Who Is…East India Youth

There aren’t many artists who can claim to have inspired the creation of a record label, but East India Youth is one of them. The Hostel EP by bedroom producer William Doyle so impressed the editors of the independent music website The Quietus that they decided to set up a label just to release it: the Quietus Phonographic Corporation.

The website’s founder John Doran, who previously said he’d rather “cut off my own head with nail clippers” than start a label, met Doyle at a Factory Floor gig in London in 2012. Doyle gave him a CD of his album Total Strife Forever, which made it into the Quietus’s best of the year list. Doran and his team then decided to splash out on a proper release — without a pair of bloodied clippers in sight.

East India Youth’s sound is crisp and considered, inspired by the singular vision(s) of its creator. Rooted in software synths and computer sequencing, it’s an impossible-to-pigeonhole mix of pop, techno, Krautrock, electro and churchy crescendos, layered with melodic guitars and distinctive heartfelt vocals.

Doyle is a proper fan of German Kosmische muzik, as well as Berlin-period Bowie, Brian Eno, Shostakovich, Fuck Buttons and Tim Hecker. He has previous form as the frontman of Southampton-based Doyle & The Fourfathers, although he ditched his band to develop the solo opuses he’d been making on the side, in his bedroom in London’s East India Docks area (hence the name).

Stuart Turnbull caught up with Doyle to talk about why he’d rather be a “curator of sounds” than a celebrity.

On the desire to make music:

I feel that this in the only thing that I’m capable of doing really well. And I’m very obsessive about it. The urgency was always there, and it’s self-perpetuating. I get up at 8 a.m. and have breakfast, then I usually go for a walk. I get back and start making music until 5 p.m. or 6 p.m., or whenever things dry up. I think having a work ethic is a good way to breed productivity. I don’t find myself that productive at night. I’m much more creative in the daytime.

On recording in his bedroom:

Everything on the Hostel EP and my demo album was done in my bedroom. I’m in an old block of flats, so I can really blast it out. Concrete floors. Great.

When I recorded in professional recording studios in the past I never enjoyed the process. It felt clinical and didn’t help with creativity. The arbitrary order of recording bass first, then drums etc — there’s no room for abstraction. It’s more about getting the cleanest sound than making interesting music.

I’ve got a really basic set-up mainly because I haven’t been able to afford any really cool gear. But I don’t romanticise knobs and faders. I’m more about trying to make the sound with whatever you’ve got.

On listening to music:

I like to sit down and make a big deal about listening to a record. I used to buy an obscene amount of vinyl but I haven’t bought a record this year, because financially I haven’t been able to go on a spree. I’m getting withdrawal symptoms.

My mum used to play classical music around the house when I was younger. Then I studied music at college. Shostakovich really struck a chord with me, and more experimental composers like Arnold Schoenberg and the German expressionists. I love minimalists like Phillip Glass and Steve Reich.

I’m also really interested in ’70s Krautrock bands like Neu!, and the way the political and social atmosphere of the time affected their artistic output.

On hearing problems:

My hearing is quite poor for my age, because of years of playing in bands. I also had a lot of ear infections as a child and suffer from constant tinnitus. It gets worse after I’ve been to a loud gig — or if I’ve played one. But it’s very high pitched, so most of the time you can tune it out or fill your ears with other aural distractions. The problem comes when I want to give my ears a rest, because I can’t sit in a room in total silence. It’s annoying and frightening at the same time.

On making long songs:

“Coastal Reflexions” on the Hostel EP is more than nine minutes long. My girlfriend did the train-announcer vocals on it; she’s not that well-spoken normally. A couple of new tracks I’m working on last a good 17 minutes. I’m a bit worried I’m developing these nasty prog-rock tendencies.

People assign “self-indulgent” and “pretentious” to anything that’s long. But that’s not necessarily true. There are plenty of great 10-minute tracks that are about repetition rather than constant key changes. Some dance tunes go on for ages and no one says they’re self-indulgent.

On being compared to others:

Pet Shop Boys seems to come up a lot. That’s a bizarre one. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Pet Shop Boys but I don’t hear any of it in what I do. Although it’s not a bad thing, I suppose.

On going solo:

I got bored of being in a guitar band. Going up and down the country, we must have played with 600 bands. All that Gallagher-esque swagger on stage and being mouthy, it was depressing really. I didn’t want to hang out with those people.

With electronic music there’s less of an emphasis on the personalities behind the music. It’s more about the audience’s interaction with the sound that’s being made. The person creating it is less of a celebrity or icon, and more so a curator of sounds. That’s liberating idea.

On getting your ideas down:

I get thousands of ideas a day, but you can get too hung up on recording every little thing. It would seriously affect the rest of your life if you felt pressured to write everything down. Your brain acts as a sieve or filter and the good stuff will remain in your head. I’ll write it down when it’s been there a while. I don’t chuck anything out. Stuff I’m working on at the moment, the melody might be four years old. If it’s remained intact for that long I think it must be worth using.

Scientology Showdown

South Park dissed them big time in a memorable episode. You’ve probably had them offer you a free e-meter audit at the mall. And maybe you were even one of those unlucky few who got snookered into watching Battlefield Earth. Yes, Scientology is nutty as hell — but it’s also undeniably fascinating, in the best tradition of American nuttery.

This winter, curious readers were blessed with the publication of two books on the infamously secretive (and litigious) religion. In Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear, the New Yorker writer and Pulitzer Prize winner offers a comprehensive history of the religion, digging up plenty of dirty secrets in the best tradition of investigative reporting. Beyond Belief, written by Jenna Miscavige Hill — niece of Scientology’s current leader, David Miscavige — is in many ways the opposite: It doesn’t have Wright’s historical breadth, but it does give the personal details of day-to-day life in one of the religion’s most high-profile enclaves that Wright’s book lacks.

While Going Clear hits harder than Beyond Belief, both make it clear that Scientology is a frighteningly repressive, conformist institution that has done all sorts of bizarre and nasty things, ranging from the merely immoral to the flagrantly criminal. Just as clear is the fascination that Scientology has held for (possibly) millions of adherents over the years, as well as its undeniable impact on the modern world. You’ll probably be shocked and disgusted after reading these books, but you’ll also come away with an understanding of how Scientology embodies much of the subconsciousness of postwar America, channeling our fascination with science fiction, authoritarianism, and self-help into a religion that represents many of our best and worst tendencies.

Arguably the Most Awful Thing L. Ron Hubbard Did, Out of Many Candidates

By the time you reach the end of Going Clear, you’re likely to think that there’s not a single awful thing that L. Ron Hubbard didn’t do. From adultery to kidnapping, theft, pathological lying and child abuse, it’s all here. It’s hard to choose the single most despicable deed, but this is my pick: With the publication of Dianetics in 1950, Hubbard’s career was finally beginning to take off after a series of failures, and he realized that in order to reach the next level it would be more advantageous if he were not married (at the time he was with his second wife, Sara Northrup Hollister). But he also realized that divorcing his wife would be a bad career move, so he found a simple solution: Hubbard asked Sara to commit suicide to further his career. When Sara, understandably, declined the offer, Hubbard then abducted both her and their child, attempted to have her committed to an insane asylum, and then claimed to the FBI that she was a communist, a serious allegation at the height of the Red Scare. Ultimately, Hubbard was given a divorce due to Sara’s “gross neglect of duty and extreme cruelty.” Point: Going Clear.

Strangest Form of Child Abuse

Miscavige Hill was a church member from age seven, when she was asked to sign its infamous “billion-year contract.” (Since all Scientologists know that we live one lifetime after another, forever, just pledging one lifetime is hardly a sign of dedication.) She details all sorts of acts perpetrated on her by the church as a youngster, from brainwashing to hours of manual labor to being forced to stare for hours at Hubbard’s “policies” written on the wall. Here’s one of the oddest: Miscavige Hill attended one of the church’s schools, where classes featured an OCD-level focus on looking up words. As Hubbard explained, all failure to learn derives from not knowing the meaning of words, so it logically follows that students who are having trouble must look up every single word they don’t know. Because of this, Miscavige Hill and many of her fellow students came to dread school, which was essentially hours of searching through the dictionary that made it impossible for her to actually learn anything. Point: Beyond Belief.

Freakiest Tom Cruise Moment

You knew we couldn’t get through a feature on Scientology without mentioning Tom Cruise, right? As Wright reports in Going Clear, Cruise is an admirably dedicated member, even helping so-called pre-clears take the steps necessary to reach the status of “clear,” a major milestone in one’s progress through the church. Wright explains that on one such occasion, Cruise was unable to get a reading from a pre-clear on the church’s e-meter in order to begin a session. In a sweet-but-unseemly moment of personal generosity, he offered the pre-clear a snack from an array of goodies the church provides its Hollywood elite with. As the pre-clear sat in amazement, Cruise offered up all sorts of treats, not realizing that he had been given special treatment and that normal members of the church subsisted on barely adequate, tasteless offerings. The most bizarre of the special dispensations made for Cruise? The church planted a field of wildflowers in its rural California enclave so that he and then-wife Nicole Kidman could run through them, apparently a long-held fantasy for the couple. Point: Going Clear.

Most Heartbreaking Moment

Miscavige Hill makes being raised by the Scientologists sound like something out of 1984: The kids are encouraged to rat out one another; they get “chits” for minor infractions that quickly add up to draconian punishments (a mere three chits means you have to clean your room well enough to survive a white glove inspection); they are made to endure painfully hot saunas and drink cups of vegetable oil for bizarre health rationale; and their school, named “Chinese school” after Hubbard’s experience with the Chinese, was a not-so-subtle form of brainwashing. As she tells it, Miscavige Hill did her best to endure these trials, but she had it worse than most: Her parents were high-ranking functionaries, which meant that she was separated from them for months at a time, and when they did visit they received whitewashed reports of how she had been treated. This all adds up to the book’s saddest moment, when Miscavige Hill and a friend decided to run away. Trying to escape on tiny legs and with their pockets stuffed full of croissants, they have no chance whatsoever, but that still doesn’t stop the grown-ups from humiliating them by blaming the ruination of a song and dance show on the little girls. Maybe instead of pulling out all the stops to punish them, they might have wondered why the girls felt pushed to such a drastic step. Point: Beyond Belief.

Biggest WTF? Moment

In Scientology no one is too young to work, nor, apparently, is anyone too young to do jobs they’re ridiculously unsuited for. Case in point: As a child, Miscavige Hill was appointed to perform medical duties for her fellow Scientologists. Fortunately, Scientology’s cure for most ailments involves eradicating bad thoughts from one’s system and hiding oneself away behind closed doors, à la the 18th century, so there was only so much damage our young doctor could do. But, as Miscavige Hill points out, had one of her “patients” been seriously ill, there’s a good chance she wouldn’t have realized or would have known what to do. She might have had a death or a lifetime disability on her hands — thank God nothing happened. Point: Beyond Belief.

A Few Final Facts About L. Ron

Lawrence Wright has done his research, and it really shows. Among other revelations, he tells us that on numerous occasions Hubbard declared, “I’d like to start a religion. That’s where the money is.” (Wright also explains that self-help is only so lucrative, because once you solve a person’s problem you lose their business — but with religion you can have them for their whole life, or a billion years.) He also informs us that upon hearing of the apparent suicide of his son Quentin, he exclaimed, “That little shit has done it to me again!” Even by the time Hubbard was becoming an infirm old man and Miscavige had taken over day-to-day operations of the church, he could still spend: ensconced in a mobile home in California, he reportedly received $1 million from Miscavige every week. Scientology may tell us the secrets of where all our bad thoughts come from, but it surely can’t tell us how an old man in a trailer can spend $1 million every week. Point: Going Clear.

Result: TIE. But there’s enough Scientology wackiness to fill a library, let alone these two books. Both are essential reading.

Who Is…East India Youth

There aren’t many artists who can claim to have inspired the creation of a record label, but East India Youth is one of them. The Hostel EP by bedroom producer William Doyle so impressed the editors of the independent music website The Quietus that they decided to set up a label just to release it: the Quietus Phonographic Corporation.

The website’s founder John Doran, who previously said he’d rather “cut off my own head with nail clippers” than start a label, met Doyle at a Factory Floor gig in London in 2012. Doyle gave him a CD of his album Total Strife Forever, which made it into the Quietus’s best of the year list. Doran and his team then decided to splash out on a proper release — without a pair of bloodied clippers in sight.

East India Youth’s sound is crisp and considered, inspired by the singular vision(s) of its creator. Rooted in software synths and computer sequencing, it’s an impossible-to-pigeonhole mix of pop, techno, Krautrock, electro and churchy crescendos, layered with melodic guitars and distinctive heartfelt vocals.

Doyle is a proper fan of German Kosmische muzik, as well as Berlin-period Bowie, Brian Eno, Shostakovich, Fuck Buttons and Tim Hecker. He has previous form as the frontman of Southampton-based Doyle & The Fourfathers, although he ditched his band to develop the solo opuses he’d been making on the side, in his bedroom in London’s East India Docks area (hence the name).

Stuart Turnbull caught up with Doyle to talk about why he’d rather be a “curator of sounds” than a celebrity.

On the desire to make music:

I feel that this in the only thing that I’m capable of doing really well. And I’m very obsessive about it. The urgency was always there, and it’s self-perpetuating. I get up at 8 a.m. and have breakfast, then I usually go for a walk. I get back and start making music until 5 p.m. or 6 p.m., or whenever things dry up. I think having a work ethic is a good way to breed productivity. I don’t find myself that productive at night. I’m much more creative in the daytime.

On recording in his bedroom:

Everything on the Hostel EP and my demo album was done in my bedroom. I’m in an old block of flats, so I can really blast it out. Concrete floors. Great.

When I recorded in professional recording studios in the past I never enjoyed the process. It felt clinical and didn’t help with creativity. The arbitrary order of recording bass first, then drums etc — there’s no room for abstraction. It’s more about getting the cleanest sound than making interesting music.

I’ve got a really basic set-up mainly because I haven’t been able to afford any really cool gear. But I don’t romanticise knobs and faders. I’m more about trying to make the sound with whatever you’ve got.

On listening to music:

I like to sit down and make a big deal about listening to a record. I used to buy an obscene amount of vinyl but I haven’t bought a record this year, because financially I haven’t been able to go on a spree. I’m getting withdrawal symptoms.

My mum used to play classical music around the house when I was younger. Then I studied music at college. Shostakovich really struck a chord with me, and more experimental composers like Arnold Schoenberg and the German expressionists. I love minimalists like Phillip Glass and Steve Reich.

I’m also really interested in ’70s Krautrock bands like Neu!, and the way the political and social atmosphere of the time affected their artistic output.

On hearing problems:

My hearing is quite poor for my age, because of years of playing in bands. I also had a lot of ear infections as a child and suffer from constant tinnitus. It gets worse after I’ve been to a loud gig — or if I’ve played one. But it’s very high pitched, so most of the time you can tune it out or fill your ears with other aural distractions. The problem comes when I want to give my ears a rest, because I can’t sit in a room in total silence. It’s annoying and frightening at the same time.

On making long songs:

“Coastal Reflexions” on the Hostel EP is more than nine minutes long. My girlfriend did the train-announcer vocals on it; she’s not that well-spoken normally. A couple of new tracks I’m working on last a good 17 minutes. I’m a bit worried I’m developing these nasty prog-rock tendencies.

People assign “self-indulgent” and “pretentious” to anything that’s long. But that’s not necessarily true. There are plenty of great 10-minute tracks that are about repetition rather than constant key changes. Some dance tunes go on for ages and no one says they’re self-indulgent.

On being compared to others:

Pet Shop Boys seems to come up a lot. That’s a bizarre one. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Pet Shop Boys but I don’t hear any of it in what I do. Although it’s not a bad thing, I suppose.

On going solo:

I got bored of being in a guitar band. Going up and down the country, we must have played with 600 bands. All that Gallagher-esque swagger on stage and being mouthy, it was depressing really. I didn’t want to hang out with those people.

With electronic music there’s less of an emphasis on the personalities behind the music. It’s more about the audience’s interaction with the sound that’s being made. The person creating it is less of a celebrity or icon, and more so a curator of sounds. That’s liberating idea.

On getting your ideas down:

I get thousands of ideas a day, but you can get too hung up on recording every little thing. It would seriously affect the rest of your life if you felt pressured to write everything down. Your brain acts as a sieve or filter and the good stuff will remain in your head. I’ll write it down when it’s been there a while. I don’t chuck anything out. Stuff I’m working on at the moment, the melody might be four years old. If it’s remained intact for that long I think it must be worth using.

Carmen Villain, Sleeper

A former cover model, Carmen Villain’s longtime gig was to effortlessly exude beauty. Things haven’t changed too much: Now a musician, on her remarkably engaging, dark and oftentimes abrasive debut album, Sleeper, the singer and multi-instrumentalist simply expresses her loveliness in a more nuanced shade. Heavy on reverb and made for headphones, the decidedly lo-fi album, its tracks washing up onto another, calls to mind Sonic Youth and Royal Trux. “Lifeissin,” Villain’s spectacular debut single, remains the album’s centerpiece, the singer muttering caustic couplets (“Seek out seek in/ Breathe frost, yeah/ Life is sin”). But it’s the album’s wilder moments, like the acid-infused samba of a head trip “Obedience” — Villain’s Lana Del Rey-on-peyote vocals emerging from the mist — that warrant repeat listens. “Oh hollow sense of time/ The good ride cannot come too soon,” she crows on the self-effacing “Made a Shell.” Villain best buckle up. Her new journey’s begun.

Nadia Sirota, Baroque

Nadia Sirota is the violist of choice for the New York contemporary-classical scene, and on Baroque, she follows up here her astoundingly assured debut, First Things First, with fresh works from many of the composers who contributed to that recording. Judd Greenstein’s piece for seven violas (all of them multitracked by Sirota), “In Teaching Others We Teach Ourselves,” employs a variety of dizzying riffs, separated by episodes of subtle pizzicato, in order to evoke the many stages of cosmos-crossing undertaken by the famous “Golden Record” shot into deep space by NASA back in 1977. It’s also a tour de force opportunity for Sirota to show off her otherworldly chops and a variety of techniques: Nico Muhly’s jaunty “Etude 3″ is as memorable as the two others in his series, which he gave Sirota the first time around, and is a showcase for Sirota the player.

But there are new composers this time as well, even if they are generally familiar to the New Amsterdam coterie. Shara Worden’s “From the Invisible to the Visible” is a brief, attractive offering that introduces keyboards and organs into the mix to considered effect. Missy Mazzoli’s “Tooth and Nail” continues the electronic theme and is the album’s standout, featuring some exciting hyper-glitch programming by the composer in during its opening minutes. Solid pieces from Paul Corley and Daniel Bjarnason complete this satisfying program, which, while more tricked-out electronically than Sirota’s first offering, retains her aesthetic imprint.

Who Is…John Fullbright

At the ripe old age of 23, John Fullbright sounds to many like the most promising new singer-songwriter on the block. He hails from Woody Guthrie’s hometown, and because Live at the Blue Door, his barely-distributed 2009 debut, was cut with just his guitar (or piano) and rack harp, he was initially perceived as a folkie in that tradition. But he’d done that album quickly and with little planning only so he’d have a sample of his work to take to that year’s Folk Alliance Conference. On his new From the Ground Up, which is being promoted as more or less his “real” debut, the majority of tracks feature a full band (though his live shows remain mostly solo). However you hear him, Fullbright’s grandchild-of-the-Dust-Bowl sensibility, with just enough of a chip on its shoulder to keep things tense as well as compelling, continues to shine through. He began as a student of country-based writers, from Townes Van Zandt on down, but his most recent work suggests he has since absorbed Randy Newman and others across the pop spectrum. His music has also come to assimilate folk, country, blues and pop without any of those antecedents being easy to pin down; combine that with his rich Okie twang, which delivers his lyrics in a voice that ranges from tremulous softness to alley-cat yowl, and you have that rarest of species, an artist who sounds like nobody except himself. He’s already built a strong reputation in his region of the country, and if it doesn’t grow now that he’s touring more widely, something is definitely wrong.

On beginning to write songs:

I’d write kinda secretly when I was 14, 15. Musically I had a very lonely childhood; nobody in my family was involved with music at all; even in high school I was starving for someone to play with. I lived outside town, so I was the first picked up in the morning and the last dropped off the school bus every afternoon. I spent a lot of time sitting by myself, staring out the window, thinking. Then when I was 17, I got a mix CD of Steve Earle…Townes Van Zandt…and it got me thinking very seriously about writing. But I came at it backwards — those guys have great vocals and ideas but struggle with the instrumental part of it. I was the opposite; I could play pretty well by then, but couldn’t sing and didn’t think I had many ideas. Townes was the man. All writing fell short of what he did. I suffered by myself trying to write the perfect song right off the bat. I was quite the snob, and every songwriter was inferior to Townes, including me.

On writing now:

Lyrics are mostly me talking to me, but I want to write more attainable songs and not be vague. So much of it is hiding behind vagueness in order to be hip. I know what I’m talking about, but I want to write lyrics that make sense to everyone. I’ve told the truth the whole time, but the truth changes and I have to change with it. At 16, you’ve got everything figured out; it’s easy to write about being persecuted. But as you gain more life experience and see more complexities…

On adding a band:

I’d been avoiding it for a while, not because I didn’t want to, but because it just didn’t make sense at the time, especially financially. I’m not shy about what I want to hear from them; I’m very picky about what I want to hear. All I really care about is the energy: If you’re gonna do something, do the hell out of it.

On reading:

Jimmy Webb told me you have to read a lot to become a great writer, and I try to be a big reader. It’s hard nowadays, when you’ve got a laptop, a TV and a phone that plays movies. But I’ll still turn those off and just read, mostly poems and short stories. I like Bukowski about as much as anyone out there…Flannery O’Connor…Steinbeck.

On Woody Guthrie:

I knew his name early on ’cause it’s on the water tower. But nobody talked about him much in Okemah, so I never knew much about him; we never went to the WoodyFest they have every year, because the politics was so radically different. I’m still kinda trying to figure out my own politics. It’s easy to say he’s an entertainer but that’s far from all he was. I’m coming to learn he wasn’t just a communist, which is how they think of him in town; he had a real love for humanity. Really, I found out about him mostly through Dylan; that was the first thump on my head, my light bulb moment.

John Foxx and The Maths, Evidence

An under-celebrated godfather of electronic music, John Foxx might flippantly now also be described as its grandfather, but at 65 his fecund productivity shows no sign of abating. Evidence is his third album with his latest band The Maths inside two years, and close on his 40th since he emerged as Ultravox’s original vocalist in 1977. Musically he still sounds fresh and vital. In a digital era, Foxx sticks doggedly to his analog guns, which means that inevitably, the Moog synthesizer-driven squeals and arabesques of Evidence recall the post-punk futurists of the early 1980s. The glacial sci-fi fantasia of “Neon Vertigo” and “Walk” show exactly why Foxx was a bigger hero than even Bowie for Gary Numan, while “Myriads” is a gossamer whirl of skittering keyboards. The wily Foxx even turns the cosmic psychedelic sprawl of Pink Floyd’s “Have a Cigar” into a throb of menacing electro-goth. He has always been a compulsive collaborator and guest artists abound here, with the pick being Brighton vocalist Gazelle Twin’s Liz Fraser-like poise amidst the spectral This Mortal Coil-esque calm of “Changelings.” At an age when most musicians are picking up their bus pass or milking the nostalgia circuit, it’s laudable that John Foxx is still striving to invent his idiosyncratic vision of the future.

25 Must-See Bands at SXSW 2013

Do we even need the preamble? You know what next week is and, like any right-thinking person, you’ve probably put off working out a schedule until the very last second. So as you start to hammer out your crazymaking week — probably on the plane, probably an hour or so before touching down — here are our picks for the 25 must-sees in Austin next week.

New This Week: The Men, Robyn Hitchcock & More

The Men, New Moon – Brooklyn’s most dynamic young rock band of the moment return with their third expectations-raising/confounding record in as many years. Austin L. Ray writes:

“Each of the last three years has produced a new album from Brooklyn’s The Men, and each of those albums has only increased the cultish glow of adoration for the fervent rock band, which has proven itself both capable and uncompromising. Like the subjects of Michael Azerrad’s ’80s-underground bible, Our Band Could Be Your Life — a book The Men would’ve been featured in had they been making music 30 years ago — this is a band that believes in the saving grace of a sweaty, anthemic rock song.”

Robyn Hitchcock, Love From London – Hitchcock is one of the most enduring cult figures in British rock, and Love From London is a quietly mesmerising illustration of his facility with a specifically English strain of pop: pretty yet dark, bright but mournful. Andrew Mueller writes:

“Love From London is all at once just another installment of Robyn Hitchcock doing what Robyn Hitchcock does, and yet another reminder that nobody else is doing much like it.”

Waxahatchee, Cerulean Salt – This record. We are in love. Here’s Carrie Battan with more:

“American Weekend, Katie Crutchfield’s first album under the name Waxahatchee, felt like a whispered sacred document of youthful discontent and loneliness, the kind you could curl up and live inside for days. On the follow-up, Cerulean Salt, Crutchfield has plugged in the amplifiers and slightly glossed up the production. That might initially disappoint fans, but the decision not to attempt to reproduce the holy rawness of her debut ultimately serves Crutchfield well. Her subtle gut-punches translate just as powerfully once the volume’s been dialed up.”

Olof Arnalds, Sudden Elevation – Our favorite Icelandic folk singer’s first English-language album. This is light and pretty, her voice curling around the notes like smoke from an incense stick.

Josh Ritter, The Beast in Its Tracks – A wry, rueful divorce record from the country-folk singer. Annie Zaleski writes:

“In the artist notes for The Beast In Its Tracks, Josh Ritter wastes no time establishing the premise of his sixth album: “My marriage ended on November 1, 2010. It was a cold, blustery morning in Calgary, Alberta, and I was on tour. I hung up the phone and looked around me.” But while the impact of his divorce certainly hovers over The Beast In Its Tracks — the longing and regret coursing through the whispery acoustic opener “Third Arm” is breathtaking — the record smartly frames the breakup through the lens of optimism, not bitterness.”

Autechre, Exai – The electronic act, entering its third decade, continues to find ways to blow synapses. Ian Gittins writes:

“As is always the case with Autechre, the joy is in the detail of their forebodingly dystopian digitalia. Tracks such as the portentously named ‘irlite (get 0)’ may appear to be cryptically abstruse glitch-pop, but a perverse joy and even humour underpins their alternate complexity and defiant, hypnotic repetitiveness.”

Kate Nash, Girl Talk – In which Kate Nash gets impressively, spitting mad. Annie Zaleski writes:

“When Kate Nash said that Girl Talk consists of her “blood, sweat, emotional puke and tears,” she wasn’t just being dramatic. Her third full-length is a messy chronicle of post-breakup grief that veers between relief (“Fri-end?”), soul-searching (“Conventional Girl”), wistfulness (“Are You There Sweetheart?”), sadness (“Lullaby For An Insomniac,” “O My God”) and anger (“All Talk”). Appropriately, Girl Talk‘s music is also all over the place; styles covered include wobbly, girl group-inspired indie-pop, brash punk, stormy post-punk, grimy new wave, sparkling Britpop and vulnerable acoustic pop.”

Lady, Lady – Lady is a duo comprised of Terri Walker from London and Nicole Wray from Atlanta, but their combined effort recalls the slinky, high-gloss R&B of the late ’70s. There are big, bright horn charts, limber grooves and assured vocals. They’re balanced right on the precipice where R&B started to give way to funk; there’s been a deluge of retro-soul lately, but by shifting their reference point up a decade or so, Lady manage to give some shine to a part of soul history that has been heretofore ignored.

The Cave Singers, Naomi – The raw, intimate backwoods rock of The Cave Singers grows a little bigger. Ryan Reed writes:

“On their sprawling fourth studio album Naomi, Seattle’s Cave Singers continue to expand their brand of rootsy, psychedelic rock. Now officially a quartet (with the addition of former Blood Brothers bassist Morgan Henderson), they sound more like a legitimate “band” than ever before: Henderson brings a funky virtuoso edge to these groove-heavy anthems, punching up the high-octane soul of “Early Moon” and anchoring the jittery, two-chord pulse of “Have to Pretend” with deep-pocket propulsion.”

Lee Hazlewood, Trouble is a Lonesome Town Lee Hazlewood was one of American pop music’s great outsiders, and this reissued debut from 1963 is a trip through the grouchy Texan’s macabre and somewhat bleak world. The idiosyncrasy of his vision is underlined with superlative 15 bonus tracks, most of which haven’t been heard in 40 years – if at all.

Olof Arnalds, Sudden Elevation

The most attractive thing about Ólöf Arnalds’s music is the sense of mystery. Beginning with her beguiling 2007 debut Við og Við, Arnalds spun songs that felt like recitations from some yellowing old elvish spell book, her soprano curling like enchanted vines and gentle guitar spinning out notes like spiderwebs reflecting sunlight. That she sang in Icelandic — with its strange vowel runs and twisting cadence — only made her songs feel more otherworldly. So it’s no small risk for her to write and sing the entirety of Sudden Elevation in English; like a sitcom actor suddenly deciding to go Method, peeling away Arnalds’s gauzy façade leaves the raw essence of her music exposed.

The good news is that the songs can bear the scrutiny. Sudden Elevation contains all the tender beauty of Arnalds’s previous efforts — the wandering-bard guitar playing, the vocal melodies that bob like butterflies in a spring breeze. And though her lyrics are in English, that doesn’t mean they’re any more easily parsed. The verses in the gently waltzing “Return Again,” for instance, are tangled as old riddles. Though the decision to forsake her native tongue could be read as a bid for more mainstream acceptance, thankfully, Arnalds has resisted any temptation to further burnish her sound. There are no horn charts, no swooping orchestras, nothing much beyond Arnalds’s guitar and voice. All of this only contributes to Sudden Elevation‘s dreamlike feel: You can understand the words and make sense of the general narrative, but the overall meaning remains as alluringly ambiguous as ever.

Olof Arnalds, Sudden Elevation

The most attractive thing about Ólöf Arnalds’s music is the sense of mystery. Beginning with her beguiling 2007 debut Við og Við, Arnaldsspun songs that feel like recitations from some yellowing old elvish spell book, her soprano curling like enchanted vines and gentle guitar spinning out notes like spiderwebs reflecting sunlight. That she sang in Icelandic — with its strange vowel runs and twisting cadence — only made her songs feel more otherworldly. So it’s no small risk for her to write and sing the entirety of Sudden Elevation in English; like a sitcom actor suddenly deciding to go Method, peeling away Arnalds’s gauzy façade leaves the raw essence of her music exposed.

The good news is that the songs can bear the scrutiny. Sudden Elevation contains all the tender beauty of Arnalds’s previous efforts — the wandering-bard guitar playing, the vocal melodies that bob like butterflies in a spring breeze. And though her lyrics are in English, that doesn’t mean they’re any more easily parsed. The verses in the gently waltzing “Return Again,” for instance, are tangled as old riddles. Though the decision to forsake her native tongue could be read as a bid for more mainstream acceptance, thankfully, Arnalds has resisted any temptation to further burnish her sound. There are no horn charts, no swooping orchestras, nothing much beyond Arnalds’s guitar and voice. All of this only contributes to Sudden Elevation‘s dreamlike feel: You can understand the words and make sense of the general narrative, but the overall meaning remains as alluringly ambiguous as ever.

Stubborn Heart, Stubborn Heart

One could be forgiven for at first believing there’s little about Stubborn Heart that sets this pair apart from their London EDM contemporaries. There are aching vocals from Luca Santucci, electronic backings from Ben Fitzgerald, and a sleek noir sensibility shared with James Blake, Jessie Ware and the xx. Eschewing sunlight, the duo favors shadows no longer radical.

Their distinction is a frisson that aligns them with a highly specific offshoot of ’80s Brit-soul — the smooth-but-tortured AOR of the Blue Nile, Black and Danny Wilson. Like those acts, Santucci suggests he’s in the throes of an existential romantic crisis. He croons and he cries and he sighs with preternatural ease while Fitzgerald surrounds him in synthetic backings utterly devoid of sweat. Opening cut “Penetrate” bubbles like a percolating coffee pot. “Better Than This” gets funky with phony tubular bells. “It’s Not That Easy” covers a rare ’60s Southern Soul obscurity, and it’s a testimony to the absoluteness of Santucci and Fitzgerald’s aesthetic that it sounds no different from their own compositions. Stubborn Heart are so finicky with their soul that they head 360 degrees away from it, which of course returns smack dab on top of it as well.

Rhye, Woman

You will discern the primary influence behind Rhye roughly 0.00002 seconds after singer/producer Mike Milosh opens his mouth: In his creamy, untroubled contralto, edged with lingering hurt, you will hear Sade materialize in front of you. This apparition will doubtless disorient you; this voice is, after all, pouring like oily incense out of this white 30-something man. To hear Milosh tell it, he never intended or expected to be mistaken for a woman: “I have no control over what people think I sound like, [but] I’m not going to be like, ‘Oh, you don’t think I’m man enough?’” he joked to Pitchfork earlier this year. And yet his decision to let the first Rhye song into the world without identifying himself as its source has only heightened the impact of the revelation. It is also a sublimely appropriate gender-twisting parallel for an artist who herself has often been mistaken for a man.

Like Sade, Rhye seeks higher energies in the intermingling of the masculine and feminine. The full-length debut, tellingly titled Woman, follows through on the fusion proposed by those early songs — chamber pop and Lovers Rock, poised with their mouths inches apart, whispering. The sashaying beat of “Open” is introduced by a cycle of sumptuous chords played by a string quartet, surrounded by an extravagant harp ripple and nosed along by a muted clarinet. The house-music pulse suggested by the piano chords of “The Fall” is cut with a wateriness that suggests Debussy. This is music that beckons the body, but in the softest voice imaginable.

Accordingly, Woman is a feather-light album; if you don’t train your attention on it, it will almost certainly slip gently from your notice from time to time. What saves it from melting into dulcet consumer-retail murmuring is Milosh’s open-hearted presence. Like the xx before him, he writes lyrics that arrive at the intimacy of sex through the quiet pleading of relationship dynamics: “Stay open for me, baby,” he begs on “Open,” couching a simple request for communication in language that suggest something else entirely. On “Major Minor Love,” he sings frankly, “There’s so many things I wanna do/ I’ll split you into two…you’ll be my body.” Milosh casts sex in a profoundly spiritual light, and the music on Woman glows softly with the heat of his conviction.

Andrew Solomon, Far From the Tree

There may be no perfect time for a parent to listen to Andrew Solomon’s Far From the Tree — any number of terrifying challenges can arise in a child’s life, regardless of age. But listening while a child is in utero, when expectant parents’ emotions and fears are running high, is especially scary. This isn’t to say that Solomon’s exhaustive but engaging book is meant to frighten. Certainly, its tales of children who are significantly different from their parents — children who suffer from autism, schizophrenia or multiple severe disabilities — can be frightening, heartbreaking and disturbing, but Solomon’s stories of the parents who love them are truly optimistic.

For the few incidences of parents who give up on or fail their children, there are many more who surprise themselves with their capacity to love — including Solomon himself, who became a father over the course of writing the book. The book is an enlightening look at parental hardship, community and endurance, and the hopeful decision to turn illness into identity. While it may alarm, overall this tome inspires and will lead parents and children alike to count their blessings.

Duke Ellington, Complete Columbia and RCA Victor Recordings with Ben Webster (featuring Jimmy Blanton)

Any significant band leader who stays in the public eye long enough will end up sparking arguments among aficionados about their “greatest” ensemble. Most have two or three groups that could be debated; Duke Ellington had four or five. This iteration, the 1940s orchestra with bassist Jimmy Blanton and tenor saxophonist Ben Webster, is always near the top, and this mammoth collection provides powerful evidence in support of that assertion.

Complete Columbia and RCA Victor Recordings moves through a staggering array or material and styles. Immediately apparent is how galvanizing an effect the youngster Jimmy Blanton had on the band. The first “modern” bassist, he added a buoyancy and propulsion to the rhythm section that was entirely new in jazz. He also streamlined the time feel, moving it away from the 2/4 meter of his predecessors. His solo on “Jack the Bear” was likely the most closely studied bass piece of its day. Ben Webster brought tremendous muscle to his up-tempo features like “Cottontail,” an irresistible swing to “Perdido,” and a deep but never saccharine emotionalism to ballads like “My Little Brown Book.”

Still, it’s vastly reductive to suggest that these two catalysts made the band. As always, the Ellington orchestra was filled with unique soloists, all of whom were given specialty arrangements. “Concerto for Cootie” gives the eponymous Mr. Williams a chance to show off the expressivity of his plunger mute, “All Too Soon” lets you languish in the luxurious phrasing of trombonist Lawrence Brown, and Johnny Hodges takes you to another world on “Warm Valley.” In classics like “Koko,” “Harlem Air Shaft” and “Sophisticated Lady,” Ellington’s compositions and orchestrations need no star soloist: They remain among the most significant works in jazz.

Interview: Ashley Monroe

From the opening line “I was only 13 when my daddy died,” it’s clear that Ashley Monroe’s sophomore Like a Rose is going to be an emotional listen. The next half-hour, however, reveals it to be so much more: From the outlaw “Monroe Suede” and the self-explanatory “Weed Instead of Roses” to the tongue-in-cheek Blake Shelton duet “You Ain’t Dolly (And You Ain’t Porter)” the record offers equal doses of heartbreak and exuberance, tears and laughter. Best known for her role in the Pistol Annies and offering backing vocals to groups like Train and the Raconteurs, Like a Rose shows that Monroe is more than capable of producing great music as a solo artist.

eMusic’s Nick Murray spoke with Monroe about her shelved debut, calling together Miranda Lambert and Angeleena Presley to form the Annies, and what the sound of the album reveals about her Tennessee roots.

Can you tell me a little bit about your first album, Satisfied? What was the original plan for that, and what ended up happening?

I was 17 when I made it. I was on Sony and I was in the middle of a radio tour, and I got a call that the labels [Sony and Columbia] had merged, and when companies merge everything goes awry. People get fired, you know, everything just kind of goes crazy. Long story short, it just didn’t get released until after I was already off Sony. They just put it up on iTunes.

How was it different making an album when you were that young, as opposed to making an album at your current age?

Well you know, it was my first time in a big studio and getting to see how it was done. But my passion for it hasn’t changed, this time I just kind of knew. I didn’t ask so many questions — where do I go, what do I sing now? I had a little bit of experience this time, but they both were very special in different ways.

Between those albums, how did you meet Angeleena and Miranda, and when did you decide to record together?

I met Miranda right after I made Satisfied. We were both on Sony. She sent me a text saying that she heard that record and that we need to write, we need to get together. Two weeks later I was at her farm in Texas, and we’ve been really close ever since. And then Angeleena I met a few years after Satisfied. Our publisher set us up to write. So we were friends separately and then one night I said, hey I think we all should know each other together.

What is like when the three of you are collaborating together?

It’s amazing. It’s magical every time we’re around each other. I hope it never stops.

I read that you guys agree on something like 98 percent of the decisions.

We really do, thank god. We’re three very opinionated women.

That makes me curious what the other two percent are.

Well, I don’t know. It depends on the day and the mood. It’s never consistent, and we get it figured out pretty quick.

Moving from one partnership to another, how did you come to work with Vince Gill on your new album?

I knew Vince when I first moved here. He had heard some of my demos and we had written a couple of songs, some that were on his last record. Obviously, he’s been a hero of mine since I was born, so when it came around that we were gonna make another record I said, “I want Vince.” Everything just made sense about it — his country roots, he gets me, he gets my voice, he gets my music. So thank god he said yes.

What was it like working with him in the studio?

He’s just so easy and kind, and when he wants something he knows how to get it. We recorded it at his house — he has a studio at his house — and he and I would just play the musicians the songs were about to cut, just him playing guitar and me singing. They would sit around in a circle, then we’d go into the vocal both and we’d cut them live.

You open the record with a line about being 13 when your dad died. When did you realize that’s how you wanted to start it off?

It’s the truth, and that’s when I started writing. That’s the beginning of my long story and all the stories on the album. I just wanted to get that in there first and say, “All right, here’s your journey.”

Can you talk a little about the sound of the record? Aside from maybe Kellie Pickler’s last album, there isn’t much on country radio that sounds similar.

I’m from East Tennessee, and that type of music is just in my soul. So I didn’t really try to overthink it, like, “Well, are there singles on here?” I didn’t overthink it at all, I just said, “Country music runs through my veins, so it makes sense that I make a record of country songs I’ve written and just do it.” That’s what I want to get heard.

Right. So then the record ends with another collaboration, the very funny “You Ain’t Dolly (And You Ain’t Porter).” How did you and Blake connect for that one?

Blake and I are buddies. We do that back-and-forth to each other all the time — we have that very jokey, back-and-forth relationships and always have. And I think he’s one of the best country music singers ever. So Vince and I were writing that song, and it was very clear that we both wanted him, and Blake’s been very good to me, so he said of course.

How excited are you for the album to finally come out?

Oh my god, I’m so excited. I held a physical copy yesterday for the first time. And I just held it and stared at. Like, it really is happening.

Lynn Coady, The Antagonist

Gordon Rankin, aka Rank, the protagonist of Lynn Coady’s The Antagonist, has the body of a comic book villain. His huge, hulking physique defines him before he has a chance to understand his own psyche, and so he finds himself overwritten by the expectations of others. Coady is a particularly Canadian writer, and so Rank’s body leads him to that most northern of sports: ice hockey. He excels in the brutally physical role of enforcer, but beneath the mountainous surface lies the heart of an introspective — and guilt-ridden — man.

In the hands of a less gifted writer, this central dichotomy would be saccharine, verging on Nicholas Sparks-level sobcore stuff. Coady, however, frames the novel in an epistolary fashion, with Rank inadvertently bearing his soul to an old college acquaintance he believes has betrayed him by writing a novel that seems to be based on Rank’s life. Over the course of his emails, we’re introduced to his petty (and physically tiny) anglophone father, who only valued Rank for his size, his long-dead francophone mother, and the act of violence he fears has marred his humanity.

There’s a certain pan-anglo-Canadian sense of location in The Antagonist, with specific nods to that culture that will have citizens of the Great White North nodding in recognition but may confuse U.S. listeners. But who cares? It’s a funny, subtle, and honest long dark night of the soul. Those don’t observe geographic borders.

Jocelyn Pook, Desh

English composer Jocelyn Pook is best-known for her many film scores, including most of the key scenes in Stanley Kubrick’s last movie, Eyes Wide Shut. But her finest works have been inspired by dance, including 1999′s Flood, and now this score to Desh. Desh is a solo piece by the great British choreographer/dancer Akram Khan (“as transporting a piece of dance as I have ever seen,” according to the review in London’s Telegraph newspaper), and is based on the idea of connecting with the land of Khan’s family — Bangladesh. Pook traveled to the bustling capital city of Dhaka to record the sounds of the land and its people (and its weather), and these become as integral to the fabric of the score as the strings, drums, electronics and voices. Those voices, as in several of Pook’s other concert works, often deliver sacred texts from various religious traditions: The opening “Hallelujah” stresses the commonalities between the Abrahamic religions. “Metallic Sonata,” a highpoint in the score, begins with the raucous sounds of the Dhaka streets — the traffic, the street vendors, etc. — and adds thumping percussion; about halfway through, though, the Western sounds of the strings begin to change the meaning, if not the sound, of the piece.

“Honey Bee Story” is essentially a Minimalist chamber music work, reminiscent of Philip Glass’s more lyrical moments. “Remembering Noor,” on the other hand, revels in the sounds of South Asian folk rhythms and instruments; insistent and strangely catchy, it is a convincing collision of the organic and the processed, of Eastern sources and a Western composer with a keen ear. Guest singer Natacha Atlas and Pook’s longtime collaborator Melanie Pappenheim blend their voices to great effect on “Ave Maria,” which manages to evoke both the famous Schubert song of that name and Pook’s own “Oppenheimer,” an earlier work that also had an Arab-tinged melancholy to it.

Josh Ritter, The Beast In Its Tracks

In the artist notes for The Beast In Its Tracks, Josh Ritter wastes no time establishing the premise of his sixth album: “My marriage ended on November 1, 2010. It was a cold, blustery morning in Calgary, Alberta, and I was on tour. I hung up the phone and looked around me.” But while the impact of his divorce certainly hovers over The Beast In Its Tracks — the longing and regret coursing through the whispery acoustic opener “Third Arm” is breathtaking — the record smartly frames the breakup through the lens of optimism, not bitterness.

Of course, it helps that Ritter’s creative catharsis also involved a new lady. “These days, I’m feeling better about the man that I am,” he sings on “Hopeful,” a ’50s-era soul-blues number burnished by torchy organ. “There’s some things I can change, and others I can’t/ I met someone new now I know I deserve.” The keyboard-swirled “A Certain Light” explores falling in love and erasing past unhappiness, while Ritter forgives both his former flame and himself on “Joy To You Baby.” Even the upbeat folk stomp “New Lover,” on which Ritter admits to still feeling “haunted” by his ex, wishes her well: “I’ve got a new lover now; I hope you’ve got a lover too.”

The Beast In Its Tracks sounds as intimate as its soul-searching lyrics, courtesy of spare, folk-inspired arrangements dominated by honeyed acoustic guitar. (On several songs, especially “Heart’s Ease,” Ritter even sounds quite a bit like James Taylor.) The stark tones and textures leave plenty of space for small sonic gestures from producer Sam Kassirer and the rest of Ritter’s Royal City Band: brief swipes of pedal steel or organ, blurry electric guitar, fading harmonies, muted drums. Still, Ritter’s unfussy wordplay and conspiratorial voice remain at the forefront, and deservedly so: The elegance with which he dissects his emotional transition elevates The Beast In Its Tracks beyond its tumultuous origins.

The Men, New Moon

Each of the last three years has produced a new album from Brooklyn’s The Men, and each of those albums has only increased the cultish glow of adoration for the fervent rock band, which has proven itself both capable and uncompromising. Like the subjects of Michael Azerrad’s ’80s-underground bible, Our Band Could Be Your Life — a book The Men would’ve been featured in had they been making music 30 years ago — this is a band that believes in the saving grace of a sweaty, anthemic rock song.

Which makes New Moon all the more puzzling at first. “What is this? The new Elton John?” one would be forgiven for asking upon gentle, strum-und-piano-drang leadoff track “Open the Door.” A direct result of two weeks’ worth of cabin-and-campfire recording in the Catskills, New Moon has tracks like this one, but also like the one-two-three punch of “The Seeds,” “I Saw Her Face” and “High and Lonesome,” which call to mind Faces/Kinks jangle, Neil Young warble and Yo La Tengo, respectively. All of which is a precedent to the hardcore stomp of “The Brass” and the Sonic Youthian groove of “Electric,” so maybe these guys aren’t actually stepping as far outside the underground as it seems.

Of course, The Men are no strangers to genre dabbling, as these last three albums have shown. Much like another Our Band alum, The Replacements, they’re damn proficient at it. Following the madness of Immaculada, Leave Home was a leaf-turner: this band could dip out of the sludge to write songs, however difficult. Open Your Heart was a revelation: This band could crank out Buzzcockian pop and fist-pumping guitar jams. New Moon emerges now as an exciting transition, an anticipatory vision of how we’ll describe whatever’s next. While imperfect, it’s hard to argue with a record whose sole purpose seems to be seducing the listener into wanting more, and in that regard, New Moon is an unabashed winner.