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"

(P)review Round-Up: May 2013

Here are all the concert previews I wrote for last month.  

Stornoway
[Indie Pop/Folk]
concert preview

Stornoway are at once meticulously modest and epically, almost outrageously ambitious.  Four well-groomed, unassuming lads – quietly consummate musicians, top-notch harmonizers – they take their name from a remote, romantic-sounding maritime town in Scotland's Outer Hebrides (which features prominently in BBC weather reportage), though they actually hail from suburban Oxford.  Led by Brian Brigg's heart-meltingly earnest, Ben Gibbard-ish tenor, their songs focus on familiar, intimate things – pastoral and domestic pleasures; the little quandaries and quagmires of love and young adulthood – but somehow conjure up far grander, more mysterious horizons.  Their 2010 debut paired indelible indie-pop earworms like "Zorbing" with arrangements that had a sneaky way of swelling, at the slightest provocation, from understated folksiness to towering quasi-orchestral bombast.  Tales from Terra Firma (4AD) follows suit on both accounts, offering could-be campfire anthems like the Celtic-tinged "The Bigger Picture" – all tremulous mandolins and a chorus so sweetly buoyant it's almost unbearable – while elsewhere layering on the strings, trumpets, zithers, dulcimers, Dixieland clarinets and spoons to the bursting point.

Classixx
[Electronic/Pop]
concert preview

Even if Daft Punk's new album somehow mysteriously fails to live up to the ludicrous levels of hype surrounding it, this still feels like a banner month or two for retro-minded electro disco, between the domestic release of Breakbot's fabulously cheesy (and very Daft Punk-ish) debut LP, the surprise return of fake-French electro-genius Jacques Lu Cont, and the tasty promise of new Phoenix remixes.  Add the full-length bow of long-time DJ duo (and sometime Phoenix remixers) Classixx to that list, with a bullet.  The LA-based twosome have been lighting up the decks and the B-sides of other people's 12"s (including easy RIYLs Holy Ghost!) for over a half-decade now, but Hanging Gardens (Innovative Leisure) readily justifies its long gestation: it's an ideal, summer-ready sampler of dance bangers and chill interludes, with crucial vocal spots from Junior Senior's Jeppe, Active Child's Pat Grossi and Nancy Whang of LCD Soundsystem and The Juan Maclean.

Little Boots
[Pop/Dance]
concert preview

Victoria Hesketh is the reigning queen of metaphor pop.  The British electro-popstress' 2008 breakout single "Stuck On Repeat" was a naggingly unforgettable pop song that likened love to...a naggingly unforgettable pop song, while other numbers from its fantastic attendant album found similar analogs for love (and dancing) in subjects like medicine, driving, radio broadcasting, and both algebra and geometry.  Her slightly darker-toned follow-up Nocturnes (On Repeat), another set of classically-styled synth-pop that could pass for prime Kylie Minogue, covers comparable ground on "Crescendo," "Satellite" and "Motorway" (shades of St. Etienne?), while also repeating "Repeat"'s feat with "Broken Record" (with the requisite additional glitchiness), paying homage at the shrine of Madonna ("Every Night I Say A Prayer") and emphasizing the dance half of the dance-pop equation on literal-minded, tech-housey highlight "Shake," produced with Simian Mobile Disco's James Ford.

James Blake
[Pop/Soul/Electronic]
concert preview

With his self-titled 2011 album, James Blake emerged, already somehow reluctantly, as the first, de-facto poster boy for the still-exotic-seeming music known as dubstep.  Two years down the line, that label has seen so many boundary disputes and tastemaker redistrictings that, wherever it may be at in 2013, it's got almost nothing to do with the dreamily glorious music contained on the UK producer's second LP.  It's not, as some have feared, that he's simply yielded to his flickering singer-songwriter inclinations.  Indeed, while he remains a formidable singer, it's curious to note that, aside from covering Feist and Joni Mitchell (and, on "Wilhelm Scream," his little-known prog-rocker father), he's rarely trafficked in "songs" per se, preferring to repeatedly loop and tweak a single verse or line of his burnished, gospel-inflected crooning (or, in one instance, RZA's slightly dubious rapping) against a rich, deftly mutating sonic backdrop.  Sidestepping genre distinctions almost entirely, Overgrown (Universal Republic) opts to play it all ways, showcasing Blake's heart-tugging sensitive-soul vocals and somber, nocturnal pianism side by side with his forward-thinking beat science, including some surprisingly tough-edged slo-mo funk and some awesomely clipped, Portishead-style ride cymbals.  Win-win.

Colin Stetson
[Instrumental/Experimental]
concert preview

The sounds that Colin Stetson conjures up with (or through, or upon) his saxophones – especially the honking humongous bass sax – constitute some of the strangest, most utterly remarkable music you're likely to hear.  First there's the physical fact of its creation.  Even understanding how he does it – circular breathing technique, multiphonics, vocalizing through the horn; basically, unimaginably precise control over every aspect of his playing, plus close-mic'ing of his breath, clacking keys, etc. – and even (perhaps especially) when confronted with the huffing, puffing, beyond-intense muscularity of his live performances, it still feels mystical, unfathomable, beyond the reach of human capability.  It's no less astonishing as pure sound: churning, cycling, susurrating waves of tone and timbre that, in the service of his meticulous, minimalist compositions, can be savagely disturbing, hauntingly eerie, lulling and mesmeric; sometimes all at once.  To See More Light (Constellation), the final volume of Stetson's enigmatic New History Warfare trilogy, finds his Bon Iver bandmate Justin Vernon turning up, somewhat incongruously, to contribute ethereal multi-tracked harmonies and guttural, cod-metal barking.  (The last installment had Laurie Anderson.)  But it's not like we needed the distraction.

Phoenix
[Rock/Pop]
concert preview

Phoenix have had – to invoke their fiery namesake – quite the majestic rise, from their early 2000s emergence as a quirky second-tier French electro-pop band to a head-scratching headlining slot at this year's Coachella.  They've done it on the wings of an absolutely killer run of singles – their eventual best-of comp's gonna be a firecracker – but, impressively, without sacrificing or even really toning down their considerable eccentricities: the evocatively meaningless accidental poetry of Thomas Mars' lyrics; their commitment to a garishly synthetic production aesthetic which should feel faceless but is somehow actually unmistakable; a defiantly non-linear approach to song structure wherein ample hooks rarely conform to verse-chorus pieties.  Bankrupt! (Glassnote/Loyaute), their fifth album, is the first to feel comfortable rather than hungry – doubling down on established terrain instead of grazing new stylistic pastures – and their most idiosyncratic.  It's also the first whose contributions to their stuffed canon of hits – the chintzy "orientalist" riffs of gaudy kick-off "Entertainment"' perhaps excepted – aren't blindingly obvious, if only because, mirroring Mars' ruminations on jet-set excess, it's their most thoroughly lavish and consistent work, more of an album-length suite than a set of pop hits.

Ghostface Killah
[Hip-Hop]
concert preview

Ghostface has been plenty prolific in recent years, but his latest project is a particularly enjoyable one: a full-on collaboration with composer/producer/crate-digging sample scholar (and also actual entertainment law scholar) Adrian Younge, Twelve Reasons To Die (Soul Temple) is a beautifully conceptualized narrative rap opus – doubling as a series of comic books – that pits Ghost's lively yarn-spinning against sinister, sumptuously stylized beatscapes, steeped in '70s Italian film soundtracks and psychedelic soul, from Younge's band Venice Dawn (who are also backing him up on tour.)  The openly referential but neatly self-contained narrative is the stuff of fantastical Wu-Tang/Marvel comic-book dreams, recycling familiar blaxploitation archetypes and reinventing the Tony Starks/Ghostface personae in a tale of mafioso warfare, double-crossing, reincarnation and sweet posthumous revenge exacted via vinyl records.  Along for the ride is a cast of Wu regulars, plus Philly soul icon William Hart, fresh from the Delfonics' recent Younge-helmed revival album.

Charles Bradley
[Soul]
concert preview

The good folks at Daptone records have well established themselves as loving inheritors of the 1960s Southern soul flame, keeping post-millennial record racks stacked with Stax and Muscle Shoals wax facsimiles.  But the latest from Charles Bradley – the toughest, rawest belter on the roster, who like most Daptone singers is old enough to have been there the first time around – takes a slightly different tack.  Victim of Love kicks off with three brassy, predictably masterful cuts more or less in the label's familiar mold, but things get a lot woolier after the dramatic pivot of the title track, a sparse, acoustic folk-soul ballad with echoes of Richie Havens (R.I.P.) and the late-period Rascals.  From there we get a couple of feathery, flute-laden blaxploitation grooves before a hard left veer into gritty, socio-political psychedelic soul taking its cues from the Temptations' "Ball of Confusion," with Bradley's impassioned, Wilson Pickett-caliber groans riding a roiling sea of fuzz-tone guitars and dubbed-out funk.  This ain't your old man's retro-soul.

Gold Panda
[Electronic]
concert preview

Scan the track list for Gold Panda's forthcoming, curiously entitled sophomore LP, Half of Where You Live (Ghostly International/Notown) and you'll notice a clear preoccupation with residential-type places, from "An English House" and "The Most Liveable City" to seemingly invented (a la Bon Iver) but actually existing toponyms like "Flinton" and "Enoshima."  It makes sense in that the producer – who himself lives in Berlin, though he hails from Chelmsford, UK – makes music that invites habitation: warm, comfortable sonic architecture which tends to create and embellish atmospheres rather than calling overt attention to itself.  Half continues Panda's habitual (and eminently worthy) pursuit of sounding more like Four Tet than even Four Tet does anymore, crafting intricate, naturalistic, bonsai-like beatscapes of pitter-pattering percussion, bell tones and the occasional touch of gentle exoticism (kalimbas, wood flutes, kotos, etc.), though, keeping pace with the times, you'll also find an uptick in concessions to denizens of the dancefloor, as on the pumping-piston pulse of "Community."

MS MR
[Pop/Rock]
concert preview

Many aspects of MS MR's backstory have a distinct quality of deja vu – or, less charitably, done-to-death – they're based in Brooklyn, they built up blogosphere buzz via an artfully curated web presence (specifically – and this is ostensibly a point of distinction – on tumblr), and until relatively recently they upheld their blankly anonymous-sounding moniker by maintaining actual anonymity.  Their unabashedly huge-sounding, lavishly theatrical debut album, the aptly titled Secondhand Rapture (IAMSOUND), expands the picture somewhat, even as it conveniently recycles most of their tumblr hits.  It's not hard to find reference points for their style of darkly anthemic pomp-pop either – Florence + the Machine, Bats for Lashes and former tour partners Marina and the Diamonds are maybe the most obvious go-tos – but (MR) Max Hershenow's adventurous, widescreen production style and (MS) Lizzy Plaplinger's legitimately spellbinding alto are strong and distinctive enough to stand alone, particularly with a strong and infectious batch of songs that veer from martial trip-hop ("Hurricane") and thunderous orchestral rock-soul ("Bones") to stately classicism and the self-explanatory (but still intriguing) "Dark Doo Wop."

The Uncluded
[Folk/Hip-Hop]
concert preview

The Uncluded is the long-in-the-works superhero team-up of Aesop Rock and Kimya Dawson, two artists who seem like weirdos even within their respective established genres (hip-hop and indie-folk), making the collaborative Hokey Fright (Rhymesayers) a thoroughly improbable, head-scratching proposition.  On paper, at least.  Once you hear it, the pair's underlying commonalities are obvious: both are writers, first and foremost (and musicians only secondarily), who use a mixture of wit, absurdist humor, and kid-like logic – including gleefully unflinching riffs on fleshly and grotesque (or just plain-old gross) concerns – along with a penchant for refreshingly specific topicality (subjects explored here include laundromats, organ donation, fear of flying, sandwiches, aquarium ecosystems and pubescent sexual confusion) to get at unexpectedly universal, if sometimes uncomfortable, truths.  You might imagine the forbiddingly cryptic Aesop would supply the titular "fright" while cutesy, chummy Kimya brings all the hokey, but it's not such a straightforward equation: her squeaky sing-song can be deceptively simplistic, and the geekily oblique verbosity of his spitting often obscures its considerable playfulness.  If they only rarely sync up in any conventional sense, they illuminate and play off one another beautifully, making each one's idiosyncrasies all the more compelling.

The Thermals
[Rock]
concert preview

After stretching out a bit – at least relatively speaking – on their last couple records, The Thermals's sixth full-length in a decade (which continues the band's survey of old-guard indie rock labels – Sub Pop, Kill Rock Stars – with a new home at Saddle Creek) ratchets back to the tightly-wound, frill-free immediacy of their blistering early work.  Desperate Ground's scrappy hooks, grit-caked production, breathless tempos and pithy track times (even if half of the numbers nudge closer to three minutes than 2:30, which with these guys practically qualifies as bloat) all signal a triumphant resurgence and/or comfort-zone retreat for the Portland indie-punk fixtures – either way, a move worthy of some fervent fist-pumping.  The album's loosely conceptual lyrical approach, meanwhile, takes a decidedly less comfortable, non-triumphant tack on familiarly psycho-political themes; it's a song cycle sung from the perspective of a nightmare-wracked but unrepentant, bloodthirsty killer.  The details are sketchy (is he psychotic? ex-military? both?) but the passion and pain are unmistakable, particularly as punctuated by the urgency of Hutch Harris' terse, adenoidal yelp.

Beacon
[Pop/Electronic]
concert preview

The Ways We Separate (Ghostly International), the eminently elegant debut full-length from Brooklyn electro-pop duo Beacon, is available on vinyl, CD, digital download, blah blah blah.  Or, if you prefer, you can buy it in the form of a ten-pound, thirteen-inch-square box made entirely out of sugar.  (It's allegedly 100% archival, which has gotta involve some seriously potent epoxy action.)  There are probably some deep, heady metaphors to be gleaned there regarding the interrelationship of substance and superficiality; beauty and artifice; decadent, intoxicating sweetness and mannered, icy inaccessibility – all of which are certainly salient aspects of the group's music.  Mostly though – and also very much like the music – it's just really damn cool (albeit at the same time undeniably, capital-A arty.)  The moody, enveloping warmth of the synthesizers, the flickering Timbaland-via-Junior Boys rhythms and the blurry soft edges of Thomas Mullarney III's vocals all code as R&B, but there's also an immaculate, bloodless perfectionism here that separates these guys from fleshier neo-indie-soulsters like Rhye and Inc.

Mt. Kimbie/Holy Other
[Electronic]
concert preview

Mt. Kimbie came up within the hazy, niche-filled "post-dubstep" milieu, but the London duo's early output had as much to do with the wistful, muted pastoralia of Boards of Canada and early Four Tet as their bass-dropping Hotflush/Hyperdub peers – to riff off key track "Carbonated," it felt fizzy, light and understated as seltzer, with a similarly mellowing, refreshing effect.  Queerly-titled second LP Cold Spring Fault Less Youth (Warp) retains that effervescence and a modicum of dappled intimacy while also following their pal James Blake's lead into notably more extroverted territory, exploring meatier instrumentation, edgier textures and dance-leaning beats, and regularly sporting proper vocals – i.e. voices that haven't been delicately sampled and spliced beyond coherence – including pair of spots from punk- and rap-informed singer-songwriter King Krule.  If you do want blurry, manipulated, subaqueous vocals and deep, immersive sub-bass, Manchester's Holy Other – whose Held (Tri Angle), all ghostly, R&B-refracting vocal splinters and swampy dub'n'click atmospherics, was probably the most satisfying album to descend from the dark, slippery witch house trendlet – is probably your guy.

Charli XCX/Little Daylight
[Pop/Electronic]
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"Nuclear Seasons," Charlotte Aitchison's broodingly anthemic breakout 2011 single, cast her in an intriguing, darkly twinkly electro-goth light – co-signified by the song's ominous title and, perhaps, her nonsensically redundant roman numerals – but the unexpectedly glittery, swooning chorus of last year's magnificent "You're The One" complicated that picture.  Full-length bow True Romance (IAMSOUND) finds her enviably poised between tastemaker cachet and big-budget pop ambition, playing a bit of a magpie – sampling Todd Rundgren; appropriating Gold Panda's beatific "You"; paraphrasing Blu Cantrell's timeless "Hit 'Em Upstyle" – on a solid set of oblique-angle electro-pop allsorts.  But – unlike some would-be neo-divas (Little Boots, I'm looking at you) – where Charli really shines, and that ambition feels fully substantiated, is as a performer; flashing her infectious grin, stage-owning spunk and nonstop dance moves, and rocking a noisy, neon Hot Topic fashion sense that feels like a throwback we haven't quite seen yet.  Also: don't miss openers Little Daylight, whose single "Overdose" may be this year's purest, sweetest synth-pop thrill-ride.

The-Dream
[R&B]
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It's no coincidence that, for once, the word "love" appears nowhere in the title of Terius "The-Dream" Nash's long-delayed, guest-stuffed fourth artist album.  Even the actual title – IV Play  (Def Jam) – is a slight misdirection, as made clear in a title track which, somewhat hilariously, equates foreplay with "procrastination."  Sure, bluntly unabashed bedroom talk has always been central to the chart-dominating hitmaker's rakish charm, but his R. Kelly-ish mitigating wit wears awfully thin here: "Equestrian" never bothers to flesh out its hackneyed central conceit, would-be MJ homage "Michael" hardly even invokes its ostensible subject, while the titular metaphor of the intriguing (albeit b-bomb-littered) "New Orleans" is simply left unexplained.  Here's sex made just as empty, joyless and mutually degrading as the red-eyed, remorse-strewn variety assayed by Drake or The Weeknd; more upbeat if only for being less self-aware.  Of course, The-Dream being The-Dream, he'll win you right back again with the very sound of the album: plush, woozy, detail-studded, lavishly synthetic slow-mo R&B that's pretty undeniably perfect for...well, foreplay, for a start.

originally published in Philadelphia City Paper