This Brooklyn four-piece follows its fantastic single "2080" with a debut packed with similar moments of pan-ethnic spiritualism. Like Midlake, Grizzly Bear, and Animal Collective ... Yeasayer channel both a dystopian science-fiction sensibility and deep appreciation for the natural world.
On their seventh album, Pulp have pulled off yet another remarkable reinvention of their sound and outlook, while simultaneously making their most organic album since their full-length debut, It, was released almost two decades ago.
Rejoicing in the Hands establishes Banhart as a major voice in new folk music ... it doesn't seem like an album so much as a collection of road hymns and journals, and small tributes to smaller pleasures.
As with the best LCD Soundsystem singles, Bang Bang Rock & Roll is at times some of the best music criticism going right now, and far better than our boringly verbose bullshit 'cause you can dance to it.
Figure 8 is, without a doubt, another step down from XO in terms of songwriting, even if its production has taken a step in the right direction (that is, away from Michael Penn's house). In the grand scheme of things, however, you only need to hear so much Elliott Smith before you get the point.
Listen to Multiply once and you'll be struck by how reverent it is; listen to it three times and you'll start to notice the microscopic digital artifacts and subtle tweaks that give it personality and pop.
An album like this extends far beyond your speakers, guiding you through an impossibly rich, detailed world of sound while also giving you room to explore it yourself; you don't listen to Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, you inhabit it.
In their crowded field, it's hard to say exactly what makes Stars of the Lid so special. It comes to mind that their relentless commitment to subtlety sets them apart, as does their masterful hand with tone. Throughout The Tired Sounds, dissonance is doled out in small portions, perfectly coloring the sculpted fields of sound.
The Body's story is just vague and gruesome enough to be weirdly terrifying, totally Orwellian, and grander, louder, and more electrifying than anything the Thermals have spit out before.
The long-awaited debut LP from Frenchman Pascal Arbez includes three-fourths of the seismic electro/techno Poney EP, which sits beautifully alongside his less dancefloor-friendly, album-oriented material.
For all the sound and song, Broadcast's vision seems relatively narrow, and several ideas are spread a bit too thinly across the album's length.
While Tallahassee, as literature, is richly detailed, even stunning on occasion, Darnielle's apparent phobia for full-band arrangements prevents the music from keeping pace with the storylines. It's an admirable experiment, but not one that will likely find its way to the podium come election time.
Bodily Functions so effectively destroys every house music cliché, from which ever school, that my Romantic self wishes just to call this album "high art." Bodily Functions is far and away the only jazz-informed house music album you'll ever need.
Their debut album, Thunder, Lightning, Strike, is a hazy blend of nostalgia, evoking that period through a melange of action hero theme songs, early hip-hop (from 1979-82, in particular), and traces of 70s sunshine funk.
It's a record that can be enjoyable in select places and definitely shows signs of potential, yet falls victim to mediocrity when held against the work of truly developed musicians.
Like the Roots' Things Fall Apart and Mos Def's Black on Both Sides, this record is certainly the product of much thought and work, but it's a labor of love.
Whether due to Annie's backstory or not, there's a palpable sense of melancholy permeating this album. She's at her most confident while dispensing romantic advice to herself on the playful, wobbly Richard X collaboration "Chewing Gum".
Throughout the record, Villalobos seems to be seeking comfort and finding it in small moments, in the nooks and crannies of the sound rather the more traditional heart-pumping moments explored by many tech-house producers over the past year or so. Instead, at Alcachofa's heart beats a more steady rhythm, pumping out fragile melodies painted with small yet precise brushstrokes.
Rome (Written Upside Down) presents this Providence, Rhode Island four-piece with a beautiful future-- one in which their records present an experience which, though an alternate dimension away from their live shows, is every bit as fascinating.
Air France's No Way Down ... conjures an idyllic world similar to the one on the Avalanches' dazzlingly great Since I Left You, another record that finds wide-eyed delight in sincerity and beauty.
Encapsulating and elevating the best of Destroyer's back catalog, Destroyer's Rubies serves as a potent reminder that the intelligence of Bejar's songs has never obfuscated their emotional weight.
Lightning Bolt have gone even artier on us with Wonderful Rainbow, and by balancing their strong-armed aesthetic with unexpected dynamics, they're now proving themselves as artists with actual range, a band that can deliver beyond the novelty that got people talking; perhaps for the first time on a broad scale, Lightning Bolt will have them listening instead.
All things considered, Pretty Toney far surpasses 2001's Bulletproof Wallets, finally finding the missing link between street cred and commercial respect.
Swedish singer-songwriter Jens Lekman returns for his genre-conquering second album, encompassing baroque pop, Northern soul, and Swedish beach-party disco.
The Cold Vein is like a musical negative, an inverse reflection of hip-hop history, full of everything DJ's cast aside, from Sega sound effects to electro-industrialism, gear-work grooves malfunctioning, synthesizers belching, a menagerie of digitalia.
Each of these songs displays a mastery of craft rarely heard, and while not all strike with the same immediacy of its two unbreakable watersheds, each quickly reveals itself as equally forcible and infectious. Beyond this, no grandiose claims warrant stating; Bows and Arrows states them itself.