There is no music in hell, for all good music belongs to heaven. -Brigham Young.
In the trailer for Paulo Sorrentino's new film, Youth, Michael Caine's character, a retired orchestra conductor, says the perfect line as Kozelek's "Ceiling Gazing" plays: "You're right, music is all I understand. Because you don't need words and experience to understand it. It just is." Indeed.
For both creator and listener, music appreciation is personal and deeply intrinsic. It just is. While music can be appreciated on many levels, it is our inherent joy in sounds that moves us - emotionally, mentally, physically - closer to understanding. We hear what connects us, humans, spirits, whatever, but something that we have surely heard before, even when the sounds are sparkling and new.
One of my favorite things is how music thrives in different contexts. It is transportable and always finds a way to flourish, augmenting your experience wherever you might find yourself. Context is crucial, of course, as soundtrack can frame much of what we perceive in a given moment, but it is never defeating when it comes to music. Music persists. And because it enriches seemingly endless environments, it is almost impossible to pin down its native habitat in our digital age.
Modest Mouse while working out at the gym. Tallest Man on Earth while taking my dog for a walk. Tame Impala while climbing up canyons on my bike. Majical Cloudz while driving alone late at night. Chvrches live in a youth-filled venue. A symphony in a packed hall, a singer-songwriter in a small club, an iTunes stream on tinny speakers in the office. When solitude spends its quiet, music delivers in its place, no matter when and where we might be.
Unless we are in hell. That I agree with. But make no mistake: in the populous heavens we will someday inhabit, music will also ring out, diverse and grand.
By now, most listeners know that Sufjan's mother left her family in Michigan when he was young. She suffered from depression, schizophrenia, and alcoholism throughout her life. Carrie reconnected with her children for a short time period in the 80s after she remarried Lowell and the children spent a few summers together at his home in Oregon. After the marriage dissolved, Lowell stayed close to the family and forged a lifelong relationship with Sufjan that culminated in Lowell running Sufjan's record label to this day. Carrie, on the other hand, remained a shadow in Sufjan's life, eventually succumbing to cancer in 2012 with him at her side.
Is it the best Christian album of the past 50 years? Is it the finest meditation on the death of a loved one ever recorded? Is it simultaneously the most beautiful and devastating folk album of all time? Is it the purest depiction of grieving we have ever heard? Yes. The answer just might be yes to all of these questions, and that in and of itself is something to behold.
Carrie & Lowell walks through the valley of the shadow of death. The record does not go around, over, or under the valley. It goes through it. As we all must do at the passing of our loved ones. Which is why we should give others the grace to grieve as they do and as they must. In their time and in their way. When the shadow passes over us, we will be grateful for such reciprocal compassion.
Sometimes in our culture we want people to move beyond their trial, especially their wrestle with death. We want them to grow from it, accept it, or move past it with resolve. A worthy sentiment, no doubt, steeped in the necessary tutelage of pain and experience that eternal destiny demands, but it is often mistimed when the shadow still hangs over the weary who are walking. Carrie & Lowell is the sound of allowing grief to run its course before the healing and the answers come. It is that space between a broken heart and being bound up again. It is the wrenching days, months, or years when agony persists and the balm fails to appear. It is someone weeping, and allowing them to weep.
From the discipline of suffering, we are fit to be founders of the universe with God, as believed by the great abolitionist preacher Dr. Henry Beecher. When Jesus received confirmation of the death of his friend, Lazarus, "whom he loved," the Lord tarried outside the town, rather than hurriedly moving to the grave or the home of Mary and Martha. When Mary came out to meet Jesus, the Jews that had been comforting her in her home also followed. Mary fell at the Lord's feet, weeping: "Lord, if thou hads't been here, my brother had not died." When Jesus saw Mary weeping, and those that had followed her also weeping, "he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled." Jesus said: "Where, have you laid him? And they answered: "Lord, come and see."
Jesus wept.
Even knowing that He would raise Lazarus from the dead, He wept with Mary. Even knowing that He held the bridge between death and life in His hands, He wept with those that sought to comfort Mary. The resurrection and the life Himself nevertheless allowed those He loved to walk through the valley first.
The miracle came shortly thereafter for Lazarus. For others, it may take longer. For Sufjan, he is still walking through or was when he recorded his beautiful record. Grace by grace, we will let him and others grieve, and mourn with those that mourn. Especially when it is this honest, this powerful, this heartbreaking.
Pink Floyd meets Michael Jackson. Say it ain't so?
Currents is a studio album so exquisite, with off-the-chart, hi-fidelity production values, it is hard to believe that mastermind Kevin Parker recorded it by himself in a small shack in Perth, Australia. He recorded every instrument, every beat, every vocal BY HIMSELF, turning his solitary studio effort into its own kind of art form. Although it sounds like big-label suits blew through $2 million to employ the best session players of our day, Currents is the brainchild of a single chill dude with serious girl problems.
While it is a towering recording achievement and an audiophile's daydream, Currents is also an immense pleasure to listen to, as its canyon-sized grooves gloriously run to star-soaked coastlines. Parker's first two albums as Tame Impala were guitar-centric forays into 60s psyche-rock and 70s prog, pressed and smoothed out with his expert ear for unadulterated pop music. Innerspeaker and Lonerism were excellent albums, however, they did not capture my aesthetic imagination in the way Currents has with its zeitgeisty impulse to blur boundaries in thrilling new ways. Parker pushes heady psychedelia into the 80s and beyond, where it devours disco, synth-rock, and programmed drums, spitting out iridescent, weightless, and air-tight soul music.
You can read dozens of articles about Parker and his masterful third album. But I just want to briefly discuss my favorite track, "The Less I Know The Better." It is standard fare from a lyrical perspective, the classic drama of a dude seeing his former lady with another dude. It stinks. Thankfully, Parker's dip in the pool of self-pity produces the finest groove of the year. My head nearly exploded the first few listens when Parker crosses a bridge and starts running into melodic, pop-music bliss, casting a vocal/rhythm spell that could only be rivaled by something from Off The Wall.
Panoramic and pristine, In Colour may be the best electro-house record of all time. It is a sparkling dance score experienced from great heights, elegant and lavishly produced. Jamie xx's 42-minute solo debut arrives after years of curating in-demand DJ sets and helming production of The xx's first two minimalist records. In parts nocturnal and noonday, the music is dark-hued and glimmering, serving as a grand escape from the glut of meathead EDM that rules much of the airwaves.
In the London producer's sophisticated hands, seemingly everything is possible. He fashions accessible and deeply hypnotic soundscapes, masterfully culling from the finest elements of techno, house, garage, reggaeton, and R&B, and delivering a record that is fresh and vital, a de facto soundtrack for 2015. There is an underlying joy that permeates the record, a knowing nod of just how fulfilling it is to be making such timely music.
First track "Gosh" builds to a dizzying finale as the synths circle higher and higher to reach into the heart of the sun, a giddy send-off for what at first appears to be only a classic drum'n'bass joint. Forget about the drop, as "Gosh" lifts listeners to stellar climbs, a quantum physics experiment in how to perfectly open a dazzling record.
In addition to a deft use of samples, Jamie xx employs bits of world rhythms, fragmented conversations, and ambient sounds from city streets to arrive at a lived-in feel for the record that could otherwise seem too distant, too preoccupied with the feel of the future. The steel drums on "Obvs," the disembodied voices on "Sleep Sound," and the dancehall reggae of "I Know There's Gonna Be Good Times" all point to the producer's encyclopedic knowledge of and wide-spread appreciation for crate-digging gold.
Jamie xx's bandmate Romy lends her voice to two tracks, and it serves as a sultry foil to his crystalline work behind the boards. "SeeSaw" swirls into a rave-like trance, pauses to consider chasing the elusive, and then rushes forward into gleaming electronica, as Romy repeats the refrain up and downwith you, apparently succumbing to the pursuit. "Loud Places" is one of the year's best tracks, as Romy's vocals are weary, pointed, and beautiful, aimed at the loneliness of club-going culture: I go to loud places to search for someone to be quiet with / who will take me home / you go to loud places to find someone / who will take you higher than I took you / Didn't I take you to higher places you can reach without me? She has moved on, it seems, although not without pangs of sadness, which are buried in gorgeous backing choirs before her final realization: When you come down / I won't be around.
Oliver Sim also shows up, the third member of The xx to participate on the record, and he sings over bubbling synths and lonely guitar lines on "Stranger in a Room," the one track that could comfortably fit on the trio's previous work together. The diverse approach on In Colour has to make listeners wonder if The xx will eventually move beyond its icy guitar minimalism.
Jamie xx makes a remarkable statement with "The Rest is Noise," a wide-screen electronic triumph that dwarfs the competition. Everything else is static, he seems to say, in the shadow of such exquisite space and sound. When the bass comes in for its first real push, followed by ethereal vocals, it is supremely gratifying to hear, and when it backs off into a glittering keyboard breakdown, it only serves to accentuate the grandeur throughout the rest of the song. "Girl" is the seductive nightcap and a fitting capstone. As the crowds finally filter out and you are left alone with your girl, the street quiet and the stars winking above, you should grab her hand and walk off into the night. The music will be waiting for you.
Kurt Vile is the coolest dude in music right now. His nonchalant chill oozes out of his records, and B'lieve I'm Going Down is no exception. It is arguably his best album yet, or at least his most refined, which is really saying something considering his last two records, Smoke Ring for My Halo and Wakin on a Pretty Daze, were Top Ten material. Stuffed with golden folk-rock, laid-back country, and filtered new wave, Vile's sixth studio album drips with swagger. His relaxed confidence in his prodigious skills is charming as always; everyone loves the unassuming kid in the corner that turns out to be the most talented person in the room.
B'lieve I'm Going Down is all vibes, a persona, a feeling, a way of living. Blissed-out, chilled-out, badass suburban guitar wizardry. Vile's unique vocal delivery is now as much his own as Dylan, Springsteen, Petty, and he has full command of his drawn-out vowels or halting emphasis when it suits his songs best. His conversational style brings to mind bleary-eyed mornings, midnight conversations, shell-toed sneakers, vinyl records, bookshelves, and vintage instruments, a chillaxed chain of being that focuses only on the killer without the filler.
Vile is an unassuming dude by most accounts: a good person with a wife and two kids, trying to do right as an artist and human being. His low-key, off-beat humor bubbles up throughout the record, and his observations on life always seem to come at things from a uniquely disarming angle. He seems like the kind of friend that you would seek out for serious advice, giving calm and caring feedback, no doubt, while also sharing a funny barb that would be just as valuable.
But sometimes the difficulties of life persist. Vile faces them by channeling a wry melancholy throughout the record, his hazy introspection inviting feelings of both sadness and self-assessment. He called B'lieve his nighttime album because he recorded much of it in the late and lonely hours after his two children were long asleep, and it certainly has an unhurried, effortless quality to it, as if it is just a guy feeling his way out in the next room. I was bugging' out about a couple-two-three-things / Picked up my microphone and started to sing / I was feeling worse, than the words come out / Fell on some keys and then this song walked out.
It is not just another guy in the next room, of course, no matter how hard he tries to keep his head down. It is a long-haired guitar savant playing rock music even when rock music is no longer writing the narrative. Whatever. Vile will do his thing, superbly.
In the age of the pop chanteuse, Grimes is having her cake and eating it too. She kicks out populist club bangers for the kids, to be sure, but she also hits the zeitgeist with imaginative pop music that will forever sound like 2015 and beyond. Uncompromising and accessible, Art Angels is a genreless album that touches on EDM, pop, punk, country, rock, and shoegaze while capturing the exuberance of youth culture in one fell swoop. Grimes is basically Taylor Swift on crack, seeking only to drill through your skull and find your pleasure cortex.
Fortunately, Claire Boucher's leap to the big stage does not require dumbing down her experimental, electro-pop tendencies. Though almost each track can pass for a mega-hit on radio or every other streaming service, her music brims with unfiltered ideas and impulses. Boucher's production skills are superb, edgy and intuitive, but may be surpassed by her ear for unstoppable hooks. As a result, she retains aesthetic credibility in ways that Ariana Grande and countless others can only dream about, chasing down euphoric pop moments without abandoning her independent spirit or, worse, succumbing to ubiquitous and boring club beats.
I have listened to this album incessantly at the gym. I am the only dude in the joint grooving to the 27 year-old Canadian's jams, no doubt. But when you bench as much as The D Man, you can listen to whoever you want. It's 2015, yo!
Discordant, subversive, and urgent, Universal Themes is unlike any other record of the year, part acoustic diary, part middle-aged rap diatribe. It just may be Mark Kozelek's first punk effort, as Sun Kil Moon's seventh album and follow-up to the universally-acclaimed Benji hits his audience square between the eyes. There are no punches pulled, only thoughts and feelings that Koz is compelled to share, barbed and beautiful.
It is fruitless to compare the record to the incomparable Benji, although the hyper-realism that saturated last-year's best album is taken to its logical extreme on Universal Themes. Starting with 2011's Among the Leaves, Koz's lyrical transition from painstaking poet to narrative diarist has been one of the most remarkable aesthetic transformations in songwriting, producing stunning, autobiographical songs like "Gustavo," "Somehow the Wonder of Life Prevails," "Carissa," "Jim Wise," "Micheline," "Ben's My Friend," and others. Unvarnished and undeniably honest, Koz's new approach seems to have reached its unfiltered endpoint with Universal Themes, leaving no experience unfit for writing or singing about.
Dying possums, heavy metal concerts, HBO shows, Italian stagehands, Michael Caine, the price of knit hats, friends with cancer, concert memories, lazy cats, fried catfish, Rob Zombie, Ohio State and Alabama football fans, books about Maurice Ravel, chocolate chip pancakes, and cashiers at gas stations, just to name a few subjects, are all worthy of mention in Koz's unfurling observations.
Because most of the songs sprawl out for ten minutes each, I have highlighted my favorite moments below (with my link going directly to the specific part in the song).
"The Possum": Koz and his friends take some pics backstage and notice their middle-aged guts protruding. Laughing ensues. Laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing.
"The Possum": The curly-cued, classical guitar notes underpin Koz's spoken word, having just seen the possum take its last steps. Then the percussion kicks in for serious introspection: I want to grow old and to walk the last walk / knowing I too gave it everything I got. As Koz's thoughts find their mark, he twists his notes into Modest Mouse-level strangeness.
"The Possum": Church bells rang that day. I remember hearing them in the afternoon just as we left / He had to have heard them too.
"Birds of Flims": A stunning lyrical achievement and arguably the year's finest narrative songwriting. Koz chronicles his experience on the set of Paolo Sorrentino's film in Flims, Switzerland, and then his transition back to the States, where he no longer can hear the sound of the birds that haunted him in the mountains. The guitars are just about perfect too.
"With a Sort of Grace I Walked to the Bathroom and Cried": The buzzing punk guitars and Mark's unhinged vocals, influenced by his ailing friend in Ohio. It is arguably the least pretty thing he has written, but the confusion and heartache is open and notorious.
"Cry Me A River Williamsburg Sleeve Tattoo Blues": In his first-ever kiss-off song to the music press, Koz still takes time to gather himself with a 90 second acoustic interlude.
"Little Rascals:" Koz gives a shoutout to Salt Lake City, where he played and had a good time. The closest The D Man will ever get to being mentioned in a song.
"Garden of Lavender:" Koz sings that his heart is drawn to the small out of the way things. A short time later, the song transitions to a sublime, dreamy sequence, triggered by just such an event: I see the big orange tabby cat / getting warm on the cover of the laptop.
"Garden of Lavender:" The cinematic spoken word that ends the song, where Koz recalls a show he played at Shepherd's Bush in London.
"This Is My First Day I'm Indian and I Work at a Gas Station": Another great transition after Koz encourages an Indian clerk at a gas station. It's a nice spring day, April 19th / And the flowers are in bloom and I did yard work until my arms turned pink / And my girl broke my laptop while making the bed / She went right to Best Buy and bought another because she felt so bad.
Our private thoughts do not make a sound. The inner dialogue that no one hears, not even our most trusted companions, is impossible to capture in music. But Majical Cloudz' spellbinding album comes close. Ethereal and arresting, Are You Alone? reveals the secret world of Montreal-based singer Devon Welsh, and it often sounds like we are listening in on poems only meant for someone else, too intimate for third-party ears.
Welsh and instrumental collaborator Matthew Otto teamed up in 2012, setting out to create avante-garde electronic music to support Welsh's confessionals. Lyrically, Welsh is unusually economic, favoring straightforward statements over elliptical allusions. With his steady baritone front and center, and Otto's stark soundscapes framing his voice, Welsh's songwriting is perfectly suited for late-night or early morning drives, when the only interruption will be your competing thoughts. Listener's subjective experiences will largely determine whether the introspection hits home, of course, but Welsh's lyrical canvas includes such broad-brushed descriptions of heartbreak, friendship, regret, faithfulness, and sorrow, it would be surprising if his words do not find their mark.
The spare, minor-key electronica enhances the record's disquiet, although there are alsomoments of unfiltered love that break through the instrumental washes of silvers, grays, and whites. The accompaniments are subtle and nuanced, but always cinematic, rising and falling for dramatic effect, and with stylistic shifts so seamless throughout the record, listeners may not initially appreciate the piano, saxophone, organ, marimba, and choral voices that interplay with Otto's electronic arrangements. Touchstones for the duo's originality are difficult to pin down, with the likes of Depeche Mode, Blue Nile, and Mercury Rev only hinted at during specific moments.
I was floored by the emotional directness of "Control" when I first heard it on the radio sometime in October. The other tracks are just as striking, resulting in moving, chill-worthy experiences. The record's dialogic nature encourages listeners to take part in the conversation and, ultimately, make it their own.
When the midnight vapors from 2011's Kaputt trailed off, they eventually reformed into Poison Season, Destroyer's beguiling 12th studio album. Almost every song is carried aloft by glorious trumpets, saxophones, and flutes, and then distilled through Dan Bejar's gleaming, urban narratives. It is an incredible record, if only for having the strength to follow up Kaputt's lyrical and tonal master-class that moved the Canadian from deep cult favorite to well-known cult favorite.
A series of Born to Run rockers, violin-laced pop songs, and melancholy ballads dot the proverbial cityscape, resulting in a vivid jaunt through the late-night streets. More than ever, Bejar seems to have embraced his inner actor, reading/singing his literate lines and unfurling drama after drama as the music serves his storytelling.
"Girl in a Sling" is a world-weary, post-suburban sigh. A sort of "Send in the Clowns," center-stage soliloquy from the streetwise bard. Few writers and vocalists could pull off something like this, as Bejar was made for the song's brilliant, lovelorn breakdown. He writes about women with keen insight and wry humor, but often overlooked is his reach for empathy, which is explicitly stated here: I know what you're going through, I'm going there too.
Other tracks share in this sophisticated musical theater. The second half of "Hell is an Open Door" sounds like a big-stage awakening, the lead's change in direction stirring plucky resolve just before the third act. "Bangkok" is the sad, solitary crooner's tale, the city lights blinking in the background, while the stagehands scurry to transition from one set piece to another. "The Sun in the Sky" is postlude, everyone back on stage to witness the new world with new eyes. All of the songs on Poison Season sound carefully crafted but well-traveled, bound to hold up under years of listening, not unlike the best moments from Broadway.
Finally, it should be noted that "The River" wishes its flutes were played on 80s soft-rock stations, but instead will have to settle for one of The D Man's favorite deep cuts from 2015. When the wannabe guitar solo is buried in horns, and the gentle piano emerges to close out the song, well, send me off now. This is Destroyer.
Great artists eventually perfect their craft or they arrive at an aesthetic pinnacle that they can no longer improve upon. On the Baltimore band's fifth studio album, Depression Cherry, Beach House has obviously perfected its craft and arguably reached its zenith. It is another indication of the band's best and highest use, so elegantly executed that there is little room for more to be done.
Victoria Legrand's seductive voice spins her usual dreamy webs while Alex Scally's guitar ripples with gorgeous pedal effects, easily making up one of the best combinations in popular music. Unlike the duo's last two records, Teen Dream and Bloom, which boasted majestic pop anthems, Depression Cherry is a more subtle, enveloping affair, content to let listeners languish in the pervasive romance of each song.
Scally's riffs are more textured this time, if that's even possible, although he still pushes his notes to pointed grandeur on tracks like "Sparks" and "Space Song." His fuzzed-out noise and cosmic wisps on those tracks are some of the most memorable sounds of the year. On other tracks, Scally's abstractions are a reminder that sometimes less is more, especially when paired with Legrand's star-kissed organ tones.
Opener "Levitation," one of my favorite tracks of the year, is drenched in passion, an unabashed love song, using a perfectly-apt metaphor to describe the rush of feeling that comes from going places - physically or spiritually - together. There's a place I want to take you. When the unknown will surround you.
"Wildflower," another year-end highlight, is more gorgeous uplift as the song finds an understated groove quite unlike anything else in the band's canon. Legrand reaches out to her companion in support, a mature expression of love that rings true to those who have forged on with the same mates in their life. It reminds me of feelings I've had while driving home with my wife at my side, a difficult day long spent.
Need a companion My head in prayer You know you're not losing your mind What's left you make something of it The sky what's left above it The way you want nothing of it Baby I'm yours
Five albums in, Beach House has become one of my all-time favorite bands, always evocative, and inhabiting a unique feeling and sound that take me to places unknown and yet all so familiar.
One of the warmest, prettiest records you will hear, and from Scandinavia no less. On Dark Bird is Home, lush, mid-tempo folk songs are embellished with graceful horns, backing vocals, and Kristian Matsson's distinctive, Dylan-esque pipes. Where the Swede's previous efforts were stripped down and spare, leaving his reedy voice to carry the melodies, his fourth studio album is the first to feature a full band throughout. Surrounded by fulsome arrangements, Matsson lays bare his soul in heart-tugging fashion.
With music this well-worn and inviting, there is no reason to be estranged. As Matsson sings, in a place like this I should never be afraid. Isn't that the hope of every wanderer seeking the hearth they once knew? Though Matsson describes the struggles and self-doubt of his journey, including divorce and the death of a loved one, he seems to find solace, or at least creates room for it to spring from his searching.
"Fields of Our Home" steadies itself with repeating acoustic strums, as keyboards, layered vocals, and trumpets fall into a gorgeous ending. "Darkness of the Dream" favors a bouncy piano line and a full backing choir, and it is nothing short of lovely. "Slow Dance" jitters along as far-away trumpets rise and fall throughout the track. A brief silence gives way to Matsson's voice: At times like these even travelers can win. Reassurance follows in a cacophony of horns and oohs and aaahs.
"Timothy" is splendid fun, as Matsson employs a clarinet line that is difficult to get out of your head. He plays more than a dozen instruments on the record, including guitar, banjo, pedal steel, alto horn, clarinet, omnichord, and tom-tom. It is clear that his compositions have moved well beyond his expert-level skills on the acoustic guitar.
"Sagres" is arguably the record's best track, capturing its wayfaring spirit with sublime songwriting. The cascading violins lead to a climax when Matsson finally faces the crippling doubt that has hounded him for too long. By squaring it up in such a direct manner, recognizing and calling it out, Matsson seems to leave it behind, homeward bound.
Neon Indian's evolution has been quite remarkable as brainchild Alan Palomo continues to expand his electro-pop palette. Psychic Charms (2009) was a leading light for chillwave, a lo-fi record that your genius kid brother would have made in his makeshift home studio consisting of an Atari Commodore and a cassette player. On Era Extrana (2011), Palomo went to Finland to be reprogrammed, replacing his eight-bit beats with the sounds of mid-winter decay, a hi-fi pop ode to the elusiveness of virtual love.
Incredibly, VEGA INTL. Night School drives even deeper into the future. It is a maximalist, effusive paeon to club life and the city's alluring late-night glow. The songs buzz with skittering electronica while bringing to mind strange retro clubs of the future, dystopian Blade Runner watering holes where the only thing that holds the chaos together is the dance floor. Even the track names are neon signs beckoning to the adventurous: "Street Level," "Smut!," "The Glitzy Hive," "Slumlord," and "Techno Clique." Intricately assembled, each track pulses with energy and a commitment to getting the groove right, dark alleys be damned.
As always, The D Man prizes originality, degree of difficulty, and artfulness, while balancing the scales with listenability and enjoyment. VEGA checks all of those boxes while pushing listeners to embrace dance music in dazzling locales.
We are young and alive!!
Ah yes, the intoxication of youth. Played out thousands of times in the annals of rock music. Beach Slang's 26-minute contribution to thefist-pumping genre is superb, a power-pop race to beat the sunrise, and with just enough punk snarl to keep you focused on the task at hand: go hard because it ends all too quickly.
Formed in Philly in 2013, Beach Slang consists of James Alex (vocals, guitar), Ruben Gallego (guitar), Ed McNully (bass), and JP Flexner (drums). On their debut full length, arguably the best rock record of the year, the band rips through a blistering but melodic set of guitar rock with nods to everyone from The Replacements to Japandroids. The underlying melodicism, reaching dreamy levels in parts, hits a continuous sweet spot, raucous but imminently listenable.
Every Open Eye is a vibrant follow-up to the Scottish band's impressive electro-pop debut. With only keyboards, electronic drums, and the occasional bass line, it is impressive to sound even bigger on the sophomore effort. The trio's cold bursts of brooding synth-rock are as brisk as the clearest winter sunrise. But there is something hopeful in the music, too, an understanding that the sun will warm things up eventually.
Make no mistake, this is Lauren Mayberry's show, her pixie beauty and lilting voice carrying Chvrches into the mainstream. Her increased confidence is on full display during the band's kinetic live show: she moves, marches, waves, and sings with the authority of a woman who will not back down. Though small in stature, her vulnerability is a strength as she winds her way through the song's break-ups, make-ups, and wise-ups. After gracefully dealing with the worst of social media trolls since her rise to fame, she has positioned herself as a thoughtful voice on women's issues.
Chvrches accessible sound appeals to many audiences, which explains the band's meteoric rise from the blogosphere. It speaks to 80s synth pioneers, EDM fans, club hoppers, and young women looking for somethingjust a little more alternative than Taylor Swift. It also speaks to listeners who enjoy a catchy pop hook and a beautiful voice, which should be just about everyone.
Mew. Denizens of Danish dream-prog. Back with their first album in six years. The band's past two records were year-end Top Ten material, and + -- deserves the same consideration. An impeccably produced, original, and life-affirming album, the strange songs soar with what can only be described as a deep sense of compassion. The D Man's review of Mew's recent live show best sums up the record and the current state of the band, so check it out here.
Floating Point's Sam Shepherd created an almost indescribable album. Soul-jazz abstractions. Studied synth excursions. Ambient dance compositions. Post-rock divinations. If Miles Davis or Herbie Hancock had come of age under the watchful eye of British dubstep, this is the retro-futurist record they may have come up with. But even that theoretical prediction falls short. A prodigious child pianist and musician who grew up singing in the Manchester Cathedral Boys Choir (and where they still perform his early choral works), Shepherd, only in his 20s, produced something utterly singular with Elaenia.
A prolific presence in England's dance music scene since 2009, Shepherd's debut as Floating Points features an ace collection of players ranging from Afro-punk bassist Susumu Mukai, multi-instrumentalist Alex Reeve, Hot Chip drummer Leo Taylor, house luminary Matthew Herbert, and Tom Skinner (accompanist to Jonny Greenwood when he is not doing Radiohead). As one critic noted, "the music they make together is loose but meticulous, grand though never bombastic." It all merges into a science-fiction experiment gone perfectly, perfectly right.
Shepherd obtained his Phd in neuroscience from London College, where he studied epigenetics and the science of pain, but he left his research to pursue his sought after DJ sets and elegant, multi-disciplinary musical compositions. The D Man is not well-versed or skilled enough in composition theory to adequately describe the record, although I am fully equipped to appreciate its allure. Rhythms are unorthodox. 4/4 time signatures are few and far between. Live percussion underpins meandering threads of synthesizers, bass lines, guitar weaves, and other instruments that I can only pick up by reading the liner notes. It is a heady but instantly accessible record that bears repeated listens. The ten-minute centerpiece, "Silhouettes (I, II, III)," may be one of the most vital tracks of the year for where it takes the music of today. So it goes with the rest record.
On album opener "All the Same," Bradford Cox sings take your handicaps, channel them and feed them back, till they become your strengths. Deerhunter do just that on Fading Frontier, the band's shimmering and diverse seventh studio album. Retreating from the sneering garage rock of 2013's Monomania, Deerhunter embrace what they do best: woozy, gorgeous psyche-pop, while reveling in Cox's outsider spirit and caustic charm. As with 2010's Halcyon Digest, nobody does it better.
"Breaker" glows into a warm, Beach Boys-esque chorus, recalling washed-out bedroom pop of the 60s. "Duplex Planet" skitters into a keyboard-drenched epiphany. "Take Care" totally spaces out, its building intricacies seemingly so effortless, demonstrating the band's inherent feel for polished, liquid psyche-rock. "Snakeskin" slithers into weird 70s funk and sounds unmistakably like a band in full command of their considerable range.
Cox was seriously injured in a car crash in December 2014, and this is his first record since the accident, which he claims "provided a perspective giving jolt" and "erased all illusions." There is a sense of urgency throughout the record, and a new wide-screen perspective is best heard on "Living My Life," one of the year's best tracks. The music swells with sonic optimism as dark skies barrel in: I'm off the grid, I'm out of range And the amber waves of grain are turning grey again The darkened stage and the infinite waves Distance can change fate I'm out of range again.
While hoping to keep the darkness at bay through detached distance, Cox finally asks the pressing question on his mind: Will you tell me when you find out how to conquer all this fear? / I've been spending too much time out on the fading frontier. Cox seems to answer by clinging to the only mantra that will get him through: I'm living my life, I'm living my life. When the storm is raging, isn't that all we can really do?
The Waterfall is My Morning Jacket's best album since 2005's Z. It is a cohesive and era-eschewing exercise in Americana and rock'n'roll, saturated in the band's affinity for folk, rhythm and blues, and psychedelia, Jim James weaves his mind-body-flow threads after a difficult breakup and his message is as crisp as the record's production: open your eyes, release your heart, and flow with the river until you drop into that metaphysical love somewhere below the rocks.
The record contains everything the band does well: there are anthemic arena sing-a-longs ("Believe," "Big Decisions"), left-field rockers ("Spring,""Tropics"), R&B-inflected grooveouts ("Compound Fracture"), falsetto love songs ("Thin Line"), acoustic apologies ("Get the Point"), and exquisite, extended guitar jams ("Only Memories Remain"). James' lead vocals have never been stronger, ranging across multiple genres and deliveries, infusing a sense of lessons-learned optimism into each song. Carl Broemel's guitar leads are as inviting as your neighbor's front porch, as usual, and the band's keyboardist, Bo Koster, deserves special mention for providing the best work of his career, driving texture and vintage atmosphere into many of the tracks.
Recorded at a hilltop studio in Stinson Beach, California, and featuring artwork depicting Vernal Fall in Yosemite, James described the record's naturalistic imagery:
It's related to being connected to nature. Literally being surrounded by trees and creatures every time we walked out of the studio doors. Every evening around sunset we would stop what we were doing and walk outside to watch the sun descend, like an enormous egg yolk slowly smashing down in a psychedelic wash of color, much like the colors of the waterfall on the album cover. Those images, the smell of ocean air and the openness of it all, seeped into every aspect of this record.
The end result is an aural depiction of nature's regeneration. The wounds we receive are real, the band reminds us, but we receive healing through faith, togetherness, and appreciation for the narrow seasons we get to spend together.
Modest Mouse's Strangers to Ourselves, the band's first record since 2007, is a whirly-gig pop venture where the center (surprise!) cannot hold. While Isaac Brock's songwriting teeters at the edge of the absurd, he fearlessly clings to his emotional and intellectual honesty, and his doomed-planet diatribes, poetic and fierce, find fertile ground in this collection of guitar rock oddities.
The indie titans long-awaited return is welcome. Strangers features the usual gonzo guitar workouts and weirdo vocal theatrics from Brock, but the arrangements brim with new ideas and crackle with intensity, the result of a more fulsome production and instrumental accompaniment than anything the band has done before. Yes, the increasingly polished approach since 2004's popular breakthrough Good News for People Who Love Bad News has led some to wonder what happened to the inspired frenetics of the band's early, raw efforts. Long gone are the days of skewed and spare dynamics ala The Lonesome Crowded West. Put simply, Modest Mouse will never sound like this again.
Too easily dismissed in this discussion, however, is that the band now contains superior individual musicians than in its underground heyday, which includes the stunning growth of founding members Brock and Jeremiah Green. Brock is a bona fide guitar wizard with an instantly distinctive space-cowboy feel, while Green's varied work on the kit breathes life into the bizarro pop songs. As a result, Strangers delivers complex arrangements, heady background vocals, and strings, horns, and other assorted instruments for a full-bodied sonic experience that should be appreciated on its own merits without the baggage of classics like The Moon and Antarctica.
"Lampshades on Fire" is the band at its headlining best, a populist mishmash carried by Brock's carnival barker persona. "The Ground Walks, with Time in A Box" dives right into the crowd, a slinky rocker masquerading as the band's first dance track. In the often uninspired slew of indie rock, these two tracks are as interesting as it gets for widespread iTunes consumption.
The band still gets crazy, of course. "Pistol (A. Cunanan, Miami, FL, 1996)" is the creepiest, warped-out song you will hear all year, depicting the mind of the madman who killed Versace. "The Turtle and The Tourist" is a raging guitar mess, and sounds totally nuts in the best of ways. "Coyotes" is actually quite pretty as Brock sings about, well, coyotes.
My favorite tracks hit square between oddball and accessible, with Brock's incisive lyrics firing on all cylinders, his opening lines summing up his existential dread: "Pups to Dust" (Our hearts don't change from pups to dust / Couldn't see clearly, but I had a sense of what right and wrong was); "Sugar Boats" (This rock of ours is just some big mistake / And we will never know just where we go / Or where we have came from); "Wicked Campaign" (Well I just found the fence where I am going to lean / Take my handkerchief out and rub my eyeglasses clean). Brock's struggles with our opaque world speak to me, and when they are driven through the band's spiraling, off-kilter jams, they help me release pent up energy and exorcise any inexplicable demons.
There is no irony in Ryan Adams' faithful reinterpretation of Taylor Swift's world-beating collection of pop songs from 1989. It is clear that Adams admires the strength of the source material. In response to Swift's tweeted wonderment about news of the project, he replied: Just finished Style. Badass tunes, Taylor. We're sandblasting them and they're holding steady. Though some have winced at the seemingly too-cute play for attention, Adams' sure-handed feel for a great hook or a little songwriting moment makes the pairing too obvious in hindsight. His keen grasp of almost every guitar-based styling - from power-pop to folk-rock to balladeering - suits Swift's material just fine.
1989 is not a poetic deconstruction in the vein of Mark Kozelek's AC/DC or Modest Mouse albums. Rather than completely reimagine (and sometimes surpass) the source material, Adams stays true to 1989's original intent, keeping the melodies largely intact while playing with tempo, texture, and tone. That said, Adams cannot help but run the tracks through his wistful, past-the-heartbreak prism, long practiced over the course of more than a dozen solo albums. Where Swift's renditions capture the fleeting climax of youthful exuberance, Adams' takes evoke a self-aware melancholy--things may not have worked out but it was worth trying.
Most listeners wanted to hear what he would do with the huge singles. "Blank Space" is a soft-picked torch song, slowed down and sung in Adams' plaintive register as gentle strings and keyboards arrive and the whole thing simmers into a sad-eyed folk ballad. "Style" is an 80's rock stomper, where Adams apes his Replacements influence and goes straight for broke, loose change rattling after too many drinks at the arcade, resulting in a solid but by no means perfect attempt at reaching the original's neon pop glow. "Shake It Off" is a pensive, late-night affair. The sticks hit the kit and the keyboards chime in, but there is never a release like the original. Everything is pent up and frustrated, belying the song's supposedly feel-good, move-on mantra. "Bad Blood" is the best cover of the big hits, a mid-tempo rocker that shows Adams at his sturdy best.
The real treats are the deeper cuts, if you can even call any track on 1989 such a thing. "Welcome to New York" opens the album with glistening guitar pop, throbbing with energy and hope and a chance that everything may come together. "Out of the Woods" could have easily fit on Ashes & Fire, a straightforward, folk-tinged plea for hanging on just a little longer, as it builds to a lovely stretch of violins, keyboards, and guitar strums. "All You Had To Do Was Stay" is my favorite track on the record, probably because it is the precise intersection between Swift's buoyant electro-pop and Adams' unfussed guitar rock.
Twin Shadow reaches for the girls at the back of the arena, and he almost pulls off the transition from nu-wave wunderkind to big-tent populist. Though third album Eclipse is not as strong as its predecessors, George Lewis Jr. sheds all pretension and runs for the strobe lights, trading in icy synths and subtle guitar work for thumping bass lines and club-ready choruses, with the end result somehow just as seductive.
Lewis's late-night romanticism permeates the record, although this time he packages everything in bombast. The big songs and production typically suit him well, but there are a couple of forgivable misses. His voice reaches new climbs on tracks like "To the Top," which happened to be one of my boys' favorite tracks in 2015. We pumped the power ballad with windows down on more than one occasion.
Equally as impressive, "I'm Ready" aims to be the millennial version of "In Your Eyes," replacing the boombox on the shoulders for the wave of an iPhone. The song's distorted guitars and synths eventually give way to a rising piano line, where Lewis's solitary voice builds to the chorus payoff: I'm right here, I'm ready, I need this love! With the hero's Camaro idling in the parking lot, it is ready-made for that perfect moment in your favorite WB drama. But the song's strength comes from the obvious fact that it does not give a flying you-know-what about its utter earnestness.
"When the Lights Turn Out" and "Old Love/New Love" are enjoyable club bangers, while "Flatliners" and "Locked & Loaded" occupy more interesting emotional territory. "Turn Me Up" is a well-executed slow R&B jam, and the track is better than anything on Prince's last album, for whatever that is worth. Some fans of Twin Shadow's first two records bemoaned Eclipse's new soul-pop direction, but it is an unapologetic detour that found its way straight into my car stereo.
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