Away" and the girl-group throwback "I Want You," are similarly indelible.

In keeping with Clarkson's career — and the ethos of Idol — her fifth album takes its inspirations from all over the pop map. While Dr. Luke and Max Martin, who shepherded "Gone" and the lead single from Clarkson's previous album All I Ever Wanted, aren't present, the producers in the mix give Stronger a texture that shows how the genre of "pop" can be a jumping-off point, and not an endgame. "You Love Me" is muscular guitar-pop with gorgeous new-wave flourishes blossoming on its pre-chorus; "Dark Side" has a delicate lullaby threaded throughout; "Honestly" opens with a floating haze of guitar distortion that could be mistaken for a chillwave track. The through line between all these stylistic leaps is Clarkson's voice, a formidable instrument that knows when to get vulnerable and when to absolutely blow. (Chillwavers could probably stand to learn a lesson or two from her.)

What gives Stronger its extra oomph is the confidence exhibited by Clarkson as she sings lyrics about self-acceptance being a key to love ("Dark Side") and rumor mills that she wishes would stop churning ("You Can't Win"). Escaping the Idol machine has been a great thing for Clarkson, who sometimes takes on the role of the pop world's ombudsman when she's defending her former show against the "authenticity" police or rolling her eyes at former Idol meanie Simon Cowell's declarations that she's not interested in being a pop star. That Stronger allows her to drop the façade that other pop stars might depend on for dear life, and address both the characters in her songs and her audience directly, speaks both to Clarkson's charm and to her growing maturity as an artist.
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Best New Artist

Some Nights

fun.
2012 | Fueled By Ramen

fun. is one of those bands that came seemingly out of nowhere to ascend to the top of the charts. Usually, those groups piggyback the steez of some other currently radio-ruling act. fun. doesn't. On this, its breakout second album, the New York trio draws from hip-hop, power-pop, emo, '70s art-rock, singer-songwriter balladry, contemporary R&B and Broadway; a combo you'll likely only find right here. Singer Nate Ruess — who also writes... the ardent lyrics and highly sing-able melodies — has a Freddie Mercury thing going on vocally, and Some Nights opens with a flurry of Queen-y harmonies and symphonic gallantry. But after that, all bets are off. The runaway success of "We Are Young," the first substantial rock song in ages to not only top the pop charts but also put a justified critic's darling, avant-R&B diva Janelle MonÃ¡e, on the radio where she belongs, is particularly amazing considering that Ruess's first band, the Format, was dropped by the same major that now distributes both fun. and MonÃ¡e. That Arizona band teamed with Redd Kross/OFF! bassist Steven McDonald for its second album, 2006's Dog Problems, and Ruess and McDonald continued honing their smarty-pants eclecticism on fun.'s 2009 debut Aim and Ignite, with the help of its multi-instrumentalists Jack Antonoff and Andrew Dost, formerly of Steel Train and Anathallo. Here the trio trade McDonald for Jeff Bhasker, a hip-hop/R&B guy who produced monster hits for Kanye West, Jay-Z and BeyoncÃ©. Together, they layer seemingly incompatible genres with reckless but radio-friendly glee, as if a music nerd's iPod somehow got into the hands of a Bruno Mars.
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Best Dance/Electronica Album

Bangarang EP

Skrillex
2010 | Big Beat Records/Atlantic

Nominated for five Grammy Awards, shortlisted for the prestigious BBC Sound of 2012 poll, and courted by everyone from Chicago producer Kaskade to metal icons Korn, former From First to Last frontman Sonny Moore's transition from post-hardcore vocalist to dubstep producer couldn't have realistically gone any smoother. However, despite his unprecedented success, there's still a question as to whether he can apply his now trademark, demonic, wobble bass drops and thumping syncopated... beats to a whole album. Named after the battle cry of the lost boys in Steven Spielberg's Hook, his fourth consecutive EP Bangarang (also his first Top 40 entry in both the UK and US) suggests he'll have to be on his game on the forthcoming full-length Voltage if he's to avoid an Emperor's New Clothes scenario. While the bombastic Wall of Sound displayed on 2010's Scary Monsters & Nice Sprites initially provided a unique take on the UK dubstep genre, Skrillex's lack of progression means there's a distinct sense of déjà vu among its seven tracks, particularly on the relentless, scattershot bleeps, chopped-up vocal hooks, and repetitive loops of opener "Right In" and the rap-metal fusion of "Kyoto." Even when he does think outside the box -- as on "Right on Time," a percussive, hard house collaboration with 12th Planet and Kill the Noise which eventually builds into a feverish slice of happy hardcore, and "The Devil's Den," a chaotic hook-up with Wolfgang Gartner which takes in everything from old-school rave to ska to techno — the results are more headache-inducing than thrilling. There are a few more encouraging signs, such as the Doors-featuring "Breakin' a Sweat," which combines proggy guitar hooks, psychedelic organ chords, and Jim Morrison samples with a snarling, Prodigy-esque vocal and a filthy slab of dub bass to produce one of the year's most unexpectedly successful partnerships, and the multi-layered trance of closer "Summit," given an ethereal sheen thanks to Ellie Goulding's lilting tones, both of which suggest Skrillex should utilize his melodic leanings more often. But overall, Bangarang is a disappointingly formulaic affair which hints for the first time that the wheels may soon slowly begin to fall off.
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Best Rock Album

El Camino

The Black Keys
2011 | Nonesuch

The Black Keys, Akron's unsuspecting blues-rock saviors, faced ridiculous pressure in following up their expansive 2010 breakout effort, Brothers. Big things happened in the subsequent year: The duo (vocalist/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney) graced the cover of Spin, tucked away three GRAMMYs, played SNL and raked in huge piles of advertising cash — big-deal developments for a band that recorded their debut album in a basement nearly a decade earlier.... Brothers found the band at a creative and commercial high-point, simultaneously embracing soulful pop melodies and the spirited muscle of their live shows, even as they gently experimented with psychedelic overdubs — emphatically darting away from the sleepy, awkward soundscapes of the Danger Mouse-produced identity crisis Attack & Release.

On El Camino, the Black Keys are done trying to impress anybody, sounding wonderfully unhinged throughout the album's compact 38 minutes. The name of the game is hard-hitting focus; spontaneity; keeping it simple, stupid; never over-thinking or over-cooking any swampy chorus or tossed-off lyric ("Hey, my my, she's a money-maker/ Hey, my my, she's gonna take ya," goes one gem). After only producing one Brothers track (the emphatic "Tighten Up"), Danger Mouse returns to man the boards — and though his approach on Attack & Release was heavy-handed, never quite gelling with the duo's style, he takes a wiser backseat approach on El Camino. His presence still lingers (check that whirring Hammond organ and retro-glock twinkle on the hooky "Dead and Gone"), but this time around, he's adapted to the Keys' raw rock approach, instead of forcing a synthesis with his bread-n-butter symphonic electro-pop.

The looseness is intoxicating. "Money Maker"'s beastly bass lags behind a millisecond or two, pushing and pulling in gnarly blues warfare with Auerbach's guitars. Carney, charmingly, still swings with the finesse of a caveman on Ritalin — despite his finest efforts at a multi-tiered groove on standout "Stop Stop," dude nearly trips over his own drum sticks. Those sassy female vocalizers on "Gold on the Ceiling" would fit nicely onstage in a broke-down backwoods bar. The acoustic-ballad-turned-electric-stomper "Little Black Submarines" unintentionally evokes Tenacious D channeling Led Zeppelin, and the result is a goofier (yet no less rocking) "Stairway to Heaven" demoed in a truck-stop bathroom stall. Meanwhile, "Sister" is the Black Keys at their glammiest and hammiest, Auerbach's fuzz-bathed, bee-stung guitars layered impeccably over a wicked Carney stomp.

Perhaps the Black Keys are America's finest rock band only because the competition is so depressingly slim. Regardless, with two straight knock-outs on their resume, these guys have clearly earned the title.
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Best Alternative Album

Making Mirrors

Gotye
2012 | Samples & Seconds / Republic

Stepping out from behind the piano/drums of Melbourne indie pop three-piece the Basics for the third time, Belgian-Australian multi-instrumentalist Wally De Backer, aka Gotye's first solo record in five years, Making Mirrors, reveals a love of the '80s pop scene, which extends far beyond the usual influences of the current nu-synth brigade. The hugely experimental follow-up to 2006's Like Drawing Blood doesn't discriminate against other decades, as evident on the impossibly uplifting... '60s retro soul of "I Feel Better," the '70s West Coast harmonies of the ethereal lullaby-like closer "Bronte," the '90s Beck-esque scuzzy garage rock of "Easy Way Out," and the 2000s hushed, claustrophobic dubstep of "Don't Worry, We'll Be Watching You." But seemingly unaffected by the constant comparisons with the likes of Sting and Peter Gabriel, it's the era of early new wave, dub, and worldbeat which defines its 12 tracks. Unexpected chart-topper "Somebody That I Used to Know," a collaboration with New Zealand vocalist Kimbra, is an oddball break-up song whose stuttering rhythms, reggae hooks, and hushed vocals sound like the Police as remixed by the XX, "Smoke and Mirrors" echoes the avant-garde pop of Gabriel's So, with its pounding tribal drums, orchestral flourishes, and new age melodies, while there are also nods to George Michael's "Faith" on the acoustic gospel-pop of "In Your Light"; the impassioned Aussie rock of Midnight Oil on the ecologically themed "Eyes Wide Open," and electro pioneer Thomas Dolby on the strange, vocodered vocals, spoken word samples, and skank guitars of the trippy "State of the Art." Familiar they may be, but some credit has to go to De Backer for managing to weave these eclectic retro sounds into a cohesive affair, which proves that along with recent efforts by Art vs. Science and Architecture in Helsinki, Australia is fast becoming one of the biggest purveyors of quality experimental pop.
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Best R&B Album

Black Radio

Robert Glasper
2012 | BLUE NOTE

Pianist Robert Glasper has jazz chops sophisticated enough to satiate diehard purists and an affinity for hip-hop and R&B that has resulted in collaborations with Q-Tip, Maxwell and Mos Def. Black Radio scrambles these influences, with Glasper's Experiment quartet (including Derrick Hodge on electric bass, Casey Benjamin on sax and vocoder, and Chris Dave playing drums), laying unpredictable music beneath a bevy of high-profile guests. In this era of... Pandora-style musical-profiling, where listeners can narrow down exactly what they think they want, the project absorbs genres like a sponge and squeezes out surprises with a tinge of tang and froth. It avoids the sappiness of "smooth jazz," the stilted self-reference of "hip-hop jazz" and the suffocating cushion of "quiet storm," yet there's a lush sensuality that permeates the beats, bop rhythms and bracing moments of curiosity and intellect.

Glasper understands that this Experiment is best undertaken as a tactile experience - as Shafiq Husayn rap-drawls in the opener, "Lift Off," all you need is your ears and your soul. To drive home the point, the beguiling yawl and coo of Erykah Badu sends the Afro-Cuban classic "Afro Blue" into the air like a large kite in a steady wind, its tail trilling. Rappers Lupe Fiasco and yasiin bey (better known as Mos Def) variously distill verbal science and wig out on wordplay ("turtles from a man hole"?), knowing the live quartet can alter the texture and freestyle the route as the situation warrants, on "Always Shine" and "Black Radio," respectively. There is a throwback nature to Black Radio, and not only because Sade ("Cherish The Day," with Lalah Hathaway on vocals), David Bowie ("Letter to Hermione," featuring Bilal channeling Stevie Wonder) and Nirvana (a deconstructed and vocoderized "Smells Like Teen Spirit") are covered. There are moments reminiscent of the soul-jazz fusion of Bobbi Humphrey and Donald Byrd back on Blue Note in the late '70s, or Soul II Soul and Me Phi Me back in the '80s, or Alphabet Soup and Mint Condition in the '90s, with a dollop of 21st-century hip-hop on top. Why reinvent the wheel when you can modify the ride?
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Best Rap Album

Take Care

Drake
2012 | Cash Money Records/Young Money Ent./Universal Rec.

Drake shot to the upper echelon of hip-hop fame by bypassing nearly every single rule of traditional cred-getting, and none of the ensuing jokes about his role as Wheelchair Jimmy on DeGrassi: The Next Generation or his own penchant for soft-batch hashtag-rap have knocked him back down. If anything, sophomore album Take Care actively doubles down on the things that make him so contentious among traditionalists — the emotional exposure, the singsong... delivery (now manifested more often as straight-up R&B singing), the lyrical focus on relationships — but infuses them with a subtle dose of self-aware ambivalence.

He still acknowledges success — the first line on the album is "I think I killed everybody in the game last year, man" — while "Underground Kings" and "Crew Love" are human-scale acknowledgments that he can afford nice cars and expensive vacations. Yet he still carries himself as though his main concern is connecting with other people without letting status obscure his intent. Most of the people in question are women; they get romantically flattered ("Make Me Proud"), ruefully drunk-dialed ("Marvin's Room"), anxiously reconciled with ("Take Care") and coldly, then regretfully, dumped (the Stevie Wonder feature, "Doing it Wrong").

In the process, Drake foregoes hashtag gimmickry and stretched-to-fatigue punchlines in favor of straightforward confessions, letting the guests — including top-form Nicki Minaj, Rick Ross, Andre 3000 and mentor Lil Wayne — fill in the pull-quotes. The production does the rest — a gauzy atmosphere of post-Dirty South beats, built around muted, glowing ambient tracks from Noah "40" Shebib, T-Minus and one-shots from Boi-1da, Just Blaze, Jamie xx and Lex Luger — and the sound complements the nuances of Drake's voice in a way that subsumes it almost completely. The end result is an album that feels like the most integral fusion of hip-hop structure and R&B soul-baring since 808s and Heartbreak.
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Best Country Album

Uncaged

Zac Brown Band
2012 | Southern Ground/Atlantic

In a sense, it's possible to measure the progress of the Zac Brown Band by the magnitude of their guest stars. In 2010, they consolidated the breakthrough of 2008's Foundation by enlisting Jimmy Buffett and Alan Jackson for duets — elders whose very presence suggested they were passing a torch (although, to be sure, Buffett has a far greater pull on Brown's sound than Jackson). Two years later, it is the Zac... Brown Band who occupy the power position, drafting in peers, not idols, to play alongside. And it is a diverse batch: twee, twiddly Jason Mraz co-writes the sprightly opening cut, "Jump Right In," with Zac, Trombone Shorty colors "Overnight" with some New Orleans funk, and upcoming folk/blues troubadour Amos Lee sings on "Day That I Die," each guest representing a different field for the ZBB, each suggesting the range of this ever-evolving nominal country band. And at this point, the Zac Brown Band would fit the grander stages of such worldly, knowing vaguely hippie enclaves as Bonnaroo better than they would a rocking country outlet somewhere in the Deep South. But Southern they are, in sensibility and sound, reflecting not the dusty beer joints and cutthroat honky tonks of the middle of the 20th century but the sports bars and sandy beaches of the present, the kinds of places where the kin of the Allmans feel as Southern as the descendants of George Jones...and where a bearded soft rock crooner like Zac Brown is happy to make evident his debt to James Taylor. Brown's sweeter side isn't hidden here but it's not quite as prominent as it's been in the past, either. He has plenty of soft, crooning melodies but there's a bit of bluegrass and a bit of reggae, a little blues and a lot of rock. Above anything else, Uncaged is a Zac Brown Band album, one that emphasizes the range of this quintet and its elastic interplay. It is the sound of a band operating from a position of considerable strength: they're confident, assured, even playful, having fun bending the rules and blurring boundaries, eager to please but never pandering. It's the rare album that suggests how good the band would be in concert yet still sounds vibrant on record.
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Best Jazz Vocal Album

Radio Music Society

Esperanza Spalding
2012 | Heads Up

Now Esperanza Spalding is making even the Grammys look hip. In her first outing since she was named Best New Artist in 2011, Spalding puts a dozen tunes into her stylistic spin cycle for a tour de force of pop glitter, jazz swing, folk moodiness and a dollop of hip-hop swagger on the dense-but-dazzling Radio Music Society. This is the work of an artist who refuses to choose, mocking genre labels with... guileless ambition. (Her original concept was to pair this disc with the classically-oriented, string-laden Chamber Music Society back in 2010, until her record company convinced her the menu would be too large for public consumption.)

By ignoring boundaries, Spalding upends expectations. She enlists august jazz tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano to provide a dulcet lilt to a Stevie Wonder cover ("I Can't Help It") and hip-hop titan Q-Tip to play glockenspiel and co-produce the jazzy tribute to her native Portland, Oregon("City of Roses"). Assembling a phalanx of 23 players and vocalists for a flashy, powerhouse "Radio Song," she sings about the giddiness of being seized by a new jam coming out of the speakers as her own electric bass wends its way through the song's buoyant center. Three songs later, with just the sparse backing of organist James Weidman, she tells the saga of a man falsely imprisoned for 30 years on a bogus murder conviction. On Radio, both extremes are fair game.

As was the case with Chamber Music Society, Spalding's vocals are her ace in the hole. Her range is limited, but her assured and agile phrasing is ideal for carrying out her talk/sung approach. It enables her to credibly pull off a bluesy, big-band-like torch song ("Hold On Me") and to surf atop a youth choir on the anthem "Black Gold." And then there's "Vague Suspicions," a dense and sophisticated number with Jack DeJohnette on drums, about the tacit accommodations Americans make to avoid thinking too much about the consequences of drone strikes and the other elements of remote-control war. It's a grim, simmering number, its closing moments featuring Spalding sarcastically cooing, "Next on channel 4: celebrity gossip." It's a typically astute and self-aware take from an artist who is the closest thing jazz has to a young celebrity.
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Best Jazz Instrumental Album

Unity Band

Pat Metheny
2012 | Nonesuch

Freedom from stylistic constraints has never been an easy thing for Pat Metheny. As one of jazz's greatest composers, guitarists and texturalists, he's compiled on a stockpile of characteristic compositional devices. Any Metheny fan can identify his white-noise-spewing guitar synths and Ornette-style "out" constructions from 40 paces. But Metheny's tools never become clichÃ©s; they're just steps from which he keeps climbing.

Unity Band is yet another example of Metheny's perpetual growth spurt. Metheny's... first record to feature a tenor saxophonist since the mighty 80/81 (with Dewey Redman and Michael Brecker), it sounds both familiar and fresh. Metheny sandblasts new creative paths through well-worn terrain, joined by tenor player Chris Potter, perennial Pat Metheny Group drummer Antonio Sanchez and inspired young bassist Ben Williams. Potter is a muscular foil for Metheny, inspiring him to comp and solo with abandon. The guitarist, though typically brilliant, can sometimes sound hamstrung by his dense PMG studio arrangements. But revamping his afore-mentioned compositional tools through new band mates, Metheny sounds truly inspired on Unity Band.

Metheny's bittersweet acoustic guitar (is there a better acoustic jazz guitarist?) opens "New Year" with a bossa nova lilt, quickly drawing you in. Metheny is soon subsumed by Potter's astringent tenor, followed by group solos over a Metheny-trademarked, high-flying vamp section. Fret-encompassing swoops ("vroom vroom") and guitar synth caterwaul infuse the funky Latin sashay of "Roofdogs," the band firing smoke and sparks as Potter's soprano sax solo winds through solar flare like explosions. Here on soprano, and elsewhere on bass clarinet, Potter shakes clean his hefty Brecker influences to improvise with originality. Sanchez storms Unity Band as well, constantly stoking the intensity level as Williams responds with graceful solos and empathetic support. His solo bass introduction (another Metheny device) to "Come and See" leads to heated solos all around over a feverish pulse. An acoustic guitar-driven ballad, "This Belongs to You," follows, then "Leaving Town," which touches on old PMG favorite "James" in its melody and overall shape. The bell-like chord structure of "Interval Waltz" recalls master guitarist Jim Hall, creating a lovely arc of an arrangement, leading to a beautiful guitar solo over a floating swing pulse. "Signals (Orchestrion Sketch)" is like nothing on any Metheny record, its clattering, Frank Zappa styled (Varese? Stravinksy?) orchestral bed emoting like humorous robots beating street percussion. "Then and Now" sounds a bit like Weather Report's "A Remark You Made" in spirit, followed by closer, "Breakdealer," which with its clunky race to the finish, is Unity Band's only deal-breaker.

Should Pat Metheny replace his main group with the freshly minted Unity Band? The guitarist is re-inspired by material that hints at years of development to come, and this is one killer band. But probably not. Metheny's vision is too broad to be contained by one band and one band alone.
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Best Reggae Album

Rebirth

Jimmy Cliff
2012 | Jimmy Cliff - Rebirth

In 1972, Jimmy Cliff's performance in The Harder They Come introduced U.S. filmgoers to the vibrant desperation ofKingston life, and his inspirational yet tough-minded songs highlighted the movie's soundtrack. Already an established hitmaker at the time, Cliff seemed poised to become Jamaica's first international superstar. Instead he misjudged American audiences, pitching vague homilies and pop professionalism to the AM crowd, allowing Bob Marley to leapfrog past him by assuming a prophetic mantle... and exciting hip FM rockers with his political defiance.

On Rebirth, Cliff now eyes a more judicious audience: middle-aged rockers weaned on punk and alternative. Shepherded by his producer, Rancid frontman Tim Armstrong, the 64-year-old rides the lithe throwback grooves of reggae revivalists the Aggrolites and Hepcat with a young man's grace, particularly on two smartly chosen covers — the Clash's "The Guns of Brixton," which transplanted Cliff's character from The Harder They Come into a London slum, and Rancid's "Ruby Soho." ("Rebel, Rebel" is good too, but it's not the Bowie tune.) Cliff's political complaints haven't grown much more specific — "World Upside Down" cries out against "Too much injustice," then proposes "love" as the answer. But his exhortations not only retain the warmth and humane spirit of old but have gained depths of pained sympathy with age, especially when he laments how "They took the children's bread/ And gave it to the dogs."
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Discover: New York Hip-Hop

eMusic Editorial Staff — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:23:36 +0000

Photo: Jay-Z

While we’re usually cruising down 8th Street in a cab, not an off-white Lexus, we know exactly where Jay-Z’s coming from in his new-school anthem, “Empire State of Mind.” From Brooklyn to the Bronx, and every borough in between, there’s no city like New York City when it comes to classic hip-hop records.

Here’s a quick, album-guided tour of the Big Apple…

Brooklyn

Reasonable Doubt

Jay-Z
1996 | Roc-a-fella / TuneCore

Every rapper needs a creation myth — Illmatic opened with Nas and A.Z. counting money over snippets from Wild Style, the devil's sons redeemed by hip-hop. Biggie opened Ready to Die with a gripping audio collage of his first twenty-odd years, as though his rag-to-riches tale was one you needed to learn. Jay opened Reasonable Doubt with a heartbeat, but its quickening pace suggested it was the sound of fear —... of moving your first package; of holding your first gun; of seeing a man die; of the moment when you realize you have grown up too fast. This wasn't an album deeply concerned with where Jay had been, since he had already built his name as a rather successful drug dealer. This album was about one man's rebirth, and as soon as that ticking heart gave way to the gloss and floss of "Can't Knock the Hustle," it was clear that Jay, too, had arrived.

"My pops knew exactly what he did when he made me/ Tried to get a nut and he got a nut," he bragged on that opening cut, as Mary J. Blige bellowed an achingly hopeful chorus borrowed from Mel'isa Morgan's "Fool's Paradise." But was Jay really a "nut," our "worst fear confirmed"? There is something cool and composed about Reasonable Doubt, as he plays straight man to Biggie's true nut on "Brooklyn's Finest" or earns his stripes on the icy "Dead Presidents II" — two of the finest songs of Jay's career. "We used to fight for building blocks/ Now we fight for blocks with buildings that make a killin'," he raps on the truly disturbing "D'evils." But even there he sounds chillingly assured against DJ Premier's spooked Allen Toussaint sample.

History recognizes Reasonable Doubt as evidence of Jay's genius, but it all could have ended up very differently. Reasonable Doubt arrived during a tumultuous turn in the history of hip-hop. Nas'disappointing It Was Written would come out a week later, and hip-hop's obsession with the Mafioso lifestyle would soon bloat to cartoonish extremes. The Wu-Tang Clan would spool out of control, and within the next year, Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. would ascend to martyrdom. Yet the culture's growth was still exceeding all expectations, and hip-hop would need new, larger, flashier heroes. And in Jay-Z, it found its pinnacle.
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Daily Operation

Gang Starr
1992 | NOO TRYBE

Straddling the very fissures where the old school gave way to the new, Gang Starr's 1992 masterpiece Step in the Arena was the sound that took rappers 15 years to perfect. In the few months that followed, New York would be scrambling to reinvent itself in the year Los Angeles broke, but Daily Operation was coolly classic-sounding; like Led Zep's Physical Graffiti, it's an unstoppable summary of everything that makes its genre... great — the most rollicking breaks, the silkiest rhyme patterns, the most nimble cutwork, the most head-knocking snares.

For being the greatest MC/DJ duo in rap history, Gang Starr were never flashy, gaudy or showy. Guru and DJ Premier are jazz heads at heart, and they understand the idea of "being in the pocket" — note how Guru brags that his vocals "complement the slow phat groove" in "Stay Tuned." But don't mistake their smoothness for soft: The production (handled by the duo) cycles through some of the most harried samples around, always hiccupping with hums and tics and audience noise and hummingbird strings — peaking with a manic one-second loop of hard-funk footnote Sugar Billy Garner in "B.Y.S."

The magic is in the details — how Premier gently stretches and bends KRS-One's voice in "Ex Girl to the Next Girl"; the way Guru can makes something as devilishly simple as "You see the mic in my hand? Now watch me wreck it now" seem like liquid perfection; how "Take It Personal" adds extra bass drums hits to the iconic "Skull Snap" break to make it even more skull-snappy. Daily Operation is an uncluttered masterpiece by a group with a catalog full of them.
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Life After Death

The Notorious B.I.G.
1997 | Bad Boy Records

Released just 16 days after his March 9 death by drive-by shooting, there's an eerie prescience to the Notorious B.I.G.'s Life After Death. Several things — that title, the hearse-featuring album cover, the crushing closing track, "You're Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You)" — gave Life After Death a bizarre resonance. But this is much more than paperwork from the morgue. In fact, rap stardom gave The Notorious B.I.G. a new lease; he... attacks with testosterone-filled glee. The album's title is about second chances at money, fame and sex after a tumultuous youth; a true second life. The result, worth every second of its expansive double-LP running time, is actually more about light and wealth than its predecessor, which was defined by a grim fatalism. The hits say as much. Consider that old speedboat-riding chestnut of hip-hop opulence, "Hypnotize" or the Diana Ross-lifting exuberance of "Mo Money Mo Problems." The giddy, quite funny "I Got A Story To Tell" finds Biggie creeping with the lady friend of a New York Knicks player and then retelling the tale to his boys, embellishing like a grandfather serenading some awestruck tots. Biggie's desire to croon — really, croon — crops up repeatedly here, as on the goofy extended "Playa Hater" or the thudding Miami bass of "Another." Even "Ten Crack Commandments," a steely DJ Premier production and drug-dealing manifesto has a delightful service-y quality — memorable and useful! So many of his lyrics became sampled and repeated hip-hop aphorisms — "If you don't know, now you know"; "It was all a dream..."; "Went from ashy to classy"; and so on. This is a crucial part of the Biggie mythology, the stickiness of his writing.

After the success of Ready To Die Biggie used his follow-up to indulge his fantasies. Working mostly with Puff Daddy's in-house production crew, The Hitmen (Carlos "July Six" Broady, Nashiem Myrick, Deric "D-Dot" Angelettie, Stevie J, Ron "Amen-Ra" Lawrence), it's surprising how many of the songs here are about sexual conquest; at times you may yearn for his debut's brutality. But over time, Life After Death reveals itself as a sensual work — the lyrics to the R. Kelly-featuring "Fuck You Tonight" are specific, attentive, lascivious in ways that might make Luther Campbell blush. Biggie is less rapid-fire throughout, whether rapping or singing, letting that charismatic, jowly burr traipse into Isaac Hayes territory. His reach is longer, too, featuring paeans to his beloved '80s R&B, production from distinguished contemporaries like Mobb Deep's Havoc and Wu-Tang Clan's RZA, and guest shots from stars old (DMC, Too $hort) and new (onetime paramour and protégé Lil' Kim, a young friend named Jay-Z, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony).

That collaboration with Bone Thugs, the whirring "Notorious Thugs," forced a flood light on rap's ever-expanding regional purview. Exposing — and paying homage by emulating their distinctive half-sung double-time flow — to Cleveland's own was just one more example of Biggie's almost perverse palm-reading — he simply knew where the genre needed to go. The song's reference to "So-called beef with you know who" anchors the album's more serious undertones. Biggie, of course, was feuding with ex-friend 2Pac for some time as he began recording the album. Pac was gunned down in Las Vegas six months before its release, but that didn't stop Big from including "Going Back To Cali," a perhaps too-braggadocious act of defiance in the service of an insatiable ego.

The backend of the second disc is the most tremulous and grandiose. The underrated single "Sky's The Limit," a defiant turn on "My Downfall," and RZA's "Long Kiss Goodnight" are all mythmaking songs that ultimately sting in light of Big's fate. And the closing track, "You're Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You)," is the hazy epilogue to a cinematic reconfiguration. That it all doesn't end in death is its own sort of optimism, tragically inaccurate though it was.
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Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star

Blackstar
2002 | Rawkus Entertainment

While Puff Daddy and his followers continued to dictate the direction hip-hop would take into the millennium, Mos Def and Talib Kweli surfaced from the underground to pull the sounds in the opposite direction. Their 13 rhyme fests on this superior, self-titled debut as Black Star show that old-school rap still sounds surprisingly fresh in the sea of overblown vanity productions. There's no slack evident in the tight wordplays of Def and... Kweli as they twist and turn through sparse, jazz-rooted rhythms calling out for awareness and freedom of the mind. Their viewpoints stem directly from the teachings of Marcus Garvey, the legendary activist who fought for the rights of blacks all around the world in the first half of the 20th century. Def and Kweli's ideals are sure lofty; not only are they out to preach Garvey's words, but they also hope to purge rap music of its negativity and violence. For the most part, it works. Their wisdom-first philosophy hits hard when played off their lyrical intensity, a bass-first production, and stellar scratching. While these MCs don't have all of the vocal pizzazz of A Tribe Called Quest's Phife and Q-Tip at their best, flawless tracks like the cool bop of "K.O.S. (Determination)" and "Definition" hint that Black Star is only the first of many brilliantly executed positive statements for these two street poets.
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Queens

Paid In Full

Eric B. & Rakim
2005 | ISLAND RECORDS

One of the most influential rap albums of all time, Eric B. & Rakim's Paid in Full only continues to grow in stature as the record that ushered in hip-hop's modern era. The stripped-down production might seem a little bare to modern ears, but Rakim's technique on the mic still sounds utterly contemporary, even state-of-the-art -- and that from a record released in 1987, just one year after Run-D.M.C. hit the mainstream.... Rakim basically invents modern lyrical technique over the course of Paid in Full, with his complex internal rhymes, literate imagery, velvet-smooth flow, and unpredictable, off-the-beat rhythms. The key cuts here are some of the most legendary rap singles ever released, starting with the duo's debut sides, "Eric B. Is President" and "My Melody." "I Know You Got Soul" single-handedly kicked off hip-hop's infatuation with James Brown samples, and Eric B. & Rakim topped it with the similarly inclined "I Ain't No Joke," a stunning display of lyrical virtuosity. The title cut, meanwhile, planted the seeds of hip-hop's material obsessions over a monumental beat. There are also three DJ showcases for Eric B., who like Rakim was among the technical leaders in his field. If sampling is the sincerest form of admiration in hip-hop, Paid in Full is positively worshipped. Just to name a few: Rakim's tossed-off "pump up the volume," from "I Know You Got Soul," became the basis for M/A/R/R/S' groundbreaking dance track; Eminem, a devoted Rakim student, lifted lines from "As the Rhyme Goes On" for the chorus of his own "The Way I Am"; and the percussion track of "Paid in Full" has been sampled so many times it's almost impossible to believe it had a point of origin. Paid in Full is essential listening for anyone even remotely interested in the basic musical foundations of hip-hop -- this is the form in its purest essence.
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Raising Hell

Run DMC
2005 | Arista

There's no mistaking Run-DMC's loud-and-proud staccato flows for today's crop of mumbly-even-when-they-shout rappers; if one thing dates the trio's rhymes, it's that they sound like they're having fun lobbing lines back-and-forth, rather than monomaniacally droning through gangsta clichés. (Just listen to the way Run shouts "Ronald's!" to DMC's "Those burgers are..." set-up on the 27-second personal history lesson "Son of Byford.") It's no surprise why Raising Hell became one of the first... hip-hop albums to truly break through to Middle America after a few years of post-"Rapper's Delight" woodshedding for the genre: that sense of play between the two MC's is infectious. With one of the best opening four-song runs of any old-school hip-hop album, these Hollis boys may not have expected to change pop, but they sure knew how to put their best foot forward.

That quartet is the core of Run-DMC's legacy: "Peter Piper" introduced many a non-New York resident to the sampled drum break, with its effervescent scratched-in segue from a terse, monochromatic drum machine beat to the funky, full-color bells of Bob James' "Take Me to the Mardi Gras." Future auctioneer-shaming fast-rappers may have made "It's Tricky" sound slow, but even if it's no longer the tongue-twister to beat, Russell Simmons' and Rick Rubin's cut-up of "My Sharona" makes it the funkiest, fuzziest rock-rap this side of Tone Loc's Delicious Vinyl classics. With some of Jam Master Jay's most vicious scratching and zilch in the way of ear-friendliness, "My Adidas" is one of the most counter-intuitive, and perversely catchy, examples of corporate name-dropping in rap history. And "Walk This Way," the culturally ingrained collab with a brink-of-extinction Aerosmith, is the model of raunchy, no-sell-out selling-out. Perhaps nothing, even near-numbing familiarity, can fully clean up Joe Perry's riff.

But that's only four songs out of 12. The rest of Raising Hell may lack the first quarter's immediacy, but it's a reminder that, even as one of the groups that put hip-hop over the top from a pop standpoint, Run-DMC were first-and-foremost servicing a hardcore audience of rap fiends who'd stuck with the genre through its commercially lean years. "Is It Live" is as much a percussion workout as a flow showcase, the backing track little more than an agitated duet for drums and scratching. And "Hit It Run" subsists on just a steady thwacking rhythm, frenetic beat-boxing, and more amelodic turntable interjections. What sells the album's minimalist excursions into almost pure rhythm is that aforementioned vocal enthusiasm. Like those millions of fairweather pop fans tricked into picking up Raising Hell on the basis of its MTV-monopolizing hit, the rappers 'glee sells the album as "pop" even if it resembles the modern-day version even less than 1986's crop of Billboard hitmakers.
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Illmatic

Nas
Columbia

The very first thing you hear on Illmatic is the lonely sound of a subway train rolling over the tracks and disappearing into the distance. It's followed by the faint sound of young Nasir Jones's very first on-record appearance, on Main Source's "Live at the Barbeque." The "Barbeque" verse made clear that this kid was A) excitable, and B) very eager to make an impression: before his 32 bars are over, he... has dubbed himself a "police murderer"; kidnapped the president's wife "without a plan,"; compared himself to the Ku Klux Klan; and confessed that he "went to hell for snuffing Jesus" (when he was twelve). As far as ear-grabbing first appearances go, it's pretty serious stuff, right up there with Busta Rhymes's jack-in-the-box verse on "Scenario."

But here it's just background music, prelude. Only two years have passed since "Live At the Barbeque," but from the first moments Nas's voice enters on "The Genesis," it's clear that it might as well have been a thousand. "Niggas don't listen, man," he sighs wearily while his crowing buddies count cash behind him. At 23, he had already become the oldest soul in the room, and Illmatic is a document of every single thing that soul has seen. In one long, deep breath, Nas unfolds all of 1980s New York City — "The ghetto is like a maze, full of black rats, trapped" — with himself rattling around inside, neither the hero nor the anti-hero, just the observer. Illmatic is a life's work — a life — in eleven songs, and it's no wonder Nas will never top it. It can't be topped. He can title his late-period albums as many controversial things that he wants, but Illmatic will reverberate forever beyond him, for it is a reinvention of New York rap, an unimpeachable poetic document, a timeless bildungsroman, and a source of more ill rhymes than almost all other rap albums ever recorded combined. You may recoil at gangsta rap's nihilism, it's zero-sum view of life, it's anger and darkness, but if you have any desire to know anything about hip-hop, than you must own this.
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The Infamous

Mobb Deep
1995 | RCA Records Label

An album featuring "Shook Ones Pt. II" repeated 16 times probably would have been enough to secure Mobb Deep's legend. Their signature song — one of the 1990s' signature songs — remains haunting both musically and lyrically, a collection of moments wherein the listener is awestruck by how Prodigy and Havoc wrote, arranged or said that.

Luckily, The Infamous, the diminutive Queensbridge duo's 1995 follow-up to the patchy Juvenile Hell, is one of... the greatest albums ever made. It feels as desperate, claustrophobic and exhausting as Havoc and Prodigy's rhymes, from the somber "Survival of the Fittest" or the nightmarish "Trife Life" to the depressingly upbeat "Drink Away the Pain" and the Queens anthem "Give Up the Goods." Even the carefree Crystal Johnson hook of "Temperature's Rising," their radio lunge, is neutralized by their weed-pushing lyrics and a bed of face-smack drums. It's a punishing, relentless hour of music — the sound of two kids who've grown up too fast, not wanting to forget a second of it. A personal favorite is "Right Back At You," a funeral march of a posse cut that features plucky Mobb disciple Big Noyd, Raekwon and Ghostface, back when they together ruled the food chain and took no orders, every stereo "bangin' Nas, Mobb Deep and Wu."
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4,5,6

Kool G Rap
1995 | Cold Chillin'
The Low End Theory

A Tribe Called Quest
1991 | Jive
The Best Of Organized Konfusion

Organized Konfusion
2008 | Nasty Habits Music / The Orchard
Legal Hustle

Cormega
eOne Music / Entertainment One Distribution

Manhattan

Licensed To Ill

Beastie Boys
1995 | Def Jam/RAL

Wherein being a dickhead is an asset. Adam Horowitz, Mike Diamond, and Adam Yauch — three punk-y, pissant Jewish kids from New York's Lower East Side — took rap in its nascent years and predicted the future: lying. Or, at least, kidding. Before the Beasties came along rap had certainly been fun, and clever, too, but rarely this funny. And their debut, a colossal success that eventually sold 9 million copies, bridged... a social gap with producer Rick Rubin's chest-caving classic-rock refixes that nicked Sabbath and Zeppelin and Steve Miller. Rubin's perfunctory drum programming and keen ear for mega-riffs makes these songs as pumped as ever. But it's the kids who kicked it.

What has traveled through the cycle of examination in the 20-plus years since its release, are the relative merits of cultural appropriation. When Licensed was released, many rap allegiants rejected the caustic and puerile punchlines of these three white boys. It's not hard to see why — rhyming about robbing, drinking, drugging, and girls. And the hits — particularly "Fight For Your Right" and "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" — have developed a kind of mustiness, used in one too many movies, championed by too many dunderheads. What early critics missed was the skill the Beasties brought with them. On songs like "The New Style" and fan favorite "Paul Revere," we hear three hip-hop loyalists doing their best Run DMC impression, rapping furiously, dropping their shrill voices hard on the one, and doing the mic-sharing routine as well as any of their contemporaries. That sort of lyric-writing, from line-to-line, rather than verse-to-verse is a complex process, but it sounds seamless here. And when it really sings, as on the booze-binge ode, "Brass Monkey," you can hear these nice boys completely redefining party music.
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Straight Out the Jungle

Jungle Brothers
1989 | Warlock Records

If you heard DJ Red Alert's Hot 97 radio show in the late '80s, the Jungle Brothers — MCs Afrika Baby Bam and Mike G, with DJ Sammy B — were familiar fixtures, and this record is a beautiful throwback to the so-called Golden Age.

The production on their debut, by the group, with some seasoning from Red Alert (who is, in fact, Mike G's uncle), is far from polished. And that's part... of its allure. One listen to "Braggin'and Boastin'" and it's clear that Sammy B was cutting live as Mike and Bam threw loose rhymes back and forth.

"Jimbrowski" is equally sloppy, with a Funkadelic drum sample so amplified it almost feeds back. And the mock-tender "I'm Gonna Do You" let's you know that these guys love booty, but aren't going the LL "I Need Love" route to get it. And just when you think that all the JBs are about is goofin', they hit you with one of the more important "conscious" (before the word was ever bandied about) cuts of the decade, "Black Is Black."
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No Way Out

Puff Daddy & The Family
2005 | Bad Boy Records

Before releasing his first solo album, Puff Daddy (aka Sean "Puffy" Combs) was famous as the producer of the Notorious B.I.G., Junior Mafia, Craig Mack, Lil' Kim, and many other rappers. As he was making his solo debut, the Notorious B.I.G. was murdered, and that loss weighs heavily on Puff's mind throughout No Way Out. Even though the album has some funky party jams scattered throughout, the bulk of the album is... filled with fear, sorrow, and anger, and it's not only evident on the tribute "I'll Be Missing You" (a duet with Faith Evans and 112 that is based on the Police's "Every Breath You Take") but also on gangsta anthems like "It's All About the Benjamins." That sense of loss makes No Way Out a more substantial album than most mid-'90s hip-hop releases, and even if it has flaws -- there's a bit too much filler and it runs a little long -- it is nevertheless a compelling, harrowing album that establishes Puff Daddy as a vital rapper in his own right.
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Lifestylez Ov Da Poor & Dangerous

Big L
1995 | Columbia
Best Of / 20th Century

Kurtis Blow
2003 | ISLAND MERCURY
The Message

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
Rhino
6 Feet Deep

Gravediggaz
IndieBlu Music / Entertainment One Distribution

The Bronx

By All Means Necessary

Boogie Down Productions
1988 | Jive

The murder of DJ Scott La Rock had a profound effect on KRS-One, resulting in a drastic rethinking of his on-record persona. He re-emerged the following year with By All Means Necessary, calling himself the Teacher and rapping mostly about issues facing the black community. His reality rhymes were no longer morally ambiguous, and this time when he posed on the cover with a gun, he was mimicking a photo of Malcolm... X. As a social commentator, this is arguably KRS-One's finest moment. His observations are sharp, lucid, and confident, yet he doesn't fall prey to the preachiness that would mar some of his later work, and he isn't afraid to be playful or personal. The latter is especially true on the subject of La Rock, whose memory hangs over By All Means Necessary -- not just in the frequent name-checks, but in the minimalist production and hard-hitting 808 drum beats that were his stock-in-trade on Criminal Minded. La Rock figures heavily in the album opener, "My Philosophy," which explains BDP's transition and serves as a manifesto for socially conscious hip-hop. The high point is the impassioned "Stop the Violence," a plea for peace on the hip-hop scene that still hasn't been heeded. Even as KRS-One denounces black-on-black crime, he refuses to allow the community to be stereotyped, criticizing the system that scoffs at that violence on the spoken recitation "Necessary." "Illegal Business" is a startlingly perceptive look at how the drug trade corrupts the police and government, appearing not long before the CIA's drug-running activities in the Iran-Contra Affair came to light. There are also some lighter moments in the battle-rhyme tracks, and a witty safe-sex rap in "Jimmy," a close cousin to the Jungle Brothers' "Jimbrowski." Lyrics from this album have been sampled by everyone from Prince Paul to N.W.A, and it ranks not only as KRS-One's most cohesive, fully realized statement, but a landmark of political rap that's unfairly lost in the shadow of Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions.
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Return Of The Boom Bap

KRS-One
2007 | Jive

Released in 1993, KRS-One's first official solo album opens with "KRS-One Attacks," a DJ Premier-hatched collage of the legendary rapper's most famous moments with his previous group, Boogie Down Productions. It was a bold gesture, especially for someone who had spent the previous seven years redefining the sound of hip-hop — but by the end of Return of the Boom Bap, KRS-One's old credentials no longer mattered. This was a fantastic, hard-hitting... record, its creator's preexisting legacy notwithstanding.

It was important that KRS' solo debut didn't merely feel like another B.D.P. record, and his collaboration with producers like DJ Premier, Showbiz and Kid Capri helped move him toward a new, more stripped-down style. "Outta Here" is hip-hop history in less than five minutes, as KRS runs down his autobiography over a hammering Premier beat. The blunted escapades of "I Can't Wake Up" is a rare moment of levity, while the title track is exactly what you imagine "boom bap" should sound like. The most memorable moments are shout-outs to law enforcement: the furious "Black Cop" and the still-thrilling "Sound of Da Police." Return of the Boom Bap is a milestone in two regards: while it's a bracing update of the B.D.P. sound, it's also the beginning of a wholly new legend.
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Those Other Two Islands

It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back

Public Enemy
1995 | Def Jam/RAL

There are no words too hyperbolic, no expressions too excited to describe the tectonic impact Public Enemy's second album had on the world. It is that vital and that infecting. Nominally a rap album, It Takes A Nation... is more like a sound grenade, thanks to the Bomb Squad's quadruple-stacked sampling, hypeman par excellence Flavor Flav's sonorous squeal, and leader Chuck D's stentorian flow — dependent not so much on meter, like... most rappers, but instead a kind of confident, formless roar.

"Chuck's a powerful rapper. We wanted to make something that could sonically stand up to him," The Bomb Squad's Hank Shocklee told the Daily News when the album was released. So drum maniacs Hank and his brother, Keith, along with the musical heart of P.E., Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, seized the challenge, creating songs, if you can call them that, that whinny and snarl and ping and clash, incorporating screeching saxophones, cross-cutting vocal samples, hissing teapots, hard-nosed breakbeats, and empty hallway pianos lines. It's a fast and new kind of electric blues — or, in places, a broken, discordant jazz — they stumbled upon. Chuck takes the music and uses its harshness to deliver unrepentant political jeremiads. "The follower of Farrakhan/ Don't tell me that you understand/ Until you hear the man/ The book of the new school rap game," he raps on "Don't Believe The Hype," the totemic single. Chuck's politics are confusing beyond calls for righteous Black Panther and Nation of Islam-inspired unity. But as The New York Times' Jon Pareles wrote at the time of the album's release, P.E. refracted the notion of "individualism" in rap, demanding a new "community," encouraging activism and cynicism in equal measure. Whether denouncing a rotting, rotten prison system and governmental authority on "Black Steel In The Hour of Chaos," or the locally debilitating crack epidemic on "Night Of the Living Baseheads," Chuck's fury is so persuasive, you may find yourself punching the sky during these songs without regret. It Takes A Nation... has aged remarkably well, as sonically arresting, and socially unforgiving as any album you're likely to hear. No one made being uncompromising so inspiring.
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Enter The Wu-Tang

Wu Tang Clan
1993 | RCA Records Label

Along with Dr. Dre's The Chronic, the Wu-Tang Clan's debut, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), was one of the most influential rap albums of the '90s. Its spare yet atmospheric production -- courtesy of RZA -- mapped out the sonic blueprint that countless other hardcore rappers would follow for years to come. It laid the groundwork for the rebirth of New York hip-hop in the hardcore age, paving the way for everybody... from Biggie and Jay-Z to Nas and Mobb Deep. Moreover, it introduced a colorful cast of hugely talented MCs, some of whom ranked among the best and most unique individual rappers of the decade. Some were outsized, theatrical personalities, others were cerebral storytellers and lyrical technicians, but each had his own distinctive style, which made for an album of tremendous variety and consistency. Every track on Enter the Wu-Tang is packed with fresh, inventive rhymes, which are filled with martial arts metaphors, pop culture references (everything from Voltron to Lucky Charms cereal commercials to Barbra Streisand's "The Way We Were"), bizarre threats of violence, and a truly twisted sense of humor. Their off-kilter menace is really brought to life, however, by the eerie, lo-fi production, which helped bring the raw sound of the underground into mainstream hip-hop. Starting with a foundation of hard, gritty beats and dialogue samples from kung fu movies, RZA kept things minimalistic, but added just enough minor-key piano, strings, or muted horns to create a background ambience that works like the soundtrack to a surreal nightmare. There was nothing like it in the hip-hop world at the time, and even after years of imitation, Enter the Wu-Tang still sounds fresh and original. Subsequent group and solo projects would refine and deepen this template, but collectively, the Wu have never been quite this tight again.
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Strictly Business

EPMD
2010 | SNOOP DOGG CATALOG
Supreme Clientele

Ghostface Killah
2000 | Epic/Razor Sharp Records
Wu-Tang Forever (Explicit)

Wu Tang Clan
2007 | LOUD Records

Discover: Labels We Love 2012

eMusic Editorial Staff — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 14:22:47 +0000

If there’s one characteristic that binds all of the labels we’ve grouped together here, it’s that all of them operate with complete indifference to the boundaries of genre. None of them are simply a “rock label” or an “electronic label.” Instead, the bands on their rosters cherry-pick from across the entire musical encyclopedia, combining formerly isolated ideas and sounds to create entire new worlds of song. These are the labels we loved in 2012.

Carpark & Acute

Who They Are: Based in Washington D.C., Carpark and its sublabel, Acute, was founded by Todd Hyman in 1999 and has remained defiantly left-of-the-dial ever since.

What to Expect: Free-roaming and obstinate indie rock that nods toward the past – Cloud Nothings contain a few well-chosen shards of ’90s emo, TEEN gently references the more ethereal end of late ’80s post-punk – while still maintaining a distinct musical voice.

Attack On Memory

Cloud Nothings
2012 | Carpark Records

For the last few years, 20-year-old Cleveland native Dylan Baldi has been recording a steady torrent of endearing lo-fi pop contagions. Released under the name Cloud Nothings, Baldi's songs are so simply constructed, so innately hooky, they almost sound easy: His 2010 compilation Turning On was a happy murk of lint-covered guitars, three-floors-below drums, and vocals so crackly, they could have been sampled off a ham-radio. Last year's self-titled follow-up was crisper... and snappier, bounding along with the sort of energy of school kids finally released into the wilds of summertime.

Baldi could easily have replicated that joyful noise sound for a few more albums, and no one would really have objected. Thankfully, though, he got bored. And bold. And kinda angry. Attack on Memory contains a lot of recognizable Cloud Nothings DNA - speedy riffs, forebrain-hugging melodies - but it grafts them onto a monstrous-sounding framework, courtesy of engineer Steve Albini. On Memory, Baldi's ostensibly straightforward power-pop numbers are stretched out and bulked up so efficiently, it feels like he somehow jumped three records ahead in less than year.

In fact, Memory veers so forcefully from its predecessors that, at first listen, it's a bit jarring: The opening track, "No Future No Past," is a slow-burn grind of spangled, in-utero guitars and tortured vocals, with Baldi intoning the words "give up/ come to/ no hope/ we're through" so harshly, it sounds as though his larynx is going to flip him off and jump out of his throat. Even more adventurous is "Wasted Days," a nine-minute(!) peal with a lithe, lupine guitar break that sounds like Greg Sage conducting Hawkwind.

Baldi hasn't given up on the quick-fix pop song, as evidenced by short, piercing numbers like "Fall In" and "Our Plan." But even those tracks feel mega, emboldened by Jayson Gerycz's battering-ram drums and Baldi's squeezed-dry vocals (by the time the album finishes, you're surprised he's able to get a word out at all). Those who've followed Cloud Nothings thus far will be happily walloped by Memory, yet even newcomers will find it a blast, in every sense of the word.
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June 2009

Toro Y Moi
2012 | Carpark Records
Explore EP

GRMLN
2012 | Carpark Records

In Limbo

TEEN
2012 | Carpark Records

Kristina "Teeny" Lieberson used to play keyboard for Brooklyn indie rockers Here We Go Magic, and while her own dreamy electro-psych sister act relies on slightly different ingredients, the results can be similarly spellbinding. TEEN's 2011 digital-only EP Little Doods leaned toward narcotic lo-fi jangle that recalled Mazzy Star. Mixed and produced by Spacemen 3's Sonic Boom, and engineered by Here We Go Magic's Jen Turner, full-length debut In Limbo is a... brainy, immersive and often-intriguing blend of pulsing krautrock drone and bouncy Phil Spector harmonies. The 11-track set has its share of reverby retro-pop gems, whether confidently thrumming "Better," lovesick space-prom waltz "Charlie" or insistent, surf-flecked "Electric." Elsewhere, on tracks like free-flowing synth workout "Unable" or crunching, Beta Band-skewed "Why Why Why," TEEN sprawls out to suit the youth-appropriate album title. Either way, In Limbo is an alluring, sometimes-enchanting stroll along the blurry line between hooks and incantations.
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Melt

Young Magic
2012 | Carpark Records
Music For Neighbors

Trypes
2012 | Acute Records

Hippos in Tanks

Who They Are: Nicking their name from a novel by William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, this L.A. label is known for their similarly stream-of-consciousness approach to electronic music.

What to Expect: At a time when the acronym EDM is doubled over with exhaustion, Hippos in Tanks represents everything the genre can be at its best. There’s an eeriness and otherworldliness to their albums – every last one – that the genre’s more popular practitioners woefully lack.

The Narcissist II

Dean Blunt
2012 | Hippos In Tanks / World Music / Redeye

Sushi

James Ferraro
2012 | Hippos In Tanks / Redeye

On 2011's Far Side Virtual, James Ferraro specialized in gleaming surfaces: Bright tunes played on ultra-bright neo '80s synths, festooned with FX that alluded to the sonic detritus of digital life (the squeal-pop that announces you've logged onto Skype, for instance, which ends Far Side's title cut). Sushi sounds more deliberately broken, like a cross between Machinedrum's Room(s) and old Prefuse 73 – arrangements that halt and stammer a la Chicago juke... ("Playin Ya Self"), crumple up old house music ("Baby Mitsubishi"), and push hip-hop through a crisply fluttering laptop sieve ("Jet Skis & Sushi"). Ferraro initially planned on calling this album Rainstick Fizz Plus, then Shoop2DaDoop – jokey names that get to the geeked-out party spirit embodied by the likes of "SO N2U" (clap-happy and funky, a la Si Begg's late-'90s Buckfunk 3000 releases) and the sideways skank of "Flamboyant." It's silly, of course – but it moves anyway.
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HoZac

Who They Are: Todd Novak’s Chicago-based label that also hosts the raucous and aptly-named HoZac Blackout festival every year.

What to Expect: 50 million tons of melody, delivered at the highest possible volume. HoZac’s roster likes it loud – they specialize in garage and amped-up power pop – but there’s always an infectious hook lurking beneath the din, waiting to burrow deep into your brainspace.

Radar Eyes

Radar Eyes
2012 | Hozac / Revolver

Don't call it just another garage-punk offering; HoZac's been doing that for years. On Radar Eyes' self-titled debut LP, the Chicagofoursome offers a pop-centric affair, all layered, fuzzy guitars and hook-laden vocals. The driving, forward momentum of "Accident" and the shit-kicking guitars of "Summer Chills" front like these Windy City residents wanna fight, but it's their pretty melodic sensibilities that encourage repeated listens. "Prairie Puppies" is an unabashed Jesus and Mary Chain... hat-tip, "I Am" attempts to hide its candy-shop leanings underneath an impenetrable wall of feedback, and songs like "Secrets" and "Disconnection," with big bass, heavenly organs and druggy atmospherics, suggest they may be the spiritual brethren of the Black Lips. The entire affair ends with the spooky, Suicide-esque "Side of the Road," reaffirming that Radar Eyes are just as effective students of rock as they are practitioners.
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Mello Music

Who They Are: Alarmingly consistent – their 2012 docket of releases contained exactly zero misses – this Arizona hip-hop label ably carries on the tradition of major label genre pioneers like Tribe Called Quest and Black Star.

What to Expect: Expertly-crafted, consistently thoughtful hip-hop that puts an emphasis on deft wordplay, usually over beats that recall the genre’s Golden Age. It’s to their great credit that their releases never once sound dated or self-consciously retro. They’re sharp, sturdy and surprising, every single time.

As Himself

Stik Figa
2012 | Mello Music Group / The Orchard

For hip-hop fans who value authenticity, Stik Figa is as real as it gets — it's just that for him, reality is an ordinary-dude life in Topeka, defined by pragmatic goals and modest honesty. Originally locally-released in 2009 and picked up for wider distribution after some productive collaborations with Oddisee, the fittingly titled As Himself is a short but comprehensive introduction to an engaging, hard-working everyman MC. With an easygoing voice that... glides through finely detailed, scenario-setting lyrics, he finds insightful personal angles on daily-grind things — the elusiveness of aspirational materialism ("Flaudgin"), the community-anchoring nature of the local mom-and-pop shop ("Corner Store"), growing up self-aware of his childhood awkwardness ("Class of 2000") — while still coming correct on big-picture material like the Aaron Neville-invoking Great Recession study "Medicine." Producer Michael "Seven" Summers bolsters the album with sinuous funk that splits the difference between box-Chevy South and Rhymesayers-style Midwest, making an unpretentiously perceptive rapper sound even more down-to-earth.
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Profound Lore

Who They Are: This Canadian label may have started as a hobby for its founder Chris Bruni, but its profile elevated rapidly in the notoriously discriminating metal scene.

What to Expect: The most challenging, forward-thinking and inventive metal around. The bands on Profound Lore typically roam far outside hard rock’s usual boundaries, incorporating doomy ambience and oblong song structures into their infernal albums.

New Amsterdam

Who They Are: Brooklyn-based label specializing in populating the gap between “indie” and “classical”

What to Expect: Depending on the release, you might get wry, witty chamber pop; avant-garde a cappella; steampunk big-band jazz; a conservatory student’s take on ’70s AM radio, or something even more delightfully weird.

Roomful of Teeth

Roomful of Teeth
New Amsterdam

Unless you have already seen and heard Roomful of Teeth live, there is little to prepare you for the effect of this avant-garde a cappella octet from New York. Well, actually, there's a lot to prepare you – if you've heard, say, the chanting of Tibetan Buddhist monks, and Bobby McFerrin's Circlesong improvisations, and John Cage's Songbook, and the Swingle Singers – and, let's say, pygmy yodeling and Meredith Monk – then... you're good to go. Roomful of Teeth creates a richly-textured sound that uses a seemingly endless palette of vocal techniques: overtone chant, rhythmic clicks and buzzes, luminous chords and piercing Balkan-style close harmonies, drones, and spoken word (usually to found texts). In the wrong hands, this kind of thing could be dangerous, but Roomful of Teeth has fallen in with the right crowd.

Released by New Amsterdam Records, which has become a home for the so-called indie-classical movement, the group's debut release includes new works written specifically for the band by some of that movement's leading lights, including composers Judd Greenstein, William Brittelle, Sarah Kirkland Snider and indie rocker Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs. With such a distinguished list of guest composers, it might be a little surprising to find that some of the record's highlights come from the group's own Caroline Shaw, whose suite of pieces named after Baroque dance forms (Passacaglia, Courante, Allemande and Sarabande) is a tour de force of vocal mischief-making, with collage-style spoken texts woven into a web of singing, semi-singing, and other less easily identified vocal noises. Again, in the wrong hands it would be a mess, but Roomful of Teeth is never less than completely musical, even lyrical.

Snider's "Orchard" is sensuous and beautiful, and possibly a little darker than it seems at first. Greenstein's works are the most reliably rhythmic and will appeal to fans of Meredith Monk; this particular Meredith Monk fan thinks "Montmartre" might be the best of the three. And Brittelle's "Amid the Minotaurs," on the surface one of the most conventionally-structured pieces here, is a truly subversive piece of anti-pop.
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Victoire: Cathedral City

Victoire
New Amsterdam

You know that numb, nagging feeling at the base of your brain when you're awake at 4 a.m., watching the ceiling cracks start to swarm in front of you? Victoire's hesitant, haunted instrumental miniatures are that feeling made manifest. Comprised of five women from the NYC contemporary classical scene, Victoire first came to our attention in 2008. eMusic released their moody, inscrutable four-song EP A Door Into the Dark on eMusic Selects.... The evocative title perfectly matched the music contained within — the four pieces were a chill of creeping unease, the breath of cold air from behind the cracked-open basement door. The four songs lasted a total of 20 minutes, but they lingered like a premonition.

The move from A Door Into the Dark to their full-length debut is summed up, again, in the title — Cathedral City is a bold step from dank, cramped beginnings into real space. The four songs on A Door Into the Dark are here, but they have been re-recorded, and in the process, have acquired a whole new bottom floor. The music now resounds startling in all directions. The MIDI keyboard that wells up in "Like A Miracle" now sounds less like a glitch in the drum programming software than an all-devouring monster run amuck. There is a new note of bassy menace in Lorna Krier's glittering electronics as well; "I Am Coming for My Things," the gorgeously lonely and unresolved meditation on an achingly sad voice mail, has a new seismic rumble beneath it.

There are four new pieces on the album as well, and they flesh out the band's morbid, anxious vision. Missy Mazzoli, the composer and musical engine behind the band, loves staircase chord progressions — most of these pieces are built on a four-chord descent with a few unexpected detours built in. They are poised on the trap-door hinge between major and minor, with melodies that probe their way hesitantly from bar to bar, the clarinet often floating free while the violin and keyboards circle warily. The sunburst of unison vocals on the title track offers the lone shaft of light, lifting the album uncertainly, and fitfully, toward a kind of transcendence. But soon the mood sours again; Mazzoli's music never settles. Painting the funk of a cloudy head-state with a virtuoso palette of blacks and greys, Victoire suggest volumes of unspoken emotion before gliding away.
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Spears: Requiem

Gregory Spears
New Amsterdam
Penelope

Shara Worden
New Amsterdam

Song from the Uproar (The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt)

Missy Mazzoli
New Amsterdam

Young Brooklyn composer Missy Mazzoli's exhilarating and ultimately heartbreaking Song from the Uproar contains traditional operatic elements – among them, romance, tragedy and cross-dressing. However, the story of the real-life Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904), who traveled nomadically through the mountains and deserts of North Africa dressed as a man, converted to Islam, and joined a secret Sufi brotherhood to struggle against French colonialism before perishing in a flash flood, strains against the bounds... of belief. Does this tale demand three tidily arcing acts or a thousand and one nights?

Mazzoli's solution is to concentrate on the heaviest emotional moments of Eberhardt's journey in 15 songs linked by electronic sounds. Performed by the five-member Now Ensemble (clarinet, bass, electric guitar, piano, flute), four singers and the splendid mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer as Eberhardt, Uproar splits the difference between opera and alt-rock. (Mazzoli's all-female modern classical ensemble Victoire was a 2008 eMusic Selects pick.) Melodic and other epiphanies bubble up unexpectedly and dramatically from Mazzoli's personal minimalist palette. These include the birdlike flute song of delight in "I Have Arrived," the heady instrumental color wheel of "Oblivion Seekers," and perhaps the opera's real tragic climax, the two-part "Mektoub (It Is Written)," a lacerating threnody in which Eberhardt mourns the betrayal of her Algerian lover, singing "How quickly love evaporates / Leaving me a desert." Not so much opera as distillation, Mazzoli's version of Eberhardt's short, memorable life is a marvel of compact complexity itself.
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the rain is a handsome animal (17 songs from the poetry of e.e.cummings)

Tin Hat
New Amsterdam

Tin Hat, formerly the Tin Hat Trio, is a quartet here, but this remarkable album has a fifth collaborator: the poet e. e. cummings. The Rain Is A Handsome Animal is a song cycle comprised of settings of cummings's poetry by all four members of the group (there are also three instrumental settings), and features the earthy, distinctive voice of the group's founding violinist, Carla Kihlstedt. Like all Tin Hat albums, this... one offers a contemporary acoustic take on Americana, chamber music and jazz. And while their previous albums have included one or two vocal tracks, with guests like Tom Waits and Willie Nelson, this is the first one to make Kihlstedt's vocals the center of attention.

The choice of cummings is a natural one for Tin Hat; the American poet held the classical forms of poetry in high regard, but not so high that he neglected the sounds and rhythms of vernacular American English, and the blues. For the musicians in Tin Hat, which includes Mark Orton on guitar and dobro; Ben Goldberg, clarinet; and Rob Reich on accordion and piano, cummings must have seemed a kindred spirit. Elegantly woven through a fabric of typically quirky instrumentation, those texts lead the quartet in several directions. "anyone lived in a pretty how town" is the most clearly rooted in traditional American music, with the poem's bluesy/folksy quality echoed in Rob Reich's setting. "Buffalo Bill," an elegiac text by cummings, is perhaps the most poignant, culminating in an emotional, if ambiguous, brass choir. "little i," a Kihlstedt setting, features the silvery tone of her e-string violin (a fiddle with four high, thin e-strings that suggests the sound of the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle) and some of her most appropriately tremulous singing.
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eMusic’s Best Albums of 2012

eMusic Editorial Staff — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:59:34 +0000

Every year, when eMusic’s editorial staff compiles our annual best-of list, the goal is never to come to some kind of academic determination of the year’s best records via a series of complicated formulas and criteria. To do so would be as maddening as it is impossible. I’ve been thinking a lot about the way our list comes together over the course of the last few weeks and I think, above all else, what we try to do with this list is to tell a story — to represent the music that mattered most to us at eMusic in an almost narrative form. We don’t really give much consideration to which albums may or may not make other people’s lists. We don’t care a whole lot about which albums were popular or unpopular, or which albums may or may not have resonance 10 or 20 or 30 years from now. And we certainly don’t care about which albums sold the most. Instead, we try to collect the albums that impacted us the most, with the belief that these are the albums that will impact other people, too. If an album is on this list, it means we love it and we endorse it, and we think you’ll love it, too. And if it made our Top 20? We consider it essential. These are our picks for the 100 Best Records of 2012. — J. Edward Keyes, Editor-in-Chief

#100 Gentleman Jesse, Leaving Atlanta

Leaving Atlanta

Gentleman Jesse
2012 | Douchemaster / Revolver

"No turning back, I gotta get out of town," Jesse Smith sings on Leaving Atlanta's "What Did I Do." Four years in the making,Atlanta power-pop king Gentleman Jesse's sophomore album was inspired by a series of wildly unfortunate events in his life. The album is dedicated to friends he lost to cancer (ATL punk staple Bobby Ubangi) and drugs (Jay Reatard), and in the time between his debut full-length and this one,... Smith had his nose broken in a violent mugging, the result of which graces the cover of his 2010 HoZac single. For a time, it seemed like the only away Smith could get away from the drama would be to flee the city.

But, as he told ATL alt-weekly Creative Loafing in a recent interview, "Atlanta is like an abusive lover that you can't leave." And even on opener "Eat Me Alive," one of the album's strongest statements musically or otherwise, Smith sings that "this city's trying to eat me alive," but tempers the statement instantly with the follow-up, "it's as good a place as any to try to survive." A handful of Leaving Atlanta's tracks reinforce the album title's thematic leaning, but there are also songs of triumph ("Rooting for the Underdog"), and lost love ("You Give Me Shivers," the fantastic "I'm Only Lonely [When I'm Around You)]") mixed in throughout.

While the years may have been rough on Smith, they've been kind to his songwriting. As he's admitted frequently, the former Carbona rarely emphasizes lyrics, instead focusing on titanic melodies and infectious guitar licks. And yet, Leaving Atlanta boasts several inspired lines. Milton Hammond's organ parts flesh out the arrangements, and three-part harmonies delight. There are several distinctly Springsteenian moments, too, and these, along with an utterly dark tale of a killer on the run ("What Did I Do"), show that Smith is not content to be "The Power-Pop Guy" forever. Much like his self-titled debut, Leaving Atlanta concludes with a quintessential closer, this one called "We Got to Get Out of Here." As the groove-locked tune barrels along, it becomes clear that the "here" in question could be referring to a negative mindset as much as a locale.

"I know you're feeling kind of uptight/ but you should come out with me tonight," Smith sings on "Kind of Uptight." Is he talking to a girl? Maybe, but it could just as easily be a self pep talk to and from a guy who needs to break free of the drudgery of a city turned against him. After all, you can give up on a situation when things get difficult, but it takes real character to push forward and find the bright spots, even if they're obscured by all manner of death and nastiness. Or to take on an optimistic attitude, as Smith sings in the very same song: "Everything will be all right/ So, come on, and take my hand tonight."
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#99 ERAAS, ERAAS

Eraas

ERAAS
2012 | felte / The Orchard

Like urban explorers, Brooklyn post-rock duo ERAAS haunt the gloomy husks of krautrock, darkwave, industrial and dreampop, finding pulsing life within them. Their dark and beat-driven self-titled debut draws on well-established subgenres, but feels utterly new: The immaculate production, full of audible space and teeming with intricate layers, is part of the reason, but most of it is due to the duo's keen command of their style. The result is a clean... draught of weird beauty.

The vocals are mostly blurred or submerged, but the rhythmic music itself gibbers and groans volubly, intimating all kinds of fearful and wonderful things. Each track combines the sensuous with the spiritual and the highbrow with the underground in some fresh way: Some tracks, like "Crescent," toy with dissonance and subtle tonal tension, yet go silky across the ears. Others, like "At Heart," ride quasi-house beats and post-punk bass lines while somehow evoking sepulchral stillness. It's so varied that listening can feel like they're scanning through netherworld radio stations. Ghastly drones resolve into haunted new-wave hooks. Horror-film score movements give way smoothly to tribal folktronica. And it's all relentlessly pretty and surprising, beguiling expectations at every turn. The musical ideas are complex and abundant but never tedious, so it's a visitation as satisfying as it is eerie.
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#98 Pop Zeus, Pop Zeus

#97 Maria Minerva, Will Happiness Find Me?

Will Happiness Find Me?

Maria Minerva
2012 | Not Not Fun / Revolver

"I hate the idea of 'gigs,'" Maria Minerva told eMusic earlier this year. "It's boring! When I go out, I just want somebody to DJ from about 10 to 6." Maybe that's why Minerva's second proper LP unfolds like a break-of-dawn set from one of her crate-digging 100% Silk compatriots. Caught in a K-hole where disco balls spin in time to handclaps, rubberized bass lines and glitter-dusted beats, it's woozy and... weightless — dance music meant for actual moon walking.
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#96 Fresh & Onlys, Long Slow Dance

Long Slow Dance

The Fresh & Onlys
2012 | Mexican Summer

By virtue of their hometown (San Francisco) and the labels they've worked with (In the Red, Captured Tracks, Sacred Bones, and now, Mexican Summer), The Fresh & Onlys are often grouped with shaggy-haired maniacs such as Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees. In reality, their gorgeous, glassy-eyed pop is more in line with The Shins, or, to use an era-appropriate comparison for the Nuggets-inclined set, the Zombies. The noisier, feedback-drenched reference points... made a little more sense when the band was just getting started, but with each subsequent release, The Fresh & Onlys have refined their tunes, trading lo-fi riffs for jangling strums, garage rhythms for elegant, choral-enhanced accompaniment. What once could've served as the soundtrack for a Vice-funded documentary now sounds appropriate for starring placement in a Wes Anderson flick, and we mean that in the best possible sense.

Long Slow Dance feels like a young band discovering their true calling. The title track meditates on finding true love alongside an acceptance that nobody's perfect. "Presence of Mind" grapples with precisely that, trying to attain it amidst a world of lies and disappointment. Multiple tracks feature a protagonist longing to unshackle himself from foolishness, sometimes over clean, dramatic guitars, other times backed by horn sections seemingly borrowed from an epic Calexico jam. The whole thing feels like a coming-out party for a band that's been leaning toward its destined path all along. Perhaps the finest distillation of this weight-off-the-shoulders thesis comes in "20 Days and 20 Nights," when frontman Tim Cohen sings, "Something so heavy in my mind/ I think I wanna try and let it out." Feels good, doesn't it?
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#95 John Talabot, Fin

Fin

John Talabot
2012 | Permanent Vacation / GoodToGo

John Talabot's Fin opens with a quiet halo of evocative nighttime sounds – owls, crickets, croaking frogs. It evokes a David Attenborough-narrated nature film, and is definitely not the intro one might expect from a house DJ based in Barcelona, let alone a guy who grabbed so many ears with a song called "Sunshine." The mist-filled seven-minute song that emerges from this dark bog, called "Depak Ine," an inscrutable reference to the... seizure medication Depakote, gathers force like a nagging doubt, accruing melodic force and rhythmic layering as it goes.

It is the first of the 11 consecutive welcome surprises that comprise Fin, a record that quietly upends whatever narrative expectations you assign to it at every turn. If you heard the first single, the fleetly throbbing "Destiny," and expected a record full of moody Depeche Mode-aping synth pop, you will hit a big red Stop sign the second the following track, a motionless, melted pool of sound called "El Oeste," begins. I have listened to it 30 times or more so far this year already, and my memory still hasn't quite nailed down the track listing's pretzel logic – always a good sign.
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#94 Laurel Halo, Quarantine

Quarantine

Laurel Halo
2012 | Hyperdub / The Orchard

There's something wonderfully unsettling about Laurel Halo's debut full-length Quarantine. A beat-less electronic album, its 12 tracks bleed into one another, creating a kind of woozy, ambient cloud cover. Hints of pop periodically break through; "Holoday," in particular, feels like the receding echo of dance music past. But ultimately, song structure is bypassed in favor of a sense of ghostly possibility that echoes both early Dntel and classical composer Steve... Reich.

Halo coaxes a stark beauty out of her cascading ones and zeros, and Quarantine's tension and character stem from Halo's juxtaposition of moments of disquieting minimalism with her all-too-human voice. Prime example: "Thaw," which begins with a sentimental synth refrain that's paired with Halo's Nico-like warble — hesitations, missed notes and all. She loops her vocals on "Years" to create a breathy choir, but for most of the record they're left unadorned, sitting naked at the front of the mix, the masterpiece-defining chip in an otherwise elegant sculpture. Halo's is a world of supernatural unease, splitting the difference between the ethereal and the haunted.
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#93 Jimmy Cliff, Rebirth

Rebirth

Jimmy Cliff
2012 | Jimmy Cliff - Rebirth

In 1972, Jimmy Cliff's performance in The Harder They Come introduced U.S. filmgoers to the vibrant desperation ofKingston life, and his inspirational yet tough-minded songs highlighted the movie's soundtrack. Already an established hitmaker at the time, Cliff seemed poised to become Jamaica's first international superstar. Instead he misjudged American audiences, pitching vague homilies and pop professionalism to the AM crowd, allowing Bob Marley to leapfrog past him by assuming a prophetic mantle... and exciting hip FM rockers with his political defiance.

On Rebirth, Cliff now eyes a more judicious audience: middle-aged rockers weaned on punk and alternative. Shepherded by his producer, Rancid frontman Tim Armstrong, the 64-year-old rides the lithe throwback grooves of reggae revivalists the Aggrolites and Hepcat with a young man's grace, particularly on two smartly chosen covers — the Clash's "The Guns of Brixton," which transplanted Cliff's character from The Harder They Come into a London slum, and Rancid's "Ruby Soho." ("Rebel, Rebel" is good too, but it's not the Bowie tune.) Cliff's political complaints haven't grown much more specific — "World Upside Down" cries out against "Too much injustice," then proposes "love" as the answer. But his exhortations not only retain the warmth and humane spirit of old but have gained depths of pained sympathy with age, especially when he laments how "They took the children's bread/ And gave it to the dogs."
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#92 Pilgrim, Misery Wizard

Misery Wizard

Pilgrim
2012 | Metal Blade Records / The Orchard

The debut full-length by Rhode Island's Pilgrim may be one of the most heralded doom-metal albums of the year (along with Pallbearer's Sorrow and Extinction), but the members of Pilgrim are completely uninterested in the recent rise of hipster doom, which is probably why Misery Wizard sounds so authentically effective. Pilgrim's apocalyptic tones are generated from piles of Lovecraft, some powerful weed and intensive study of the giants of the first two... generations of sludge, Black Sabbath, Pentagram, Trouble Saint Vitus, Sleep and Electric Wizard. By never breaking above a bloody-kneed crawl (with the exception of the mid-paced "Adventurer"), Pilgrim's lengthy, down-tuned songs maintain a genuine sense of despair and enough rhythmic variation to keep them captivating and transcend the artificial bleakness of many of their peers. When vocalist The Wizard emotes the melodic lines, "In solitude I lie alone/ In the void, a sweet release/ In darkness I can feel at peace" he sounds like he's not play acting, he's crying for catharsis, or at least some good SSRIs. But as the title implies, The Wizard's misery is our gain. Just don't let him near any sharp objects.
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#91 Alice Russell & Quantic, Look Around the Corner

Look Around the Corner (with The Combo Barbaro)

Quantic & Alice Russell
2012 | TRU THOUGHTS LTD

A band manager of my acquaintance used to regularly warn his acts against "flutes and bongos." And he was mostly right. When modern musicians — especially British musicians — start affecting the signifiers of conscious 1970s soul and jazz, it tends to be just that: affectation. Even Tru Thoughts, one of the finest jazz/funk/hip-hop labels in the U.K., has had its misfires on this front, bands and records that may brim over... with virtuosity and good vibes, but fail to match to the heart, guts and, well, soul of their inspirations.

In fact, even Will "Quantic" Holland, Tru Thoughts's star producer/bandleader, has veered into pastiche in the past. Not here, though; not by a long chalk, even though flutes and bongos abound. Alice Russell has previously voiced many of Quantic's finest moments in England, and in these sessions recorded in Holland's adopted home of Cali, Colombia, over a couple of visits by Russell between 2007 and 2011, it's clear that absence had made the heart grow even fonder.

Russell's voice remains formidable, but it's her song-writing that comprises the core of this record. The arrangements and production meticulously recreate the feel of Minnie Ripperton and Rotary Connection, or vintage Colombian cumbia, but they are backdrops for the songs with a life all their own, rather than knowing retro nods. There are great stylistic twists, too: "Boogaloo 33" reminds us just how much mambo there was in classic rock 'n' roll, and the opener "Look Around the Corner" delivers the same liquid-sunshine string arrangements and grooves of Nuyorican soul. Through all of this, Russell is Quantic's anchor, singing with her characteristic blend of toughness and smoothness, and investing these impeccably written songs with emotional life.
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#90 Donny McCaslin, Casting for Gravity

Casting For Gravity

Donny McCaslin
2012 | eOne Music / Entertainment One Distribution

Donny McCaslin has long seemed a prime candidate to update and upgrade fusion jazz-rock. Since as far back as Seen From Above in 2000, his tenor saxophone style has been fueled by a rambunctious lyricism that isn't afraid to leave skid marks on his phrases. By "Rock Me," off Declaration in 2009, he'd discovered a fertile and yet phosphorous crossroads between prog-rock and hard bop, and a year later ... href="http://www.emusic.com/album/donny-mccaslin/perpetual-motion/12340045/">fattened the mix by adding electric bassist Tim Lefebvre.

But Casting For Gravity represents McCaslin's most dogged effort thus far to redefine fusion. Lefebvre is back, paired with powerhouse drummer Mark Guiliana for a potent yet still ruggedly jazz-centric rhythm section, the backbone of the quartet. Versatile keyboardist Jason Lindner occasionally steps out for a spirited solo, but is more influential in helping to determine the texture and in setting and coloring the mood. Along with producer David Binney, a longtime McCaslin ally who also sparingly adds synthesizer, they provide McCaslin with the ability to create grand gestures. There are stop-and-go grooves that escalate in intensity and fall back on themselves in dramatic tension-and-release; tonal layers that morph from liquid silk to electric sizzle and evaporate; rhythmic struts containing melodic swagger and impulsive outbursts.

There are also ambient, gossamer shadings and trip-hoppy segments and songs (most obviously on the title track, "Love Song for an Echo" and "Alpha and Omega") to which McCaslin credits Richard D. James of Aphex Twin as his inspiration. While they impressively broaden the bouquet, the bolder, burning tracks like "Tension," Binney's "Praia Grande" and the shifting, suite-like "Losing Track of Daytime" feel more impressive for blending the brutish revelry of rock with the harmonic complexity and gymnastic improvisation of jazz. Or, put more simply, "blazing a trail."
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#89 Hundred Waters, Hundred Waters

Hundred Waters

Hundred Waters
OWSLA

Gainesville, Florida-based avant-folk outfit Hundred Waters defy easy definitions on their beguiling, absorbing and richly detailed debut album. They've toured with Skrillex and recorded for his OWSLA label, and Hundred Waters has an expensive-sounding attention to production value. But it's cheap to sound expensive these days, and singer-percussionist Samantha Moss's fleetly wandering vocals here, swathed in sinuous electronics, have more in common with those of Björk, Bat for Lashes or another recent... tourmate, Julia Holter. Or a smokier-voiced Joanna Newsom: The twinkling synth tones and winding harmonies of "Boreal" belie a heroic narrative that lets its freak-folk flag. Hundred Waters run deep.
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#88 Peaking Lights, Lucifer

Lucifer

Peaking Lights
2012 | Mexican Summer

Peaking Lights — husband-and-wife duo Aaron Doyes and Indra Dunis — make distinctly modern music of understated joy and optimism. The pair, clearly both avid crate diggers and knob twiddlers, refract their love of Krautrock, dub and analog synth music into an enthusiastically lo-fi jumble. Listening to Lucifer, where Doyes and Dunis irreverently tinker with, poke and prod these influences, can feel like peering down into the basement of a record store... through a kaleidoscope. It's an album of guts-out experimentation tamed into something intimate and sweet.

The duo have said Lucifer is largely about "play and playfulness" and it's hard to disagree. "Beautiful Son," a lilting ballad about, you guessed it, the couple's new son, is a gently warped groove of electronic pulses buoyed by a spare piano melody and Dunis's simple and tender vocal. On "LO HI," baby Mikko can be heard cooing over a shuffling reggae interlude. Talk about playful. Elsewhere, Lucifer teems with sportive sounds — the bubbly romp of a bass line on the frolicking "Live Love" and the addictive, gurgling groove of "Dream Beat" stretch out nearly seven minutes each and set the rollicking tone.

Despite the seemingly weighty recipe of obscure influences and tangled electronics, at the heart of Lucifer is a fun, hallucinatory, rampant spirit. It's evident the album was a joy to create and, appropriately, it's a contagious and joyous listen.
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#87 PAWS, Cokefloat!

Cokefloat!

PAWS
2012 | FatCat Records / The Orchard

"She wasn't only just my mother," Phillip Taylor slurs over rickety, distorted guitar in the opening seconds of PAWS' Cokefloat!, continuing, "She was my friend, a good friend." As an introduction to the Glasgow trio's rowdily impressive debut album, it could hardly be more fitting, showing off both the band's throwback slacker-rock style and Taylor's blunt, decidedly un-macho lyrics. But on this 13-track, 42-minute set, what separates PAWS from so many other... garage-bound pop-punks printing out Pavement and Sonic Youth guitar tabs is how expertly – and emotively – they assail a relatively wide range of song types. "Sore Tummy" and "Miss American Bookworm" put bubblegum melodies beneath heavily scuzzed noise-pop and throat-rending screams, like early Foo Fighters but more awkward and relatable. While "Get Bent" comes across as a post-Girls acoustic kiss-off to a distant father, the stylishly chiming "Pony" steps back to critique parent-funded underground scenesters. Best of all is mid-tempo anthem "Homecoming," which begins as a bully-baiting comeuppance but morphs into a self-actualizing mission statement recalling recent European tour-mates Japandroids: "Thanks for the punches of encouragement/ I've turned my world into sing-alongs." Shout-alongs, even – punchdrunk and easy to love.
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#86 Roomful of Teeth, Roomful of Teeth

Roomful of Teeth

Roomful of Teeth
New Amsterdam

Unless you have already seen and heard Roomful of Teeth live, there is little to prepare you for the effect of this avant-garde a cappella octet from New York. Well, actually, there's a lot to prepare you – if you've heard, say, the chanting of Tibetan Buddhist monks, and Bobby McFerrin's Circlesong improvisations, and John Cage's Songbook, and the Swingle Singers – and, let's say, pygmy yodeling and Meredith Monk – then... you're good to go. Roomful of Teeth creates a richly-textured sound that uses a seemingly endless palette of vocal techniques: overtone chant, rhythmic clicks and buzzes, luminous chords and piercing Balkan-style close harmonies, drones, and spoken word (usually to found texts). In the wrong hands, this kind of thing could be dangerous, but Roomful of Teeth has fallen in with the right crowd.

Released by New Amsterdam Records, which has become a home for the so-called indie-classical movement, the group's debut release includes new works written specifically for the band by some of that movement's leading lights, including composers Judd Greenstein, William Brittelle, Sarah Kirkland Snider and indie rocker Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs. With such a distinguished list of guest composers, it might be a little surprising to find that some of the record's highlights come from the group's own Caroline Shaw, whose suite of pieces named after Baroque dance forms (Passacaglia, Courante, Allemande and Sarabande) is a tour de force of vocal mischief-making, with collage-style spoken texts woven into a web of singing, semi-singing, and other less easily identified vocal noises. Again, in the wrong hands it would be a mess, but Roomful of Teeth is never less than completely musical, even lyrical.

Snider's "Orchard" is sensuous and beautiful, and possibly a little darker than it seems at first. Greenstein's works are the most reliably rhythmic and will appeal to fans of Meredith Monk; this particular Meredith Monk fan thinks "Montmartre" might be the best of the three. And Brittelle's "Amid the Minotaurs," on the surface one of the most conventionally-structured pieces here, is a truly subversive piece of anti-pop.
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#85 Jeremy Siskind, Finger-Songwriter

Finger-Songwriter

Jeremy Siskind
2012 | Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records / The Orchard

There is a classic intimacy to the piano, sax, vocals of the Jeremy Siskind's Finger-Songwriter. Siskind's piano is a mix of elegance and storyteller charm. The slow burn of Nancy Harms's vocals is an enchantment oftentimes dispelled with a smoldering vulnerability. On sax, Lucas Pino is drifting smoke, and on clarinet, a brooding melancholia. Siskind's love of literature the inspiration for each album track, he's created an album of songs about heartbreak,... loss, and hope, delivered with a warmth and immediacy that brings the late-night jazz club to the listener.
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#84 Family Band, Grace & Lies

Grace and Lies

Family Band
2012 | No Quarter / SC Distribution

Grace and Lies: two ghostly characters envisioned by Family Band vocalist (and former visual artist) Kim Krans as a pair of girlish sirens with wily intentions, capable of quick seduction and even quicker betrayal ("I saw them in a field behind our cabin, singing and slow dancing," she's said). It's a sinister and defeating image, but fitting; Krans and her guitarist husband Jonny Ollsin, formerly of the metal bands Children and S.T.R.E.E.T.S.,... make aching, languorous goth-folk, vaguely reminiscent of the Handsome Family and Beach House, but slower, stranger, more hollow-eyed. Grace and Lies, their second full-length, isn't a record for the nights you have people coming over, or for a midday stroll through the park — Ollsin's stark, velvety guitar and Krans's disconcertingly affect-less vocals are better suited to those very-early-morning, there's-the-sun slumps, the moments when you catch yourself reconsidering every last decision you've ever made. If that sounds impossibly depressing, fear not: Grace and Lies is buoying, a meditation on darkness that yields light. As Krans explains in "Moonbeams," it's the questioning that'll save you: "If you wonder what I need/ I'll tell you just what I need/ But I gotta hear your wondering sounds."
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#83 Pig Destroyer, Book Burner

Book Burner

Pig Destroyer
2012 | Relapse Records / The Orchard

Like other extreme acts, Pig Destroyer write songs about murder, insanity and mayhem, but there's something grimier and more disconcerting about their tunes than your average Cannibal Corpse gorefest. With the release of 2004's Terrifyer, the band was already rising above the constraints of traditional grindcore, incorporating industrial sound bites, death-groove riffs, doomy atmospherics and math-metal tempo changes into their schizophrenic songs. Brutally misanthropic, their songs grimly reflect the rage, intensity and... social disconnect of minds on the edge. Book Burner is no different: "The Bug" begins with a dissonant audio collage, over which a demented voice declares, "I will sing while you croak, I will dance over your dirty corpse" and from there evolves through cacophonous blast beats, propulsive riffs, and pained moans. Equally nightmare-inducing is the opening track, "Sis," where vocalist J.R. Hayes (ex-Agoraphobic Nosebleed) roars, "My sister's dangerous/ She climbs the barbed wire fence/ Changes clothes in the back seat/ Medical gown to red jeans." There is nothing "pretty" about their music, but visceral savagery has its own allure.

Book Burner delivers all flesh and no fat; Pig Destroyer attack with pinpoint precision, plowing through 19 cuts in just under 33 minutes and mapping out when to pummel, trudge and lacerate. The tag team of acrobatic drummer Adam Jarvis (who also plays in Misery Index) and guitarist and producer Scott Hull (ex-Anal Cunt) both boast the ability to turn sick, horrific and off-kilter clamor into coherent, memorable compositions.
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#82 Sea of Bees, Orangefarben

Orangefarben

Sea of Bees
2012 | Team Love Records

When I was 11 my parents sent me to a hellhole of a sleepaway camp where I was miserable (one of the counselors made me eat tomatoes – gross!). It was at that terrible camp where I first heard the song "Leaving on a Jet Plane" played over and over, and to this day I have a Pavlovian response to those familiar lite rock folk chords: When I hear them I'm overtaken... by homesickness. It's fitting, then, that Sea of Bees' sophomore effort – a tearjerker of a breakup album written by Julie Ann Bee in response to the demise of her first relationship after coming out to her friends and family – features a lovely (and much hipper) reinterpretation of the song (simply called "Leaving") that zeroes in on that same panicky feeling, that same sense of dread. Homesickness and heartbreak, after all, come from that same sad place located in the gut-area.

With sunny-sounding guitars and a sweet, ethereal voice that belies the agony of which she sings, Bee makes Orangefarben a meditation on mind over matter, the importance of gasping "I'll be fine" again and again, even when it's clear you're not. "And I know I shouldn't think those thoughts/ but I've gone ahead and thought those thoughts and I'm fine," she confesses on "Teeth," as if convincing herself that the worst may be over, that time might go about its business and provide some relief. And if that grief is never fully eradicated, if she still finds herself longing for the comfort and safety of old attachments (oh, the sad letters I wrote to my parents from summer camp!), then at least the baggage she lugs around with her will be beautiful.
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#81 Christian Mistress, Possession

Possession

Christian Mistress
2012 | Relapse Records / The Orchard

The full-length debut byOlympia,Washington, quintet Christian Mistress is more than a savage, irony-free '70s metal flashback. It's an honest and lovingly composed epic that combines the sludge of Black Sabbath, the guitar harmonies of Judas Priest and the amphetamine bursts of MotÃ¶rhead.

Several elements levitate Christian Mistress above their peers. The most blatant is vocalist Christine Davis, who unleashes a barrage of skin-stripped melodies that support even the heaviest songs. Equally important are... the band's immaculate arrangements, which range from thuggish to progressive, recalling cult heroes like Angel Witch and Diamond Head as much as Priest and Sabbath. Also, while the Mistress clearly love great metal, they also covet classic and southern rock (check out the ZZ Top-style lick in the chorus of "Black to Gold" and the gloomy slide guitar on the acoustic intro of "The Way Beyond"). Possession offers NWOBHM and doom fans a dragon's lair of gems to behold, but to pigeonhole Christian Mistress as sword and sorcery "retro metal" is a crime worthy of a squeeze in the ol' iron maiden.
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#80 Glen Hansard, Rhythm & Repose

Rhythm And Repose

Glen Hansard
2012 | Anti/Epitaph

There's irony in the fact that Glen Hansard's first solo album comes just a week after the Broadway musical Once triumphed at the Tony Awards. 2007's film-version original of that musical, starring Hansard and the wispy Czech pianist Marketa IrgolovÃ¡, brought the romantic and creative duo widespread fame. The duo, who eventually dubbed themselves The Swell Season, began recording together in 2008, but the love affair didn't last: They announced... their breakup after touring behind 2009's Strict Joy, and IrglovÃ¡ married producer Tim Iseler in 2011. Hansard, meanwhile, has been living in New York, keeping an eye on Once while breaking in a new set of collaborators. While the end product isn't leagues away from his work with IrglovÃ¡ or his longtime band, The Frames, Rhythm and Repose steers away from the latter's anguished anthems and the former's fragile harmonies.

R&R is a heartbreak album through and through, but it leans more towards self-reflection than self-laceration, like a more melancholy, less pissed-off Blood on the Tracks. (It's not surprising that the late Levon Helm was asked to guest on a track.) Those sifting for shards of autobiography will seize on lines like "We talked about talk of a gold ring/ You brought me one step closer to the heart of things" and "We married on an August night/ No priest, no church, just the big moon shining bright," from "You Will Become" and "Maybe Not Tonight." Unless you've got a chronic weakness for Irish melodrama, the album's front-loaded breast-beating starts to wear thin after a while; it's hard to hear "The Storm, It's Coming," nestled just after the midpoint, and suppress the temptation to remark that it's already done come.

Fortunately, Hansard pulls out of his emotional nosedive with "What Are We Gonna Do," where a female voice (not IrglovÃ¡'s) lifts him out of his torpor and sets him on the path to recovery. He's still only beginning to heal by the time Rhythm and Repose draws to a close; a little "Revelate" style catharsis would have done much to lift the album out of its perpetual doldrums. But its limited palette is a lovely one, sustaining a mood that lingers like the bittersweet scent of lost love.
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#79 METZ, METZ

METZ

METZ
2012 | Sub Pop Records

On their debut album, Canadian trio METZ has delivered a sound that's reasonably scarce in 2012: post-hardcore, pre-grunge, noise-addled punk rock. You can hear the influence of the Jesus Lizard in particular everywhere: in Alex Edkins's strained screams; in Hayden Menzies's crashing drum assault; in their relentless wave of screeching guitars, in the frenzied pace of "Wet Blanket," in the sludgy industrial instrumental "Nausea," and in their grim, dour lyrics. But the... sheer volume and force of the music don't take away from their musicianship – no individual element is covered by fuzz, thanks in part to production work from Graham Walsh (of Holy Fuck) and Alexander Bonenfant (who was behind the boards of the first two Crystal Castles records). The production shows off an intricate variety of textures lurking beneath the noise: On "Get Off," a chaotic drum barrage toward the end of the track is paired with a wavering high-pitched screech of white noise, bolstering an already-urgent moment. It's small details like that on METZ that sharpen the band's anger and attack, elevating them from your average Touch & Go apostles into a seething, unique operation.
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#78 Lotus Plaza, Spooky Action at a Distance

Spooky Action at a Distance

Lotus Plaza
2012 | kranky / The Orchard

That Lockett Pundt, he'll sneak up on you. In Deerhunter, frontman Bradford Cox's outsize personality makes him an easy lightning rod, but Pundt has played a hardly less electrifying role as the band's guitarist. His first solo album as Lotus Plaza, 2009's The Floodlight Collective, was woozy, winsome dream-pop that confirmed Pundt's familiar gifts for ethereal sonic textures but only hinted at his growing strength as a songwriter. This follow-up is strikingly... the work of the man who wrote "Desire Lines," the rousing centerpiece of Deerhunter's peak so far, 2010's Halcyon Digest. Crystalline guitar arpeggios meet precise krautrock pulses, time-bending codas – and ear-catching '60s pop melodies. Wistful stoners' anthem "Monoliths" distills the album's shoegaze-informed style most concisely, but equally essential non-album single "Come Back" best previews the mesmerizing yet propulsive live show. Proof soft-spoken daydreamers can pump their fists, too.
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#77 Amit Friedman, Sunrise

Sunrise

Amit Friedman Sextet
2012 | Origin Records / The Orchard

Creating his own mix of jazz and Middle Eastern music, saxophonist Amit Friedman offers a debut album of richly-textured tunes full of bombast and beauty. The use of additional percussion and an oudist brings intricacy and detail to the music, but it's Friedman's crafting of simple yet vivid melodies that elevates the songs to something very special, a splendid balance between the complex and the catchy. Furthermore, the addition of a string... trio lifts songs up to euphoric heights, but amidst all that soaring, Friedman doesn't forget to let his jazz ensemble swing. This is the kind of majestic album that'll sweep listeners up out of their seats.
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#76 Gonjasufi, MU.ZZ.LE

MU.ZZ.LE

Gonjasufi
2012 | EP/SINGLE

It's one of the more unlikely stories from U.S.beat culture: San Diego's Sumach Ecks moves to Las Vegasto work as a yoga teacher, but not before contributing an edgy, Billie Holiday-like vocal to one track on Flying Lotus's 2008 debut Los Angeles. Impressed with his distinctive scatting, Warp Records offer him his own deal. It's a nice creation myth, and Ecks, who records under the suitably wigged-out moniker Gonjasufi, has thus far... lived up to its billing.

Warp Records are classifying this as an EP, but MU.ZZ.LE – the follow-up (in 10 short tracks) to 2010's A Sufi and a Killer - sounds in many ways like the bigger record. Taped somewhere out in the Mojave, this dubbed-out desert music occasionally trips into emotional ditches that are bleak enough to soundtrack an end-times movie like The Road. MU.ZZ.LE sounds like it was recorded on filthy equipment salvaged from RadioShack dumpsters, with Gonjasufi's searing, blurted vocals dissolving immediately upon emerging from the speaker cones. Vinyl flecks dot the opener "White Picket Fence," whose dread-fuelled electric piano chords are reminiscent of Tricky's mid-'90s debut. "Rubberband' is slow, sad and stately as a Procol Harum anthem, strained by DJ Shadow through a sieve of hiss; while "Blaksuit" is a chopped-and-screwed, syrupy jam over garage punk guitar chops.

You never quite know if MU.ZZ.LE's gloopy, ramshackle character is painstakingly crafted or the genuine record of serendipitous moments of improvised dementia; whatever, it breathes new life into the corpse of "triphop" and confirms Gonjasufi as a gloriously eccentric new broken beatmaster.
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#75 Neurosis, Honor Found in Decay

Honor Found In Decay

Neurosis
2012 | Neurot / Revolver

Like the band's last album, 2007's Given to the Rising, Neurosis's 10th studio album in 27 years, Honor Found in Decay, is a cinematic, multi-dimensional exploration of texture and emotion that weaves together doom-metal, atmospheric rock, dark psychedelia, tribal metal and proto-industrial. But the experimental post-metal pioneers also delve deep into the apocalyptic folk that frontmen Scott Kelly and Steve Von Till have explored on their recent solo albums. "At the... Well" starts with slow, reverberant guitar strums and cryptic existential musings: "The blaze of a Helios sky/ Rage will blossom into iron/Blind as a worm in the earth." And "Casting of the Ages" opens with dual acoustic guitars and deep, rattling vocals atop a lolling bass line and a lazy accordion before sparking into a thudding, trudging doom trek.

Honor Found in Decay is hardly uplifting; here's the opening line from the propulsive opening track"We All Rage in Gold": "I walk into the water to wash the blood from my feet." Yet the bands presentation is so artful and symphonic it reveals sheer beauty in lyrical hopelessness and inspiration in rhythmic ugliness. Unlike many post-metal albums that seesaw between reflective calm and turbulent chaos, Neurosis's dualism is more subtle and natural, and at times almost spiritual in its nihilism.
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#74 Ab-Soul, Control System

Control System

Ab-Soul
2012 | TopDawg Ent. / TuneCore

Ab-Soul is the resident word-nerd of Black Hippy, the rap crew that includes the Dr. Dre-anointed young rap prince Kendrick Lamar and the brooding, heavy-lidded, ex-Crip leader Schoolboy Q. He's easily the most cerebral of a fairly brainy crew, and on the ferociously excellent Control System, he produces an immersive, dark and wide-ranging piece of work that takes listeners to Saturn and Andromeda ("Pineal Gland"), sardonically salutes Obama as a "puppet" ("Terrorist... Threat"), breaks our heart with a devastating first-person tale of young love and loss ("The Book of Soul"), puffs out some post-Tribe Called Quest weed clouds ("Bohemian Grove") and oh, also finds room for a sex joke as goofy as "She got that magical vag/ Let me hocus poke."
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#73 Lilacs & Champagne, Lilacs & Champagne

Lilacs & Champagne

Lilacs & Champagne
2012 | Mexican Summer

Alex Hall and Emil Amos are the personalities behind Grails, a Portland instrumental rock collective that's happily traversed so much sonic terrain over the past decade and a half that they'd seemingly make side projects unnecessary. But where Grails absorbs and perverts genres, Hall and Amos's self-titled debut as Lilacs & Champagne is an act of deconstruction and rebuilding: The duo were inspired by Madlib's dank crate-digging and sample-stitching technique, and they... also share a love for similar source material. Unquestionably stoned in demeanor, L&C leans heavy on underground hip-hop, Krautrock, '70s psych and even an occasion Jayne Mansfield recording to create ambient music for the kind of people who find the idea of ambient music boring, or a solution for anyone who wished the sample-happy travelogues of Avalanches or Quiet Village transported them to somewhere darker.
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#72 Pop 1280, The Horror

The Horror

Pop. 1280
2012 | Sacred Bones Records / S.C. Distribution

"Burn, burn/ burn the worm," goes the ominous chorus of The Horror's pissed-and-pulverizing opener, the perhaps-unsurprisingly titled "Burn the Worm." Subtle, Pop. 1280 is not. But you don't really need a gentle hand when your band regularly and fiercely recalls the finer moments of Liars, the Birthday Party and Swans. Where 2010's The Grid EP sported the occasional synth-heavy hook, The Horror is positively relentless, piling brutal rhythmic grinding on top of... lyrical references to dead people, bodies, death, and, well, the kind of horror that's often reserved for the cinema. Perhaps it's the addition of Twin Stumps former drummer Zach Ziemann or the apparent improvisational, on-the-spot writing process that created The Horror, but the album is a relatively bleak and corrosive listen - an accomplishment for a band that's previously broached topics including bed bugs in low-income housing projects and dystopian future worlds. But that's also part of the fun. Like their fellow wall punchers the Men, Pygmy Shrews and White Suns - bands the Village Voice has credited with drudging up the pigfuck spirit of yore - Pop. 1280 is making quite a glorious racket. If you can't stand it, maybe you should get out of the basement.
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#71 Lianne La Havas, Is Your Love Big Enough?

Is Your Love Big Enough? (Deluxe Edition)

Lianne La Havas
2012 | Nonesuch

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

#70 Frankie Rose, Interstellar

Interstellar

Frankie Rose
2012 | Slumberland Records / The Orchard

Frankie Rose spent the early part of her musical career as a member of a ragtag coven of Brooklyn retro-garage bands, including Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts and Dum Dum Girls. Interstellar, her second solo album since moving on from those groups, shows exactly how to move your music out of the garage: Clean out all the grit and grease, put on some makeup, imagine yourself as a dragon's teardrop... on the moonscape of a Yes album cover, and blast off into a colder space. An appreciation for early-'80s new wave blankets Interstellar with a certain iciness - drum machines, oscillating keyboards, brittle-sounding guitars - but it's not frozen solid. Rose's voice unlocks these songs like a key; rather than apply the steely, remote effects given to so many electronic-pop vocalists, producer Le Chev (whose very name makes this album seem even more tilted toward the '80s) keeps Rose's voice at a tender, close distance. Though some fairy-dusted moments occur (such as the feather-light title track or the strange wood-sprite chanting on "The Fall"), this isn't a Cocteau Twins record. Rose has pop songs to sing, from winning A-side "Know Me," with its brisk Smiths rhythms, to the I-am-a-bird-now ballad "Wings To Fly." There are big, warm choruses here, and an almost childlike sense of joy and dreaming, that would seem to clash with Interstellar's cold-pressed instrumentation . But mismatched styles never seem to bother Frankie Rose - her music contains galaxies.
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#69 Chris Cohen, Overgrown Path

Overgrown Path

Chris Cohen
2012 | Captured Tracks / SC Distribution

While being in any band seems incredibly difficult, Chris Cohen likes a challenge: He's played with Deerhoof, Haunted Grafitti and Cass McCombs, artists too chaotic, daunting or insular to really occupy indie rock's center. It's not surprising that his solo effort Overgrown Path sought retreat in rural Vermont. What is surprising is how it stands up to anything his prior gigs have done, a survey of the past four decades of jangle-pop... unified by his Ray Davies-esque voice and the comfort of finding yourself through escape.
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#68 Liars, WIXIW

WIXIW

Liars
2012 | MUTE

With every release, invigorated both by self-imposed limits and half-baked experiments, Liars discover new aesthetic worlds. Consider the 30-minute dance-punk-to-drone closer "This Dust Makes That Mud" off their 2001 debut They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top. Nothing specific about that song, just you know, that it happened. And chew on the go-for-broke concepts of 2004's They Were Wrong So We Drowned (witches, dude) and 2010's... Sisterworld (Los Angeles, man).

On WIXIW, the goal is retrofitting the past's electronic pop and dance presets into rhythmic, art-damaged dirges. Save for acid-squelch rave-up "Brats," WIXIW's songs are all nervous tension and no cathartic release. Imagine the brutal minimalism of Iggy Pop's The Idiot sharing a slow dance with the transcendent cheapness of Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 85-92. As sun-faded synths unfold on opening track "The Exact Colour of Doubt," you almost expect lead singer Angus Andrew to croon, "I want my MTV." So retrolicious, and therefore, totally right now. For the first time since their debut, Liars sound of-the-moment rather than out on a limb. That may be the only affront left to savvy listeners anticipating the latest sea change from these puckish, post-post punks.
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#67 Miguel Zenon & Laurent Coq, Rayuela

Rayuela

Laurent Coq & Miguel Zenon
2012 | Sunnyside / Entertainment One Distribution

Argentine novelist Julio Cortázar's 1963 classic Rayuela – in English, Hopscotch – is a fragmented tale of a Bohemian adrift on two continents. To underscore his hero's dislocation and odd thought processes, Cortázar maps a zigzag alternative route through the book for adventurous readers. On their Rayuela, Puerto Rican alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón and French pianist Laurent Coq variously evoke the novel's playfulness with language, mobile-like structure, transatlantic breadth and fascination with... jazz, as well as the bittersweet nature of expatriate life. Ably abetted by instrument switchers Dana Leong on cello and trombone and Dan Weiss on drums and tabla, they make smart, inventive, heartfelt music.
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#66 Flying Lotus, Until the Quiet Comes

Until The Quiet Comes

Flying Lotus
2012 | Warp Records

What was Flying Lotus supposed to do, twist our synapses till they turned blue every single time out? Please – not even Hendrix could have done that. British DJ Mary Anne Hobbs may have declared FlyLo Jimi's modern equivalent, but Until the Quiet Comes, his fourth album, plays like something Jimi didn't get to stay around and make: both reflective and madcap, full of details scurrying in the margins. Take "Tiny... Tortures," which rides a near-subcutaneous bass pulse, twitchy, subtle clicks and clacks, ruminative jazz guitar flecks and flurries. Is it fusion? Maybe, but it doesn't show off the way most fusion does – it's too busy sneaking up on you.

Seventies cosmic jazz has always been a FlyLo touchstone, and his forays into it can feel ponderous, such as on the brief "DMT Song," on which Thundercat's vocals are echoed into gauze over glittery electric piano and twisting double bass. But mostly he's impish, as is evident even on broader-stroked tracks such as the overtly daffy "Pretty Boy Strut," where a walking bass line meets cartoon-voiced keyboards and insistent electro-handclaps. There are fewer giant flourishes of the sort that marked 2008's Los Angeles or 2010's Cosmogramma, though. Even the big guest starsâ€”Erykah Badu on the circularly rhythmic "See Thru to U," Radiohead's Thom Yorke on the dense whorl of "Electric Candyman" – are ingredients he stirs into the mix with impunity. As always, the signature is FlyLo's alone.
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#65 Screaming Females, Ugly

Ugly

Screaming Females
2012 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

New Brunswick, New Jersey's Screaming Females have turned out roaring punk album after roaring punk album since 2006, amid booking hundreds of their own shows – some in basements and others in massive club venues warming up for the likes of Ted Leo, the Dead Weather and Garbage. Their Steve Albini-produced fifth LP Ugly is a darker, less melodic affair than its 2010 predecessor, which thrived on a perfect balance of... hooky choruses and frontwoman Marissa Paternoster's masterful guitar acrobatics. Paternoster hasn't lost any of the full-throated, low-alto howl, best showcased in "Rotten Apple" ("Hell is within me/ Hell's all around me now," she snarls), and as she bellows "I want you to tell me to expire" in "Expire." Ugly is long and it can feel that way, at 14 tracks, almost 54 minutes, but the high points ("Expire," "Help Me," the acoustic, string-backed closer "It's Nice") are high enough to make it worthwhile.
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#64 Bowerbirds, The Clearing

The Clearing

Bowerbirds
2012 | Dead Oceans / SC Distribution

In "Overcome with Light," Bowerbirds' Phil Moore and Beth Tacular sing, "Yes, we had some hard work, but now it's right." Their lush third LP, The Clearing, is about unexpected challenges: Tacular's near-death experience; the ending and rekindling of the couple's relationship; building a home by hand. And despite all of that, they pulled through with their best work yet: clear, full instrumentation and a celebration of new beginnings.

#63 Ty Segall Band, Slaughterhouse

Slaughterhouse

Ty Segall Band
2012 | In The Red / Revolver

Each Ty Segall record is a new outfit in the garage-rock prodigy's ever-increasing wardrobe. Slaughterhouse, his latest quick change, is the first release billed under his touring band, a group which includes punky wunderkinds Charlie Moothart and Mikal Cronin. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that this is a group that's been traveling the road together, Slaughterhouse is a loose, scrappy set. Some songs are given ample jamming room ("I Bought My Eyes"), while... others are haunted-house screamers ("Slaughterhouse"). There are inspired covers with humorous studio banter ("All right, here we go, extra fast," Segall says by way of introducing "Diddy Wah Diddy."), and staring-contest noise parties (the 10-plus-minute "Fuzz War"). It's a glorious grab bag, uncouth and unkempt in its exuberance, but with a worn-in feeling derived from the players' comfort with each other.

Like he did on his Singles 2007-2010 compilation, Segall forgoes the catchier, cleaner vocals he's sometimes showcased, opting instead for the feral yawls and yelps that earned the young Segall so many comparisons to the late Jay Reatard early on. Elsewhere, he does his best, fuzz-soaked Led Sabbath impression ("Wave Goodbye"), and only occasionally hints at the comfy, Nuggets-influenced jaunts he's so good at ("Tell Me What's Inside Your Heart," "Muscle Man"). Slaughterhouse isn't exactly a consistent record, but that doesn't exactly seem to be the point, either. If Segall's going to keep trying on new, inspired costumes every few months, who's complaining?
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#62 Grizzly Bear, Shields

Shields

Grizzly Bear
2012 | Warp Records

Remember when Grizzly Bear was Edward Droste's solo project? Didn't think so. And that's okay; while the disconnect between Droste's bedroom-pop beginnings and the band's longtime status as a democracy – with Daniel Rossen at the helm half the time – has been a source of tension in the past, their third album as a full-fledged quartet is sleek and self-assured. Or as Droste admitted in a Pitchfork interview this past June,... "As we get older, more confident and more mature, we're becoming more comfortable with stepping on each other's toes."

That doesn't mean that Shields is marred by muddled ideas and misdirected hostility. Thanks to several "songwriting retreats" in New York and Cape Cod, the effort is decidedly collaborative, an autumnal listen that feels alive and full of welcome left turns rather than heavy-lidded and hazy. The LP's leadoff single ("Sleeping Ute") is a perfect example of the group's push-and-pull dynamics – a tidal wave of rippled rhythms, honeyed harmonies and burbling synths. The rest of the record is much more subtle yet no less effective, as Rossen's rich melodies and spare riffs play a perfect counterpoint to Droste's fragile, emotionally-charged confessionals. Repeat listens reveal the hours that went into every hook, too, whether the finish line is reached through windswept strings and woozy jazz ("What's Wrong") or one long walk on the beach, a slow build that seems to be on the verge of a total breakdown ("Sun In Your Eyes"). Grizzly Bear emerges unscathed, however, as ready to assume the mantle of Brooklyn's most promising crossover band as they've ever been.
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#61 Woods, Bend Beyond

Bend Beyond

Woods
2012 | Woodsist / Revolver

When Jeremy Earl left Brooklyn for the tiny upstate town where he grew up – Warwick, New York, a rural, rail-side area best known for its annual Applefest – a few years ago, his decision wasn't surprising so much as long overdue. And not just because dude's the founder of a ramshackle rock band called Woods and a lo-fi-leaning label that goes by the name Woodsist. Forestry nods aside, Earl has always... seemed like a hippie who's constantly lumped in with "hipsters" – a soft-spoken Neil Young fan who'd rather hang out with his cat, a considerable wooden owl collection, and a freshly packed bong than a poorly ventilated house full of cool kids.

More important, however, is his musical vision, which has long hinted at but lurked just below the level of psych-steeped greatness that's achieved on Bend Beyond. Led by Earl's lovelorn falsetto and loose, fiery riffs, Woods' seventh album offsets its tales of frustration (lots of "it's so fucking hard" talk) with red-blooded arrangements and a clean mix that brings the frontman's hooks right into focus. It helps that the well-oiled quartet saved their jam-band tendencies for the stage and let their individual parts shine at the same time instead, from the rambunctious organ rolls and roaring guitar leads of "Find Them Empty" to the curve-hugging rhythm section of the title track. It's inviting enough to make us big city folks briefly ponder our own move to Deliverance-town, USA Well – almost.
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#60 White Lung, Sorry

sorry

White Lung
2012 | Deranged Records / The Orchard

White Lung's pummeling second album, Sorry, isn't for the faint of heart. "I'm the disease that you've already caught," frontwoman Mish Way spits on "I Rot," one of 10 punk bursts driven by tension-filled riffs, frantic drum assaults and macabre lyrics. Yet Sorry's violent imagery is also deeply poetic – more Plath than Poe – and the album has plenty of melodic moments (unexpected chorus harmonies on "Bag," lively guitar spikes on... "Take The Mirror" and "St. Dad") to temper the aggression. Urgent and inspiring.
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#59 Ravi Coltrane, Spirit Fiction

Spirit Fiction

Ravi Coltrane
2012 | BLUE NOTE

It's been a little more than two decades since saxophonist Ravi Coltrane fully broke into the top-shelf jazz world (as a member of drummer Elvin Jones's Jazz Machine), thus finally overcoming the daunting task of emerging from the shadow of his father, jazz god John Coltrane (who passed when Ravi was two). Now in his 40s, Coltrane continues to develop as an artist; for demonstration of his singular tenor/soprano saxophone voice and... his creativity and intimacy as a leader, look no further than his superb Blue Note Records debut, Spirit Fiction. He employs two primo bands as the anchors of the sessions: one, his longtime quartet of pianist Luis Perdomo, bassist Drew Gress and drummer E.J. Strickland and the quintet he used on his 2002 sophomore album From the Round Box; the other, trumpeter Ralph Alessi, pianist Geri Allen, bassist Lonnie Plaxico and drummer Eric Harland.

Produced by Joe Lovano, Blue Note's modern-day tenor titan, Spirit Fiction shows how forward-thinking Coltrane has become as he continues to steer clear of standard formulas and aims straight for imaginative contrasts and convergences. He experiments with tunes developed by disparate layers of improvisation, notably on the doubleheader of the scrambling "Roads Cross" and the sprightly "Cross Roads", where pairs of players from his quartet are recorded individually with the results spliced together. Coltrane also opts to record in a variety of instrumental formats, including duo ("Spring & Hudson," an original with Strickland that bursts with brio), trio (a redolent take on Paul Motian's "Fantasm" with Lovano and Allen), and sextet (as Lovano joins in again with the quintet's rollicking-to-reflective spin through Ornette Coleman's "Check Out Time").

On Coltrane's ballad "the change, my girl," his tenor delivers a lyrical mix of melancholy and joy, and on the three Alessi-penned tunes, the two ebulliently converse and criss-cross. As a saxophonist, Coltrane may not be a flashy, blow-with-bravado type, but his playing communicates on levels ranging from the vigorous to the ruminative. Spirit Fiction is yet another giant step in his maturation.
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#58 How to Dress Well, Total Loss

Total Loss

How To Dress Well
2012 | Acéphale / S.C. Distribution

When one-man R&B deconstructionist Tom Krell, aka How to Dress Well, released his 2010 debut Love Remains, he was one of a a host of bedroom artists – Krell, plus James Blake, the Weeknd and others – re-interpreting FM-radio slow jams and twisting the slinky genre into new shapes. Since then, the number of contemporaries has grown while unchartered paths have shrunk, so it's commendable that two years later, Krell has distinguished... himself again, this time with tighter arrangements and more substantive lyrics.

While Love Remains' longing murmurs and blown-out falsettos kept listeners at a distance, Total Loss sees Krell laying out his diary pages in tight close-up for everyone to read. Written while he was grieving the death of his best friend and recovering from a recent breakup, songs like "Cold Nites," "Running Back" and "How Many?" bare the heartbreak in Krell's somber croon. Without the low fidelity of his previous offerings (and with help from the xx producer Rodaidh McDonald) it's clear that the scratches and crackles weren't a cover for a lack of a voice: Krell's falsetto soars when refined. It's a remarkable evolution: Somewhere in the time he was fine-tuning his warped take on the genre, How to Dress Well has moved towards becoming a real R&B artist.
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#57 Yellow Ostrich, Strange Land

Strange Land

Yellow Ostrich
2012 | Barsuk Records

Yellow Ostrich mastermind Alex Schaaf has said that the title of his new album refers to his move in 2010 from Wisconsin to New York City. Yet after making last year's The Mistress under humble bedroom-recording conditions, Schaaf upgraded to a professional studio for Strange Land, and it's that unknown habitat he seems most intent on exploring here. Opener "Elephant King" shows his hand straightaway, riding in on a sparkling guitar figure... that slowly accumulates all kinds of indie-pop filigree: harmonized singing, sustained horn tones, and an escalating parade-drum beat by Michael Tapper, whose consistently inventive percussion work comes to distinguish Strange Land in a way that recalls Steven Drozd's avant-Bonzo beats on The Soft Bulletin. Elsewhere, Schaaf builds intricate loops from tiny vocal slivers ("Marathon Runner") and chops up Tapper's playing into a kind of nimble white-guy funk ("I Want Yr Love"). None of this high-end studio tricknology distracts the frontman from making memorable melodies, as the elemental fuzz-rock gem "Stay at Home" demonstrates; "Daughter," too, should satisfy Built to Spill fans impatiently waiting for that band's new one. But it's definitely a kick to hear him let Yellow Ostrich run wild.
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#56 Wymond Miles, Under the Pale Moon

Under the Pale Moon

Wymond Miles
2012 | Sacred Bones Records / S.C. Distribution

When he wasn't conjuring dust storms of noir-ish, twanging guitar with San Francisco garage-rockers Fresh & Onlys, Wymond Miles was quietly stockpiling his own songs. Not that we're sure where he finds the time: aside from the building buzz of F&Os, Miles earned a degree in the humanities and also became a father. Earlier, he released Earth Has Doors, which evinced a deep appreciation for the lyricism of Scott Walker. His full-length... debut is darker and more somber than the Fresh & Only's; Miles indulges his inner goth, singing of torn desires and fragile flesh on opener "Strange Desire" and sounding at times like Robert Smith fronting the Bad Seeds. Though his words tend towards the lugubrious, it's Miles's hooks, expert six-string playing and tactful placement of sounds that make the album a luminous whole. See how the theremin sweeps in during "The Thirst" or how the guitar feedback upticks on "Lazarus Rising" before receding to its original jangle. Perhaps his strategy is laid out best on "Singing the Ending," where he croons about "go(ing) gentle into that goodnight."
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#55 Esperanza Spalding, Radio Music Society

Radio Music Society

Esperanza Spalding
2012 | Heads Up

Now Esperanza Spalding is making even the Grammys look hip. In her first outing since she was named Best New Artist in 2011, Spalding puts a dozen tunes into her stylistic spin cycle for a tour de force of pop glitter, jazz swing, folk moodiness and a dollop of hip-hop swagger on the dense-but-dazzling Radio Music Society. This is the work of an artist who refuses to choose, mocking genre labels with... guileless ambition. (Her original concept was to pair this disc with the classically-oriented, string-laden Chamber Music Society back in 2010, until her record company convinced her the menu would be too large for public consumption.)

By ignoring boundaries, Spalding upends expectations. She enlists august jazz tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano to provide a dulcet lilt to a Stevie Wonder cover ("I Can't Help It") and hip-hop titan Q-Tip to play glockenspiel and co-produce the jazzy tribute to her native Portland, Oregon("City of Roses"). Assembling a phalanx of 23 players and vocalists for a flashy, powerhouse "Radio Song," she sings about the giddiness of being seized by a new jam coming out of the speakers as her own electric bass wends its way through the song's buoyant center. Three songs later, with just the sparse backing of organist James Weidman, she tells the saga of a man falsely imprisoned for 30 years on a bogus murder conviction. On Radio, both extremes are fair game.

As was the case with Chamber Music Society, Spalding's vocals are her ace in the hole. Her range is limited, but her assured and agile phrasing is ideal for carrying out her talk/sung approach. It enables her to credibly pull off a bluesy, big-band-like torch song ("Hold On Me") and to surf atop a youth choir on the anthem "Black Gold." And then there's "Vague Suspicions," a dense and sophisticated number with Jack DeJohnette on drums, about the tacit accommodations Americans make to avoid thinking too much about the consequences of drone strikes and the other elements of remote-control war. It's a grim, simmering number, its closing moments featuring Spalding sarcastically cooing, "Next on channel 4: celebrity gossip." It's a typically astute and self-aware take from an artist who is the closest thing jazz has to a young celebrity.
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#54 Baroness, Yellow & Green

Yellow & Green

Baroness
2012 | Relapse Records / The Orchard

Before the release of Yellow & Green, Baroness frontman John Baizley stressed in interviews that the records were going to take some risks and expand the band's sound, partly by being more direct and placing greater emphasis on songwriting. Fans of the metal band's notoriously complex music weren't quite sure how to take this assessment; their responses tended toward wariness and curiosity mixed with guarded optimism.

As it turns out, the... double album Yellow & Green is pretty much just how Baizley described it: The burly metal fury of previous Baroness efforts has settled into something far more daring and diverse. Look no further than Yellow's "Twinkler" and "Cocainium." The former's primary sounds are throaty flute, stately acoustic guitar and stacked vocals — think Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" at a Renaissance Faire, or a lusher version of Blue Record's "Steel That Sleeps The Eye." In contrast, the latter's tar-bubble riffs and oil-slick keyboards rumble like Iron Butterfly, before the song explodes into a fuzzed-out The Sword/Metallica hybrid.

Although this simmering tension between aggression and restraint permeates both albums, Yellow is more focused and accessible. A nimble bass line gives "Little Things" an elastic quality, while the cattle-stampede riffage of "March to the Sea" is classic Baroness. Still, these tunes exhibit impressive concision; even the turbocharged stoner rockers "Sea Lungs" and "Take My Bones Away" contain discernible (and catchy!) hooks.

Green overall is far moodier, slower and quieter than Yellow. The instrumental "Stretchmarker" is heart-wrenching psych-folk, while the ominous "Collapse" is nothing more than a tangled arrangement of folky acoustic guitar, some surging sound effects and a patient kick-drum thump. Other interesting influences crop up, too: The melancholy "Mtns. (The Crown & Anchor)" conjures Thrice's brooding post-hardcore musings, and the watery guitar textures of "Foolsong" and Green's closing instrumental track, "If I Forget Thee, Lowcountry" are reminiscent of Explosions in the Sky.

It's obvious these stylistically sprawling albums represent the next step for Baroness: Like Metallica once did, or, more recently, Mastodon, they have begun to grow beyond their niche and have accordingly set their sights on expanding beyond a cult audience. If much of Yellow & Green sounds like metal for people who don't necessarily identify as metal fans, then, it hardly means the band is hardly consciously dumbing down its music for the mainstream. On the contrary, these daring albums cement Baroness's reputation as an uncompromising group of musicians who's never been afraid to flout convention when pursuing ferocity.
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#53 THEESatisfaction, awE naturalE

awE naturalE

THEESatisfaction
2012 | Sub Pop Records

In this cloud-computing age where everyone is a fan of a bit of everything, it's good to see Sub Pop, the label most famous for bringing grunge to the world, continue to define itself not by genre but merely by brilliant music. They released their first hip-hop album in Shabazz Palaces' much-lauded Black Up last year, which featured Afro-futurist Seattle duo THEESatisfaction; the latter now get their own Sub Pop release with... their debut full-length.

Opening with a fanfare of stumbling polyrhythms and speaker-blowing pomp before swerving into nimble, pared-down poetry recitation, the pair recall the boom-bap collages of J Dilla and Madlib, with a touch of Erykah Badu's simultaneous languor and clarity. With constant gear changes like these, and songs that rarely break three minutes, the record is full of personality and verve, a feeling cemented by the rapped and sung vocals. Stasia Irons and Catherine Harris-White recite everyday dramas of sex and politics and give them a magic mushroom logic, full of tangents and florid imagery; Palaceer Lazaro of the aforementioned Shabazz Palaces returns the favor on a brace of tracks mid-album, laying his nimble non-sequiturs over "God," with its beat like an elegantly stuck Bill Evans record, plus the deranged funhouse of "Enchantruss."

Meanwhile, the filtered pop-rap of "Queens" could have come from Alan Braxe or Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter in their more laidback moods, and it's easy to imagine Lil B waxing surreal over the thickly aquatic "Juiced." Irons and Harris-White have lyrical flair, melodic gifts and a varied production voice, blending it all in a sensually blunted modern soul music. But like Sub Pop, you should forget genre labels — to tie this record to one is to undermine its richness.
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#52 Nas, Life Is Good

Life Is Good

Nas
2012 | Def Jam Records

Nas's career path has been a strange, contradictory one: It's clear that he's a legend, but he's always being pressured to live up to it, as though Illmatic was his own personal Citizen Kane. The last time he reasserted his status back in 2001, it was thanks to a feud with Jay-Z that lit a fire under his ass. But after a series of increasingly uneven late-career albums, Nas has found another... route back to form, embracing the idea that maybe his position is already secure and he doesn't have anything left to prove. But don't mistake this attitude for complacency: Life is Good, his 11th studio album, is steeped in reflection, a mixture of gratitude and regret, retrospect and foresight.

The first four tracks are the kind of intricately constructed, human-level crime narratives Nas has always excelled at — statements of influence ("No Introduction"; "Loco-Motive"), tense come-up/fall-down scenarios ("A Queens Story"), payback gone tragically wrong ("Accident Murderers") — but tinged with the bittersweet undertone of not having enough peers who made it big alongside him. The last three — the ruminative, frustrated "Stay", the romantic-daydream "Cherry Wine" and the Kelis breakup wrap-up "Bye Baby" — reveal that he's just as adept talking about the aspirations and frustrations of love. And in between there's Nas figuring out how to be a model father ("Daughters"), reconciling his hood roots and his jet-set present ("Reach Out"), invoking his origins to dress down pretenders ("Back When"), and doing the memory of Heavy D proud with his hardest got-mine anthem since "Made You Look" ("The Don"). The production fits the legacy-minded tone — no brostep or Guetta, no attempts at exhuming an ossified '94, just a slate of good-to-excellent beats from names that've always suited him well (Salaam Remi, No I.D., Buckwild) and A-list R&B hooks (Mary J. Blige, Anthony Hamilton, Amy Winehouse). In a hip-hop era where the most pivotal icons are dealing with the idea of becoming elder statesmen, Life Is Good is the kind of album an Illmatic acolyte would hope a pushing-40 Nas could make.
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#51 Vijay Iyer Trio, Accelerando

Accelerando

Vijay Iyer Trio
2012 | ACT Music

Let's not mince words: Accelerando is a source of rippling power and resplendent beauty that deserves to be called a masterpiece. (Except I suspect that Iyer, who recorded this a month before his 40th birthday, might top it on some future project.) As with the acclaimed, chart-topping Historicity in 2009, the pianist leads his trio through a stimulating collection that blends sharp originals and a surprisingly disparate array of cover tunes, from... Heatwave to Herbie Nichols to the Thriller track, "Human Nature." But in the nearly three years between the discs, the trio has been able to turbo-charge the force of their ensemble collective, without sacrificing the depth of their interactions. There are magnificent stretches throughout Accelerando — the rising to crescendo of the last half of "Optimism," much of Henry Threadgill's agile and agitated "Little Pocket Sized Demons," the title track, and Iyer's "Actions Speak," among others — where the effect is like a rock power trio along the lines of Cream or The Who, but using the language of jazz, and with a piano instead of a guitar. Iyer's two-handed chordal phrasings are cavernous, anthemic and intensely personal — he says he wants his music to be visceral, and he succeeds in spades here. Bassist Stephen Crump is a great enabler of intensity — his plucking (especially "Wildflower" and "Little Pocket Sized Demons") and bowing ("Accelerando") are brusque and bristling with contagious energy. Masterful drummer Marcus Gilmore keeps time and regulates the current with aplomb and unerringly good judgment. Accelerando feels like a unified magnum opus: The opening "Bode" pleasantly ushers you in, and the closing "The Village of the Virgins" carries the amiable goodwill of a benediction. In between is a wild, wonderful ride.
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#50 Robert Glasper, Black Radio

Black Radio

Robert Glasper
2012 | BLUE NOTE

Pianist Robert Glasper has jazz chops sophisticated enough to satiate diehard purists and an affinity for hip-hop and R&B that has resulted in collaborations with Q-Tip, Maxwell and Mos Def. Black Radio scrambles these influences, with Glasper's Experiment quartet (including Derrick Hodge on electric bass, Casey Benjamin on sax and vocoder, and Chris Dave playing drums), laying unpredictable music beneath a bevy of high-profile guests. In this era of... Pandora-style musical-profiling, where listeners can narrow down exactly what they think they want, the project absorbs genres like a sponge and squeezes out surprises with a tinge of tang and froth. It avoids the sappiness of "smooth jazz," the stilted self-reference of "hip-hop jazz" and the suffocating cushion of "quiet storm," yet there's a lush sensuality that permeates the beats, bop rhythms and bracing moments of curiosity and intellect.

Glasper understands that this Experiment is best undertaken as a tactile experience - as Shafiq Husayn rap-drawls in the opener, "Lift Off," all you need is your ears and your soul. To drive home the point, the beguiling yawl and coo of Erykah Badu sends the Afro-Cuban classic "Afro Blue" into the air like a large kite in a steady wind, its tail trilling. Rappers Lupe Fiasco and yasiin bey (better known as Mos Def) variously distill verbal science and wig out on wordplay ("turtles from a man hole"?), knowing the live quartet can alter the texture and freestyle the route as the situation warrants, on "Always Shine" and "Black Radio," respectively. There is a throwback nature to Black Radio, and not only because Sade ("Cherish The Day," with Lalah Hathaway on vocals), David Bowie ("Letter to Hermione," featuring Bilal channeling Stevie Wonder) and Nirvana (a deconstructed and vocoderized "Smells Like Teen Spirit") are covered. There are moments reminiscent of the soul-jazz fusion of Bobbi Humphrey and Donald Byrd back on Blue Note in the late '70s, or Soul II Soul and Me Phi Me back in the '80s, or Alphabet Soup and Mint Condition in the '90s, with a dollop of 21st-century hip-hop on top. Why reinvent the wheel when you can modify the ride?
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#49 Dum Dum Girls, End of Daze EP

End of Daze

Dum Dum Girls
2012 | Sub Pop Records

Sporting black leather jackets, bright red lipstick and hangdog poses, Dum Dum Girls resemble high-school dropouts from another time – the '50s, maybe; or maybe it's the '60s; or maybe it's the '80s. Whenever it is, it's not now. But no assembly of retro references, however clever, will get you to sing with a voice as bold, outsized and sad as Kristin Gundred, nor will they get you to write melodies as... instantly indelible as she can either. Over the course of two albums, and now two EPs, her band has gone from playing misfit little garage songs punctuated by "bang-bang"s and "la-la"s to dark, glittering music exploring resignation, regret, and other big subjects that sound surprising coming from a band calling themselves "Dum Dum Girls."

End of Daze, their latest, follows in the footsteps of convincingly sad bands from the Shangri-Las to the Smiths: They treat raw emotional vulnerability with musical confidence. Guitars buzz, drums boom and everything cocoons comfortably in reverb. At 18 minutes, End of Daze has no standouts and no weak spots: It's beautiful all the way through. The spiritual heart of the EP comes from the lone cover, of 1980s Scottish pop-rock group Strawberry Switchblade's "Trees and Flowers." "I hate the trees and I hate the flowers," Gundred sings over shimmering, reverberant guitars – "I hate the buildings and the way they tower over me." With just the slightest push, the simplicity that once made them playthings gets elevated to metaphor. As a title, End of Daze might be a little joke about their own maturity: The fog lifts and leaves nothing but clarity, naked and bittersweet.
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#48 Eternal Summers, Correct Behavior

Correct Behavior

Eternal Summers
2012 | Kanine Records

Nicole Yun only knows a handful of guitar chords, but she plays them passionately. Her band, Eternal Summers, has expanded sizably on sophomore effort Correct Behavior, building on their debut's ramshackle indiepop foundation with stadium-sized hooks, extra layers of guitar, and loads of reverb. But in spite of their sonic makeover, Eternal Summers (now a trio with the addition of bassist Jonathan Woods) still understand the power of brevity and focus, striking... a balance between the naÃ¯ve, home-spun charm of early gems like "Running High" and "Safe at Home" and the more expansive style they've branded "dream-punk."

"Millions" is a hell of a re-introduction. With its jangly guitar lines and see-sawing chorus melody, the track sounds like New Pornographers stuck in the garage, with Yun channeling her inner Neko Case. They have their stoner-poet moment with the atmospheric prog-pop of "Heaven and Hell," Yun philosophizing "Death itself will die" over cavernous distortion – epic shit for a band who probably used to record in their mom's basement. Eternal Summers seem to have a blast exploring the limits of a legitimate studio (check the skronky, drunk toddler guitar solo on "Disappear," or the rocket-snare blast on "You Kill," or the Beach House-y preset keyboard beat on closer "Summerset"), but they rarely experiment at the cost of joyous, chest-pounding pop. Correct Behavior indeed.
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#47 The Men, Open Your Heart

Open Your Heart

The Men
2012 | Sacred Bones Records / S.C. Distribution

There's nothing quite like a good old-fashioned, skull-splitting album-opener. Judged on those merits alone, Open Your Heart's "Turn it Around" completely fucking aces its final exam. Moreover, it's a refreshing, accessible upgrade for the Men, the Brooklyn noisemakers who set speakers smoking with last year's overdriven, occasionally overindulgent and ultimately overwhelming Leave Home. Its mix of shoegaze grandiosity and punk grit was exciting and powerful, but there were moments where one... wondered what they'd sound like if they reined it in with a couple of hooks.

Open Your Heart is the answer. The album is divided roughly into three categories: rockers (the abovementioned "Turn it Around," the Buzzcockian power pop of the title track, and the straight-up hardcore "Cube"), chill-outs (the aptly titled instrumental "Country Song," the halcyon-era-Meat-Puppets-doing-Poison drinking song, "Candy") and Leave Home sister songs (building, stretch-outs "Oscillation" and "Presence"). These categories aren't compartmentalized. Instead, they mix and mingle like you do at any great party, screamers butting elbows with blue-collar laments, rave-ups doing shots with the burnouts.

It's uncommon for a rock 'n' roll band to show such proficiency in genre-dabbling, but the Men pull it off, and it's exciting to think about what they might do given full-on immersion into one of the many directions hinted at on Open Your Heart. When American Sun's Holly Overton shows up to croon on a couple tracks, her feathery backing vocals providing balance to a screaming mix that often threatens to push too far into the red, it's tempting to hope she'll join the band. A record-length meditation on upbeat, Big-Star-inspired love songs would thrill, no doubt, but hey, what if they did a full-on country album? The potential, clearly, is unending. Thankfully, so are the rewards.
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