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| Big Thief |
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Big Thief - Open Desert from U.F.O.F.
By the arrival of Big Thief's third album, U.F.O.F. ("UFO friend" per lyrics in the title track), songwriter Adrianne Lenker had established herself as a singular force in indie music, both through two acclaimed albums with her band and with more delicate solo material including 2018's Abysskiss. In the meantime, Big Thief had toured almost constantly between preparing their 2016 debut, Masterpiece, and recording U.F.O.F., all the while becoming more and more tight-knit as a group...
Field Medic - used 2 be a romantic from fade into the dawn
Kevin Patrick, aka Field Medic, begins his first properly realized album, Fade into the Dawn, with one of the sharpest opening lines in indie rock history. "Used 2 Be a Romantic" finds its protagonist, the mid-level touring musician in a loud dive bar, defeatedly proclaiming "I need a cigarette, those fuckers talked over my whole set." These are the first words we hear on an album rich with Patrick's uniquely intimate style, one that blends aching narratives with understated humor and optimism...
Comet Gain - The Institute Debased from Fireraisers Forever!
When a band has been around as long Comet Gain have -- over 25 years -- and keep making great records, it's easy to take them for granted. They have a foolproof plan for always getting the full attention of their listeners though: make the angry songs feel like the attack of a swarm of insane bees, make the pop songs pop like giant bubblegum bubbles, make the sad songs cry-a-bucket-of-tears sad. While their previous record Paperback Ghosts had an autumnal, almost pastoral, tinge on many of the tracks, the sound of Fireraisers Forever! is almost the opposite. This time David Christian and his devoted band take no prisoners...
Empath - Soft Shape from Active Listening: Night on Earth
Philly-based four-piece Empath grew organically out of noisy basement jam sessions and free jazz listening parties between close friends living in a communal house. Their earliest recordings were made with a cheap USB microphone intended for use with a video game and would often include canned field recordings of frogs and nature sounds as segues between bursts of noisy racket. The band's first full-length, Active Listening: Night on Earth, zeroes in on the best elements of their ecstatic punk songwriting without cleaning up the production or losing any of the naturalistic dirt that made them so special in the first place.
Froth - Catalog from Duress
After releasing an album, 2017's Outside (briefly), that made it seem like the group was on their way to being the next coming of Ride, the L.A. trio Froth take a different direction on 2019's Duress. Though they worked with the same producer (Tomas Dolas) and reference the same shoegaze, noise pop, and dream pop influences, the album has a dialed-back, dressed-down approach that has more in common with the bedroom-brewed lo-fi of Duster than it does the stadium-friendly feel of Ride. On the majority of the album, guitarist/vocalist Joo-Joo Ashworth, bassist Jeremy Katz, and drummer Cameron Allen sound like they were bunkered in a laundry room, huddling around an old four-track tape machine and gently picking their way through the songs so as not to bother anyone else in the house...
Young Guv - Roll with Me from Guv I
Working under the Young Guv name, it's never clear what Ben Cook's restless musical soul is going to do next. He's made lo-fi indie pop, slickly cooked bedroom R&B, and throbbing new wave in the past, and sometimes all three at once. On 2019's Guv 1, Cook sets his sights on re-creating the glory days of early-'90s power pop and does it masterfully. The record sounds like Teenage Fanclub recording in a broom closet, or Sloan in a garden shed, mainlining Big Star hooks and gulping soda pop fizz as they knock out pristine, chiming, lovely tunes one after the next. Cook and a small band of collaborators work this magic by using rich layers of jangling guitar, vocals -- both winsome leads and sweet harmonies -- and rock-solid rhythms to construct a shimmering, homemade sound that's evidence that no matter how many times it seems that power pop is buried for good, there's always some weirdo ready to dig it back up and show the old-timers some new(ish) tricks...
Altin Gün - Leyla from Gece
Altin Gün were formed by former members of Jacco Gardner's band to pay tribute to the Turkish psychedelia of the early '70s that they discovered and fell in love with while on tour in Turkey. Bassist Jasper Verhulst fell under the spell of artists like Baris Manço, Selda Bağcan, and Erkin Koray, who blended traditional Turkish folk sounds with the wild sounds of their day, so Verhulst decided he wanted to do something similar in the 2010s, using modern production techniques and synthesizers along with psych guitars and Turkish instruments...
Avey Tare - Saturdays (Again) from Cows on Hourglass Pond
For much of the decade that followed Animal Collective's 2009 masterstroke Merriweather Post Pavilion, output from the group and its members splintered in several different directions. Animal Collective themselves continued along their never-linear trajectory with strange and spazzy albums that could be claustrophobic or spacious. Dave Portner, known under his stage name Avey Tare, went in various directions with his solo work as well, from the swampy gunk of 2010's Down There to the sprawling emotional whirlwind of 2017's Eucalyptus, an often-formless home-recorded reflection on major shifts in his personal life. Cows on Hourglass Pond streamlines Portner's impulses to wrap his tuneful songs in drawn-out experimentation, focusing instead on the closest thing to straightforward pop his weird vision can manage...
Vanishing Twin - Cryonic Suspension May Save Your Life from The Age of Immunology
From their name to the trippy examinations of the self on Choose Your Own Adventure, Vanishing Twin excel at giving a heart to heady concepts of identity and belonging. On their second album, Cathy Lucas and company give these ideas a much wider scope: The Age of Immunology is an idealistic, impressionistic rebuke to Brexit and the other xenophobic movements of the late 2010s. Though the album's subject matter is of global proportions, the group's perspective on it is personal. With members hailing from Belgium, Japan, Italy, France, and America as well as England, Vanishing Twin are living proof that the other is nothing to fear...
Fly Pan Am - Distance Dealer from C'est ça
During their initial run, Fly Pan Am were arguably the most avant-garde group signed to Montreal's Constellation label. Their releases consisted of lengthy compositions featuring long stretches of skeletal, Krautrock-influenced rhythms that didn't build up into the type of sweeping crescendos some of their better-known labelmates were known for, and their usage of noise and musique concrète elements felt much more jarring and challenging. The group dissolved following the release of 2004's N'Écoutez Pas, their most accomplished work to that point, and its members concentrated on other projects, including Pas Chic Chic and Feu Thérèse. In 2018, Fly Pan Am unexpectedly reconvened and played their first concert in 14 years, and fourth full-length C'est ça arrived a year later. The album builds on the more accessible elements of N'Écoutez Pas, while also pushing the sonic experimentation over the edge, resulting in a jaw-dropping suite of avant-pop that constantly takes exciting hairpin turns. "Distance Dealer" is a My Bloody Valentine-style song spiked with a few doses of stimulants, with searing electro-shock noise buzzing on top of the gliding guitars and buried vocals...
First known as the frontwoman for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Karen O branched out from the band's incendiary rock soon after their debut album, Fever to Tell, was released in 2003.
Danger Mouse / Karen O - Nox Lumina from Lux Prima
With the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and on her own, Karen O proved herself one of the most powerful voices of the 2000s -- and one that went missing for most of the 2010s. While she took some well-deserved time to raise her child and pursue other projects, whenever she resurfaced, as on the 2017 Daniele Luppi and Parquet Courts collaboration Milano, it was a reminder of just how much she was missed. On her first album since 2014's Crush Songs, O draws on the different aspects of her previous work without repeating herself, blending together thoughtful ballads and the occasional fiery rock song with soundtrack-worthy atmospheres. Her partner in this balancing act is Danger Mouse, whose lush, funky production harks back to his work with Gnarls Barkley...
Susanna & the Brotherhood of Our Lady - Death and the Miser from Garden of Earthly Delights
On albums such as Flower of Evil and Go Dig My Grave, Susanna has proven herself a gifted interpreter of works by artists ranging from Henry Purcell to Lou Reed. With Garden of Earthly Delights, she draws inspiration from an entirely different kind of artist: Hieronymus Bosch, the Dutch painter and draftsman whose work -- particularly the triptych altarpiece that is this album's namesake -- has fascinated viewers for centuries. While Susanna's 13th album is not a literal interpretation of The Garden of Earthly Delights, the painting's mysterious mix of innocence, sensuality, and darkness reminded her of the complexities of life in the late 2010s and spurred her to create a richly symbolic world of her own...
Bill Callahan - Son of the Sea from Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest
Bill Callahan packed a lot of living into the years between Dream River and Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest: He married in 2014, welcomed a son in 2015, and lost his mother in 2018. These experiences couldn't help but inform his music, and on his fifth solo album, he sounds like he's rediscovered the wonders of life (and death) and is primed to share them in a way that feels new to his lengthy career. Though Shepherd is over an hour long, its songs are on a smaller, and more personal, scale than any of Callahan's previous work -- instead of panoramas, they're family snapshots...
Simon Joyner - Tongue of a Child from Pocket Moon
One of the best-kept secrets of underground music, Omaha singer/songwriter Simon Joyner is your favorite musician's favorite musician. Consistently active and firmly independent since the early '90s, Joyner's influence is apparent in much more recognizable names like Bright Eyes, Kevin Morby, Angel Olsen, and other top-shelf artists occupying the space between Americana and lyrically focused songwriting. Pocket Moon continues Joyner's reshaping and refining of the elements that have given his work such impact since he began. The arrangements are simple, centered around vocals high in the mix. Throughout his discography, Joyner has consistently evoked Leonard Cohen's grim narratives, Dylan's flirtations with the surreal, and Townes Van Zandt's blue-collar storytelling. Combined with his own intricate lyrical perspectives, these influences are sharper on Pocket Moon. The foreboding cello, spooky spare percussion, and fingerpicked guitar of "Tongue of a Child" make a perfect backdrop for an ominous Cohen-esque vocal performance...
Cate Le Bon - Magnificent Gestures from Reward
Welsh artist Cate Le Bon's fifth album, Reward, was created in a vacuum of solitude. While Le Bon was in an intensive furniture-making course by day, she spent her nights alone at the piano writing the skeletons that would be fleshed out as songs here. Nonstop activity is part of Le Bon's brand, and while her collaborative band Drinks and production duties for Deerhunter's Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? took up space on her resumé not long before Reward, three years passed between its release and her last fully solo album, 2016's Crab Day. Where that album and much of Le Bon's work were centered around nervous, angular guitar rock, Reward exposes new dimensions of her songwriting...
Vampire Weekend - This Life from Father of the Bride
During the six years between Modern Vampires of the City and Father of the Bride, things that seemed essential to Vampire Weekend changed drastically. Founding member Rostam Batmanglij left to pursue his solo career, while Ezra Koenig left the East Coast to settle in Los Angeles. These shifts in lineup and location are just a few of the changes Vampire Weekend take in stride on their fourth album. After reaching peak musical and lyrical density on Modern Vampires of the City, they're reborn with a West Coast perspective and pace on Father of the Bride, giving all 18 of its songs more room for their novelistic detail and surprising juxtapositions...
Deerhunter - Death in Midsummer from Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?
A quick scan of Deerhunter's body of work -- which includes album and song titles like Fading Frontier and "Memory Boy" -- serves as a reminder that the fleeting nature of life is something that has fascinated Bradford Cox and company for years. Until the band's eighth album, these meditations on ephemerality were deeply personal. On Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?, Cox looks at the world around him with the same intensity that he used to examine his own life on earlier albums. Though this shift in perspective was brought on by the political climate of the late 2010s, Deerhunter's version of resistance isn't to rail against only the injustices of that era, but against a seemingly endless history of inhumanity and death with songs that sound deceptively life-affirming...
The Mattson 2 - Wavelength from Paradise
Recorded in their San Diego home, 2019's Paradise finds the sibling duo of guitarist Jared and drummer Jonathan Mattson moving away from the psychedelic modal jazz that marked their 2018 reworking of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme and towards their own beatific brand sunshine pop. Whereas their maverick take on A Love Supreme found them drawing heavily upon their jazz-trained roots, Paradise is a much more laid-back and pop-oriented production...
that dog. - When We Were Young from Old LP
"I haven't felt like this since 1995," Anna Waronker snarls at one point on Old LP, the first album from that dog. in 22 years. During that time -- nearly half of Waronker, Rachel Haden, and Tony Maxwell's lives -- the band's spiky yet vulnerable mix of punk, chamber pop, and singer/songwriter confessions shaped later generations of indie rock and pop artists. It's all the sweeter, then, that Old LP is a near-flawless blend of experience and exuberance. Though Waronker and Haden sound only a day or two older than they did on 1997's Retreat from the Sun, that dog.'s members have become more seasoned musicians since that album's release. They also made Old LP at a deliberate pace, writing a handful of songs each year after their 2011 reunion shows. All of the time invested in the album pays off richly: Their skill at being witty but not arch, emotional but not overwrought, and calling out hypocrisy wherever they see it has only become keener, largely because Waronker is an even sharper, more articulate songwriter...
Ex Hex - Want It to Be True from It's Real
On Rips, Ex Hex reimagined the instant gratification of rock & roll with thrilling results. On their second album, Mary Timony, Betsy Wright, and Laura Harris take a deeper dive into rock's transporting powers. At once tighter and more complex than Rips, It's Real reflects the two years Ex Hex spent touring in support of their debut, as well as the year it took to craft the album in the studio (one key piece of gear was the Rockman, an amp that Boston's Tom Scholz developed in 1982). In much the same way that some power pop and new wave bands expanded their music to arena-sized proportions as the '80s unfolded, It's Real is bigger and more deliberate than its predecessor. The songs are longer, the beats are heavier, and the guitar solos are more ambitious, with the suite-like "If You Want It to Be True" providing one of many showcases for Timony's formidable fretwork...
Grandchildren - Phantom Pains from Grandchildren
Having started out as the solo project of lead singer/songwriter Aleks Martray, Philadelphia's Grandchildren evolved into an immersive, Baroque pop outfit. It was a sound they embraced on 2015's layered Zuni, and one they've developed even further since the addition of vocalist Shari Bolar in 2017. Blessed with a dusky, soulful voice that matches Martray's perfectly, Bolar is one of the main reasons that the group's fourth full-length album, 2019's eponymous Grandchildren, is such a moving leap forward... The album's sustained vibe of moody heartbreak takes its most potent form on the noirish, early-'60s-style ballad "Phantom Pains," in which Martray and Bolar's voices intertwine in desperate agony against a spiraling guitar hook, and dynamic backdrop of dark orchestral swells...
Helado Negro - Please Won’t Please from This Is How You Smile
Considering how Private Energy positively beamed thanks to radiant songs like "It's My Brown Skin" and "Young, Latin and Proud," the title of Helado Negro's sixth album could come as a surprise. However, on This Is How You Smile, Roberto Carlos Lange finds ways to sustain a sense of identity, family, and love when that energy runs low. For these strong yet tender songs, Lange drew inspiration from Jamaica Kincaid's short story "Girl," in which an immigrant mother gives her daughter instructions on how to survive and thrive in a world that wasn't made for her. Lange's flair for imagery is just as deft as any author's: He sets the album's mood with "Please Won't Please," sounding weary but resilient as he sings "Lifelong history shows that brown won't go/Brown just glows" over a scuffed beat and luminous synths...
Sharon Van Etten - Comeback Kid from Remind Me Tomorrow
For a decade, Sharon Van Etten specialized in understatement. From her 2009 debut Because I Was in Love through 2014's Are We There, she mined the tension generated by murmuring instrumentation clashing with her passionate delivery, a balance that proved quietly compelling. Van Etten maintains that sense of drama on Remind Me Tomorrow, her fifth full-length album, but she's radically shifted her presentation. Working with producer John Congleton, she's expanded her sonic palette, incorporating vintage synthesizers and drum loops while occasionally cranking up her amplifiers. Some of the sounds are conscious throwbacks, but they don't play like retro nostalgia, not in the context of Remind Me Tomorrow, which juxtaposes fearless aural adventure with keenly observed observations of easing into a satisfied life...
Jenny Hval - High Alice from The Practice of Love
With each of her albums, Jenny Hval uses different facets of pop music to express her intricate concepts. To explore love as an action rather than a passive state of being, on The Practice of Love, she borrows the sound of '90s trance as a backdrop for her musings. It's an unlikely but ultimately inspired combination: The washy synths, wide-open spaces, and hypnotic yet energetic beats of trance music let Hval's ideas flow in a remarkably engaging way while also harking back to the floaty sounds of Innocence Is Kinky. The very smoothness of The Practice of Love's music demands that her audience listen closely as Hval suggests that maintaining connection, whether through the senses or through questions, may be the key to being an attentive friend, lover, or artist...
Sacred Paws - Life's Too Short from Run Around the Sun
...Rachel Aggs (vocals, guitar, bass) and Eilidh Rodgers (vocals, drums) apply the same high standards to Run Around the Sun, working with much the same team to create a joyous indie pop listening experience. This time around they have upped the production values a little by adding a slightly richer horn section to most tracks and more keyboards (as provided again by Free Love's Lewis Cook), along with an overall punchier sound. It's the kind of sonic expansion that could have led to an overcooked sound, but that's definitely not the case here. Instead it gives more dimension to the melodies and makes the record sound widescreen as opposed to the focused punch of the first album. Aggs and Rodgers certainly don't sound any less energetic as they trade off vocals and attack their instruments with fervent glee. They sound like they play and sing with huge smiles plastered across their faces, and the feeling is infectious...
Lachlan Denton & Studio Magic - A Brother from A Brother
..Australian songwriter Lachlan Denton and his brother Zac played in bands the Ocean Party and Ciggie Witch, spending their days touring around, making music, and enjoying young life together. When Zac died suddenly at age 24 in October of 2018, an entire faction of Melbourne lost not just a friend but an integral part of their scene. Neither Ocean Party nor Ciggie Witch felt right about continuing on without Zac, and Lachlan poured his grief into new songs of loss and loving remembrance. A Brother is technically Denton's second solo album, but it was tracked live with "Studio Magic," a makeshift assemblage of friends and affiliates who knew or made music with Zac. Members of Cool Sounds, No Local, Skydeck, and other Aussie indie pop acts back Lachlan up on tunes with the same wistful jangle that he brought to Ocean Party and his earlier solo work...
Rozi Plain - Inner Circle from What a Boost
Collaborative U.K. musician Rozi Plain finished writing her fourth solo album, What a Boost, during a yearlong world tour as bassist for like-minded collective This Is the Kit. The leader of that project, Plain's friend and longtime collaborator Kate Stables, appears on the record, as do guests including but not limited to Sam Amidon, Joel Wästberg (aka sir Was), and members of such experimental groups as Zun Zun Egui and the Comet Is Coming. It's Plain's second consecutive album to be recorded at Total Refreshment Centre, a London club and rehearsal/recording space popular with local jazz musicians at the time, and her intricate, folk-inflected indie rock has a more conspicuous, gentle jazz presence here, including on the improvisational opening track, "Inner Circle." It opens with a slinky guitar riff, spare jazz drum kit, and hand drums, gradually adding additional instruments (electric bass, saxophone, violin, and more)...
Lisel - Ciphers from Angels on the Slope
Before making her debut as Lisel in 2019, Eliza Bagg had already built an enviable music resumé, having collaborated with such highly regarded avant-garde artists as Meredith Monk, John Zorn, Daniel Wohl, and Julianna Barwick. In the indie world, she sang and engineered for San Fermin, played strings for Kevin Morby and Simon Raymonde's Lost Horizons, and co-led Brooklyn art-rock band Pavo Pavo. Familiar to fans of that group will be the soaring, wistful melodies of Bagg's elegant voice, whose ethereal quality is front and center with Lisel in layered, organic, and distorted forms. Its particular use of vocal samples is indicative of the overall experimental tendencies on the self-produced Angels on the Slope, a title that evokes its otherworldly and off-balance qualities, including dissonance, spacy timbres, and glints of subtle, sculpted noise. While sparse, opener "Ciphers" includes examples of all of the above, as does most of the album. Pulsing vocal samples are introduced in its first few seconds, cuing Bagg's delicate, live soprano, drum machine, and eventual dissonant flute and impromptu-sounding percussion. The track then locks into radiant harmonies, another judiciously employed trait of the record...
Rocketship - Nothing Deep Inside from Thanks to You
Following up a classic album is never easy. Roughly 99.9 percent of bands or artists lucky enough to make something that stands out as a paragon of their genre never get within range of it ever again. That seemed to be the case with Rocketship. Their 1996 album A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness is a brilliant distillation of indie pop sweetness, chamber pop skill, shoegaze softness, and dream pop hooks played on space-age keyboards and perfectly jangled guitars and sung by a chorus of voices dialed in on the special frequency between lovelorn and melancholy.... Cue the record scratch sound effect because 2019's Thanks to You is exactly that. Working mainly with vocalist Ellen Osborn, Reske concocted a record that nearly measures up to their debut in every way, and it's clear that while time has passed and there are new elements added to Rocketship's sound, Reske's gifts as a writer and producer haven't faded at all...
Lost Under Heaven - Bunny's Blues from Love Hates What You Become
Lost Under Heaven's debut, 2016's Songs for Spiritual Lovers to Sing, was the sound of Manchester-bred singer/songwriter Ellery James Roberts and Dutch singer/songwriter/visual artist Ebony Hoorn having fallen in love and willfully drowned themselves in artful sonic euphoria. With their sophomore album, 2019's cathartic Love Hates What You Become, the couple rise to the crashing reality of living in the wake of that love and the realization that simply finding your soulmate doesn't fix your life, your emotional health, or the world around you. Recorded in Los Angeles with producer John Congleton and Swans drummer Thor Harris, Love Hates What You Become is a devastatingly affecting album, built deftly around the duo's yin and yang vocals with Roberts' tortured, throaty yawp coolly contrasted by Hoorn's flat, Marlene Dietrich-in-Doc Martens delivery. The songs are hugely anthemic in the punk tradition of Patti Smith and Nick Cave...
Nilüfer Yanya - In Your Head from Miss Universe
Following three years of peculiar but persistently catchy EPs and critical buzz-building, England's Nilüfer Yanya arrives with Miss Universe, the singer/songwriter's first longform statement. With breakout tracks like 2016's "Keep On Calling" and 2018's "Baby Luv," the West Londoner introduced the bones of her sound, which generally revolve around a quietly smoldering electric guitar part, a handful of beats, and the bluesy, mumbled staccato that marks her unique vocal delivery. Like an urban magpie weaving bits of pop, soul, indie rock, jazz, and hip-hop into her nest, Yanya's artful and often minimalist guitar pop comes from a contemporary place and on Miss Universe, with both pathos and humor, she tackles the overly commercialized industry that has built up around that most fragile of concepts: the self-image... These shorter tracks provide an interesting framework for full-length songs like the irresistibly punchy "In Your Head" and "Angels," which cover themes of ambition, anxiety, falling apart, and reaching too high.
Purple Mountains - All My Happiness Is Gone from Purple Mountains
After the Silver Jews ended in 2009, David Berman's retreat from music seemed so final that the mere existence of Purple Mountains is somewhat miraculous -- and even more so because it's one of his finest collections of songs. For this go-round, Berman chose a brilliant band name: Purple Mountains is traditional but not obvious, familiar but with more than a hint of eternal mystery. While he's always been an eloquent songwriter, now he's also a direct one -- it's as if these songs are making up for lost time as they let listeners know what's been on his mind during the years he was gone...
Orville Peck - Dead of Night from Pony
But that fringed mask Peck wears, the guitar figures that evoke shoegaze and goth sounds as much as vintage country & western, and the casual references to getting high with hustlers, sexually ambiguous rodeo riders, and fellow cowpokes calling him pretty make it clear Peck is not about to become the new Marty Robbins. But as an artist who at once embraces and subverts the tropes of classic country music and the iconography of the North American cowboy, Peck delivers some of the most enjoyable cultural détournement since Robert Lopez transformed himself into El Vez, and he's an even better singer. Peck's instrument suggests some fortunate cross between Elvis Presley, Chris Isaak, Roy Orbison, and Morrissey, and if his delivery is a bit melodramatic in its swagger and brio, it suits the material, and his pipes are strong enough to make it work...
