Wavves’ V.

My ALDS notes and predictions are up now for Insiders, and I’ll have a post up on Eddy Julio Martinez and several other Cuban and Dominican prospects I saw this week in Santo Domingo. I also held a chat earlier today.

Wavves first came to my attention with their 2013 album Afraid of Heights, which featured the song “Sail to the Sun” and encapsulated their sort of slightly obnoxious southern California pop-punk style of music, but also showed what I interpreted as a reluctance to become too accessible. Songs with big hooks would often turn dissonant as lead singer X strained his voice to scream a final chorus or verse, which I don’t usually mind but which limits the group’s potential audience for no appreciable reason. (I’ve never understood screaming in pop-oriented music; unless you’re doing extreme metal, what’s the point?)

On V, their fifth album, the band has dispensed with the more obnoxious elements of their music and crafted an album that seems more mature and is certainly more likely to find commercial success, thanks also to a half-dozen short, hook-driven pop-rock songs. Opener “Heavy Metal Detox” is already getting some radio play, sounding almost like the Descendants have come back to their heyday. Wavves also mix in some different guitar tones, leading off “Way Too Much” with a Queens of the Stone Age riff that doesn’t resurface till the chorus. After the album’s first track asks “why does my head hurt?” we get a whole song on that topic with “My Head Hurts,” one of many songs where the lyrics reference alcohol abuse, something lead singer/founder Nathan Williams has fought in the past.

V avoids the monotony that plagues a lot of punk-pop records (coughGreenDaycough) in two ways: the songs are short, and there are a lot of small production changes or different guitar tones that layer a veneer of variety over songs that otherwise might seem too similar. Even something as small as a little distortion on an acoustic guitar in “Redlead,” probably the most complex song on the album, becomes a needed change of pace.

There’s still some of their rougher-edged former selves on the album; closer “Cry Baby” starts out with the kind of off-key shriek that was all over their previous record, leading into a song that’s heavier on the punk and lighter on the pop. The overall result of V works fine without that kind of material, however; it sounds like a band that’s grown up and accepted that its core competence is churning out catchy, short, punk-inflected songs.

September 2015 music update.

Great month for alternative music album releases, with several more to come before the year is out.

Superhumanoids – Touch Me. Their second album, Do You Feel OK?, came out earlier this month, and I’m floored that it’s not getting any attention. The album has a solid half-dozen songs that are worthy of these lists, and Sarah Chernoff’s voice alone sets them apart from many other indie/electro outfits, some of whom are pretty good in their own right.

Potty Mouth – Cherry Picking. This Massachusetts all-girl punk-pop act would have fit in perfectly in the pre-riot grrl era in the early 1990s – you can hear Lush and L7 and even some Velocity Girl in the sugary chorus and simple power-chord hooks.

CHVRCHES – Clearest Blue. Their second album, Every Open Eye, came out last Friday and is just as good as their debut.

The Libertines – Glasgow Coma Scale Blues. The likely lads’ comeback album, Anthems for Doomed Youth, is a solid listen but couldn’t possibly live up to the level of their first two records. Shockingly, many of the songs are about getting wasted even though the band members are apparently sober.

Wavves – My Head Hurts. I’m hoping to have a review of their new album V up on Friday, its release date; I’ve loved the singles I’ve heard so far, which take their usual slightly obnoxious surf-punk sound and pair it with better production and cleaner guitar lines, so Nathan Williams’ pop hooks come through more clearly.

PLGRMS – Pieces. PLGRMS – not to be confused with the Vermont-based alternative act – is an Australian duo whose lush electronic sound reminds me a little of alt-J.

Wild Beasts – The Limit. These guys are just weird; this song is the final track on their three-song EP Life is a Burn, which features these critical darlings going full retro, referring heavily to ’50s garage rock.

Coasts – Tonight. More Bastille/Coldplay-style pop from this Bristol quintet, whose full-length debut appears due for a 2016 release.

The Paper Kites – Revelator Eyes. Soft-rock with a folky influence from this Australian five-piece who channel some early Cranberries as well as a little bit of the War on Drugs’ version of Bob Dylan.

Shy Technology – High Strung. I’ve seen them called “alt-folk” but Shy Technology sounds a lot to me like the piano-and-guitar pop/rock hits of the 1970s, a little bombastic, a little melodramatic, but driven by a very catchy chorus.

Spires – Nothing More. Spires are from Brooklyn, which is just so unusual. I’m a bit of a sucker for any band with a psychedelic sound, and with Tame Impala in vogue right now it’s a good time for Spires’ similar sound.

Library Voices – Oh Donna. It’s been a rough couple of years for this Saskatchewan band, whose latest single kind of sounds like two different songs mashed together, both of which come from the 1960s or early ’70s.

Big Grams – Lights On. Big Grams is a collaboration between Phantogram and Big Boi, who worked together on a few tracks on Big Boi’s last solo album, but the current project is a colossal disappointment largely because Big Boi’s lyrics appear to have been written by a 12-year-old boy.

The Dead Weather – Cop and Go. Jack White’s guitar work here is just so much better than on either of his solo albums; he’s at his best when he just lets himself jam.

New Order – Plastic. Longtime New Order fan here … and I wouldn’t say I love this song. It’s good, but a little more techno than their classic sound, which was obviously electronic but not so much like something The Cheat would put together. Also, seven minutes long? Really?

All Them Witches – Open Passageways. Heavy, bluesy folk rock that manages to simultaneously sound like something you’d hear on the Mississippi Delta and near closing time at an Irish bar.

Diiv – Dopamine. The Brooklyn outfit, led by former Beach Fossils member Zachary Cole Smith, will put out their second album by the end of the year. This lead single sounds a lot like every other song Diiv has released.

Telekinesis – Sylvia. Michael Benjamin Lerner’s newest album as Telekinesis, Ad Infinitum, came out last month on Merge Records and features a totally different sound, heavily influenced by early ’80s new wave, with several radio-worthy singles.

Disclosure featuring Lorde – Magnets. The whole here isn’t quite as high as the sum of the parts, but I still foresee a huge hit because of the names involved and the incredibly catchy chorus.

Dagny – Backbeat. Dagny hails from Norway and might be the next big thing in smarter pop, having revised her sound from her earlier folk-tinged rock to more overtly pop music. My daughter’s two new favorite songs are this and Ellie Goulding’s “On My Mind,” the latter of which I find really annoying.

Rationale – The Mire. The producer known as Rationale sounds a hell of a lot like The The circa “Uncertain Smile” on this track, which comes from his first EP, Fuel to the Fire.

WATERS – Up Up Up. WATERS’ second album, What’s Real, came out in April, but somehow this little pop gem, which first appeared at the end of 2014 as a single, escaped my notice until a few weeks ago.

SEXWITCH – Ha Howa Ha Howa. Natasha Khan was compelling as Bat for Lashes but she’s hypnotic singing traditional folk songs in various Asian languages with SEXWITCH, her collaboration with the band Toy.

Broken Bells – It’s That Talk Again. Broken Bells is pretty much an automatic add to these lists. It’s also a legitimately good song, built around a great walking bass line in the chorus.

Saltwater Sun – Making Eyes. This West London act keeps the guitars out front and Jenn Stearnes’ Lorde-like delivery works particularly well here over the loose-strummed rhythm lines.

Arcade Fire – Get Right. One of six bonus songs on the new deluxe edition of their 2013 album Reflektor, a sort of sinister groove track that, unlike many of the songs on the album proper, ends before it wears out its welcome.

Iron Maiden – Speed Of Light. Maiden’s comeback album, The Book of Souls, was far better than I expected and perhaps their best since the 1980s. If this is it, they ended on a high note.

Every Open Eye.

CHVRCHES’ 2013 debut album, The Bones of What You Believe, was my #2 album of 2013, an upbeat electro-pop album that put five songs on my top 100 for that year and turned singer Lauren Mayberry into a minor star. The singles leading up to their second album Every Open Eye (iTunes), released on Friday, showed tremendous promise that this disc would be more of the same but better, and it is undeniably so; the album is a direct descendant of Prince’s Purple Rain with its layered synthesizers and R&B-influenced rhythms, to say nothing of the album’s unending stream of great pop hooks.

Every Open Eye begins with the two lead singles, “Never Ending Circles” and “Leave a Trace,” both among the best tracks of the year, showcasing the group’s signature sounds while adding more complex production and instrumentation behind Mayberry’s vocals. She sings like a 5’10” power hitter – her voice is strong for its size – and while lyrics aren’t quite a strength they’re also clearly improved from the first album. Indeed, the opening quintet of tracks all seem like they could have been authored by Prince in his synth-R&B heyday, which is unsurprising from a band that once included a cover of “I Would Die 4 U” in its setlists and drew inspiration from the 1980s without quaffing too deeply on the new wave music of that era. When CHVRCHES does put a keyboard line at the front of a track, as on “Make Them Gold,” that line still makes way for Mayberry to provide the primary melody, in this case in the song that most directly reminded me of the Purple Rain soundtrack.

The most remarkable part of Every Open Eye is the sheer variety of melodic lines the trio carve out of what would appear to be a single block of marble: the eight strong tracks (of eleven) are all variations on a central musical motif, yet they’ve crafted distinct tracks with small changes in the layering of their synth lines and with Mayberry shifting registers or altering a few notes in each chorus. I might have thought they’d run out of room for growth within this particular sound after one album, but through two albums they’ve shown no signs whatsoever of doing so. You won’t mistake a CHVRCHES song for anyone else, but the way the group can carve uplifting chanters like “Bury It” and driving angst-filled songs like “Empty Threat” from the same stone is their greatest strength.

The slips on EOE mirror those from the band’s debut: when Mayberry isn’t singing, or when the group slows the tempo. Mayberry only takes one song off from singing, here on the soulful “High Enough to Carry You Over,” but without her vocal power or charisma it falls horribly flat. That charisma is also notably absent on the slowest tracks on the album, “Down Side of Me” and the dismal closer “Afterglow,” which deviate from the formula that has made CHVRCHES cross-over successes even with their inherently British sound (including Mayberry’s Scottish brogue). The deluxe edition of Every Open Eye includes three bonus tracks, including “Get Away” (#46 on my top songs of 2014) from the re-scoring of the film Drive; the forgettable “Follow You,” sung by Martin Doherty; and “Bow Down,” which sounds more like a B-side due to the lack of a strong central melody.

I imagine the first couplet on the album, “Throw me no more bones/and I will tell you no lies,” was a nod to their debut’s title and an indication that they wanted to shift direction with this release, but they truly haven’t done so: EOE is the clear successor to their first record, but an evolution rather than a change in direction, and that’s the best possible outcome for listeners. For the second time in their short careers, CHVRCHES have churned out one of the year’s best albums, a little light on experimentation but incredibly deep in compelling hooks.

Do You Feel OK?

Superhumanoids first crossed my radar last year with their two-song release “Hey Big Bang” and “Come Say Hello,” dreamy electro-pop tracks that showcased lead singer Sarah Chernoff’s potent soprano voice. I’d missed their 2013 album Exhibitionists, which had a similar sound but lacked the stronger hooks from their 2014 EP; the promise of those two songs had me eagerly anticipating their second full-length album, Do You Feel OK?, which more than fulfilled expectations with a half-dozen single-worthy tracks that keep Chernoff front and center without skimping on the underlying melodies.

Superhumanoids’ sound draws on the electro-pop and new wave sounds of the 1980s but avoids sounding retro or derivative with distinctly modern production and more emphasis on layered music tracks below the vocals. The lead single, “Anxious in Venice,” is a glorious introduction to the album, bringing a new intensity that replaces the languorous feel of their previous work, and as a result has garnered some airplay on Sirius XM. Chernoff’s vocals rule the day, as they do on most tracks here, but it’s the throbbing beat behind her vocals that makes the song such a standout, bringing a funk or even disco element to the track that we haven’t heard from Superhumanoids before. Second single “Norwegian Black Metal” has the song title of the year for me, starting with a sample of Chernoff that sounds like she’s doing a bird call, shifting into a mid-tempo track that is more dream-pop than “Anxious,” restoring the ethereal quality that’s more part of their signature, but again with greater intensity and the introduction of a vocal melody that we’ll hear repeated through the rest of the album (on the line “what’s the delay?”).

This style of music – one that crosses a number of subgenres, but ultimately is synth-heavy electronic pop, with a slower tempo than dance music – can become repetitive over an entire album, which was a little true of Exhibitionists but is not the case at all on Do You Feel OK?. Shifting tempos helps, as “Dull Boy” drifts back into that dreamier (or perhaps stoner) territory after the first few songs have all had quicker paces, as does varying electronic drum lines and mixing up melodic elements across the various tracks. “Touch Me” is one of the most upbeat tracks and gets Chernoff soaring; her voice is main separator between Superhumanoids and other similar acts like CHVRCHES, led by another female vocalist whose voice is endearing but less powerful. She’s also very much the driver of the disturbing “Oh Me I,” a sweet-sounding track with the repeated couplet, “Everything implies/that we’re all going to die.” And suddenly I don’t feel OK.

There are experimental moments on the album, including the trip-hop crescendo-filled “Blinking Screens” (very successful) and the vaguely soul-influenced “Death Rattle” (less so), which also helps counteract the potential monotony that I find on so many electronic albums. Do You Feel OK? seems to be slipping under the general radar this month in the torrent of great alternative releases (CHVRCHES, Wavves, Telekinesis, Disclosure, New Order, Beirut, the Libertines, and more), but this album deserves far wider listening than it’s getting.

August 2015 music update.

These playlists are getting longer, but there’s just more good music out there – I even cut a few tracks because I can keep raising the bar with so much great independent music coming out. This month’s playlist has a bunch of familiar artists, but also has more pop or at least non-alternative songs than any list I’ve crafted so far. We’re also headed into a two-month span with a ton of promising albums coming out, many of which are foreshadowed here.

Deerhunter – Snakeskin. Deerhunter have been around for over a decade, and while their sound is really all over the map, I haven’t heard anything from them as cohesive or melodic as “Snakeskin,” the tumbling, funk-soaked lead single from Fading Frontier, due out in October.

Superhumanoids – Norwegian Black Metal. The second track from their sophomore album, Do You Feel OK?, due out September 11th, is just as promising as the first single “Anxious in Venice” was. I first heard the trio’s music last year via their fantastic two-sided single “Come Say Hello”/”Hey Big Bang” last year, with Sarah Chernoff’s vocals a real standout in a field of dream-pop and other indie artists who stick a female singer out front without regard to her range or depth.

CHVRCHES – Never Ending Circles. Another stellar single from their sophomore album, Every Open Eye, due out September 25th.

Pure Bathing Culture – Pray For Rain. The lead single from this Portland, Oregon, indie-pop duo is their best song yet, more modern than the ’70s vibe that permeated their debut album.

Beirut – Gibraltar. Zach Condon’s fourth album as Beirut, No No No, is due out September 11th; there’s a delightful weirdness about this song, which starts out like LCD Soundsystem’s “Dance Yrself Clean” before the piano (real) and handclaps (maybe real) come in.

The Colourist – When I’m Away. I loved the Colourist’s first single, 2013’s “Little Games,” but the rest of their debut album (released the following year) fell short of that song’s strong central hook and shifting sounds and tempos. This title track from their latest EP follows a similar formula, slightly less catchy but with a more upbeat tempo throughout.

Civil Twilight – Holy Dove. This South African quartet just put out their first album in three years, since their second album brought the minor hit “Fire Escape” to alternative radio here. “Holy Dove” isn’t quite as intense, exchanging that for a more mid-American shuffle backing up the vocal hook in the chorus.

BØRNS – The Emotion. Garrett Borns’ first full-length album, Dopamine, is due out in October, featuring a couple of the tracks from his previous EP release, but “The Emotion” is his best song to date, a shimmering, hazy song where Borns gets all the feels into his high-register vocals.

Cœur De Pirate – Carry On. Roses, the third album from Quebecois pop singer Béatrice Martin, features her first original compositions in English, although most of the album is in French like her previous work.

Allison Weiss – Golden Coast. Apparently Weiss is a big deal in indie circles, funding her first album in 2009 with a hugely successful Kickstarter (and you thought Kickstarter was just for boardgames) before that was a thing. Weiss’s indie aesthetic doesn’t really stretch to her music, as “Golden Coast” is a pop song like you’d expect to hear on a top 40 station … it’s just better than most other songs of its type, lighter on production and heavier on songcraft.

Low – Lies. I remember Low from the mid-1990s, when I kind of dismissed them as too slow and dull for my then grunge-influenced tastes, and hadn’t realized they were still around until I came across this lead single from their upcoming album, Ones and Sixes, their eleventh to date, also due out September 11th. “Lies” is slow and mournful, just like most of Low’s music; I’ve probably aged into them more than they’ve changed their sound in any way.

Neon Indian – Slumlord. The second single from Alan Palomo’s upcoming album VEGA INTL. Night School, due October 16th, is unapologetic in its devotion to early 1980s New Wave, probably to its detriment when compared to the more progressive lead single “Annie,” even though the lyrics here are quite a bit darker.

Small Black – No One Wants It to Happen to You. It’s synthpop meets shoegaze – I think Carles would call it “chillwave,” although SB themselves apparently disdain the label – with a dissonant, wailing guitar solo that elevates this song from the background to the fore.

Josh Ritter – Getting Ready to Get Down. It’s catchy, but it also makes me laugh, right down to the line “Jesus hates your high school dances;” Ritter seems to be satirizing America’s leading family of degenerates, the Duggars, in a track about a teenaged girl escaping the moral and sexual repression of her evangelical family and judgmental neighbors.

Little May – Seven Hours. The Sydney trio’s first full-length album, For the Company, is due out October 9th, featuring sweet harmonies and more acoustic-to-electric rhythm guitar lines, music rooted in folk but borrowing more from dream-pop for their melodic inspiration.

Lou Barlow – Wave. Founding member of Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh, and Folk Implosion, Barlow will release his first solo album in six years on Friday, with this track starring him on vocals and ukulele, giving the song an unmistakable beach-music feel. I do wish it didn’t sound like it was recorded in a closet, though.

Passport to Stockholm – All at Once. This young British quartet includes a cellist among its members, and that’s the distinguishing characteristic of their soaring folk-rock sound, reminiscent of Birds of Tokyo and, yes, the earlier work of Mumford & Sons.

Boy & Bear – Walk the Wire. More great independent music from Australia – I’m starting to think every adult on that continent is a member of at least one indie band.

Mutemath – Monument. I’ll admit I’m not a huge fan of Mute Math or this particular song – it’s fine, if unremarkable – but I know from past conversations many of you like the band. I’ve found their lyrics to be very disappointing; if you’re going with a name that includes “math” there’s a higher standard in my book.

Palma Violets – Danger in the Club. The title track from this British trio’s latest album sounds like a big drinking song – and like it was actually recorded in the pub where everyone was getting hammered.

Radkey – Evil Doer. I had higher hopes for this punk-pop trio’s debut album Dark Black Makeup, but it’s very safe and overproduced, emphasizing the pop over the punk. I know that not every African-American punk band can be Bad Brains, but these kids had some of that looser, angrier feel in their earlier releases.

Wavves – Heavy Metal Detox. Their fifth album, V, comes out October 2nd, and this third single from the album (not to be confused with their collaborative album with Cloud Nothings from July) is its most promising yet, hook-filled but uncompromising, probably the closest thing to a post-Nirvana act going today.

The Dead Weather – I Feel Love (Every Million Miles). This supergroup, with Jack White its best-known member, will put out its third album, Dodge and Burn, on September 25th; it includes two tracks released as singles in 2014, as well as this rocker, with White doing Jack White things on the guitar, which is what Jack White should probably spend most of his time doing.

SEXWITCH – Helelyos. SEXWITCH is Natasha Khan, a.k.a. Bat for Lashes, along with the English rock band Toy and producer Dan Carey. They’ve recorded covers of a half-dozen psychedelic tracks from around the world, including this Iranian track about “my dark girls” that takes on quite a different meaning when Khan sings it.

Deaf Wish – Sex Witch. This Aussie post-punk act’s half-hour debut album Pain is decidedly anti-commercial, almost grating, until the sudden arrival of this seventh track, a slower song that marries the anti-tonal vocal style of Kim Gordon with the dissonant math-rock of Polvo.

Battles – The Yabba. Is there a better experimental rock act going right now than Battles? I’d have it down to them and These New Puritans, as both acts produce intelligent, unpredictable, technically proficient music that manages to veer over the line into accessibility too.

Ghost B.C. – From The Pinnacle To The Pit. This bizarre Norwegian black metal act (it all ties together on my playlists) is almost shameless in its borrowing of sounds from British Heavy Metal to late-80s thrash to the Crystal Method-inspired guitar line that opens this track, the second from their most recent album, Meliora. Ghost’s members all appear under pseudonyms, and they maintain a facetious Satanic theme in their lyrics and appearance, something that only detracts from the fact that they’re producing some of the most compelling metal in the market today – it’s heavy yet melodic, eschewing death growls and blast beats but retaining the musical sensibilities of the Gothenburg style or even Finnish acts like Children of Bodom. I think the
Pitchfork review of Melioradoes a great job of summing up the album’s strengths and limitations. These guys are going to have to grow up at some point if they want to have any legacy beyond modest record sales, instead of running over the same old ground of tired black-metal tropes and Halloween costumes.

July 2015 music update.

I think this is my longest playlist to date, at least by number of tracks, and that’s after a handful of deletions that didn’t make the ultimate cut. A lot of these are preview tracks from albums due out in the next two months, so it seems like we’re headed for a great fall of new music.

CHVRCHES – Leave A Trace. They’re back with one of their best songs yet; the new album, Every Open Eye, is due on September 25.

Boxed In – Mystery. Boxed In is the stage name of solo artist Oli Bayston, who used to be in a band called Keith (great name, lads), who were joint winners in a 2006 competition with Bombay Bicycle Club, which is the band I first thought recorded this song because it sure sounds like their work. Turns out Bayston’s self-titled debut has been out for months, but this single, a minimalist, offbeat dance track, is just starting to get some airplay over here.

Prince – Stare. I’ve come to grips with the reality that 1980s/1990s Prince is gone, but “Stare” might be my favorite song from him since The Hits/The B-Sides came out in 1993. Prince at least seems to be trying to recapture the golden era of funk influences that informed his earliest recordings, something that comes through even with the sparse production that’s characterized most of his self-recorded albums from the last ten to fifteen years.

Foals – Mountain At My Gates. When these guys rock, they’re among the most interesting bands out there, but when they drift too far over toward their dance/electronic leanings, I start to fade out. This song rocks.

Superhumanoids – Anxious In Venice. Their song “Come Say Hello” was #62 on my top 100 songs of 2014, but it looks like this new track might be their breakout song – or at least the first to garner some mainstream attention, at least. They’re all about lead singer Sarah Chernoff’s voice for me, as she has tremendous range and can go from seductive to soprano in the space of a measure, but what sets “Anxious in Venice” apart is the throbbing electronic beat behind her, one of their best pop hooks ever.

Wavves/Cloud Nothings – No Life for Me. The title track from the “collaborate album” by Wavves and Dylan Baldi (who records as Cloud Nothings) is … well, actually what you’d expect if you mashed these two artists up, in a really good way. Wavves tend toward a cynical/dissonant sound, while Cloud Nothings can be monotonous, but here the two artists seem to mitigate each other’s worst tendencies for a track that’s a little bit poppy and closes out before the hook starts to wear.

Swimm – All the Time. An indie-pop duo from Florida, Swimm calls their sound “genre-blurred” on their bandcamp page, but I think it’s quite clearly electronic pop music like Grouplove or Tanlines, here boosted by a high-flying chorus.

Atlas Genius – Stockholm. There’s more great music coming out of Australia right now than any other place on earth. The brothers Jeffery (not to be confused with Jeff the Brotherhood) will put out their second album of quirky alt-rock gems later this month.

The Libertines – Gunga Din. Try not to act too surprised, but the Libertines’ big comeback song is all about getting wasted. Enjoy them while you can.

Wilco – You Satellite. Wilco’s unexpected album Star Wars (still free on amazon) also seemed, to me as a non-Wilco fan, one of their most accessible to date, but it’s the sprawling five-minute rocker “You Satellite” that grabbed me rather than the more radio-friendly “Random Name Generator.” This song’s syncopated drum line and mournful guitar lines seem more like something out of Wooden Shjips or Slowdive than classic Wilco, but instead of devolving into stoner-rock nonsense the song completes its orbit (pun intended) with a more majestic finish.

The Sword – High Country. Speaking of stoner-rock, we have The Sword, which sounds like the spiritual descendants of Deep Purple and Rainbow, losing some of their Black Sabbath inclinations here on the title track from their upcoming fifth album, due in late August.

Orchid – Helicopters. Sign of the Witch, the new four-song EP from San Francisco-based Orchid, continues down its own Sabbath-inspired path – they chose their name from an instrumental track off Sabbath’s Master of Reality – starting with this track, sort of like “War Pigs” as reinterpreted by Jim Morrison.

Years & Years – Worship. Years & Years’ debut album, Communion, came out last month and debuted at #1 on the UK charts, even reaching #47 here without a lot of radio support. It’s a safe record, like Hot Chip distilled for broader appeal, with very few moments that stood out as worth replaying. This track was the album’s highlight.

Tove Styrke – … Baby One More Time. Styrke, a Swedish pop artist, takes a pop song (and, if you remove the hypersexualized underage girl from the original’s equation, a good one) and makes it into something new, with a darker twist to the song and a synth line that sounds like a Lo-Fi All-Stars riff. It’s far better than the other cover running around this month, Nekokat’s perfunctory, cash-grabbing cover of the Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry.”

Passion Pit – Until We Can’t (Let’s Go). These guys seem to be good for one great track per album; this is the one from their April release Kindred.

Metric – Cascades. The third single from their upcoming album isn’t as immediate – ugh, I can’t believe I used that word – as “The Shade,” but it’s a similarly mature track from the Canadian outfit whose early stuff drove me up a wall.

The Helio Sequence – Battle Lines. This Portland duo’s eponymous sixth album came out in late May on Sub Pop but I missed it in all the draft prep I was doing at the time. “Battle Lines” is a dreamlike, textured track that has a hint of melancholy in the reverbed vocals and a tropical underpinning in the drum line, probably a shade too long at 4:20 (heh).

Mimicking Birds – Dead Weight. These guys seem too smart for even the smarter (if more self-important) corners of popular and “alternative” music, especially in the lyrics to this track, which read more like poetry than rock lyrics. It’s mournful and immersive until the odd smooth-jazz outro.

Telegraph Canyon – Why Let It Go. Arcade Fire with a tinge of country? They’re called “Americana” in reviews, but that’s not only a subtle insult, it diminishes the breadth of their sound and the members’ prodigious technical skills.

Houndmouth – Say It. Now this is more Americana, right? Or maybe alt-country or roots-rock. I’ve noticed “Sedona,” which appeared on my April playlist, is getting a little mainstream airplay, so, you know, way to catch up.

Cloves – Don’t You Wait. I can’t quite get my head around Cloves’ bizarre pronunciations (what she does to the word “better” might qualify as vandalism), but her voice is haunting and strong, reminding me of how I felt when I first heard Fiona Apple’s “Shadowboxer” and couldn’t get over that voice coming from an eighteen-year-old.

Chelsea Wolfe – After the Fall. I don’t know what to make of this song, but it creeps me out. She cites lots of dark influences, including black metal acts, but the morbid feel of “After the Fall” comes from atmosphere rather than blast beats or death growls.

Telekinesis – In a Future World. This song from Portland indie rocker Michael Benjamin Lerner is so new his own website doesn’t mention it, but it’s the lead single from his upcoming album Ad Infinitum, due out on September 18th. It’s a departure from his power-pop output to date, instead drawing heavily on early 1980s synth-pop and new wave, and I think the best song I’ve heard from him.

Shura – White Light. Aleksandra Denton has yet to produce a full-length album, with this track coming from her first EP release, itself just three songs long. It’s electro-pop more than “alternative,” with a definite R&B influence underneath her vocals, which are reminiscent of Leanne Macomber’s.

Undertow (Drenge album).

The debut album from British rock duo Drenge was one of my favorite albums of 2013, and remains one of my favorite of the decade so far, an unabashed sneering post-punk cataclysm that took the now-common guitar-and-drum format to a logical extreme. They were more Gang of Four than White Stripes, with lyrics that focused on sex, violence, and self-loathing, yet the album was full of strong hooks that sustained the mostly two to three minute tracks and extended them beyond mere guitar/drum demo material.

The album didn’t make a dent in the U.S. at all – it wasn’t even released here until about six months after its UK release – and for their sophomore set, Undertow, Drenge have changed their approach, incorporating more hard-rock sounds while largely relegating their angry punk influences to the background. The results are strong but a little bittersweet; it’s a very good album, one that shows substantial musical growth, but if you liked Drenge and were hoping for more of the same, it’s a serious departure from their initial sound.

The change is noticeable right away in the first proper track, “Running Wild,” with multiple layers, an actual bass line, and reverb that makes the track sound like Richard Butler brought the Psychedelic Furs back together to be a hard-rock band. There’s still a distinctive guitar riff in the transition from verse to verse, but I wonder if someone told the brothers that they needed to sound a little more like fellow UK duo Royal Blood, whose sound is heavier and slower, drawing more from mid-70s metal than late-70s new wave. “Never Awake” comes from similar territory as the first album’s “Face Like a Skull,” but the opening drum riff is exponentially more intricate, and that same muted, reverb-heavy production quality feels like we’re referring back to pre-grunge Soundgarden or Nirvana.

The new-wave stylings aren’t limited to Gang of Four/Wire influences, as there’s a groove element to several songs here that, while not quite dance-able, at least sit in that shaded area where the post-punk portion of new wave overlapped with bands like Blondie who adapted that sound into something that did work on the dance floor. The main guitar riff in “The Snake” slithers low and mid-tempo, with an actual harmony in the song’s vocals and a drum pattern that departs from anything the brothers tried on their first album. “Side by Side” scared me at first with a hand-clap pattern that might make Imagine Dragons proud, but the song evolves into an irreducible complexity shortly thereafter with a two-tone guitar riff and percussion lines that are probably drummer Rory Loveless’s best work to date, swirling in a way that refuses to let the listener get comfortable with the pattern.

Drenge haven’t eschewed punk entirely on Undertow, as “We Can Do What We Want” sits somewhere between classic punk and modern punk-pop variants like the Vaccines’ “Teenage Icon,” opening with a very Drenge-ish image of a “balaclava on my boyfriend’s head.” (The melody reminded me, inexplicably, of “Kids in America.”) “Favourite Son” is by far the song most comparable to the core tracks from Drenge (“Backwaters,” “Bloodsports,” “Gun Crazy”), hard and fast and sparse, with quickly-sung, rage-filled lyrics delivered without apparent irony or concern for your opinions.

I don’t know if the album’s title is in any way a nod to Tool’s album of the same name, itself a seminal work of dark, progressive metal that created a new subgenre and led to a number of bands that, for better or worse, tried new song structures and greater musical experimentation that weren’t typically found outside of technical or extreme metal. That album took the brooding standard in grunge and alternative rock at the time to a new level of angst, a sound that struck me as self-parodic but that evidently appealed to a broad cross-section of listeners looking for something more serious about its seriousness. Drenge aren’t serious or even as pissed off as they were on their first album; they’ve lightened up and expanded their sound rather than merely refining it. I didn’t see any connection to Tool until I reached the final track on Undertow, “Have You Forgotten My Name?,” which begins with a heavy, deep guitar-bass-drum section that wouldn’t have been out of place on Ænima, although Tool would have had the song go on for eight more minutes. The wrath of Drenge is now resigned submission, and while it’s not what I wanted from them after such a phenomenal debut, it’s a clear step forward for a band worthy of more more attention from American audiences.

Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit.

My latest boardgame review for Paste covers NanoBot Battle Arena. I also have an updated top 50 prospects ranking up for Insiders.

Courtney Barnett’s two singles from 2014, “Avant Gardener” and “History Eraser,” were both on my top 100 tracks of the year primarily for her clever, witty lyrics, which told complete stories with inventive wordplay and a willingness to break out of standard meters and rhyme schemes. Her first true full-length album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit, more than delivers on the promise of those earlier songs, with better hooks and more upbeat rock sounds while maintaining the high standard of wordsmithing she’d already set for herself.

Led by two stomping tracks, “Elevator Operator” and lead single “Pedestrian at Best,” Sometimes I Sit… is a tour de force of finding humor in despair and setting it to a guitar-rich soundtrack; it harkens back to the halcyon days of the Smiths, where Johnny Marr could get you off the couch and Morrissey would send you to the therapist’s. The opener tells the story of a disaffected white-collar worker who has had enough of cubicle life and reveals that all he ever wanted was to be an elevator operator; the second track comes at you like a shouted-word (rather than spoken-) statement of purpose, with a chorus that candidly offers, “Put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you/Tell me I’m exceptional and I promise to exploit you.” Barnett has no use for the typical tropes of the female pop artist, and instead asserts herself in juxtaposition with statements of insecurity or even occasional self-loathing.

Barnett is too young to remember the ’80s but there are hints of that decade’s strain of British new wave artists who built their hooks around guitars rather than synths and employed wry irony that often went over listeners’ heads throughout the album. “Debbie Downer” sounds like the descendant of an Aztec Camera tune, shockingly upbeat for its title (where, indeed, she’s told by a somewhat older woman to quit frowning, only to inform her target, “Don’t stop listening, I’m not finished yet”). “Aqua Profunda!” revisits a common theme in Barnett’s lyrics, that of the embarrassing incident, this one where she’s swimming in a lap pool, notices the guy in the next lane, and tries to impress him, only to have the whole thing go awry. “Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go to the Party” is true.

Barnett’s slower songs have always fallen short of the mark for me because she’s not a singer; she talk-sings, and her lyrics would largely work as spoken-word offerings anyway, but without solid music behind her the unmusical nature of her voice is exposed. Sometimes I Sit has two long, meandering bluesy tracks, “Small Poppies” and “Kim’s Caravan,” that clock in at just about seven minutes apiece and couldn’t hold my attention that long. When she reduces the tempo, it works better with more storytelling; “Depreston” starts out as an ennui-scented trip to buy a house in the suburbs, only to turn dark when she sees signs of the previous owner’s life in some of the house’s features and décor. The story evolves so that the languid pace of the song never becomes an obstacle for the listener. Plus she points out in the lyrics that by making coffee at home she’s saving $23 a week; we should all admire such thrift. “Dead Fox” is one of the album’s catchier songs, but it’s a rare case of Barnett’s lyrics – a critique of consumerism (including the feel-good variety) – feeling forced.

Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit is the best debut album I’ve heard so far this year, and one of maybe a half-dozen albums I can think of so far this decade that I’d recommend on the basis of its lyrics alone. Barnett’s ideas threaten to spill out of the speakers, and the quality of her music is already improving. She’s probably destined to remain on alternative stations because of her quirky delivery and too-cerebral lyrics (you have to pay attention to them), but she deserves a wide enough audience to keep her producing this kind of art for many more albums.

Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance.

Is there anything quite so Belle & Sebastian as a song titled “Enter Sylvia Plath?” The veteran Scottish indie-folk-rock-whatever group, known as much for their low profile as for their music, have always enjoyed great critical acclaim but never much commercial success, which I believe is the result of their refusal to sound un-British and their use of song titles and lyrics that range from abstruse to sinister, too cerebral for mass appeal even though much of their music is blatantly pop in nature. They’ve had a few gold records in the UK, but have had very little sales traction outside of Britain, not even in Australia, often the most receptive market for distinctly British acts.

“Enter Sylvia Plath” encapsulates the paradox of B&S, as it’s a 131 bpm electronic dance song that name-drops a poet/author who produced depressing material that matched her tragic biography. It’s part of the soft middle of the band’s new album, Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, their first since 2010’s quiet, underappreciated Write About Love. The new album kicks off with a quartet of effusive pop songs that would fit as well on any pop/top 40 station as on independent or alternative radio, including the lead single “The Party Line” (#3 on my list of the top songs of 2014), enough to buoy almost any album on to a year-end best-of list. Beyond the initial promise the boys (and girl) can’t sustain the energy that drove the opening chapter, with music that’s more pleasant background listening rather than the hook-laden stuff that demands your full attention, more intriguing lyrically than musically.

Ah, but that opening tetrad is something else. “Nobody’s Empire” begins with a swirling piano riff and softly thumping bass drum before lead singer/songwriter Stuart Murdoch introduces a sunny melody that goes back to 1960s pop, belying the lyrics describing Murdoch’s own experiences with the debilitating chronic fatigue syndrome, along with the first of many wonderful quotes from the record – “Marching with the crowd singing dirty and loud/For the people’s emancipation” (Shouldn’t all protest songs be dirty and loud?) “Allie” plays like a sly, sinister detective story describing a woman fighting some kind of mental illness that puts her through delusions and desires for self-harm, over the album’s best hook, a shuffling minor-chord blues pattern that refuses to let you catch your balance any more than the song’s subject can. “The Party Line” might be the best pure pop song Belle & Sebastian have ever recorded, replete with Murdoch’s typical wordplay (he’s calling you to the dance floor more than to a partisan debate). “The Power of Three” at least starts to downshift the listener before the softer middle third of the album, moving towards a glammier ’70s vibe with the tinny synth riff that powers the bridges after each chorus, although by the end of its four minutes they’ve dissipated much of the energy that powered the first trio of tracks.

The middle of the album drags both due to the drop in tempo and the length of several of its songs, with “The Cat with the Cream” a sedative to bring everyone down from the high of the start of the album, leading into “Enter Sylvia Plath” almost with a whisper. “The Everlasting Muse” dips into a musical allusion to Russian folk dances for an incongruous middle movement, certainly true to the band’s roots in folk music but less subtle than their best work. The pace doesn’t pick back up until the seven-minute opus “Play for Today,” featuring Dum Dum Girls singer/songwriter Dee Dee Penny sharing vocal duties with Murdoch in a song laced with mid-80s new wave trappings that seems to run far shorter than its actual length thanks to the shared vocal duties. That song sets up “The Book of You,” with Sarah Martin taking over lead vocals on another banger that builds up to an old-fashioned rock guitar solo, but the newfound momentum collapses with the dirge-like closer “Today (This Army’s for Peace.”

For a band that’s been around for nearly twenty years now, releasing nine albums, Belle & Sebastian manage to sound new at several points on Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, never more so than when they live up the album’s title by producing songs that combine great hooks with beats and rhythms suited for the dance floor. The album is surprisingly incoherent for a group whose songwriting and production always feel so meticulous, almost like it’s two half-albums mashed together without a thought to sequencing. The portion that finds Belle & Sebastian feeling the urge to get up and dance is the revelation here, a new dimension from a group that, while talented, seemed to have fallen into its own set ways.

January 2015 music update.

The whole top 100 prospects package is now up for Insiders, including:

I got a complaint yesterday that one of the team reports wasn’t long enough. With over 48,000 words in the whole package, you can send any such criticisms to /dev/null.

January was a great month for new releases, especially tracks previewing albums coming in March or April. Here’s the Spotify playlist, with a note on each song coming up below:

Purity Ring – “Push Pull.” I didn’t love their first album, Shrines, but this lead single from their upcoming sophomore LP Another Eternity is a marvel, especially in Megan James’ lyrics, which seem to draw heavily from classical English poetry. “A fever billowed with the wind/And I bade the sky therein.” The music struggles to keep up with her vocals, at times sound like a weird remix the way the track doesn’t line up with her meter, but she could probably sing this a cappella and I’d still listen.

Wildhoney – “Molly.” This Baltimore shoegaze act, one of two Charm City bands on this playlist (along with Lower Dens), is signed to a Canadian punk label, but their music is more Curve, Swervedriver, and early Lush than Bad Religion or the Descendants. The tiny guitar line behind the vocals is the track’s separating factor, although I liked how the walls of guitars in the chorus referenced My Bloody Valentine without drowning out Lauren Shusterich’s vocals.

HOLYCHILD – “Running Behind.” The percussion lines remind me of tUnEyArDs’ “Water Fountain,” but with non-irritating vocals. My daughter loved this song on first listen, and I have a feeling it’ll be a quick crossover to pop radio, since it’s only “alternative” in the sense that it’s not popular yet.

The Districts – “Peaches.” Seems like my favorite fruit (especially for pie) is a popular topic for songs of late, including this new release that has some resemblances to the Hold Steady with its blues/roots-rock backing and sung-talked descending vocal lines. The whining guitar riff that parallels the vocals in the chorus strikes a fine balance between hooky and annoying.

Viet Cong – “Silhouettes.” I admit to being a little off from the consensus on this debut album featuring two of the three surviving members of Women, finding it very uneven, with lead single “Continental Shelf” missing my top 100 from last year. “Silhouettes” has a dark, Joy Division/Bauhaus kind of vibe but with harder guitar lines that made it the standout from their eponymous album, relased two weeks back on indie Super Tuesday.

Modest Mouse – “Lampshades On Fire.” It almost sounds like Johnny Marr never left. I never loved Modest Mouse before “Dashboard,” which I suppose means I’m not a True Fan or something, but also means I particularly like this new song’s rhythm – and as always there’s a lot of fun wordplay in the lyrics.

Coasts – “Oceans.” They’re going to be compared to Coldplay because their next single is called “A Rush of Blood,” but the similarity is just in the attempt to craft songs that feel anthemic with big climaxes of drums and shimmering guitars. Coldplay has its detractors, and I find their work frustratingly inconsistent, but they do write some pop hooks that prove indelible, something few imitators (save, perhaps, Bastille and Imagine Dragons) have been able to do. Coasts has a shot, though, based on these two singles, both of which came out last year in the UK.

Matt and Kim – “Get It.” Solid melody, weak lyrics, which unfortunately has been the duo’s formula for much of their careers.

Belle & Sebastian – “Nobody’s Empire.” I adore the first four tracks on this album, Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, but it tapers off into maudlin material that is probably more authentic B&S but just not my style. “The Party Line” was my #3 track of 2014; “Nobody’s Empire” will likely rank very high for me on this year’s list.

A. Sinclair – “Suit Up.” From this Austin band’s October album Pretty Girls, this single kicks the door down with the intense introductory riff. I imagine they’d be fantastic to see live given how much energy comes through in their studio recordings.

Young Ejecta – “Welcome to Love.” Formerly known as Ejecta, this side project of Neon Indian’s Leanne Macomber – who is once again au naturel on the album cover – put out their second short album of ethereal, quietly melodic synthpop that highlights Macomber’s breathy alto.

Sleater-Kinney – “Price Tag.” The opener from their amazing comeback record, No Cities to Love, which I reviewed in January.

Tobias Jesso Jr. – “How Could You Babe.” I’m still not sure how much I like this mournful piano ballad, which is driven primarily by Jesso – whose debut album comes out in March – crooning the song’s title repeatedly. It’s been stuck in my head a few times already, though.

The Mowgli’s – “Through The Dark.” They may never do anything I like as much as “San Francisco,” but I do love this septet’s sound when the entire group starts singing in unison, practically begging you to join in. Their second proper album is due this spring.

Death Cab for Cutie – “Black Sun.” It seems like 2015 is the big year for comeback records from some of the biggest alternative acts of the aughts – these guys have been gone for four years, Belle & Sebastian for five, the Decemberists for four, Modest Mouse for six, and Sleater-Kinney for nine. “Black Sun” is very promising, especially the guitar interlude, which brought back to mind my favorite track from 2011’s Codes and Keys, “You are a Tourist.”

Lower Dens – “To Die in L.A.” Did they steal that guitar sound from Robert Plant’s “Big Log?”

Courtney Barnett – “Pedestrian at Best.” When she plugs in and there’s some real music to back up her brilliantly twisted lyrics, she’s among the best voices in independent/alternative music today, contorting the language into whatever shapes she desires, with brilliant imagery and incisive wit. Here’s hoping her next album continues what she’s started here.

Twerps – “Back to You.” Twerps, an Australian quartet who remind me in many ways of the Go-Betweens, seem to specialize in understated, pleasantly annoying pop tracks, a formula that works about half the time on their debut album Range Anxiety. Everyone’s raving over “I Don’t Mind,” one of the two longest tracks on the album, but the off-key singing and twangy, repetitive guitar licks work much better on songs half that length, as with the syncopated riff that powers this sunny bit of indie-pop.

Voivod – “We Are Connected.” Voivod’s 1989 album Nothingface had a huge influence on my tastes in music; at a time when “metal” largely meant the glam-rock derivative of hair bands, with Metallica the edgy alternative to Poison and Cinderella, Voivod – who toured off this album with two similarly unknown acts, Faith No More and Soundgarden – produced intelligent, aggressive, intricate songs exploring dark themes with lyrics that, if nothing else, moved beyond what was available on the radio in those pre-satellite, pre-web days. The band’s sound changed in the mid-90s with Negatron, going more toward death-metal growls and “groove” riffs; withh the 2005 death of original guitarist Denis D’Amour they will probably never recover their original vibe, but “We Are Connected” at least restores the clean vocals and spaced-out thrash sound that made them one of metal’s first real innovators.

And while I’m not going to put anything from Napalm Death’s upcoming album on the playlist (I’ve never been a fan of their brand of extreme grindcore), this piece on the letter that lead screamer Barney Greenaway wrote to Indonesian President (and Napalm Death fan) Joko Widodo is worth a read. Here’s hoping it succeeds in convincing Widodo to commute those two criminals’ death sentences.