Though some of indie's brightest leading men have come through Virginia's halls of higher education (Steve Malkmus, David Berman, Travis Morrison), your average college rock band in the Old Dominion area probably sounds more like Agents of Good Roots. So if you live in a place like Blacksburg, Va., home of the Virginia Tech campus and not much else, and you want to be in a tropical punk act (Facepaint), an introspective singer-songwriter project (Jack & the Whale), or a band that covers Kate Bush instead of Dave Matthews (Wild Nothing's breakthrough rendition of "Cloudbusting"), you'll probably have to do what Jack Tatum did and start them yourself.
The group's sophomore effort, Public Strain, pushes forward in both directions-- the hooks are noisier, the noise is hookier, and both are fogged over with enough reverb to make Felt records seem bone-dry by comparison.
If you've followed Matthew Dear over the years, then you know he doesn't like to stay in one place for very long. Even as a primarily electronic artist in the early 2000s, Dear hopped from label to label, switched aliases often, and made everything from steely microhouse to harder Detroit techno. But his biggest departure was 2007's Asa Breed, the record where he stepped out from behind the decks and reached for the mic. Singing on tracks and leaning more heavily on song structure, he built strange hybrid music that had one foot in techno and the other in pop.
Innerspeaker demonstrates a subtle yet encompassing sense of control, never obstructing the grander motifs while still offering a variety of odd details that guide you back to the album's hooks.
Drake sings or raps the word "I" 410 times on his debut album. Even in the realm of hip-hop-- a style famous for its unswerving solipsism-- this is a feat. For comparison's sake, noted mirror watcher Kanye West managed to work only 220 "I"'s into the verses and hooks of his big break, The College Dropout. Illmatic; 210. Reasonable Doubt; 240. With Thank Me Later, Drake attempts to enter the pantheon of those rap game-busters by the sheer force of first person singular pronouns. All eyes are on him-- especially his own. But considering this mixed race, half-Jewish, all-Canadian "Degrassi: The Next Generation" alum looks and sounds unlike any major rap star before him, betting the house on nothing but himself turns out to be a wise gamble.
The band whose Ayrton Senna EP helped define last summer's bright, beachy sound gains momentum with a beautifully surging, shimmering trance-pop LP.
The songs may sound more conventional, but they're no less complex. The music is hard-wired and overflowing with activity, even in the record's sparsest moments.
Describing Emeralds' music feels a little like capping that underwater oil spill must: how do you get your hands around this stuff? The Cleveland trio may favor methodical cadences in their music, but their releases come fast and furious. According to Discogs.com, they've put out around 40 releases in just four years, most of them CDRs and cassettes. There are variations of mood and intensity, and each major release has its own particular signature, owing in part to changes in gear and technique, and in part to being a band that improvises and records non-stop. Any given album feels like a snapshot of the band in time.
Ex-Blur frontman Damon Albarn ditches the idea of writing pop songs a cartoon band might front and makes one of his most gorgeous pop records in years.
Matsson is both a romantic and a realist, and on The Wild Hunt, he uses the barest of pop-folk settings to give mundane moments-- another break-up, another tour, another change of season, another Dylan comparison-- a grandeur so disproportional that it's difficult not to identify and sympathize with him.
Lo-fi heroes graduate to crafting country-inflected indie pop that's part Wowee Zowee and part Workingman's Dead.
But this one finds them starting to pull all those ideas into something a little more focused, something easier to digest.
High Violet is the sound of a band taking a mandate to be a meaningful rock band seriously, and they play the part so fully that, to some, it may be off-putting.
Driven by dance-inspired beats and ghostly sampled voices, the new Four Tet album is the most focused in Kieran Hebden's catalog, and also among his best.
The songs may be catchy, but their intricacy and thoughtful storytelling makes them stick.
But instead of succumbing to trends, Stevens barrels through with another long-form work that requires-- and rewards-- time and devotion.
Dialing back some of their eccentricities and embracing personal songwriting, Hot Chip have crafted their most consistent album yet.
If Broken Dreams Club is indeed an honest glimpse of what's ahead, it sounds as though Girls have much more to give.
And that brings us to "Angela Surf City", the song on this album that deserves a place alongside "The Rat" and "In the New Year". It starts off tense and withdrawn, Leithauser singing about some relationship without ever letting us in on what, exactly, is going on. Underneath, there's a tense, withdrawn surf-rock beat. And when the chorus starts to well up, the music underneath keeps surging upward, becoming huger than anything the song should be able to handle, then getting even huger from there, as Barrick lets off relentless Bonham-level thundercracks.
How to Dress Well is to my mind the biggest breakthrough in home-recorded lo-fi in years. It feels brave, like it's going places a lot of artists in this sphere are afraid to go.
After the fury of the stunning New Amerykah Part One, Badu returns to creating relaxed, personal funk that feels more like a sketchbook than a record.
After drawing from IDM, krautrock, and sunshine pop, Dan Snaith's project sets its sights on dark and intricate dance music, with dazzling results.
The New York duo's debut full-length is a wildly fun noise-pop thrill-ride, delivering on the promise of last year's widely circulated demos.
With Body Talk, Robyn ups the ante for pop stars across the radio dial and raises her own chances of appearing on yours.
Simply a sonically chameleonic, musically generous, seriously compelling record from a couple guys who've once again got all their pedals in a row.
Where many concept albums run a high risk of being pompous, cryptic, and self-important, Monáe keeps things playful, lively, and accessible.
It's a satisfying return to form-- proof that Arcade Fire can still make grand statements without sounding like they're carrying the weight of the world.
It all turns out so ridiculously fun-- with Ken Burns-style readings of speeches from Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, daguerreotype cover art, and song titles all participating in the reenactment-- that it never even begins to approach the pretentiousness these elements might suggest.
Ariel Pink's best songs are surprising, and there's a real sense of musical delight on Before Today; the sections sound logical but never predictable, and there are wild bridges and short bits that emerge seemingly randomly but wind up taking the song somewhere unexpected.
Few artists are stretching the boundaries of dance music wider than this UK producer, who follows CMYK with another excellent EP.
The best songs feel more like conversations rather than artworks to be hung on the wall and admired from several paces away. Newsom seems to sing from somewhere deep inside of them, and her earthy presence has a way of drawing you in, bringing you closer to her music than you've been before.
Contra works because of its juxtapositions-- of natural sounds to processed ones; of manners to tantrums; of party rhythms to deadpan poetry; of black music to white music.
This is both the most diverse and most listenable of their three full-lengths, and yet it never seems like a compromise.
Halcyon Digest is a record about the joy of music discovery, the thrill of listening for the first time to a potential future favorite, and that sense of boundless possibility when you're still innocent of indie-mainstream politics and your personal canon is far from set.
Even considering his bold-name touchstones for This Is Happening, it would be shortsighted to cry rip-off; Murphy is remaking essential 70s art-rock in his own hyper-modern, self-aware image.
As a result, the record comes off like a culmination and an instant greatest hits, the ultimate realization of his strongest talents and divisive public persona.