Animal Collective has enjoyed a huge year with the release of Merriweather Post Pavillion. What to do next but drop another great record before 2009 is in the books? Check out "What Would I Want? Sky" from the Fall Be Kind EP. Like their best work, the song is stranger, groovier, and better listen after listen. Despite the use of technology, the song is eerily organic in the way it grows and builds, tendons of loops, synths, and hooks attaching at random but perfectly-placed joints.
Following their critically-acclaimed debut, Vampire Weekend will release their much-anticipated second album, Contra, on January 12. The preppy afro-pop-punk band (with an equally preppy and gorgeous blonde gracing the new album's cover) previously tipped off listeners to the exciting track "Horchata." Check out the video for new single "Cousins" and remember again why your girlfriend fell in love with Ezra Koenig.
The supergroup Monsters of Folk lay down their weapons and encourage the townsfolk to roller skate in the video for "Say Please." With Coner Oberst (Bright Eyes), M. Ward (She & Him), Jim James (My Morning Jacket), and Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes / indie uber-producer) combining their individual musical powers, the dynamic fondly recalls the Traveling Wilburys. Indeed, the group's self-titled debut is self-aware and quite good, even if no track measures up to this all-time favorite gem.
Sub-Pop's deluxe-edition reissue of Nirvana's debut Bleach reminds listeners (if they have ever forgotten) of the band's lightning-fast progression from indie-thrashers to grunge-rock goliaths. By infusing Beatles-esque pop songs with metallic Pixies-punk and melodic aggression, Bleach is loud, fast, scattered, incomplete, and otherwise brilliant. Check out "Negative Bleach" as another reminder that the band's catalog runs deeper than Nevermind.
Nirvana's blistering set at the 1992 Reading Festival is the stuff of rock'n'roll legend and now can be yours on DVD, CD, or vinyl. As one of the greatest live performances of all time and certainly one of the most vital in-the-zeitgiest snapshots of the past twenty years, every hard-core music fan should probably own a copy in some form. Given the passage of time and the near final death of grunge's last con-artists (Nickelback be damned), now may be the perfect time to revisit Nirvana's ascendent peak in all its guitar-frenzied glory.
Check out the colorful claymation in the new video for "Ready, Able," The D Man's favorite track from one of the year's finest collections of musical recordings. Veckatimest may be more of a November record than anything else; so still time to pick up the flawlessly-executed and exquisite record from the Brooklyn-based quartet.
The Antlers "debut" album, Hospice, is a sprawling, potent record with elements of noise-rock, lo-fi pop, and soft/loud wall-of-sound guitars. With drummer Michael Lerner and multi-instrumentalist Darbit Cicci joining singer Peter Silberman's previously solo efforts, The Antlers establish themselves as one of the most exciting indie-rock bands of the year. The fierce emotional and lyrical content of the record lays bare both fictional and autobiographical accounts of 23-year-old Silberman's isolation, frustration, and desolation. But the music's aural power--and Silberman's ever-reaching voice--results in something altogether astonishing, sad, and soaring.
Check out the video for "Two." And check out some other tracks here. This record will most certainly be among The D Man's Best Twenty Albums of the Year, so you may as well go pick it up and start listening.
Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver) gathered his Wisconsin friends from the Collections of Colonies of Bees to make an unconventional, meandering record of guitar strings, choir swells, and electronic bleeps. On the aptly-titled Unmap, the music slowly unwinds and reveals a placeless beauty, somewhere in the void, where matter and sound are still taking shape, still fighting to combine with the emerging topography. The album cover implies a group of ancient, mysterious musicians and some sort of north woods escapism calling for large trees, heavy snows, endless nights, and gospel gatherings.
The D Man is always looking for the right music to capture the given mood of life's myriad moments with their varied emotional rhythms. While driving home on a clear Halloween night, with an ever-so-close full moon, Volcano Choir offered the perfect accompianment. The opening sequence is perhaps the record's strongest passage. Check out opener "Husks and Shells," second track "Seeplymouth," and the video for the vivid "Island, IS."
