from 1st to 33rd dozen bestof
ALTER.NATiON SELECTiON on DEEZER
An immensely talented jazz saxophonist and flautist with limitless expertise and expressive improvising technique.
DONNY McCASLIN -
Exactlyfourminutesofimprovisedmusic (Zach Danziger / Jason Lindner / Jonathan Maron / Donny McCaslin) 4:00
With Blow., Donny McCaslin transitions from world-class jazz saxophonist to indie/art rock provocateur. The musician gained mainstream recognition from the rock world when his quartet collaborated on David Bowie's final album, Blackstar...
A blend of Krautrock grooves and eerie atmospheres, featuring Portishead's Geoff Barrow. Featuring members of Portishead and Moon Gangs, Beak> is a trio crafting dense and atmospheric music inspired by dub, Krautrock, and the Beach Boys.
BEAK> - Brean Down 3:51
>>> "You don't like our music cuz it ain't up on the radio," Beak>'s Geoff Barrow sings on >>> with something approaching pride. This contrarian attitude defines the band's third album: Barrow and company could have easily made another album of sinister motorik-driven instrumentals like >>, but this time, they blow up their music.
Barry Adamson's work as a bassist for Magazine and Nick Cave's Bad Seeds gave little indication of the complex, cinematic works he has composed and arranged as a solo artist.
Barry Adamson -
The Snowball Effect 4:24
If the post-punk era produced a renaissance man, it's Barry Adamson. He was an integral member of Magazine and the founding incarnation of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. He played on synth pop albums by Visage and Pete Shelley. He's written and arranged for Nitzer Ebb, Ethyl Meatplow, Scott Walker, and Simple Minds, to name a few, and has contributed music to soundtracks like Derek Jarman's The Last of England, David Lynch's Lost Highway, Allison Anders' Gas Food Lodging, and Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers...
Chicago-based psychedelic/Krautrock enthusiasts Cave craft tight and funky free-form slabs of groove-heavy instrumental space rock that have earned them comparisons to everyone from Can to Stereolab to Funkadelic.
Cave -
San' Yago 5:58
...“San’ Yago” announces itself with a clattering polyrhythmic beat that rolls through the song like an uneven tricycle. Percolating rhythms and a perky guitar line run alongside. Cooper Crain patiently works his electric piano into the gaps, applying warm tones like a mason working mortar into a stone wall. But as the tension slowly builds, a keening synth line approaches like a sunrise, and for a moment everyone’s playing feels fuller, and the song’s colors become more saturated. Eventually it recedes, leaving just the steady prickling of that guitar line scuttling around like a crab in its wake. We’re right back where we started, but the lowering of the tide has shifted the entire landscape.
Gentle '60s pop vocalist who matured into a smoky chanteuse who focused on dark, deeply personal themes. Few stars of the '60s reinvented themselves as successfully as Marianne Faithfull. She began her career as a pop thrush who scored an international hit with her version of "As Tears Go By," which was released well before the Rolling Stones recorded it, and a string of successful singles followed in the U.K
Marianne Faithfull -
As Tears Go By 3:52
"As Tears Go By" _WikipediA
Marianne Faithfull was just 18 years old when she scored a hit in England and America with "As Tears Go By" in 1964. In 2018, a 71-year-old Faithfull re-recorded the song for her album Negative Capability, and the differences between the two versions speak volumes about the artist she is in the 2010s. The performance on Negative Capability comes from a vocalist who has learned a lot more about love, heartache, and the good and bad places that fate can take you than the 18-year-old ever imagined she could know.
Scuzz-rocking guitarist who fused ernest traditionalism and destructive tendencies fronting Pussy Galore, the Blues Explosion, and Heavy Trash.
Jon Spencer -
Wilderness 2:27
...The only thing curious about that would be that this marks the first time Spencer has released a solo project. Spencer has always displayed a strong personal style, whether in the noise rock assault of Pussy Galore, the hard wailing of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the lascivious R&B stomp of Boss Hog, or the roots-conscious swagger of Heavy Trash. But if you were expecting that something new would be revealed with Spencer as the uncontested leader, free to bend his talents into any direction he chose, well, that's really not what you get here. More than anything, Spencer Sings the Hits suggests the Blues Explosion without the same degree of fire and gravity, and with a little bit of noisy clatter and keyboard blurt added for seasoning...
Hen Ogledd - Tiny Witch Hunter from Mogic
The band Hen Ogledd is named for the ancient Welsh term for northern England, which is where most of its four members are from. Originally rooted in northern folk music, Hen Ogledd has morphed into a weird art pop band that blends references to modern technology with imagery from older magic. Their next album will be called Mogic – a mix of magic and logic. The single is “Tiny Witch Hunter,” a pitch-shifted collage of apparently random scientific and tech terms that leads to a catchy, short chorus that consists solely of the song’s title phrase.
Irreverent British post-punk revival band earned its cult following in the '00s.
Art Brut -
Kultfigur from Wham! Bang! Pow! Let's Rock Out!
tuneful, zippy guitar pop!
Eddie Argos’s Bournemouth- and now Berlin-based band made a splash in the mid-2000s as exuberant, wordy indie-rock contemporaries of Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand. Now rocking a remodelled lineup and even more exclamation marks, Art Brut’s first album in seven years is trademark zippy, tuneful guitar pop, although there is perhaps more of a nod to new wave and power pop than there once was.
The guitars and brass don’t exactly trouble the zeitgeist, but the harmonies and choruses are singable, and surely pop is richer for such a haplessly engaging character as Argos. Something of a deadpan, Jarvis Cocker-like antihero, his stock-in-trade is wide-eyed, drily humorous songs about pined-for girlfriends and dreaming of being on Top of the Pops, littered with affectionate references to pop culture.
Reverend Horton Heat -
Don't Let Go of Me (James C. Heath)
from Whole New Life
He’s been on fire for a long time and Jim Heath is showing absolutely no signs of stopping! To keep that fire stoked and burning... For “
Don’t Let Go of Me,” they slow the pace down and dip into deeper tones for a reverb-heavy jam session. Here, a meandering plea in the name of love highlights the band’s musical talents. Similarly, the instrumental journey that is “Ride Before the Fall,” much like its predecessor, displays the band’s exceptional talents beautifully. Together, the band tell a story without words, painting a stellar, cinematic landscape.
Thom Yorke -
Suspirium
The perpetually haunted voice of Radiohead reserved his solo billing for further electronics and beats experimentation. Few rock singers of the alternative era were as original or as instantly unforgettable as Thom Yorke, and his band, Radiohead, became one of the biggest acts of the 1990s and 2000s for their challenging and unpredictable music. Early on, Yorke rarely worked outside the band, but he steadily collaborated with a variety of artists, released a pair of low-key solo albums, and briefly led another band, the Afrobeat-inspired Atoms for Peace. Throughout, he worked closely with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich...
Australian singer/songwriter with a slacker style and deadpan delivery that work in perfect tandem.
Courtney Barnett -
Nameless, Faceless
Probably one of the most talked-about #MeToo anthems this year, Courtney Barnett’s “Nameless, Faceless” vocalizes so well every woman’s fear: “I wanna walk through the park in the dark,” she sings, then citing a tactic many of us have, unfortunately, utilized before: “I hold my keys / Between my fingers.” She also quotes The Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood in her three-minute diss track of both a nasty internet troll and the patriarchy: “Men are scared that women will laugh at them / Women are scared that men will kill them.”
Indie rock supergroup featuring Jack White of the White Stripes, Brendan Benson, and two members of the Greenhornes.
The Raconteurs -
Sundey Driver 3:39
The first of the two new songs is an absolute banger called “Sunday Driver.” White takes the lead on that one, and it’s a rip-snorting Camaro-rocker with hooks for days. In director Steven Sebring’s video, the camera spins vertiginously around the band as they play. Jack White recaptures that old rock-star swagger, and
it’s a cool thing to see.
A freewheeling band fusing indie, hard rock, electronic, and pop sounds, the Voidz feature guitarists Amir Yaghmai and Beardo, singer/multi-instrumentalist Julian Casablancas, keyboardist Jeff Kite, bassist/keyboardist Jake Bercovici, and drummer Alex Carapetis
The Voidz -
ALieNNatioN 4:39
“ALieNNatioN” has a truly horrible title, owing specifically to its liberal abuse of upper- and lower-case letters, and I went into the album expecting to hate the thing. Instead, it’s probably my favorite track on Virtue, and in many ways, the most straight-up gorgeous song ever recorded by Julian Casablancas. Compositionally, it kinda sounds like Pinback: that crisp architectural melody over the reggae-ish rhythm; the shift into dizzying angelic beauty on the chorus. But sonically, it could be a Metro Boomin’ production: the vast echo; the hard, sparse beat. It rules.
A gritty, rootsy R&B and rock act fronted by the multifaceted singer and songwriter.
Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats -
You Worry Me
Denver’s Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats broke through in 2015 with the polished honkytonk rock of their self-titled debut on the famed Stax Records label. Three years later, on their sophomore LP, the band, with Rateliff at the helm and the dearly departed Richard Swift behind the boards, have become one of the finest Americana acts in the nation, and “You Worry Me” is the best song Rateliff has ever written. Solitary keys play as the song opens, a now bold and signature indicator that Rateliff & The Night Sweats are about to embark on their crown jewel. Intensity builds through gracefully careening strings and Rateliff’s gravelly vocals ascending into a glorious explosion of horns. A superb saxophone bridge atop a kick drum raises Rateliff’s delivery to mountainous levels of soul and emotion, and you can’t help but just feel something powerful inside of you.
Neko Case feat. Mark Lanegan -
Curse of the I-5 Corridor
Neko Case’s seven-minute song winds like the long interstate it references: I-5 runs along the West Coast of the U.S., from the Mexican to Canadian border. A duet with Mark Lanegan, who is known for his solo work in addition to collaborations and his work with Queens of the Stone Age, “Curse Of The I-5 Corridor” is a haunting combination of lyrics and sound. The song reflects on the past, and uncovers an unsureness of the future and what it could have brought. Lines like “in the current of your life I was an eyelash in the shipping lanes” and “I fear I smell extinction in the folds of this novocaine age coming on” reveal these aspects. Lanegan’s voice at times becomes an eerie echo to Case’s, lurking in the background, and adds to the tension the song’s instrumental breaks carry.
One of the great bands of the '90s and 2000s, a restless, experimental guitar band who incorporated adventurous electronic elements into their smart alternative rock.
Radiohead -
Ill Wind 4:14
Radiohead Rarity “Ill Wind” Is Now Streaming / The Moon Shaped Pool B-side is finally available
Radiohead have finally made “Ill Wind” available on streaming services. A B-side from A Moon Shaped Pool, the track originally appeared on a CD with the vinyl edition, alongside their would-be Bond theme “Spectre.”
Juliana Hatfield - Broken Doll
from Weird
...Appropriately, some echoes of AM pop linger on Weird -- it's there in the occasional wash of analog synth and the insistent hooks, and it's there in exuberant closer "Do It to Music," a love letter to the complex joys of pop -- but the album is barbed by design, a return to the ornery personal pop that's been Hatfield's métier in the 21st century. The album title alone hints at what Weird is about: the feeling of not quite fitting in with the world at large...
Kamaal Williams -
Snitches Brew 2019
Kamaal Williams (aka Henry Wu) follows his universally acclaimed 2018 full-length The Return with this two-track 12" single that, because of its compositional and improvisational acumen, plays more like an EP despite its relatively brief playing time... The flipside, "Snitches Brew," with its left-field nod to Miles Davis in the title, is a trio affair produced by Wu and recorded and mixed by Syed Adam Jaffrey. It hosts the producer on synth bass, Mansur Brown on electric guitar, and the wonderful Dexter Hercules on drum kit. It's introduced by a jagged synth bass bubbling in an angular, insistent riff with double-timed snare, kick drum, and cymbals by Hercules, who is clearly seeking the tune's bleeding edge. When Brown enters with his wah-wah pedal, things get wonky. While it doesn't sound much like Davis, it does recall the more cosmic funk traverses of early Weather Report à la Sweetnighter and Mysterious Traveler. Halfway through, the tempo increases and Wu's bassline is merely the anchor as Brown uses his instruments as exploratory tools and Hercules breaks the beat, adding weight and balance to the atmospheric textures..
Le Butcherettes -
nothing/BUT TROUBLE from bi/MENTAL
Le Butcherettes is a band out of Guadalajara, Mexico, and are currently based in El Paso, Texas. The band consists of: Riko Rodriguez-Lopez (guitar), Marfred Rodriguez-Lopez (bass) and Alejandra Robles Luna (drums). Le Butcherettes are lead by their firebrand lead singer, Teri Gender Bender (Teresa Suarez Coscio). Gender Bender is the center of the hurricane, and she keeps everything around her swirling with chaotic precision. Her voice is a work of art. When she sings, she sounds like a revolution.
Le Butcherettes’ last three albums were produced by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (At The Drive-In, The Mars Volta) on his own record label. Now with a new home, Rise Records, Le Butcherettes have brought in legend and icon Jerry Harrison (Talking Heads) to draw out a new and creative sound. Harrison both tightens and stretches out the guitar runs, and emphasizes the thump/thump/thump rhythm that Robles-Luna delivers—providing the intense immediacy needed for each track. Harrison handles Gender Bender in the most effective way possible – he stays out of her way. Harrison allows Gender Bender to tap in and bleed out her soul like an open vein...
Cass McCombs -
Rounder from Tip of the Sphere
A little less a set of songs and more the spirit of a warm, smoke-shrouded Sunday afternoon spent somewhere in a generously upholstered chair, Tip of the Sphere arrives three years after singer/songwriter Cass McCombs' first Top 40 independent album, 2016's Mangy Love. Definitely not shooting for the charts here -- not that he ever was -- the album places McCombs' often sharp, sometimes meandering or halted ruminations in a context of a cosmic folk with sleepy '70s album rock inspirations. Musically as well as lyrically lost in thought for most of its playing time of nearly an hour... The album is bookended by its longest tracks, with the ten-minute "Rounder" closing out the proceedings with steady drums, LoCastro's Fender Rhodes, Iead's pedal steel, and McCombs' gentle, prolonged guitar riffing. While a potential gem for certain Grateful Dead-philes and possibly off-putting to some even well-established fans, the album's diversions, textures, and McCombs' particular way with words should appeal to more than merely the Garcia set.
4
Archive feat. Band Of Skulls - Remains of Nothing
Archive is a music-collective, originating from London, UK, but based in Paris, France for many years where they enjoy a much bigger following. They are signed to Warner Music France. Archive was formed by Londoners Darius Keeler and Danny Griffiths in 1994 and began as an electronica project. At the beginning, they mixed Bristol-style, Massive Attack, Portishead with Rap... Archive are a Collective, not a band.
Claypool Lennon Delirium -
Easily Charmed by Fools from South of Reality
On paper, the pairing of Les Claypool and Sean Lennon doesn't quite fit. From inside and outside Primus, Claypool has specialized in technically exacting rock, while Lennon favors a fuzzier approach, leaning on vibe and soft-focus melodies. The two approaches appear to be contradictory, but the Claypool Lennon Delirium proves they're complementary: Claypool sharpens Lennon's trippier elements, while the guitarist pushes the bassist toward melody. South of Reality, the duo's second album, crystallizes the benefits of this collaboration...
Control Top -
Chain Reaction
The new track they’re sharing from it today, “Chain Reaction,” is all fiery rage and crawling fury, bashing drums cut through with peeling guitars. “No one likes to take the blame/ In the end, we’re all the same,” Carter screams. “Light the wick, pull the trigger/ What started small is getting bigger.”
“The song takes place in the middle of an argument,” Carter explains in a press release. “Vitriol is flying and emotions are running high. With our culture’s growing appetite for anger and conflict, a petty disagreement can easily escalate into a full-out shouting match.”
Boundary-breaking underground rock project from guitarist Neil Hagerty and producer/singer Jennifer Herrema.
Royal Trux -
Suburban Junky Lady from
White Stuff
When Royal Trux's late-2010s reunion led them into the studio to make new music, there was a small hope that Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema might go even further with the freewheeling experiments that have been missing from indie rock since they disbanded in 2001.Instead, for better or worse, White Stuff sounds like an amalgam of Accelerator, Veterans of Disorder, and Pound for Pound... While fans of Royal Trux's inventiveness might find more of that in Hagerty's and Herrema's solo work, White Stuff is still another entertaining part of a reunion that once seemed impossible.
S
inger/songwriter whose stylized folk-rock sometimes diverges into distortion-fueled indie rock or whimsical folk.
Laura Stevenson -
Value Inn
Last month, Laura Stevenson announced her latest album, The Big Freeze, with “Living Room, NY,” a song that, like the rest of the tracks on The Big Freeze, was recorded in her childhood bedroom.
Her next single, “Value Inn,” also takes its name from a location, but rather than the comfort of something familiar, this one’s weighed down by uncertainty and unknown. “And in a Value Inn, I dig at my skin,” Stevenson sings as her guitar crashes behind her for a brief moment. “With a travel kit in the fluorescence/ Because I’m lumbering, ’cause I want to be gone.” The song is quiet, but it’s not still — it has all the intensity of a black storm cloud rolling in.
English female singer whose melodic, down-tempo music has been hugely successful on both sides of the Atlantic.
Dido - Hell After This from
Still on My Mind
Reinvigorated and confident, Dido returns from a six-year absence with her sparkling fifth album, Still on My Mind. Following 2013's neon-washed Girl Who Got Away, this set features her liveliest, catchiest production since early-era breakthroughs No Angel and Life for Rent, and soundtracks familiar themes of love, loss, desire, and -- as the mother of a young son -- family. Anchored by her yearning and ever-ethereal vocals, the LP delivers on the promising glimmers that were teased on its cool (but ultimately sedate) predecessor, successfully synthesizing the spirit of her early hybrid sound with updated late-2010s sheen. Yet another collaboration with her brother Rollo, Still on My Mind finds the English singer/songwriter in a mature, controlled space -- an elegant but fresh collection of her familiar electro-folk with a hip-hop heartbeat.
Precocious synth pop singer/songwriter who built up a huge online following.
Sky Ferreira -
Downhill Lullaby
After six years, Sky Ferreira is back with new music. She’s shared “Downhill Lullaby,” her first single since Night Time, My Time. The track is slated to appear on that album’s follow-up, Masochism. In Pitchfork’s new digital cover story, Ferreira told writer Camille Dodero that she co-produced the track with “Twin Peaks” music supervisor Dean Hurley. It features strings by Danish violinist Nils Gröndahl.
Freewheeling indie rock combo from Austin, Texas whose exuberant, hard-hitting sound has charted in the U.S. and U.K.
Though they are from Austin, and started out as a punk power trio, much of White Denim's ninth studio album, 2019's Side Effects, sounds like it could have been recorded by a psychedelic rock band in Los Angeles in 1969. That fuzz-tone, reverb, and echo-pedal sound is pretty much the aesthetic bandleaders James Petralli (vocals, guitars) and Steve Terebecki (bass) have been aiming for since at least 2011's D. While the lineup has gone through changes over the years (there are even at least three different drummers credited here), White Denim have remained remarkably consistent...
The New York author, songwriter, journalist, screenwriter, and cult figure became a recording artist at age 70.
Who is Ratso? Why is Nick Cave on his debut album? Ratso is the nickname for author, journalist, screenwriter, songwriter, New York persona, and septuagenarian Larry Sloman. He earned his bones penning On the Road with Bob Dylan, which documented the Rolling Thunder tour (where Joni Mitchell nicknamed him). A close friend of Leonard Cohen, Dylan, and many other songwriters... "Our Lady of Light," with Cave, is the set's finest moment, with pillowy guitars in a vintage rock & roll waltz; it could be a companion to one of Cohen's own songs of unattainable amorousness (think "Suzanne"). Alternating with Sloman's reedy nasal instrument, Cave's croon adds balance, poignancy, and emotional heft...
With a host of real-life songs and lilting vocals that reflect a passion for his influences (particularly Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen, and Bob Dylan), Glen Hansard is best known for his work with the Frames and the Swell Season.
Glen Hansard -
I'll Be You, Be Me from This Wild Willing
The opening track on 2019's This Wild Willing, "I'll Be You, Be Me," begins with a fuzzy rhythm track and a bass patiently thumping over a clanky rhythm machine as Glen Hansard delivers his lyrics in an ominous murmur. Four minutes later it snowballs into a massive tower of cacophony with guitars, keyboards, and strings united in a howling frenzy of sonic force. It's a powerful way to start an album, and while it's easily the set's boldest departure from the introspective but passionate indie folk that has been Hansard's trademark, it sets the stage for a set that finds Hansard pushing his stylistic boundaries. This Wild Willing was primarily written during a four-week working holiday in Paris, and Hansard received input and inspiration from a wide variety of fellow artists, running the gamut from Irish traditional folk instrumentalists to experimental electronic musicians...
Trippy soft rock and singer/songwriter sounds from former Run DMT and Salvia Plath member Michael Collins.
Drugdealer -
Fools from Raw Honey
The first Drugdealer album, The End of Comedy, was a bit of a stylistic shift for the band's main instigator, Michael Collins, that saw him moving away from trippy and weird psych towards something far more relaxed and Laurel Canyon-y. There were a few kinks to be ironed out, like meandering songs and a few too many cooks, but it was a promising and enjoyable record. The second Drugdealer album, Raw Honey, has zero kinks left to work out and fulfills all the promise of the debut and more. This time around, Collins and a wide range of collaborators absolutely nail the lush and lovely singer/songwriter sound of the mid-'70s, while adding some healthy bits of warm weirdness and subtle grandeur to the mix along the way. The album is a cool mix of shaggy-dog pastiche and real feeling moments of emotion, all wrapped up in an organic sound that's as familiar as a favorite old blanket...
Punk-rock-garage quartet from Kyoto, Japan. Taking their cue from other Japanese acts like Hikasyu and Yapoos, Kyoto's garage-punk quartet Otoboke Beaver also share the raucous energy and feminist perspective of Bikini Kill and the Slits
Otoboke Beaver -
datsu . hikage no onna from Itekoma Hits
おとぼけビ〜バ〜 - 脱・日陰の女
When the English label Damnably Records released the 2016 compilation Okoshiyasu!! Otoboke Beaver, it made it easier for those outside of Japan to hear exactly why the Kyoto band had such a fervent fan base... Otoboke Beaver add more detail and sophistication to their music on Itekoma Hits' new songs... Itekoma Hits doesn't leave listeners a moment to catch their breath -- or grow bored. Arriving a decade after Otoboke Beaver formed, it suggests they're becoming bolder and more surprising with time.
The quintessential lo-fi band of the '90s, centered around the neurotic observational genius of depressive-obsessive Lou Barlow.
Sebadoh -
Sunshine
Sebadoh are nearing the release of their first album in six years, Act Surprised. The indie greats have been promoting it with a run of singles... a fourth preview in the form of “Sunshine”... According to Lou Barlow, the song is “about going inside. Giving up, for the moment, on finding answers in nature or social rituals. Going inside, where I feel safe, and finding strength in intimacy.”...
