Cups to the Stars: 2013 in Review – The Albums

[REEEEEEEEEEMIX!]

And now: my FINAL, re-re-revisionized, way beyond the wire, post-Epiphany Top Five (and more) Albums of 2013, featuring the #1 pick that was right under my nose this whole time.  Oh my goodness I feel so much better already...

1. Paramore: Paramore

Oh man.  The 2007 me would be ashamed at how long it took the 2013 me to really, truly come around to this one.  It wasn't even in my top 20 until probably mid-December, and the album came out in April (and I've had it since at least May.)  In the original version of this post (published two days ago, though mentally redacted later that evening), I had it at number five.  It's not like I was letting some kind of inhibitions or sense of propriety hold me back (popguilt what?) although it's true that this isn't really where my listening buddies were at for most the year and (ongoing issue) this is definitely the sort of album that demands to be shared, to be appreciated in a communal context, preferably perhaps (per the opening cut) from a packed-full, windows-down, fast-moving car.

I think what happened is that I internalized "Still Into You" (The Singles Jukebox's well-deserved top song of the year, and maybe the most gut-tugging pop treatise on the bizarrely under-explored topic of long-lasting, self-sustaining love since Sharon Jones' "All Over Again"); I stuck "Now" on my iPod, and for some reason figured I was good.  Cause that's a lot of anthemic hyper-pop potency right there.  But this album is ridiculously stacked with anthems, crammed with them: a seventeen-song pop-punk album (!?) with as many hair-trigger hooks and aural stimulants as a Girl Talk DJ set.  (I've even woken up with the ukulele interludes stuck in my head.)  So many instantaneous sugar-rush thrills that it actually takes quite a while to integrate them, as if the game plan was to stockpile so many in one spot that somehow the cumulative impact would last forever.

The crazy thing, though, is that it really is built to last.  In fact, the surprising durability of passion and spirit and passion and love is the album's defining, overarching theme.  Paramore is about the deeper experience of youthfulness that only comes with maturity; about growing up and looking around and realizing that getting older actually makes things better, because all the good stuff is still there and you can just let the shit fall away.  Such is the clarion call at the heart of every single blazing, indelible, fist-pumping chorus mantra here – alive, alert, eager to meet life head-on: If there's a future we want it now.  One of us has to grow up sometime.  Ain't it fun living in the real world?  And that's no less true of the album's fierce, firmly-grounded assertions of love – which can (mostly) be read as either romantic or otherwise: The only proof that I need is you.  You should be alone with me.  After all this time I'm still into you.  "I'm writing the future," Hayley sings on the album-closing post-rock freakout that's simultaneously the quietest and most bombastic thing here – and she's ain't kidding.

2. Kacey Musgraves: Same Trailer Different Park

 
Same Trailer, Different Park is a fantastic collection of songs: honest, witty, expertly-crafted dissections of small town small-mindedness, world-weary workplace trash-talk, and all manner of romantic tribulation; full of fresh spins on familiar metaphors and stacked with sharp, hummable tunes.  But it's also a great, brilliantly sequenced album – easing you in with "Silver Lining"'s broadly palatable platitudes and "My Home"'s chipper free-wheeling before shifting gears toward a series of increasingly direct, emotionally potent servings of real-talk, and saving the best for a gut-punch finale that balances the giddy, Nashville-style YOLO anthem "Follow Your Arrow" against the quietly devastating disillusionment of "It Is What It Is."  In an all-around terrific year for female country singer-songwriters – between Ashley Monroe, Caitlin Rose, the Pistol Annies and Brandy Clark (who co-wrote the aforementioned album-closers here) – Kacey Musgraves distinguished herself with a knack for articulating universal truths in resoundingly personal terms...or maybe it was vice versa.  [written for Philadelphia City Paper]

3. Neko Case: The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight The More I Love You


By 2013 we knew what to expect from a new Neko Case album, or, rather, we were well prepared for her brilliance to manifest in thoroughly unexpected ways.  From the title (and, I've gotta say, typically bizarre but uncharacteristically weak cover art – the deluxe version's a very slight improvement) on down, the absurdly word count-devouring The Worse Things Get......... (Anti-) played true to form; another skewed slice of peerless, surrealist puzzle-Americana that felt modest and lived-in without coming close to skirting predictability.

Actually, it did initially seem like a relatively hemmed-in effort, what with the absence of thirty-minute field recordings and the presence of some of her pithiest, most genre-bound songcraft (and most seemingly transparent lyrics) in ages: the full-throated 6/8 gospel-soul of "Night Still Comes" and "Local Girl," the power-pop crunch of "City Swans" and the pounding, provocative, eminently quotable "Man" (plus the heart-stoppingly honest, beautifully formed a cappella epigram/parable "Nearly Midnight, Honolulu.")  And no question it served as yet another deft showcase for both Case's ever-formidable force of nature vocals and the often under-appreciated instrumental vocal contributions of her ensemble.

But even with repeated listens – compulsory and compulsive though they were – the album retained its little mysteries, side-glancing quirks like the sonic and conceptual incongruousness of "Where Did I Leave That Fire," or the casually divulged incest/homicide of "Bracing for Sunday,"  or the wry meta joke of Neko covering Nico, or "Ragtime" promising up a triumphal finalé that never seems to arrive.  So chalk this up as another one of Case's intoxicating, insoluble riddles; the latest in a consistently formidable string of cryptic, ever-so-subtly insane Delphic majesties that refuse to fully resolve.  Or try telling it those Pharoahs she's so inexplicably fond of invoking.

4. Free Energy: Love Sign


I <3 this band so much.  I don't even care, and I've given up on trying to understand, why the whole bleeding blood-pumping ear-having world isn't right there alongside me on this one.  What, you only pretended to like them so James Murphy would notice you?  You're really gonna grumble about the production?  Or maybe I just haven't spent enough time with the pertinent source material to get how painfully, mind-numbingly derivative this is – though, I mean, haven't we all?  And isn't that the flipping point?  This album, this band is for all of us; no requirements for entry.  They're an open door with flashing neon welcome mat, a big smiley sweaty group hug.  They are the Lowest Common Denominator Soundsystem.  Free Energy, capisce?

I love the unapologetic cowbells, I love the thoroughly wholesome mushy softness of a group who graft their signifiers from what's theoretically (at least on some level) "hard" rock, I love spelling out T-R-U-E-L-O-V-E, I love that you can dance to all of it, even the ballads, one of which is actually called "Dance All Night," and it has the most beautiful break-it-on-down slow-motion drum fill of the year.  (And yeah, the cover art is godawful.)  Mostly I just love how much fun I have every single time I put it on.

5. Chvrches: The Bones of What You Believe

The Postal Service's anniversary festivities this year signaled that the 21st century electro-pop revival – which, needless to say, has hardly remained a strictly indie proposition – is now a full decade deep.  So what did 2013's blog-anointed model offer that we hadn't heard a hundred times already?  More killer hooks? Another slew of epic beats and dazzlingly shiny sounds?  Well, yes – but shouldn't we be sick of this stuff by now?

Chvrches apologists sometimes note – for anyone who still cares – that these Glaswegian upstarts earned their indie rock bona-fides before, as the sage said, selling their guitars and buying synthesizers because they wanted to make something real ("...they wanted to make a Yaz record.")  What matters more is that, like all synth-pop greats, they understand that the genre's power stems from a fundamental juxtaposition: the steely perfection of machine-generated sounds (and make no mistake, Chvrches make some damn perfect, hi-definition sounds with their machines: crisp, brittle, pummeling, urgent), contrasted with the fallibility and vulnerability that is our lot as fleshly human animals.  That's why, like The Knife and Purity Ring before them, Chvrches' lyrics are strewn obsessively with the language of bodies – throats, lungs, teeth and lips; blood, skin and bone – and of violence (plus the faint, glimmering hope of recovery.)  But for all Lauren Mayberry's vaunted book-smarts and her fierce, uncompromising vocal delivery, these songs'd be just as potent without any words at all, because they also know how to speak directly to your body. [written for Philadelphia City Paper]

and now....
the rest of my top 20+1+3 in pictorial format:

6. Daft Punk: Random Access Memories

7. The Knife: Shaking the Habitual

8. John Wizards: John Wizards

9. Cass McCombs: Big Wheel and Others

10. Chance the Rapper: Acid Rap

11. Lucius: Wildewoman
12. Four Tet: Beautiful Rewind
13. Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires of the City
14. Rhye: Woman
15. [James] Holden: The Inheritors
16. Dawn of Midi: Dysnomia
17. Robbie Fulks: Gone Away Backward
18. Breakbot: By Your Side
19. Marek Hemman: Bittersweet
20. DJ Koze: Amygdala
21. Jagwar Ma: Howlin'
22. Arcade Fire: Reflektor
23. Sky Ferreira: Night Time, My Time
24. Eleanor Friedberger: Personal Record

and the rest of my top 20 + 13, in non-bolded list format:

25. Beyoncé

26. More by Arp

27. The 20/20 Experience by Justin Timberlake

28. Days are Gone by Haim

29. Ooey Gooey Chewy Ka-Blooey! by The Dirtbombs

30. The Invisible Way by Low

31. I Hate Music by Superchunk

32. Run The Jewels

33. Colours by Devon Sproule + Mike O'Neill

and the rest of my top 20 x 1 x 3...

34. Dalmak by Esmerine

35. Settle by Disclosure

36. Overgrown by James Blake

37. Soul Music by Special Request

38. Dream River by Bill Callahan

39. In Focus? by Shugo Tokumaru

40. Akkord

41. Factory Floor

42. Wakin on a Pretty Daze by Kurt Vile

43. Impossible Truth by William Tyler

44.  Jungle Revolution by Congo Natty

45. Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action by Franz Ferdinand

46. Wise Up Ghost by Elvis Costello & The Roots

47. Where Does This Door Go? by Mayer Hawthorne

48. Fade by Yo La Tengo

49. Partygoing by Future Bible Heroes

50. mbv by My Bloody Valentine

51. Light Up Gold by Parquet Courts

52. MCII by Mikal Cronin

53. Once I Was An Eagle by Laura Marling

54. Dungeonesse

55. Waiting For Something To Happen by Veronica Falls

56. The Marriage of True Minds by Matmos

57. We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic by Foxygen

58. Free Your Mind by Cut Copy

59. Nightmare Ending by Eluvium

60. Static by Cults

and the rest of my top 201 ÷ 3...

61. 1977 by Kölsch

62. lousy with sylvianbriar by of Montreal

63. Major Arcana by Speedy Ortiz

64. Feet Beneath The Moon by King Krule

65. AM by Arctic Monkeys

66. Yeezus by Kanye West

67. Pull My Hair Back by Jessy Lanza

ps: my most-listened-to albums of 2013, according to the dubious imps at last.fm – these are the only albums with 100 or more track-listens logged.
1. Disclosure - Settle
2. When Saints Go Machine - Infinity Pool
3. Chance the Rapper - Acid Rap
4. Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City
5. Chvrches - The Bones of What You Believe
6. Neko Case - The Words Things Get...
7. John Wizards - John Wizards
8. Kacey Musgraves - Same Trailer Different Park
9. Primal Scream - More Light
10. Sky Ferreira - Night Time My Time
11. Rhye - Woman
12. DJ Koze - Amygdala
13. Low - The Invisible Way
14. Laura Marling - Once I Was An Eagle
15. Daft Punk - Random Access Memories
16. Cass McCombs - Big Wheel and Others
17. Sam Amidon - Bright Sunny South
18. Foxygen - We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic
19. Mikal Cronin - MCII
20. Flume - Flume

Cups To The Stars: 2013 in Review – The Songs

I've been reviewing 2013 for quite a while now.  I wrote my first for-publication Best of 2013 albums list (for Magnet) back in October; then another, substantially different one (for City Paper) in early December.  I (just) missed the Pazz'n'Jop deadline (again), but anyway my list has again seen more fluctuation and rejiggering since then.

Basically it's either been a highly competitive year for albums or a highly confusing one – or possibly both: sometimes it's hard to tell if all the reshuffling is due to there being a ton of really strong albums vying for the spots, or a dearth of albums strong enough to really assert their place.  In other words, 2013 was definitely not a 2012 or a 2010 (i.e. a year with a huge, unassailable top 5+ – or possibly just a year with a new Hot Chip album), but it wasn't exactly a 2011 (lower key, smaller scale, off-cycle) either.  Or, maybe it was in terms of absolute great greats: ultimately, nothing stood out as an unmitigated 10/10; a fully satisfying #1 – Kacey Musgraves has held steady in that spot for a while, but it feels a bit like a default, and in any case it's not really representative of my actual year in listening.

Anyhow, there were unquestionably many really good albums that came out last year – enough that I've been inspired to make my list relatively long-form.  I've listed 24 of them below in the next entry, with some commentary (including my blurbs from the CP list), and you can find a whole bunch more over on the sidebar: numbered up to 100, just for fun, and subject to revision whenever I feel bored.  (oh yeah – and I totally reserve the right to list BEYONCÉ in 2014.)  (Actually, screw that...while I'm being revisionist anyway I'm sneaking it in now...no higher than #25 though.  Don't feel like search for any more jpgs plus I'm honestly not that sold on it.  Though maybe I'll live eat those words.)

First though: some songs.  2013 was an exceptionally good year for songs (or, if you like, tracks), but more specifically it was a truly great year for anthems.  Not every song on the list below was even a single, and many that were didn't exactly permeate broader consciousness (even on an indie level) to the extent that plenty of other great, probably equally list-worthy hits – by folks like Daft Punk, Disclosure, Drake, Haim [**big ups especially to the Lindstrøm remix of "Forever"**], Skye Ferreira, Paramore, Robin Thicke, Miguel [er, as featured by Mariah Carey and Janelle Monae] and Rhye [a few year-of-release quibbles there] – but almost every one of them feels, in its own way, powerfully, personally and specifically anthemic.  And, for sure, none more so than this one:

1. Neko Case: "Man"

"Night Still Comes" was the instantly familiar, deftly melodic, perfectly formed gospel-soul stunner that already felt like a pre-ordained cozy campfire classic from the first time we heard it (in my case, live at WilcoFest.)  "Nearly Midnight, Honolulu" was the quietly staggering, heart-rending emotional centerpiece whose startlingly unadorned a cappella form precisely matched the stark, searing poignancy of its content.  But there was nothing on The Worse It Gets, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You that compared to "Man."

Maybe it's partly because I heard it several months before the rest of the album, but "Man" stands defiantly apart from the record surrounding it – and really, from Case's entire career.  (Her work with the New Pornographers only grudgingly excepted, because this feels like something else, something emphatically more forceful, even if it certainly takes a few pages from that book.)  It has a directness, a thundering force – like an electric jolt – that she's never really attempted otherwise, and it comes across with an unambiguous, surging certainty – those drums, those cymbals, the teeth-grinding violence of guitars on guitars on guitars – that's very tempting to equate with simplicity.

But as with the brilliant, seemingly baldly self-explanatory lyrics; even given the delicious, pivotal reveal that – no, it's not about gender, and she's not playing a role this time: "Man" is just what kind of animal she is – I get the sense that there's still a little more going on here than she's quite letting on; some evasion or elision in the pronouns and syntax.  (That's the animal part, maybe: just because Neko is, like all of us, a man, doesn't mean she's not still as mysterious as any other beast)  Still, who cares what kind of sense it makes or doesn't; there were few more inexplicably desirable states of being in 2013 than "dipshit drunk on pink perfume," and few assertions more satisfying or self-evident than the Neko-logical corollary to such a situation: "I AM THE MAN IN THE FUCKING MOON"

2. Classixx ft. Nancy Whang: "All You're Waiting For"

In which Classixx – two L.A. electro-scene gadabouts with a handful of quite good remixes to their credit, and little else to speak of – suddenly, shockingly live up to their name, x's and all.  "All You're Waiting For" came a title that was hard to take seriously – oh sure, another synthy, disco-ey burst of upbeat electro-dance blog fodder is exactly what we've been missing – but somehow became self-fulfilling, and undeniable.  This track does absolutely nothing new, but it does absolutely everything it needs to do.  It is a 100% pure, clinical-grade distillation of the ever-beguiling but so often lackluster 21st century dance/pop/house/electro axis – that nebulously shiny, blandly stylish domain of stock neon visuals and endless goofily-named remixers.  Every so often, though, somebody just gets it right.

It doesn't hurt that they enlisted Nancy Whang, who for reasons I have never really been able to understand, let alone articulate, is pretty the undisputed queen of this stuff.  What she does here is not much different from what she's done in the past for the likes of Soulwax, Juan MacLean and LCD Soundsystem (and again on a forthcoming banger from DFA also-ran Shit Robot), which is...not much, really.  Sing the words.  Maybe her voice just functions like a sort of seal of authenticity by this point.  But it does the trick – managing to invest some legitimate drama into the most banal lyrical imagery imaginable ("...got my bags packed, waiting on the driver curbside...")  On the other hand, the synths – inexplicably both crisp and pillowy – have the whole job pretty much sewn up before her voice even enters the scene.

3. D E N A: "Cash, Diamond Rings, Swimming Pools"

Nobody heard this.  Nobody cares about Kitsuné any more (if they ever did), which is only fair because most of what they put out really isn't very interesting.  But somebody should really start paying attention to D E N A, or Dena, or however she wants us to write it, because she has mad swagger like M.I.A. back in '05 and because this song is amazing, hilarious both conceptually and musically (that doorbell sample?!? – and that's not even mentioning the video) but without actually seeming like a joke, brilliantly deadpan, and also extremely banging.  And the EP has a bunch of really solid remixes on it too.  I like how, despite the titular mantra, she seems to be interested in the swimming pools far more than the other two items.  And not even because she's hot; most of the song is about how it's too cold in Berlin (and/or Bulgaria) and she'd rather be anywhere else.  I also like how it's a direct appeal to the listener: "If you're listening to this in a hot country, please come rescue me."  If you have a swimming pool, she promises "then we can be hanging."  Hey Dena, I've got a three foot deep inflatable one... does that count?

4. Caitlin Rose: "Menagerie"

Another head-scratcher of a non-hit (indeed, non-single), and this was on an album some people actually heard (and liked.)  I found the bulk of The Stand-In to be fine: well-produced but generally unexciting tasteful, all-purpose Americana.  But this song – for sure, the most power-pop thing on the record, almost but not quite to the point of being unrepresentative – hit me hard the first time I heard it (live at South by Southwest, which was also my first exposure to Caitlin Rose period) and I've been smitten ever since.  It's got a terrific thumping, thundering, shimmering production job (love that slightly grimey electric piano – really the texture of the whole thing are just great), the kind of riff that you can't imagine not having been around forever, and a brilliantly stinging kiss-off of a lyric built around a nicely understated Tennessee Williams allusion.  Simply said: a beautiful thing.

5. Little Daylight: "Overdose"

Another song I first heard at SXSW; more great thumping and thundering; another bone-simple but beautifully-deployed riff.  This is from the new band/project of my high school friend Nicole, formerly of Xylos, and while I still haven't heard much else they've done (and sadly their tour with the stacked line-up of Charli XCX and Kitten got reshuffled, although I did therefore get introduced to LIZ) but they have been playing shows with Bastille, which seems to augur well for their future.

Sort of like the Classixx track, this feels like an archetypal, Platonic ideal of a certain stripe of synthy, catchy, kind of gleefully dumb indie-pop.  (Particularly the oh-oh-ohs doubling the synth riff.)  And it is pretty dumb.  But it works.  What really makes it is how the arrangement keeps switching around to highlight different parts and keep things fresh, and especially the chorus that breaks down to just handclaps and funky bassline.  Plus the kind of unnecessarily epic drums, which push it into anthemic territory and make it especially great for biking to.

6. Dungeonesse: "Soon"

'90s-urban revival-core synth-pop; a semi-slow/sad ballad jam but still with a funky breakbeat, almost freestyle groove.  This one's really all about the vocals, particularly the floaty, self-harmonizing bits when the beat drops out.  Just gorgeous.  Also heartbreaking, in a way that goes beyond standard break-up song tropes ("half a love's not enough for the two of us to live on...soon we've gotta give it up.")  Sort of puts me in mind of Kylie/José's "Hand on Your Heart," another aching, reluctant plug-pulling.  Plus Jenn Wasner sounds so much like Tracey Thorn here and I'm just always gonna be a sucker for that.

7. Chvrches: "Gun"

Could have gone with any of several Chvrches jams really, but this is the first one that really got to me, and besides the other big singles actually came out last year, right?  (Was confused about why they were on the P4k list.)  Everything about this is so perfectly chiseled into place, every build-up and break back down (maybe my favorite is the live-sounding snare drums in the ramp-up to the chorus, as if all the synth instruments in the world just weren't enough to convey the requisite urgency.)  I keep thinking I've gotten sick of it – in some ways it is less sonically/structurally inventive/more pro forma synth-pop than some of their other hits – but then I try biking to it again and I can't help but smile.

8. Cayucas: "High School Lover"

Another big smiler.  More kinda-dumb but effective indie pop.  Sweet bassline, interesting percussion groove, understated surf chords and overall beachy vibe, and I like the syncopated vocal rhythm, with each line relaxed so far behind the beat so that it almost wraps around to the next bar, especially in the chorus.  Which is also really fun to sing.  They probably could have come up with something more interesting to finish it off than just repeating  the title phrase a bunch of times – also, the guy's voice is not the greatest – but whatever.

9. Lindstrøm & Todd Terje: "Lanzarote"


Comedy single of the year!  Travel agency commercial of the millennium!  (And the most durable, versatile "insert-your-own" 2013 running joke between me and E, applicable basically any time one of us mentions "going" anywhere.)  Also, how handy that it comes with a bonus seven minutes of typically immaculate LinsTerje synth-disco squiggles and arpeggios and crazy left-field harmonic shifts tacked on to the beginning.  They had to put that part first because otherwise they would have just kept on naming four-syllable destinations for all eternity, making each one sound more enticing than the last (...Santa Barbara! ...Mississippi!  ...North Dakota!  ...Mogadishu!  ...Sarajevo!  hmm...Purgatory!)

10. Veronica Falls: "Waiting For Something To Happen"

"Everybody's crazy – what's your excuse, baby?"  I probably unfairly underrated this album when it came out.  Yes, it's probably true that all the songs sound more or less the same.  But if they all sound like this, how is that really cause for complaint?

11. Vampire Weekend: "Unbelievers" 

Was this the most boring, most boilerplate-VWs track on Modern Vampires of the City?  Maybe so... at least it felt like the simplest, most straight-ahead pop song.  Which may be why it's the one that ultimately did the most for me.  ("Obvious Bicycle" a close second, just because it's so darn pretty.)  I'm all for musical ambition, but give me three chords, a largely repetitive, ambivalent lyric about religious relativism, and a surprise incursion of vaguely Celtic-sounding pipes and I'm a happy guy.  Also, more people should take inspiration from Buddy Holly generally (and "Peggy Sue" specifically.)  Oddly, the usually annoying and off-the-mark Paul Simon comparisons feel almost appropriate here.

12. Tegan & Sara: "Now I'm All Messed Up"

Gotta love back-up vocals that argue with (and/or straight-up contradict) the lead singer.  See also: "Shame" by Randy Newman; "Hypnotised" by Aberfeldy.

13. Kacey Musgraves: "Follow Your Arrow"

I think my favorite part is the "Or don't!" in the first chorus: wherein she encourages people whose their hearts tell them not to smoke pot to just go right ahead and not smoke pot.

14. Superchunk: "Me & You & Jackie Mittoo"

This feels like the first rock song on this list.  That may or may not be true but anyway this is maybe the purest rock'n'roll song of the year, in spirit and in substance.  So much indie-punk everyband evocation crammed into two short, sweet minutes – crammed into the back of the van, feet on the dash, half an hour at the record exchange..  I feel like it could have been even shorter though; what's all this business about Jackie Mittoo?

15. My Bloody Valentine: "New You"

2013: wherein I tried in vain to take away the pain of being a Loveless unbeliever, by seeing if I could get into MBV's follow-up record instead.  results: decidedly mixed.  but this swoony floaty gooey loveliness is clearly the best song Stereolab never made.

honorable mention:

Bibio: "À Tout à l'Heure"

Bleeding Rainbow: "Waking Dream"

Neko Case: "Nearly Midnight, Honolulu"

Foxygen: "San Francisco"

Kalabrese: "Purple Rose"

Lucius: "Tempest"
Paramore: "Still Into You"

Saint Rich: "Young Vultures"

Sophie: "Bipp"

Stornoway: "The Bigger Picture"

John Wizards: "iYongwe"

Review Round-up: June 2013

Here's my output for June – minus the two reviews you already saw (Disclosure and Jon Hopkins.)  Not much that's too super amazing stuff, but plenty of good stuff nonetheless.  Magnet stuff seems to no longer be available online, so no links for those.

Tunng
Turbines

Tunng have made it through five full-lengths and a full decade as a band without ever really coming across as professional musicians.  Not that music on Turbines (or any of its excellent predecessors) is in any way sloppy or amateurish – indeed, the delicacy of its craftsmanship is evident and enviable – but they've managed to retain a sense of innocence, freshness and pure joy in the act of creation that's well-conveyed by the name of their long-time record label, Full Time Hobby.  Some of that has to do with their chosen musical approach: fingerpick-friendly folk-pop which lends itself well (and frequently) to whole-group singalongs, crossbred with gently playful electronica that's less about banging beats than subtle, whimsical sonic inventions and interventions.  Turbines doesn't offer anything vastly new or different for the British six-piece, but it's a welcome consolidation of their crafty communal vibe, a reminder that novelty can be overrated when there's so much pleasure to be gleaned from simply reexamining (or gently tweaking) the wondrousness of the everyday.

Zomby
With Love

Where were U in 2008?  Zomby was juggling the dubstep-rooted explorations of his early singles with a gaze cast back to the past, darkly, on the hardcore rave throwback of his first full-length.  Five years on, that initial, promise-filled "post-dubstep" moment – Hyperdub's late-decade heyday – feels strangely, insurmountably distant, but the residue of its grainy, grimy, grayscale ethos still looms large for the idiosyncratic producer, underlying a faltering futurism that's still streaked with plenty of backwards glances.  As a 33-track double album, With Love (which is technically short enough to fill a single CD) has space for a small village's worth of memory lanes, including manic drum'n'bass ("Overdose," "777"), 8-bit video game twinkles ("Shiva"), airhorns'n'breakbeats ragga-jungle ("It's Time"), bleary-eyed sample-soul ("Rendezvous") and ravey 808 tech-house ("This One,") while the more somber, unified back half is dominated (almost oppressively) by the tense, trendier twitchery of trap music (though none of its joyous abandon.)  Zomby remains resolutely uninterested in coherent presentation – these all-too-brief tracks jam awkwardly into one another when not fading out unceremoniously like so many Amazon.com preview samples, and the arbitrarily alphabetical track-listing suggests a wanton approach to sequencing, track titling, or both – but he's got life in him yet; maybe even a bit of love.

Emika
DVA

You can practically hear Emika's resumé – classical piano and composition training, a degree in Music Technology, work as a sound designer for Native Instruments, ample time in the club scenes of Bristol and Berlin, collaborations with the likes of Pinch, Mala and Amon Tobin – in her music, which is every bit as moody, stylish, ominous and immaculate as you'd expect from her life experience.  On the other hand, an album like DVA could be equally well explained as the product of having spent an unhealthy amount of time internalizing Massive Attack's Mezzanine (perhaps with Portishead's self-titled as a palate-cleanser.)  Even with all the ample production prowess in her corner, Emika seems to struggle for a way truly forward.  Her classical credentials come to the fore on haunting orchestral fare like "Dem Worlds" and the opening "Hush Interlude" (with an almost throwaway cameo from Czech soprano Michaela Šrůmová), and her icy diva-wails sound even lonelier and more Beth Gibbons-ish than ever, but the more intriguing, harder-edged dubstep inflections of her eponymous debut have largely receded.  The results are gorgeous but frustratingly circumspect: twitchy, mournful, would-be futuristic dark-pop that's almost comforting in its claustrophobia.
originally published in Magnet Magazine

Eleanor Friedberger
Personal Record
[Pop/Indie]

While her brother Matthew constructs his solo albums as abstruse, hermitic wormholes of weirdness, Eleanor Friedberger's are quirky and personal in an entirely different, decidedly more approachable way.  Personal Record (Merge), the second set of sweet, chatty, retro-minded pop from the Fiery Furnaces' distaff half, practically doubles as a short story collection; reflecting on love and loss, friendship and solitude in a life lived through music (with characters including several oddly bewitching chanteuse types – "how could anyone resist a girl with such a big setlist," runs one pertinent punchline), in songs packed with wit and diaristic narrative detail set against  '50s-tinged balladry and warmly breezy classic rock riffs.

Safety Scissors
In A Manner Of Sleeping
[Pop/Electronic]

Little wonder, perhaps, that Safety Scissors' first album in eight years is most reminiscent of music made a decade ago: Morr records and microhouse; the plush, tender lap-pop of Styrofoam and the Notwist and the moist, gnomic skitter-twitches of Herbert and Schneider TM.  Not that it feels derivative or even outdated – with its chipper analog squiggles and whimsically heartfelt songcraft (interspersed with dreamily curious 'ludes like the well-named "Lemon-Scented Moist Pillowette"), In A Manner of Sleeping (BPitch Control) plays like the photo-positive inverse of Baths' weighty Obsidian, arriving right on time to herald the micro-pop revival we didn't know we were missing.

Kölsch
1977
[House]

1977 is Kölsch's first full-length for Kompakt, following numerous contributions (all collated here) to the dance-inclined Speicher sub-imprint – but it's a fine example of what the label has always done best: even-keeled, warmly melodic tech-house full of rounded synth tones and cheerful thudding grooves, hotwiring the chassis of trance without all the filter-y filigree and emotionally manipulative theatrics.  No, the emotional manipulation here is refreshingly guileless and straightforward.  While you can definitely dance to it, somehow the drumbeats never hit as hard as those heart-tugging pianos and soft synths, particularly on lavishly sentimental dad-disco centerpiece (and sole vocal cut) "All That Matters."

various artists
After Dark 2
[Electronic/Disco]

Moving from strength to strength, NJ's Italians Do It Better label follow 2012's epic Symmetry and Chromatics LPs with After Dark 2, a sequel to their ethos-defining 2007 compilation.  By now we know what to expect: eighty generous minutes of languorously leaden disco, seedy synth atmospherics, and dispassionate vocals, typically delivered through vocoders, thick accents and/or blank-eyed stares – basically, it's music for sad, haunted discotheques (although Glass Candy's contributions, at least, take on a brighter-than-usual cast.)  It's another decadent, indulgently lush bounty; expansive yet distinctly unified thanks to the potent, pervasive production aesthetic of Johnny Jewel.

Chvrches
[Pop]
concert preview

Chvrches' Lauren Mayberry leaves you with basically no choice but to envy her: she's smarter than you (she holds both a law degree and a journalism masters – and she's only 25), cute as a pint-sized pixie button with an abominably adorable Glaswegian accent to boot, and – oh yeah – she's also in one of the shit-hottest bands on the planet right about now.  But just look at all the things she and her bandmates (thirty-something veterans of broody Scottish rockers Aerogramme and The Twilight Sad) have done for you.  They put that "V" in their name, not to be all consonantal and hip, but just to help you search for them on the internet (okay, that one's really a win-win – but it does make their name more fun to say!)  Then they gave us "Gun," the most immaculate, deceptively effortless electro-pop single of the year, complete with rewind-worthy lyrics (it's basically 2013's answer to Chairlift's "Sidewalk Safari") and enough discrete, icy-cool hooks to keep your serotonin receptors flooded all summer long.  Jerks!

Baths/Houses
[Art-Pop/Electronic]
concert preview

Will Weisenfeld introduced Baths with the beguiling glitch-hop/lap-pop of 2010's texturally-oriented Cerulean.  Three years (and one severely debilitating bout of e. coli) later, he's back with Obsidian (Anticon), and the difference mirrors the stark contrast between those titular hues.  The new record pairs a striking lyrical focus on mortality and bodily concerns – unflinching, brutely poetic treatments of sex, suicide and the general abjection of human relationships – with a huge leap forward in musical inventiveness, self-assurance and charisma.  You'll hear stately, ethereal classicism a la Active Child and echoes of Jimmy Tamborello's work with Dntel and the Postal Service alongside clattering shards of metal and industrial – "No Eyes" brilliantly jacks the seedy thump of Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" – but is truly an album without clear precedents.  Similarly domestically-inclined (and domestically partnered) tourmates Houses made a comparable (albeit less traumatic) shift between albums; translating their debut's demure, atmospheric electro-pop into more organic, song-based slowcore/space-rock territory.  The aptly-named A Quiet Darkness (Downtown) has the low-key, loop-friendly earnestness of a bonsai Joshua Tree; it also – fun fact! – incorporates field recordings of actual (abandoned) houses.

Quadron/Barbarossa
[Soul/R&B]
concert preview

Quadron's members seem to network as expertly as they make music: jazzy-voiced chanteuse Coco O. has been turning up everywhere from Odd Future records to the Great Gatsby soundtrack, while Robin Hannibal, probably best known as the producer/instrumentalist half of indie-soul sensations Rhye, is an ever-prolific collaborator.  The Danish duo's second LP together, Avalanche (Vested in Culture/Epic), finds them at the tipping point of a burgeoning wave of (quasi-)indie R&B, brightening up their debut's moody, smoke-filled grooves with standouts like the summery Motown/disco-touched "Hey Love," which has the potential for Adele-style mega-success (only partly due to a piano riff that's recycled pretty much whole-cloth from Rhye's bedroom killer "The Fall.")  Hopefully, should that comes to pass, opener Barbarossa (aka James Mathé) will be right behind them: Bloodlines, the excellent debut from the London-based soulslinger/guitarist (and sometime sideman to headliners Junip), which is due in August on Memphis Industries, takes Rhye's sensitive-guy sultriness in a slightly rockier, electro-funky and tremendously hooky direction.

Tricky
[Trip-Hop]
concert preview

Unlike his Bristol trip-hop progenitor peers, Adrian Thaws has rarely gone more than a few years between records, so there's no way False Idols – Tricky's tenth album, on his newly minted label of the same name – could approximate the comeback impact of, say, Portishead's Third.  Still, it's being widely touted as a return to form; Tricky himself having gone so far as to assert its superiority to his career-defining 1995 landmark/albatross, Maxinquaye.  And it's certainly a resounding return to the spirit – that dark, existentially brooding spookysexycool – of that album (and perhaps equally, the tension-spiked R&B of his true coming-out party, Massive Attack's Blue Lines), as well as its sparse, gritty breakbeat loops and samples.  Idols initially seems to practically broadcast a dearth of new ideas – opener "Someone's Sins" cribs hard from Patti Smith; two cuts later "Valentine" recycles perhaps Chet Baker's most recognizable phrase – but then again he's frequently at his best when riffing off and (re)contextualizing the work of others, via samples, cover versions and vocal collaborations (ideally with haunting, airy-voiced females to contrast his deep, mumbly rasp, still a solid formula.)  Tricky is, above all, an auteur of moods; it's been ages since his bad vibes have felt this good.

Mikal Cronin
[Rock/Pop]
concert preview

Mikal Cronin may be a charter member of San Francisco's feverishly fertile garage/psych posse – readily spotted as sideman and collaborator to high school pal Ty Segall, among others – but as his second solo venture should make crystal clear to anyone within earshot, there's a lot more to the longhaired twenty-something than fuzzboxes and freakouts.  The simply titled (sidestepping a too-easy relativity pun) MCII (Merge) posits Cronin as heir apparent to the line of sweetly trepidatious West Coast power-pop auteurs (Jason Falkner, Jon Brion, Elliott Smith), while equally recalling hook-happy grunge-era holdouts like Weezer and Sloan.  Cronin, who's responsible for nearly all the playing (and singing) here, has no problems kicking in some well-targeted guitar crunch when the moment calls for it, but he's just as likely to stick to sunny, stress-free strums, sneak in some string orchestration or plop down at an unadorned piano – all the better for his ambivalence-ridden lyrical quarter-life crisis come through in mellifluous, multi-tracked harmony.

Patty Griffin
[Folk/Americana]
concert preview

The title of American Kid (Columbia/New West) – Patty Griffin's first set of original material since 2007 – refers to her father, a WWII vet and high school teacher whose impending passing in 2009 inspired many of these songs.  But it doesn't need to: while the album comes across as a touching tribute, reflecting on the fullness of his life as much as mortality and loss, Griffin's language, as imagistic as it is (potentially) biographical, is never so narrow as to suggest that this story, these experiences and emotions, are her dad's alone.  It's ultimately irrelevant which details are specifically his and which belong to the broader, all-American 20th century "greatest generation" history/mythology that's evoked equally vividly in the music's loose, natural interweaving of blues, gospel, country, and melting-pot folk.  Griffin's powerhouse of a voice is, as always, phenomenal throughout, but it's perhaps most dynamic (and fun) on the numbers where she adopts a male character's perspective, including scene-setting swamp-stomper "Don't Let Me Die in Florida," teeth-gritting piano balled "Irish Boy" and the good-naturedly bawdy wedding night waltz "Get Ready Marie."

Glenn Jones
[Folk/Instrumental]
concert preview

Glenn Jones' genial, gossamer, contemplative pieces for solo acoustic guitar and banjo are so effortlessly casual and fluid as to feel practically improvisatory.  Indeed, some of them – including several on his latest, Jersey-honoring opus My Garden State (Thrill Jockey) – apparently were extemporized in the studio – but catch him playing them live and you'll realize just how meticulous a player and composer he is, with not a single note out of place from the recorded versions.  And while Jones' albums feature the spiffy bonus of artwork culled from his collection of antique German postcards of animals (and in this case plants) playing stringed instruments, what you do miss out on is his between-song storytelling, which is as nearly as memorable and folksy as the music itself.  This being Philadelphia, he'll probably spin a few yarns about his dearly beloved buddy and fellow American Primitivist virtuoso Jack Rose.  Ask him to tell the one about the time they brushed their teeth with shaving cream.

Steve Gunn
[Folk/Rock]
concert preview

Steve Gunn is a busy man: an active player in numerous groups, all amply prolific, which happen to bear his name – Golden Gunn, Gunn-Truscinski Duo, GHQ – as well as a collaborator with the likes of Meg Baird and Magik Markers, and, most recently, a touring member of (and opener for) Kurt Vile's mighty Violators.  If we're to take the title of his new trio record as a leader – whose release Saturday's gig celebrates – at face value, even his Time Off (Paradise Of Bachelors) effectively amounts to a busman's holiday, although this music is so preternaturally warm and blissful it's hard to imagine it feeling much like work to make it.  The album's six tunes stretch out to fill nearly forty minutes with patient, dappled semi-acoustic drone-folk jams; Gunn's modestly masterful American Primitivist roots commingling with raga undertones, bottleneck blues and a loose, beneficent Grateful Dead vibe – but each also stands as a fully serviceable song, in an indie-friendly, sing-along-ready sense, thanks to his appealingly low-key vocals and subtle, chiming hooks.

Peals
[Instrumental/Post-Rock]
concert preview

The two members of Peals play in two of Baltimore's noisiest, most boisterous art-rock outfits – William Cashion in Future Islands; Bruce Willen in the recently defunct Double Dagger – but the music they make together, as showcased on their Thrill Jockey debut Walking Field, feels very far removed the world those groups inhabit.  It's also considerably more varied and engrossing than you'd expect from a record of utterly relaxed, even-keeled instrumental meditations.  Performed primarily on ringing, clean-toned guitars, but sometimes using actual bells (true to their moniker; the difference isn't always immediately obvious), as well as one languorous visiting cello, these open-hearted sound-surges range from elegant, slow-moving drones to pointillist stipples reminiscent of their scene-mate Dustin Wong and the curiously juicy/metallic sonics of NJ guitarist "Delicate Steve" Marion, but – unlike much music made in this vein – the duo's textural explorations are balanced by an equally prominent focus on melody, which is abundant, typically multi-layered and often delivered with a pleasantly country-ish feel.

originally published in Philadelphia City Paper