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: November/December 2013

i'm probably not writing anything else that'll be published in 2013 (save for year-end list blurbs and such), so i'll cap off what was probably my most active year of reviewing yet with a two month (well, six week?) double-shot.  it's been a year!  [sorry bout the nsfw, silly sky!]

Sky Ferreira
Night Time, My Time

Sky Ferreira has accumulated such a scattered portfolio that even her followers (real or virtual) might have trouble telling who, exactly, she is.  If prime bubblegum robo-pop single "One" (cut when she was 17) offered one answer, last year's stylistically everywhere Ghost EP suggested about five others (country chanteuse? pathos-stricken balladeer? neo-Shirley Manson?), while endearing her to the ears of indiedom with the understated, sneakily durable appeal of "Everything is Embarrassing."  (All this, incidentally, without changing record labels.)

Now she's 21, that long-frustrated full-length is finally here, and she's trying on more new looks – but things are finally drawing into focus.  Assured and assertive, Night Time, My Time plays like the darker, dirtier counterpart to fellow category-confounders Haim – a tough, twitchy slab of hooks and heartache that blithely shrugs off distinctions of rock vs. pop, indie vs. mainstream, retro vs. timely.  It's practically overflowing with possibilities – there's equal space for the gleaming melodies and breezy riffs of "You're Not The One" (her biggest earworm yet) and a squalling, krauty rocker titled with a decidedly impolite Japanese anatomical term – but, for the first time in her young career, it feels more like a real, lasting accomplishment than just another indication of potential.

semi-self-paraphrase for City Paper concert preview:

Sky Ferreira epitomizes, perhaps better than anybody else, the category confusion of the present pop/indie/mainstream landscape.  After five years of collaborating with everyone from A-list chart doctors like Bloodshy & Avant and Ryan Tedder (yielding a couple of bright, shiny, go-nowhere electro-pop baubles) to arty indie impresario Dev Hynes (resulting in last year's invitingly understated fluke quasi-hit "Everything is Embarrassing"), she's racked up plenty of one-off singles, a pair of genre-hopping EPs and a respectable slate of modeling and acting gigs, yet it remains a glaring open question what she's actually all about.  But she's finally ready for her close-up – or so the title of her long-developmentally-delayed debut album would suggest.  Night Time, My Time (Capitol), which was produced by and co-written with 2013 golden boy Ariel Reichstad (his streak this year has also included helming LPs from Haim, Charli XCX, and Vampire Weekend), and it finally, fully crystallizes Ferreira's aesthetic – at least for moment – in a single, magnificent electronic glam-punk smartbomb: the would-be it-girl whose love of dirty rock fuzz, snarling crunch and bad decisions turns out to mesh perfectly with gorgeous, gleaming radio-pop hooks.

Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs
Under the Covers Vol. 3

Pure-pop true-believers Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs aren't out to win any points for edginess, or even obscurity.  The first installments in their ongoing covers album series – canvassing the 1960s and '70s, respectively – were strictly for fun: happily inessential niche affairs that found the honey-voiced sometime Bangle and the indubitably named Sweet applying their candied harmonies, twelve-string jangle and squeaky-clean sheen to a slew of generally recognizable pop-rock nuggets, equally apt to inspire smiles or shrugs.  Volume Three treads a similar path through the 1980s, with the duo's customarily polished, treble-heavy production – for better or worse – adding an extra dose of era-appropriate fidelity.  Understandably, the song selection here is rather more idiosyncratic: this was the decade when both Sweet and Hoffs came of musical age (and launched their careers), but it was also a decade when the kind of guitar-based pop they so fervently worship was more apt to be flourishing underground (and on college radio, especially) than ruling the airwaves.  So while we get a few headsmack-obvious blockbusters ("Free Fallin'," "Our Lips Are Sealed," "More Than This" – all fine if questionably necessary airings), the collection is dominated by left-of-the-dial pioneers, including numerous Byrds-indebted janglers – R.E.M., the dBs, the Bongos – and their UK counterparts: XTC ("Towers of London" – an odd, somewhat unfortunate choice), the Pretenders and Dave Edmunds ("Kid" and "Girls Talk," respectively, both given curiously Elvis-ish readings by Hoffs.)  Sweet also tries his hand at the moodier romanticism of Echo and the Bunnymen ("Killing Moon," naturally) and the Smiths ("How Soon Is Now"), injecting just a whiff of darkness among all the relentlessly shiny happy sonics.  It's a mild stretch that pays off just fine: like everything these two touch, the results are hardly astonishing, but they're just as pleasant as you please.

originally published in Magnet Magazine

William Onyeabor
Who Is William Onyeabor?
[Funk/African]

Who is William Onyeabor? asks the newest chapter in Luaka Bop Records' occasional "World Psychedelic Classics" series.  Good question.  These days, reportedly, he's a born-again Christian flour mill operator and civic leader in his native Nigeria who wants nothing to do with his musical past.  But these nine generous cuts, culled from his 1977-85 string of self-released LPs, document an era when he was an analog-synth-inclined counterpart to Fela Kuti, offering his own brand of righteous politicking and (incidentally, hardly un-Christian) moralizing atop extended, curiously rigid but still deeply funky afrobeat, disco and electro-funk grooves, often coming across as Africa's one-man answer to Kraftwerk and Bambaata.

Alsarah/Débruit
Aljawal الجوال
[World/African/Electronic]

A meeting of the minds between freaky French electro-funk/hip-hop producer Débruit and classical Sudanese singer Alsarah, Aljawal الجوال (Soundway) offers an astonishingly fluid, readily addictive fusion that, even in a musical climate overrun with trans-cultural and inter-genre cross-pollinations, feels legitimately surprising and truly exotic.  Neatly balancing between traditionally-rooted and several-ways futuristic sounds, Débruit's gooey, bleepy, analog productions find a curious resonance with Alsarah's arresting, dusky alto melismatics and the homely 'oud and hand percussion of Nubian folk.  Who knew how natural and satisfying it could be to connect the dots between whirling dervish music and the similarly kinetic, ecstatic stutterings of Chicago footwork? (Hint: think handclaps!)

Livity Sound
Livity Sound
[Bass/Techno]

The players behind Livity Sound – a sprawling, monumental two-disc compilation of tracks recorded and released over the past few years via the eponymous boutique imprint – are three Bristol, UK bass/post-dubstep producers, Asusu, Kowton and (label head/ringleader) Peverelist.  But the sounds it contains – spooky, skeletal, hypnotic, addictively syncopated; hybridizing minimal techno and dub reggae in unremittingly sparse but continually surprising ways – seem elemental and otherworldly in a way that makes the Maori glyphs on the cover (for which Peverelist's been fielding accusations of cultural appropriation) feel entirely appropriate.

Special Request
Soul Music
[Electronic/Breakbeat/Jungle]

If the quarter-century-plus lineage of UK urban dance music has a soul, it exists in the kind of discrete, iconic sound-signatures – pirate-radio rewinds, 303 acid throbs, grimey gun-cocks, and breakbeats breakbeats breakbeats – that form the nucleus of Paul Woolford's productions as Special Request.  Where some producers might slip in an Amen break as a gimmicky, nostalgic aural shorthand, the monolithic bounty of Soul Music (Houndstooth) exhibits Woolford's pious, unswerving dedication to these mystically encoded sonic incantations, layering breaks upon breaks not to recreate the form of classic jungle but to probe its many evocative possibilities, from cold steely violence to fluid, nuanced funk.

Cut Copy
Free Your Mind
[Electronic/Dance]

There's some serious aesthetic boundary-testing happening on Free Your Mind (Modular.)  In less perfectly calibrated hands, the album's unmitigated day-glo positivity could've easily trainwrecked into treacly insipidity, full of psychonautic pseudo-spiritualism and empty affirmations.  But Cut Copy are exactly the kind of expert electro-pop technicians to pull off an all-in, over-the-top reincarnation of circa-1988 acid house, with every bongo, every breakbeat, each chunky piano riff, 303 squelch, diva wail and analog birdcall perfectly in place.  Turns out that big, throbbing, blithely bombastic smears of sunshine, rainbows and perpetual fluorescent dancefloor euphoria are all about the little subtle details.

Milosh
Jetlag
[R&B/Pop/Electronic]

Michael Milosh's tenderly passionate, introverted croon first bewitched many listeners earlier this year via his work with Rhye, and Jetlag [eOne/Deadly] – the fourth solo full-length the Canadian has produced under his surname – should hopefully, deservingly benefit from the increased exposure.  This album favors a more modern flavor of electro-soul over Rhye's classicist throwback touches, and the songs, on the whole, aren't quite as distinctive, but it's every bit as elegant, emotive, lush and, simply said, beautiful; swirling soft, shimmering bleeps and blips (a la the Notwist or mid-period Radiohead) with the organic warmth of harp, organ, and that undeniable, ineffable voice.

Nils Frahm
Spaces
[Modern Classical/Ambient]

As the music industry settles in for its winter's nap, it's hard to imagine a richer hibernation soundtrack than Spaces (Erased Tapes), an engrossing compilation of performances by Berliner Nils Frahm.  Performed on acoustic and electric pianos (sometimes several at once), these improvisations and reworked compositions range from placid but evocative zone-outs to ecstatic space-drones to visceral, Keith Jarrett-like flights of pianistic flash (like the aptly named "Hammers.")  Since they're live recordings, Frahm's extended reveries are interspersed with (rather vigorous) bursts of applause, creating the odd, jarring sensation that you're being cheered on for relaxing.  But hey, go ahead – you've earned it.

Arcade Fire
Reflektor
[Rock/Dance]

The Arcade Fire jump on 2013's disco bandwagon in typically grandiose fashion on Sprawl III: Electric Boogaloo...er, a.k.a. Reflektor (Merge).  Even if most of these epic, James Murphy-abetted jams are, like that harbinging Suburbs highlight (and "Get Lucky" itself), almost too slow to dance to, it's still a surprisingly apt, afterlife-fixated Halloween afterparty  – complete with Win and Régine in costume as Orpheus & Eurydice (though, wouldn't Echo & Narcissus better emblematize "love in a reflective age"?) – from the title track's haunted hall of internet mirrors to "Here Comes the Nighttime"'s voodoo carnival to the Stepfordian horror of "Normal Person," until the daybreaking, Timberlake-mirroring "Supersymmetry" fades in a glorious swirl of arpeggios and particle-physics metaphors.

Courtney Barnett
The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas
[Folk/Rock]

Courtney Barnett is a saucy Aussie slacker-type who'll charm you with a single, slyly casual turn of phrase – say, the precise yet offhanded way she mutters "asthma puffer" on instant winner "Avant Gardener" – about as readily as she'll get out of bed.  Even if you can't be bothered to follow the narrative nuances of all the drolly drawled shaggy-dog story-songs collected on her carefully titled debut non-album, The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas (Marathon Artists), the music underpinning them is equally shaggy and beguiling, all Velvets-y, countrified, couple-chord drones and gamely goofy backup gang vocals.

Kurt Vile
Jamaica Plain/it's a big world out there and i'm scared
[Rock/Psych]

Kurt Vile's pretty daze just keeps on rolling.  The beatific Fishtown rocker, who returns to Union Transfer this Saturday for his fourth hometown gig of the year – including a record-setting city hall courtyard appearance which took place on his own personal, mayorally-decreed holiday – is capping his unstoppable 2013 with a fourth quarter re-boot of his widely-dug third Matador LP, dubbed Deluxe Daze (Post Haze).  In a typically righteous, kindly gesture, the appended bonus material will also be available separately (digitally and vinylly) as "it's a big world out there (and i am scared)".  Alongside a couple fine if relatively negligible, self-explanatory revamps (e.g. "Snowflakes Extended") and three increasingly electronified mutations of "Never Run Away," the EP boasts two previously unaired six-minute outtakes – one dark, fingerpicked and folky, the other fuller and rangier – that fit right in with the album's languorous shimmer.

First up though is the Jamaica Plain EP (Care in the Community), a collaboration with palindromic New England psych-popper (and one-time Violator) Sore Eros, named for the neighborhood that's kinda the Boston equivalent of West Philly.  These three recordings – two lazy, meandering instrumental shape-shifters and one briefer but equally spacey vocal cut – date back about a decade, and offer solid, satisfying evidence that Vile has long been well acquainted with the delights of dazedness.

Swearin'
Surfing Strange
[Indie Rock/Punk]

Do identical twins usually sound really similar to each other?  Google suggests no, but it is definitely the case with the Crutchfield sisters, Alison and Katie, who rose to DIY punk notoriety with their band P.S. Eliot and, since relocating from Brooklyn last year, have become two of the brightest recent additions to the West Philly scene.  Anyone who's fallen for the casual Alabama twang and deep-set fidelity to '90s indie archetypes evinced by Katie's solo endeavor, Waxahatchee, should find similar things to love about Swearin', the decidedly noisier (if equally raw) outfit fronted by her sister.  Surfing Strange (Salinas), recorded at the Hazel Ave house the Crutchfields share with their bandmates and boyfriends, is less peppy and melodically direct than its eponymous predecessor, but it finds the band – in which Alison shares vocal duties with guitarist Kyle Gilbride – stretching out a bit, expanding both their grungy, heavier side and their gifts for softer, vaguely folky (and, well, Waxahatchee-esque) moments – frequently both in the same song – while also trying out some keyboards (and making good on their album title) with the psych-damaged "Glare of the Sun."

Bongos
Phantom Train
[Rock/Pop]

They may take a close second to The Feelies when it comes to Hoboken indie rock luminaries (pre-Yo La Tengo division), but the recently reunited Bongos offered their own sharp, gutsy brand of '80s jangle-pop that's too good to be forgotten.  Let Phantom Train (Jem) – a "lost" LP recorded in 1985 but unreleased until now – serve as exhibit A: an unmistakably vintage but still plenty fresh set of catchy, treble-heavy tunes and muscular grooves capped with Richard Barone's potent vocals, plus a kickin' Donovan cover.

Lucius
[Indie Pop/Folk/Soul]
concert preview

Brooklyn up-and-comers Lucius put a lot of effort into their appearance, with the band's blond, could-be-sisters frontwomen, Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig, dressing up as symmetrical twinsies on stage in brightly colored mod-soul outfits and thick eyeliner, and the three gentlemen in the band typically appearing equally well-coordinated and stylish.  That look, sharp and singular as it is, functions as an apt analog for the band's equally potent, equally distinctive sound: similarly retro and crisp, similarly meticulous and infectious; similarly built around Wolfe and Laessig's soulful close harmonies and twinned unison crooning.  It's a sound that, nearly a decade after the vocalists first hooked up at Berklee College of Music, finally exists in the form of full-length album: the excellent Wildewoman (Mom+Pop) – that's four syllables, by the way; "Wilde" pronounced as in "-beest", not Oscar – which adds some country and a bit of synth-pop to their versatile fusion of throwback girl-group R&B and big, strummy indie folk-pop, and which seems to feature a massive, searing, potentially world-conquering chorus on just about every song.

Howe Gelb
[Americana/Singer-Songwriter]
concert preview

Howe Gelb has been the primary force behind something like forty albums since the mid-'80s, including upwards of twenty with the long-running Giant Sand, ten or more under his own name and others under monikers like Arizona Amp & Alternator and the Band of Blacky Ranchette.  It's a lot for even a devoted fan to keep track of, and certainly daunting for neophytes – especially since, apart from some fortuitous overlap with the alt-country/Americana heyday of the late '90s, he's rarely made much sense as part of a broader scene or movement.  Still, its the kind of catalog that rewards and encourages the occasional, informal dip in, full of quiet, oddball gems to discover (like 2006's gospel choir foray 'Sno Angel Like You.) Indeed, since his records never feel particularly urgent or imperative – they are almost uniformly loose, collaborative, and unfussy, sporting his ever-relaxed, half-spoken vocals over some murky, cock-eyed stew of folk, country, rock, weirdo jazz and Southwestern ambience – it's kind of hard to approach them any way other than casually.  Anyhow, The Coincidentalist (New West) – whose title seems to reflect that particular aspect of his appeal – marks (yet another) fine occasion to stop in for a look-see; another sweet, quizzical, low-key set of songs with another fine cast of supporting players and guests (M. Ward, A. Bird, W. Oldham, KT Tunstall.)  

Alice Smith
[Singer-Songwriter/R&B]
concert preview

Alice Smith popped up in 2006 as a fully-formed, fully formidable talent: For Lovers, Dreamers & Me, her assured and slyly addictive debut, introduced her as both a knockout vocalist (with a tremendous four-octave range) and, more singularly, a promising new addition to the woefully disregarded pantheon of female African-American songwriters, hopscotching between elements of soul, rock, blues, pop and funk without seeming the least bit formulaic or overreaching.  And then... nothing.  For almost seven years, despite a Grammy nomination and a deal with Epic records, her career suffered the hiccuping indignity of major label limbo, as she shelved a series of recordings, became a mother, and relocated to LA without issuing another note of new material.  Finally, this spring, Smith reemerged with She (Rainwater), a collection of smooth, soulful, sometimes theatrical not-quite-R&B that's a bit more polished than her debut but at least as accomplished, with her typically tender and thoughtful compositions balanced by a brassy, show-stopping cover of Cee-Lo Green's "Fool For You."

Cults
[Pop/Rock]
concert preview

Some things have changed for Cults since they first won us over with the glockenspieled insouciance of their calling-card single, "Go Outside," and the sweetly winsome debut album that followed.  The band's golden couple, Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion, called things off romantically last year, though they've thankfully decided to stick together – musically speaking – for the kids.  Oblivion also took some impressive strides toward living up to his moniker; embarking on a drug-addled sojourn to Japan and developing a fascination with broken television sets that informed the title and prevailing imagery of the duo's second LP.  But much has also stayed the same: given that backstory, Static (Columbia), almost defiantly mirrors its predecessor in its presentation (similar cover, similarly concise construction), and it boasts exactly the same sort of smart, yearning, indelible melodies (rendered in Follin's entrancing, alternately dusky and girlish coo); the same blend of fastidious, '60s girl-group-style craft and artily atmospheric coloration that made their first album so refreshing.  It's a bigger, bolder, richer restaking of their unique stylistic terrain; harder-rocking and more poignantly swooning: basically, it's everything you'd want from the follow-up to a great debut.

MGMT
[Pop/Rock/Psych]
concert preview

MGMT spelled out their epic rock-star fantasies in "Time to Pretend," the title track of a self-released EP they were hawking in the Unitarian church basement way back in 2005 (as openers for of Montreal) – well before the blockbuster success of their 2008 debut started bringing those mythic ambitions absurdly (or at least improbably) close to fruition; well before they began furiously backpedalling against that album's genial synth-pop with 2010's self-consciously strange Congratulations.  The song was mostly a waggish joke from the start, but it's accrued increasingly complex layers of irony over the years, as they've occasionally, winkingly played into its outlandish conceits – a recent David Letterman appearance saw them sporting star-shaped glasses and konking a comically oversized cowbell – even while sliding into a more sustainable if less glamour-courting artistic niche for themselves.  Their self-titled third album (Columbia) – which finds their early penchant for playful silliness thankfully intact – is nothing more or less than an eminently enjoyable little psych-pop record, neither pandering nor melody-averse, whose production budget just happens to accommodate Dave Fridmann's iconically trippy production tweaks and lavishly surreal music videos starring Omar from The Wire.

Guardian Alien
[Psychedelic/Experimental/Improvisation]
concert preview

If Guardian Alien were nothing more than a vehicle for the torrential force-of-nature drumming of Greg Fox – formerly of black metal iconoclasts Liturgy; also a member of hardcore NY avant-gardeists Zs – that'd be more than reason enough to tune in.  But it's becoming something quite a bit woolier and harder to define, as the single, restlessly unfurling 38-minute blurt of instrumental psych/metal/drone/jam circle mayhem that constituted the project's debut for Thrill Jockey earlier this year (See the World Given to a One Love Entity) turns out to be merely a taster for the kind of virtuoso conceptual acrobatics they have in store.  Spiritual Emergency – out next month – tries on an even wider array of approaches across its five cuts, culminating in a mind-bending, incantatory free-jazz maelstrom inspired by (and audibly incorporating) the theories of psycho-spiritual psychiatrist Stanislav Grof.  And even that's probably just a taster for what the group – for now, a trio comprising Fox, guitarist Bernard Gann and Alexandra Drewchin on electronics and vocals – can rustle up live.

My Bloody Valentine
[Rock/Shoegaze]
concert preview

2013 has been well established as a banner year for triumphant musical returns, from Justin Timberlake, Boards of Canada, The Knife and The Blow [[see above/below]] dropping their first albums since 2006 to Daft Punk, David Bowie, Mazzy Star, Luscious Jackson and the Dismemberment Plan breaking even longer silent streaks.  But nothing could really top shoegaze-crystallizing demi-gods My Bloody Valentine, who kicked off the trend back in early February by returning, almost suddenly, after an absurd twenty-two years, with the follow-up to their widely beloved 1991 album, Loveless.  Even more miraculously, they actually managed to satisfy the long-marinating, mythically-proportioned expectations of their faithful; carefully balancing fondly familiar sonic territory (Kevin Shields' dense, druggy excursions through the outer limits of processed guitar texture; Bilinda Butcher's edgeless, ethereal coos) with deft, dignified expansions of their stylistic reach.  Self-released with little overt fanfare or advance notice, mbv is by turns smoother (the organ-draped, Stereolab-ish midsection) and much much rougher (the blown-out, apocalyptically percussive final third) than its vaunted predecessor.  Ultimately, thankfully, and perhaps most improbably of all, nothing about the album's context or its makers' fanatical perfectionism can interfere with the simple, primal pleasure of just diving in, and turning it up.

Crocodiles
[Rock/Pop]
concert preview

San Diego's Crocodiles are dependable sorts.  They've turned out four solidly enjoyable if ultimately unspectacular albums in just over four years, and while they haven't exactly made any great leaps beyond the buzzy, noirish jangle-rock that made their name and earned them thousands of shrugging Jesus and Mary Chain comparisons, they've steadily brightened and broadened their approach with each release.  Album #4 is no exception – its bright pink cover doesn't lie: Crimes of Passion (Zoo Music/Frenchkiss) is the duo's poppiest, most immediate work yet, occasionally taking a few beat-looping, gospel-infused cues from the Madchester-reviving likes of Jagwar Ma (or, more likely, they've just been adding some Primal Scream and Stone Roses records to their usual steady diet of Echo and Spacemen 3), the better to illuminate the tuneful blend of sweetness and nihilism that, any year now, is gonna be distinctive enough to call their very own.

The Blow/Love Inks
[Indie-Pop/Electronic]
concert preview

Khaela Maricich is in love.  That's probably the most conspicuous message of The Blow's new, self-titled album (Kanine).  Sure, she penned one of the past decade's most enduring, endearing statements of indie-pop affection ("Parentheses," from the last Blow album, way back in 2006), and once made a record subtitled "Love Songs" – but, she suggests, she was only faking it then.  This time is for real.  "A kiss was just something to do with my tongue/until you kissed me," she offers in her sweet, stilted alto.  Clothes, she now realizes, were "invented for the single purpose of you taking them off me."  Pretty sexy stuff, in its nerdy, insecure, self-consciously arty way – especially imagining those lyrics directed toward Melissa Dyne, Maricich's partner in art and life, who constructed the album's brightly minimal, intriguingly handmade-sounding electro-pop.  But don't expect an evening of moonstruck crooning: Maricich's a tricky one, and Blow shows are closer to performance art than traditional concerts.  If the duo's conceptual abstractions get to be too much, the gently krauty synthscapes and placid coos of Austin trio Love Inks – showcased on their lovely Generation Club (Monofonus Press) – should offer a smooth, warmly glowy antidote.

Benoit & Sergio
[Dance/Electronic]
concert preview

This Washington DC/Berlin production duo has, since roughly 2010, issued a string of strange, subtle, almost perfectly-formed singles that occupy an aesthetic world entirely their own: lush but sparing, nostalgic and crisp, inviting and cryptic, somewhere between deep, disco-indebted house and bookishly understated synth-pop.  The ingredients seem simple enough – skipping, lightly syncopated trebly grooves; hypnotically looping samples; playful sproingy basslines – but they're fit together with an uncommon, uncanny deftness.  What seals the deal are the duo's blankly wistful, slightly processed vocals, which make unlikely dancefloor mantras of wryly heartbreaking phrases like "My baby does K all day," or "I love girls who never say they're sorry."  Also: "You need poetry to turn these girls on."  Benoit and Sergio have got that, in spades (they've also been known to crib lyrics from Barrett Browning and T.S. Eliot), and they're nothing if not comfortable with contradictions.  Take "Adjustments," their most recent 12" (which may or may foreshadow the debut album they've promised us next year): the wan, woozy title cut harbors some major hesitance about current dance culture ("Sometimes I think that DJs don't understand...") even as the frisky flipside "Shake Shake" sees them scratching their most buoyant disco itch to date.

Nightmares on Wax
[Electronic]
concert preview

Nightmares on Wax debuted in 1989 with some of the earliest singles (and the second ever album) for the still mighty Warp Records, playing a large part in defining the label's brittle, bleepy UK take on Detroit techno and acid house while also exploring playful undercurrents of hip-hop and jazzy funk.  By 1995, the Leeds-born DJ/producer George Evelyn – long the project's sole member – was pushing those elements to the forefront for the eclectic, lushly organic trip-hop of  Smoker's Delight, which helped set the template for the countless (and often far more faceless) "chill-out" records swamping the turn of the century market.  Since then Evelyn has kept right on grooving: the latest, seventh NoW album (and first in five years) finds him still on Warp, still swirling together a blunted assortment of smooth downtempo beats – dub, disco, reggae, funk, gospel, easy-listening R&B – while infusing his productions with guest vocalists and more live instrumentation than ever before, and just generally, as the title says: Feelin' Good.

WinterWaltz Festival
[!!!, Vacationer, YACHT, Washed Out...]
concert preview

This two-day mini-festival, curated by local promoter Deathwaltz Media, nestles cozily in the intersection of dance-friendly indie rock and rockist-friendly electronica.  Basically, it's just an all-around friendly line-up.  It's also a handy summation of the past decade's middle-ground sounds, from early-'00s dance-punk progenitors !!! (whose recent, awesomely titled Thr!!!er (Warp) funks along in fine, typically jammy style) to late-'00s chillwave progenitors Washed Out (the festival's de-facto headliner, who hit the Electric Factory Friday.)  None of it is music you'd necessarily associate with Winter per se (not for nothing does the bill include acts named YACHT and Vacationer) – though maybe that's the point – and I almost guarantee nobody will play anything you can actually waltz to.  But there is a bevy of local talent on hand, including live electronics band Damn Right!, cosmic disco production trio Les Professionnels and – playing live tonight and DJing tomorrow – the excellent, underappreciated electro-dream-pop outfit Vacationer, whose lovely, lushly melodic 2012 debut, Gone (Downtown), had the misfortune of arriving too fashionably late in a long line of languorous, indie-tronic tropical travelogues.

originally published in Philadelphia City Paper