Sun Angle, Diamond Junk

A chaotic serotonin kick lies at the core of Portland power trio Sun Angle’s bracing debut, which opens with a blast of echoey urgency worthy of the Pop Group. Recorded loudly in the numinous hinterlands of Zigzag, Oregon, Diamond Junk often suggests a lysergic flashback to the gnarly heyday of Deadhead-punk founded SST Records — so imagine an overdriven and smeared Meat Puppets, even a disco-version Minutemen. Guitarist Charlie Salas Humara creates a glorious off-the-cuff caterwaul throughout, wah-wah-ing his way through dizzying half-riffs that split the difference between Hendrix and Curt Kirkwood. Nailed to the starry sky by Marius Libman’s cumbia-core bass and Papi Fimbres’s Keith Moon beams, Sun Angle makes music of muscle and allusion with the attention span of a spun-out gnat. The trio cover a lot of ground in three-minute cerebral symphonies such as “Yes Beach,” which gets fast, then slow, then weird very quickly; or the epic “Time Snakes,” which captures an Animal Collective-like sense of the divine before accelerating into a multi-dimensional reverbogasm. The result, as the album’s title implies, splits the difference between precious and disposable.

Aceyalone, Leanin’ On Slick

From the breaks that first propelled Kool Herc’s parties in ’73 to Dre’s minimoogs to Mystikal’s manic James Brown tics, funk has not only provided a foundational structure to hip-hop, it’s often risen to the surface and flat-out driven it. West Coast indie-rap vet Aceyalone has spent more than 20 years riding the outskirts of that territory, through his time with Freestyle Fellowship to his cult-classic solo debut All Balls Don’t Bounce to the later-career triumph of RJD2 teamup “A Beautiful Mine” (aka the Mad Men theme song). So after a long career — concurrent with a stab at making another excursion into grown-man rap — Leanin’ on Slick sees Aceyalone toeing that line between underground rap and the traditions that scene built its base on.

The title track draws off the J.B.’s sound more in a way befitting a ’70s indie-label garage-funk band (or a Daptonian revivalist group) than, say, the Bomb Squad, and the lyrical conceit isn’t the only throwback — Acey’s smooth-rolling delivery relays hustler tales from days when Caddies rolled long and low instead of high on 24s. That’s not the only nod tovintage soul: “I Can Get It Myself” cockily struts through the door that James Brown demanded be opened back in ’69, the handclaps and horn stabs of “What You Gone Do With That” is an old-school road-show with Acey’s own overdubbed echoes standing in for call-and-response vocalists, and the pairing of his steady-job grind motivation with a wailing Cee-Lo chorus makes “Workin’ Man’s Blues” the closest Aceyalone’s come to a genuine but uncompromised potential pop crossover. If the record vibe skews older, it’s by design — leadoff cut “30 and Up” practically decrees it — but if this is the album young Aceyalone figured he’d be making once he approached middle age, he had some right-thinking foresight.

Shining, One One One

During a performance at Poland’s Unsound festival, Shining singer/saxophonist Jørgen Munkeby paused between songs to address a cluster of furiously headbanging fans: “Thank you for expressing your emotions with us.” There was humor in his understatement, but there was even more truth, because Shining’s jazz-metal hybrid is, indeed, heavily expressive and messily emotional stuff — a chain reaction of blast beats, detuned riffs and tortured yowls sent zinging down a labyrinth of strange time signatures. Call it music for agonized physicists, an exploration of deep structure and even deeper chaos, fusing math-rock precision with existentialist skronk.

At least, that was true of the Norwegian band’s 2010 album Blackjazz. Following 2011′s Live Blackjazz, One One One is intended as the final part of a trilogy, but the album marks a significant shift from its predecessors. Where Blackjazz was thick with fuzz and reverb, One One One sweeps away the haze and hones in on fundamentals. The production is cleaner, and song lengths have been trimmed considerably, from eight- or 10-minute sprawls to sharp, punchy, three- and four-minute blasts.

There’s still a maze-like sensibility to the band’s stop-start changes and weird meters, like the 7/8 chorus of “Paint the Sky Black,” but all those tangled passageways lead eventually to a classic rock ‘n’ roll payoff. “Off the Hook” sounds a little like Mudhoney playing technical death metal; the circus-carousel melody of “My Dying Drive End” is as much Faith No More as it is John Zorn. While the hooks are meatier and the choruses (marginally) more suited to singing (or screaming) along, the band hasn’t softened its attack, however. “The Hurting Game” covers an epic expanse of ground in just four minutes, taking in double-time thrash, Branca-like guitar squalls, freeform sax squeal and rapidfire soloing, and doom riffs. It’s enough to make your head spin, and that goes for the album as a whole. It’s a funhouse (or, indeed, a Funhouse) designed by hyper-intelligent robots that’s been doused in gasoline and set on fire. Whatever emotion you associate with that image, One One One positively oozes it.

The-Dream, IV Play

The first thing you learn about The-Dream’s new album is that its title is a red herring. “I don’t give a fuck about the foreplay, I want it now,” he sings two songs in. Five songs later, that’s modified to “Fuck a love song, I need to fuck you,” but set among enough MJ references, throw-pillow piano chords and Ciceronian paralipsis (“And sure I could tell you how wonderful you are…”) to sound almost romantic.

Few other tracks even sugarcoat it that much. “Equestrian,” “Pussy” and “Turnt,” offered back-to-back-to-back, are all sex jams, their hard, spacious beats either suggesting the influence of in-demand Atlanta producer Mike Will Made It or reminding us how much The-Dream has influenced Mike Will. On the other hand, when Dream loves, he loves: Later cuts “Loving You/Crazy,” “New Orleans” and “Holy Love” describe a passion so intense it can only be attribute to, in order of appearance, insanity, voodoo or good old-fashioned Catholicism.

The best track, however, might be the bonus one, on which the self-described Radio Killa brings back perennially likeable NY rapper Fabolous while offering an unexpected admission: “I know they ain’t gonna play this on Top 40 radio/ But the white girls still gon’ ride it like a rodeo.” Then later, an unexpected jab — “Them other ni**as had to do a dance record or the label wouldn’t put ‘em out” — that leads into the singer finally admitting what we knew all along: The-Dream is one of good guys still taking love songs seriously. You gotta slow it down.

Free eMusic Samplers

It’s easy to get stuck in a musical rut. The amount of new music that’s released, at this point, on a daily basis can feel overwhelming, and the deluge can cause you to run panicked to old favorites instead of looking for something new. That’s where we come in. We’ve assembled this page of samplers — all of them free — as a way to help you find your next favorite band without burning through your precious balance or making you spend hour after hour digging through the stacks. Just grab a bunch, load them on to your music player of choice, and let the discovery begin.

New This Week: Mount Kimbie, Boards of Canada, Akala & More

Mount Kimbie, Cold Spring Fault Less Youth On their Warp Records debut, the electronic duo arrive at their own sound. Andy Battaglia says:

“Displaying a remarkable range, Cold Spring Fault Less Youth wanders between atmospheric song forms and pumped-up club tracks, each one unique and ready to blur around its boundaries. “Break Well” plays a neat trick by switching from ambient drama to a funky fit of jangling-guitar instrumental pop about two-thirds of the way through, and other tracks toggle between smart dance-floor fodder (“Made to Stray”) and delicate forays into slower but still scintillating tempos (“So Many Times, So Many Ways,” “Sullen Ground”). All together, it’s a new kind of electronic mood music with signals of more moods to move through still.”

Boards of Canada, Reach for the Dead Boards of Canada’s first new track in seven years is an immersive symphony of glitch and drone that feels like it reaches you on a cellular level. Taken from the album Tomorrow’s Harvest, out June 10, it conjures images of desert landscapes, the sun and the seasons, while also being full of bass-driven beauty. Awe-inspiring.

Sparrow & the Workshop, Murderopolis Glasgow folk trio Sparrow & the Workshop deliver a wonderful, welcome correction to a bad case of Second Album Syndrome. Andrew Mueller writes:

“Flower Bombs” is a reminder of how much their first album suggested a reincarnation of Jefferson Airplane. “The Fast You Spin” gets outright metal, and “The Glue That Binds Us” is a kiss-off tune of singular directness and brutality. On the Fairport-Convention-play-The-Cure “Darkness”, they’re extraordinary.”

Charlie Boyer & the Voyeurs, Clarietta The Velvets-indebted five-piece, who are produced by Edwyn Collins, deliver their hyped debut. Ian Gittins says:

“Boyer’s nasal whine is likely to prove a polarizing factor, but is employed to deft and dramatic effect on faux-shambolic art-rock essays such as “The Things We Be” and “Clarinet,” which also recall those great lost British guitar-wielding romantics The Libertines. It is too early to know whether the Voyeurs are destined to justify the extravagant praise that is being ladled their way, but there is much to enjoy on this canny debut.”

Gregor Schwellenbach, Gregor Schwellenbach Spielt 20 Jahre Kompakt As part of Kompakt’s 20th anniversary celebrations, the Cologne-based classical composer Schwellenbach reworks Kompakt classics by the likes of Justus Köhncke, Gui Boratto, Michael Mayer and Studio 1.

Akala, The Thieves Banquet Despite that missing apostrophe, Akala is one of the most erudite and articulate of British rappers. Ian Gittins reviews his fourth album:

“It finds him on characteristically loquacious form, remembering musical giants long gone on “Old Soul”, lauding society’s idealists and agitators on “Malcolm Said It”, and lambasting colonialism and the slave trade on “Maangamizi”. Few would argue with these bouquets and brickbats, yet the wry philosopher-poet Akala delivers them via winningly dexterous wordplay over limber, jazzy beats.”

Tim Burgess, Oh No I Love You More Django Django, Factory Floor, The Horrors and The Seahawks pull Tim’s solo album in every direction from woozecore to dubstep.

Miguel Zenon & The Rhythm Collective, OYE!! Live in Puerto Rico Miguel Zenon and his band bring greater jazz awareness to their native Puerto Rico. Ken Micallef says:

“Zenon is no stranger to merging jazz and Latin music, as you can hear on recent Marsalis Music recordings such as Esta Plena and Alma Adentro. But OYE!! is first and foremost a live recording, and it’s infused with all the blood, sweat and glory of both a great performance and at times, a street fight. It communicates on a visceral level, each musician improvising and scorching the earth clean with Zenon’s often beautiful, always spirited alto saxophone leading the way.”

Texas, The Conversation Sharleen and co. collaborated with Bernard Butler and Richard Hawley on their first album in six years.

Brazos, Saltwater Brazos’s second LP is a collection of indie-rock songs brushed with jazzy complexity. Says Andy Battaglia:

“On Saltwater, Martin Crane orchestrates a mad indie-rock clatter that sounds effortless, easy, always on the brink of breaking but never really at risk of falling apart. “Always On” strikes a telling opening note with feverishly strummed acoustic guitar, a funky bass line, streaks of synths, and drums that tumble as if played inside a dryer. Over top is Crane’s expressive voice, oddly adenoidal but agile and expressive. The result is indie rock brushed with jazzy complexity and delivered with all the nonchalance of old Brazilian record spinning on a beach in the sun.”

Rodion G.A., The Lost Tapes Vintage sounds from late-’80s Romania, released for the first time on this highly recommended compilation. Andy Battaglia says:

During their heyday, Rodion G.A. conjured the vintage sounds of Romania in the 1980s, using reel-to-reel tape machines and gear that included guitar and a slew of synthesizers and sound-processors. The results, most of which haven’t been released before now, are out there and then some, as you might guess from an opening track that boasts the portentous title “Alpha Centauri.” That star, among the brightest in the universe and certainly the most mythologized, is rarely paid tribute in understated fashion and, indeed, there’s a lot of spaciness in Rodion G.A.’s ode: robotic rhythms, strange phasing, imitations of lasers, lots of eerie-toned synths.

Julia Holter, Maria Trying to figure out what this has been tough. It appears to be an expanded version of a 7″ Holter put out on Human Ear not long ago. It’s a lot sparer and less ornate than her bewitching Ekstasis, which leads us to believe it predates that material. But don’t quote us on that. Can anyone assist?

Kylesa, Ultraviolet Brilliant Georgia metal group returns with another album that tests the borders of metal. Editor-in-chief J. Edward Keyes talked with Kylesa’s Laura Pleasants and Philip Cope here. As for the album, Ian Cohen says:

“Kylesa have always been something of a dark horse among their peers, and on their third album Ultraviolet, they convey maturity by simply being a more uncompromising version of themselves. Their once stereo-panned, double-drum assault has been streamlined to an efficient groove machine, while Laura Pleasant, the more distinctive of Kylesa’s two vocalists, has become the prominent frontperson.”

Who Are…Alex Bleeker and the Freaks

It was a simpler time when Alex Bleeker and the Freaks released their self-titled 2009 debut. “The recording of that record took one day,” says Bleeker, who also plays bass in Real Estate. “The songs had been written, it being the first record and all, throughout my life. They were the best songs I’d written up to that point.”

When it came to making How Far Away, the group’s sophomore offering, things weren’t quite so easy.

“This record is pretty much the opposite experience of the first,” Bleeker says of his 11-song, lovelorn charmer.“I had the idea I wanted to follow up, but I didn’t have an exact plan. The recording process was stretched out over about two years and that’s just from when we started recording the earliest song on the record until we finished it.”

Made during the height of what he calls “Real Estate madness,” How Far Away was made in fits and starts whenever Bleeker and his cohorts had time to devote. The idea for what it would be, however, was set in stone early on. “The idea for the record came together as quickly as the first record was finished,” he says, “but it took this long for it to fully come together.”

eMusic’s Adam Rathe spoke with Bleeker about his love for the Grateful Dead, his theatrical ambitions and what happens when fans request Real Estate songs at Freaks shows.

On jam bands:

I don’t blindly subscribe to the music that is widely beloved by the jam-band scene. I think most of it is really bad. That said, I do love, love, love the Grateful Dead, particularly at this point in my life. I’m in the deepest Grateful Dead black hole I’ve ever been in.

What’s cool about the Dead is that they were always on the forefront of technology and ahead of their time. Basically, all PA systems we use now in modern concert halls were invested by the guy who made the original sound system for them and had the idea of multiple speakers stacked up in a row in front of each other in order to create a big sound.

You could chart the hipster acceptance of the Grateful Dead. It’s probably the highest it’s ever been. People used to have shame about it, people who grew up on the Dead and appreciate them a lot have been sheepish about their love for the Dead. Whatever happened in Brooklyn in 2009, when everyone was wearing tie-dye T-shirts and there was weed everywhere — that was the gateway to the Dead being cool. I also really like Phish.

On being a theater geek:

It’s sort of a sensitive subject. I think about theater a lot because I’m really not involved in it right now at all. That has a lot to do with the fact that the music thing, which is another dream of mine, took off. Which is great. I grew up expecting that, when I finished college, I would move to New York and be struggling to work in theater. I studied theater in college; it was always my biggest passion. I came to it the way a lot of people do, via theater in high school because it was an outlet that wasn’t sports. I had this really comprehensive high school program and the people who did it were really cool. It was the only thing I was really good at.

I moved to New York City and I was interested in new media and video in theater, which was a really hot thing at the time. I was the video guy who wanted to perform, too. I did a performance at the Kitchen, which was a really big deal for me. Then I started going on tour a lot with Real Estate, and it’s impossible to tour with a band and be at theater rehearsals at the same time. I haven’t lost interest, but I’m just not doing anything with it. I think a lot about doing something again and how I could make it work. You can go deeper with a theatrical performance and touch more complex things that you can while playing with a rock band. But when I’m on stage, it’s still a theatrical performance.

On making a break-up record:

I didn’t set out to write a record about heartbreak, but that’s what it is. It’s like, “Oh shit, I guess this is what I’m writing about.” It’s beyond the point of just grieving and feeling sorry for yourself — it’s not sad, it’s just practical. Like, what comes next? In my case, I’m not debilitated by this thing, it’s just the reality as I wade through other relationships and try to make them work as compared to this weird gold standard. Obviously, there’s tons of precedent for it — most songs are sad love songs. There’s some sort of collective unconscious thing that happens. Lyrically, I go there a lot and I don’t know why. It makes me feel better, I think. With a three-minute pop song, the best thing you can do is relate to a broad spectrum of people. It’s something a lot of people have experience with, so it can be cathartic to write a song and also to hear a song that reflects situation you’ve been in.

On being that guy from Real Estate:

The fact that people will give my record a chance because I’m involved in Real Estate is positive for me. I’ve had a lot of opportunities based on that. You don’t want to be like, “The only reason people give a shit about this is because I’m in another band,” but at the same time it’s not like I’m a hired-gun bass player for that other band and I have nothing to do with the creative process. In a way, I feel like it’s all part of me and if that brings you to my solo music, that’s so much the better.

Sometimes at shows, people come up and ask me to play a Real Estate song and I have to explain that this is something else. But then sometimes people come up and say they like my solo stuff more than Real Estate. But that’s me, too. I’m not competing with myself.

On the physicality of being a frontman:

With the Freaks I’m in the middle of the stage and I’m singing all night, but I’m pretty good with my voice. Actually, I took choir class for a long time, so I know how to sing correctly. It’s not something I think about when I’m singing in a rock band, but I’m used to it and I know how to do it. For Martin in Real Estate, before we played a ton of shows, he hadn’t sung much. For him, it was figuring out how to be good to your voice; I’d often tell him he’d blow his voice out. Now he’s a singer who’s really aware of that.

While I don’t get into the whole tea thing, it’s definitely real for me and it’s what I do. The Freaks are a lot more about vocals and the lyrics and communicating those feelings. So, I do a lot of the work for the band in my voice. It’s something I’m using a lot.

On coming from New Jersey:

At this point, that scene [is growing] exponentially. I can speak to Ridgewood High School directly, which has birthed a lot of bands. It’s crazy to me. There were just people obsessed with music who wanted to play in rock bands. We formed this scene in people’s parents’ basements and it was really special and rewarding. The first group of those people to get recognition in New York doing that was the Vivian Girls and Titus Andronicus, and they were an inspiration to the rest of us. It was like, “Oh, man, those are our friends.” I knew those people and where they came from. It impregnates you with a sense of possibility — that’s our scene, if they can do it, we can do it. Now bands like Big Troubles are a few years younger than us, but that attitude we had I can see in them.

Brazos, Saltwater

Brazos mastermind Martin Crane uses conventional tools — guitar, bass, drums, every now and then some keyboard or tambourine — to build intricate songs that lean hard on idiosyncrasy. On Saltwater, the second Brazos album (and first for the fine label Dead Oceans), Crane orchestrates a mad indie-rock clatter that sounds effortless, easy, always on the brink of breaking but never really at risk of falling apart. “Always On” strikes a telling opening note with feverishly strummed acoustic guitar, a funky bass line, streaks of synths, and drums that tumble as if played inside a dryer. Over top is Crane’s expressive voice, oddly adenoidal but agile and expressive. “How the Ranks Was Won” works all the same elements into a sweeping drama, with a casual shift of styles subtly and impressively prevalent on the rest of the record. The result is indie rock brushed with jazzy complexity and delivered with all the nonchalance of old Brazilian record spinning on a beach in the sun.

Kylesa, Ultraviolet

Keeping up with the bustlingGeorgia metal scene has often meant growing up: On last year’s Yellow & Green, Savannah’s Baroness made a double-LP that focused quite literally on adulthood, while Mastodon have dropped the prog storytelling, signed with a major label and partnered up with fellow Atlantans Adult Swim to become one of the mainstream’s friendlier metal acts. Kylesa, meanwhile, have always been something of a dark horse among their peers, and on their sixth album Ultraviolet, they convey maturity by simply being a more uncompromising version of themselves. Their once stereo-panned, double-drum assault has been streamlined to an efficient groove machine, while Laura Pleasant, the more distinctive of Kylesa’s two vocalists, has become the prominent frontperson.

More crucially, they synthesize the rhythmic force of Static Tensions and Spiral Shadow‘s anthemic melodies into something simultaneously darker and catchier than what preceded it. Their range has certainly expanded — “Grounded” is Pantera-esque Dixie boogie, while “Low Tide” is M83 in a metal mood — but rather than following in the alt-rock path set by Spiral Shadow highlight “Don’t Look Back,” they take the message of that song to heart instead and Ultraviolet is a testament to Kylesa’s tunnel vision.

Rodion G.A., The Lost Tapes

During their heyday, Rodion G.A. conjured the vintage sounds of Romania in the 1980s, using reel-to-reel tape machines and gear that included guitar and a slew of synthesizers and sound-processors. The results, most of which haven’t been released before now, are out there and then some, as you might guess from an opening track that boasts the portentous title “Alpha Centauri.” That star, among the brightest in the universe and certainly the most mythologized, is rarely paid tribute in understated fashion and, indeed, there’s a lot of spaciness in Rodion G.A.’s ode: robotic rhythms, strange phasing, imitations of lasers, lots of eerie-toned synths. (There’s also an insane break around 2:05 just waiting to be sampled by the likes of Death Grips.) After that rousing instrumental intro, The Lost Tapes runs off in wildly different directions. “Cantec Fulger” introduces vocals with a cadence and a sense of melody suggestive of their Eastern European roots. Tracks like “Disco Mania” drum up a sense of propulsion and weight directed toward the dance floor — though a comparatively rinky-dink ’80s version, to be sure. “Imagini Din Vis” leans hard on guitars in a way that lands closer to garage rock than anything expressly electronic. At the center of every digression is an endearing rawness and an entrancing sense of sound that makes for music more alive than mere history.

Four Tet, Rounds (Special Anniversary Edition)

The late ’90s and early ’00s were a fecund time for laptop-generated electronic…well, “dance” wasn’t really the word for it, but there were beats, and most of the time the music wasn’t pop, that was for sure. This music had near-aluminum sheen, its surface was glitch-laden or at least crinkly-sounding, full of clearly unnatural but oddly soothing timbral shifts of individual notes that spoke to their creation on a monitor’s waveform. As Four Tet, Kieran Hebden made that methodology his locus, but he also made it sing — made it sound, if not natural, then spontaneous, or at least freewheeling. He also wrote…well, “songs” wasn’t really the word for them, but there were beats, and if the music wasn’t pop, it was so listenable and replayable that, for a lot of people, it came close enough.

Rounds was Four Tet’s third album, but it was his first fully-realized one — the kind of album you’d have expected from Warp in its ’90s heyday. The music-box melody of “My Angel Rocks Back and Forth” balances elegantly against a beat full of stylus noise; separately, they might be too cute and too dry, but not here. This 10th-anniversary version adds a 74-minute second disc of a show from Copenhagen shortly after Rounds‘ release. It doesn’t supplant the original, but its extended variations on the album’s songs are worth a hear, particularly “Spirit Fingers,” whose speedy squelching riffs are taken so far past themselves they practically become ambient music.

New This Week: Laura Marling, Kylesa, Alex Bleeker & More

Welcome back! If you’re anything like me, this past weekend you ate too much, stayed out too late and grappled with your conflicting feelings about the fourth season of Arrested Development. What better way to ease back into the work week than with a whole host of new records? And man, have we got a bunch for you. And so, without any further hesitation, here’s this week’s edition of New This Week. As always, feel free to use the comments to tell us what you’re liking, and what you think we missed.

Laura Marling, Once I Was an Eagle: The fourth LP from British singer/songwriting Laura Marling; every effort from her keeps getting better. This one is Highly Recommended. Ashley Melzer says:

On Marling’s expansive Once I Was An Eagle, a duality of blind trust and blind wrath mark out the twin poles of a journey that explores pure hope and pained confusion in equal measure. With Ethan Johns again along for production duties, Marling and her band venture deep into the brambles of love.

Kylesa, Ultraviolet: Brilliant Georgia metal group returns with another album that tests the borders of metal. I cannot recommend this record enough, so I’ll say Highly Recommended. I talked with Kylesa frontspeople Laura Pleasants and Philip Cope here. As for the album, Ian Cohen says:

Kylesa have always been something of a dark horse among their peers, and on their third album Ultraviolet, they convey maturity by simply being a more uncompromising version of themselves. Their once stereo-panned, double-drum assault has been streamlined to an efficient groove machine, while Laura Pleasant, the more distinctive of Kylesa’s two vocalists, has become the prominent frontperson.

John Fogerty, Wrote a Song For Everyone: This is John Fogerty re-recording a bunch of his old songs with newer artists — among them: Foo Fighters, Keith Urban, Miranda Lambert and Kid Rock. The results, as you might guess, are mixed. The best songs — perhaps unsurprisingly — are the collaborations with country singers. “Almost Saturday Night” sounds natural in its new twangy digs, and the title track is earthy and searching and evocative. The rock pairings are clunkier. Foo Fighters stomp “Fortunate Son” into the ground — it’s furious, to be sure, but it sounds like everyone involved is trying too hard. As for Kid Rock’s take on “Born on the Bayou” — you can probably ballpark how that turns out.

Mount Kimbie, Cold Spring Fault Less Youth: On their Warp Records debut, the electronic duo arrive at their own sound. This one is Recommended, and Andy Battaglia says:

Displaying a remarkable range, Cold Spring Fault Less Youth wanders between atmospheric song forms and pumped-up club tracks, each one unique and ready to blur around its boundaries. “Break Well” plays a neat trick by switching from ambient drama to a funky fit of jangling-guitar instrumental pop about two-thirds of the way through, and other tracks toggle between smart dance-floor fodder (“Made to Stray”) and delicate forays into slower but still scintillating tempos (“So Many Times, So Many Ways,” “Sullen Ground”). All together, it’s a new kind of electronic mood music with signals of more moods to move through still.

The Pastels, Slow Summits: The indiepop pioneers pick up right where they left off on this RecommendedSlow Summits picks right up where the band’s earlier work left off. Sure, there’s a lot of guest help: a couple Teenage Fanclubbers (Gerard Love and Norman Blake) and a couple of To Rococo Rots (Stefan Schneider and Ronald Lippok), most notably. But you won’t mistake it for anyone but the Pastels: Hazy, glistening, and beguilingly filled out with subdued but rich winds and guitars. “Summer Rain,” the album’s centerpiece, is a perfect example, a murmured melody winding slowly in on itself, growing lovelier as the overdubs pile gently on.

Alex Bleeker & the Freaks, How Far Away: As the bassist for Real Estate, Alex Bleeker picked up the knack for infusing classic rock templates with lackadaisical indie attitude. On How Far Away, his album with his own band, the Freaks, he explores that territory even further, filtering Crosby Stills & Nash and mid-period Dylan through the lens of groups like Let’s Active and Sebadoh. The results are lovely and engaging and Recommended

Alice in Chains, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here: True confessions: this band never really clicked with me in their Layne Staley heyday. So it’s a bit of a surprise to me that I’m finding the songs here strangely alluring. Their trademarked stacked harmonies are here reminding me of folks like Ghost and Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats, and the riffs sound as grim and as greasy as ever. Old fans will be satisfied, skeptics may be turned.

Brazos, Saltwater: Brazos’s second LP is a collection of indie-rock songs brushed with jazzy complexity. Says Andy Battaglia:

On Saltwater, Martin Crane orchestrates a mad indie-rock clatter that sounds effortless, easy, always on the brink of breaking but never really at risk of falling apart. “Always On” strikes a telling opening note with feverishly strummed acoustic guitar, a funky bass line, streaks of synths, and drums that tumble as if played inside a dryer. Over top is Crane’s expressive voice, oddly adenoidal but agile and expressive. The result is indie rock brushed with jazzy complexity and delivered with all the nonchalance of old Brazilian record spinning on a beach in the sun.

Rodion G.A., The Lost Tapes: Vintage sounds from late-’80s Romania, released for the first time on this Highly Recommended compilation. Andy Battaglia says:

During their heyday, Rodion G.A. conjured the vintage sounds of Romania in the 1980s, using reel-to-reel tape machines and gear that included guitar and a slew of synthesizers and sound-processors. The results, most of which haven’t been released before now, are out there and then some, as you might guess from an opening track that boasts the portentous title “Alpha Centauri.” That star, among the brightest in the universe and certainly the most mythologized, is rarely paid tribute in understated fashion and, indeed, there’s a lot of spaciness in Rodion G.A.’s ode: robotic rhythms, strange phasing, imitations of lasers, lots of eerie-toned synths.

Ariel Pink, Thrash & Burn: Like Beck, Ariel Pink’s catalog is crowded with one-offs and weird experimental side projects. Thrash & Burn is a collection of noisy experimental compositions that Pink recorded way back in 1996. Anyone expecting the skewed tunefulness of his later work should steer clear: this is gnarly, noisy stuff — walls of static giddily submerge simple melodies, some songs are nothing more than drone swells and Pink’s radically-slowed-down voice. It’s experimental stuff for fans of the same.

Bunny Lee & Friends, Good News: Good News indeed! These tracks were recorded between 1975 and 1978, but they sound like they hail from the mid ’60s. Featuring classic singers like Cornell Campbell, Johnny Clarke and Derrick Morgan, this is light, lithe, sunny reggae — the perfect start-of-summer record, and very much Recommended

CocoRosie, Tales of a Grass Widow: Spooky duo jettison the freakfolk stylee of their early work in favor of some jittery electronic music. What they’ve retained are their strangely-curling medeival style melodies. This group is pretty divisive, to be sure, but this outing sounds strange and spooky and, if nothing else, an interesting curiosity, and their childlike voices blend well with the synthetic textures.

Octo Octa, Between Two Selves: Truly lovely, spacey ambient-ish music from Not Not Fun’s 100% Silk offshoot. The music here is cool and relaxed and pulsing — minimal back beats and gentle synth washes abound, making this feel like 3am deep in a deserted city. There are odd snatches of vocals, but this is a mostly wordless affair. It’s lovely throughout, and is Recommended

Terror Bird, All This Time: Latest from this Vanvouver synth group doesn’t up the ante or the budget from their previous outing — and thank god for that. Their chintz is their charm, and this is another batch of winningly no-fi Casio goth.

TEEN, Carolina EP: We loved TEEN’s last full-length, the spooky In Limbo, and we’re even more impressed with this follow-up. They’re still mystic and spooky and still gets mileage from layers of reedy, spell-casting vocals.

Miguel Zenon & The Rhythm Collective, OYE!! Live in Puerto Rico: Miguel Zenon and his band bring greater jazz awareness to their native Puerto Rico. Ken Micallef says:

Zenon is no stranger to merging jazz and Latin music, as you can hear on recent Marsalis Music recordings such as Esta Plena and Alma Adentro. But OYE!! is first and foremost a live recording, and it’s infused with all the blood, sweat and glory of both a great performance and at times, a street fight. It communicates on a visceral level, each musician improvising and scorching the earth clean with Zenon’s often beautiful, always spirited alto saxophone leading the way.

King Tuff, Was Dead: Our buddies at Burger reissue Tuffy’s 2008 debut. This is a little less noisy and furious than his Sub Pop outing of last year, but all of the things that made that record great are here in abundance: slack-jawed melodies, scuzzbucket guitars and pickup-truck melodies. Do I even have to say it? Recommended

Sean Nicholas Savage, Other Life: If Antony or Carletta Sue Kay made a How To Dress Well record, this is what it would sound like. Deliberately chintzy synths swaddle Savage’s breathy voice. These are soothing, digital-age come-ons — ’80s R&B ballads on a budget.

Blood Ceremony, The Eldritch Dark: The latest from this occult metal band finds them treading further away from metal and even more into weird, dark, pagan hard rock. This is some straight-up medeival shit — replace the electric guitars with lutes, and you’d have a classic of early British psych-folk. Alia O’Brien’s voice sounds even more assured against the minimal musical backdrops. Pour yourself a glass of mead, roast up some turkey legs, gather your loved ones around the fire and crank it.

Burzum, Sol Austan, Mani Vestan: Since being released from prison for killing someone, white supremacist church burner and accidental black metal pioneer Varg Vikernes has released about an album a year. The last few were full-on re-embracings of the infernal black metal he helped invent before he abandoned it in 1997 for a string of electronic compositions, beginning with that year’s Dauði Baldrs. Well, history repeats itself: Varg has abandoned his guitars and is back behind the keys once again, for another batch of brooding, synth-driven dark ambient. As is ever the case with Varg, you have to decide whether or not you can reconcile his beautiful and compelling music with his truly idiotic and embarrassing views on race and culture. My preferred option is to enjoy the music sparingly, and mercilessly mock the cement-headed imbecile responsible for making it every chance I get.

Dark Tranquility, Construct: The 10th album from this melodic, sorta-symphonic Swedish group is grand and sweeping, displaying a heavier emphasis on synths and ‘orchestration’ than their earlier efforts. There’s a keener sense of melody on display, too — the results are riveting and absorbing.

Sonia Khaleel, Shark: Chicago singer Sonia Khaleel takes a whimsical look at capsizing relationships and the difficulty of falling in love on her debut outing. The songs jump from whirligig carinval pop to earthy guitar-pop to pulsing, gutsy indie rock.

Diamond Terrifier, The Subtle Body Wears a Shadow: I’m a pretty big fan of this experimental outfit. Weird, staticky backdrops swaddle robotic vocal samples; drones swell and subside, sound streaks and quivers. This is the sound of haunted deep space — the music that’s surely playing on the abandoned Discovery One as it twists silently in the blackness.

Julia Holter, Maria: Trying to figure out what this is has proven flummoxing. It appears to be an expanded version of a 7″ Holter put out on Human Ear not long ago. It’s a lot sparer and less-ornate than her bewitching Ekstasis, which leads me to believe it predates that material. But don’t quote me on that. Can anyone assist?

Various Artists, R&B Humdingers Vol. 14: Oh, hey, guess what: this is great. Twenty-two house rocking R&B songs designed to get the floor moving and hips shaking. Highly Recommended

Verma, Coltan: A bit of a departure from our friends at Trouble in Mind, this one abandons the rollicking garage and power-pop on which they’ve built their name for spooky, atmospheric guitar jams that sound like they’re designed to score a neo-noir film. As all things Trouble in Mind, the results are completely absorbing.

Young Girls, Young Girls: Houston group delivers jangly garage-pop with a heavy emphasis on clear-eyed melody. Funnel Paisley Undeground groups through a grungier, grittier aesthetic and you’ve got the idea. Recommended

Ex Wife, New Colors: The New Brunswick group Ex Wife is proudly all over the stylistic map. One minute they’re conjuring the dour, doomy approach of the earliest R.E.M., the next they’re indulging in blown-throat scuzz-guitar rave-ups. The music here is mostly speedy and sewn up by ambling vocal melodies.

Keith Jarrett Standards Trio, Somewhere: A 2009 Swiss concert from a ubiquitous 30-year-old trio. Steve Holtje says:

The swinging uptempo tracks (“Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” “Tonight”), are highly classy lounge jazz, mostly functioning as change-of-pace, though Jarrett’s solo piano intro to the former is imaginative and witty. It’s the more ruminative tracks that offer the rewards here, and dominate the album. Most obviously, there are the two medleys: Jarrett’s solo improvisation “Deep Space” leads into a playful “Solar” (Miles Davis) and the epic (group improv?) “Everywhere” follows “Somewhere” (Bernstein/Sondheim). Jarrett’s luscious lines on “Stars Fell on Alabama” and “I Thought About You” are ballad playing at its soulful best.

ASG, Blood Drive: Our pals at Relapse records venture further into melodic metal territory with the latest from this North Carolina crew. Vocal melodies that feel ripped from ’70s FM rock records do battle with nasty, clawing riffs.

Interview: Snowden

Often, when a musician goes nearly seven years between full-lengths, it means something is amiss — either they’re drugged-up, written out or Paul Simon. However, in the case of Snowden (the nom de disque of Jordan Jeffares) it was another impediment altogether: getting free of his label. Having done that, he’s proven that good things take time. No One In Control, Snowden’s new record, is a singular, shimmering gem full of eerie, ear-wormy melodies, unique electronic sounds and lyrics that seem to recount Jeffares’s hard times. However, talking with him, one finds Jeffares isn’t moping about music business woes. He’s got bigger things on his mind.

eMusic’s Peter Gerstenzang recently got the lowdown from the man who was saved from pop purgatory by Kings Of Leon.

You haven’t put out a full-length record since 2006 and your legal wrangling is no secret. Even if it’s metaphorical, would you say that some frustration from all this bled into the new record?

There’s pounds of frustration all over my music, even on the first record. I feel I just got better at writing about it.

So what sort of stuff were you dealing with? Was it trying to get off your label?

Well, I was three years out of school when I made [the record for Anti-]. I toured a lot and about a year after the record came out, there were a lot of changes at the label, to put it lightly. They went from a four-man operation down to a one-man operation. The two heads of the label pretty much went on to other professional jobs. They said that everything was going to be fine. You know, Yada yada yada, but it wasn’t nice. It was “Let’s talk about what it’s going to take to let you go.”

So who’s distributing this thing?

This is a joint venture between BMG Publishing and a label called Serpents and Snakes, which is Kings of Leon’s label.

Are they helpful and hands-on? Or are they just using their name?

My main contact is with the bass player Jared [Followill]. He’s the one who always wanted me. We’ve been friends over the years. I was at his wedding last year. We love a lot of the same music and he’s always really loved Snowden. And when this label came along, he was my champion there.

One of the songs on the new album I found particularly pointed is “Keep Quiet.” Is that related to feeling like you’ve been squelched?

No. That’s looking across the room at someone you long for, but who will not have you. That’s one of the main cases of me, all over the record, of trying to express longing for someone. But I don’t want to just say that. It’s, how do you talk about love without saying “love”?

Is that the same case for stuff like “Don’t Really Know Me” or “Not Good Enough”? Are they connected to that same sort of feeling?

“Don’t Really Know Me” is pretty obviously a twisted love song. That comes out of dating someone that was bipolar. That one is pretty straightforward. “No One in Control” and “So Red,” same thing. They’re both pretty much written about the same person and during the same time period as “Keep Quiet.” Songs about longing and frustration.

“Hiss” is coming from a different place. It actually sounds like dance music.Are there people you listen to that influenced the groove of that song?

I struggle to write upbeat stuff. I always have to work at it. My stuff is usually sort of melancholy, partly because I record and demo all my own material. And that tends to make my music melancholy. That [sad] stuff comes off better; it comes off easier, working alone. I’ll be working on upbeat stuff and then put on something like the Big Pink and then my mix sounds like total shit. And I give up. And I go back to writing my smarmy, neurotic music. But yeah, that’s me forcing myself to make something that chugs. With my upbeat stuff, I’m sitting there thinking, “Does this get the heel tapping on the floor?” This is one of the few scenarios where I’m actually writing, thinking about the reaction. When you’re writing, you’re trying to write new things to keep it fresh.

Reading the press release, I got the feeling you were scrambling around the country, recording wherever you could, and that this album was not made under the most relaxed circumstances. Did you have to go here and there to make this record?

No, each place I was there for one year, two years, in a bunch of different cities. I tried to move to New York but I couldn’t figure out how to. It takes a year or two where you can get to the place where you can pay your bills in New York. And still have two days off to make music.

So you were working regular jobs?

I’ve always worked regular jobs.

What kind of stuff have you been doing to supplement this?

Bartending.

Will that allow you to go out and promote the new album?

It’s why I work in this industry. It’s one of the few jobs you can come back to with no problem.

Did you actually have to take the mixology course?

95 percent of bartending is the vodka tonic. Four percent is the classics: Old-Fashioneds and gimlets. The rest is Aviators, Sidecars and Singapore Slings. I could teach anybody to do the job in about 10 minutes.

You get big points for not writing a Harry Chapin-type song about how hard it is to be a bartender.

Oh my God…[chuckles]. No, you’ve got to dig a little deeper than that.

Now, I have to ask you one literary question: Have you read Catch 22 more than once? Was the name [Snowden, a character in the novel] picked because you liked Joseph Heller’s novel so much? Or did it just sound right to you?

I love that scene where Snowden dies. It always had a big effect on me. It’s the protagonist [Yossarian] and his realization that Snowden has died. They open his flak jacket and his guts spill out there on the floor. And he keeps saying he’s “cold.” I read the book as senior in high school. I really wanted the band’s name to be called Snowden’s Secret, because that was his secret; he was mortally wounded. But it didn’t roll off the tongue. If I could go back? I wouldn’t name the band Snowden again.

The Pastels, Slow Summits

“Indiepop” is a genre with many parents, but there’s good reason that Glasgow’s the Pastels tend to be of the first names to come up in discussions of its lineage. Led from the beginning — 1982 — by Stephen McRobbie, aka Stephen Pastel, the group’s output has been rickety and tender, as homemade as a patchwork quilt and as fuzzy as a cardigan. They play rock-by-name that doesn’t necessarily rock-by-design — better suited to hanging your head than banging it — a sound and style so set in stone they’d have to go full-on brostep in order to surprise their fan base.

Luckily, their first album since 1997′s Illumination doesn’t do that. Slow Summits picks right up where the band’s earlier work left off. Sure, there’s a lot of guest help: a couple Teenage Fanclubbers (Gerard Love and Norman Blake) and a couple of To Rococo Rots (Stefan Schneider and Ronald Lippok), most notably. But you won’t mistake it for anyone but the Pastels: Hazy, glistening, and beguilingly filled out with subdued but rich winds and guitars. “Summer Rain,” the album’s centerpiece, is a perfect example, a murmured melody winding slowly in on itself, growing lovelier as the overdubs pile gently on.

Interview: Kylesa

If you’re looking for a mythical metaphor to sum up the sound of Georgia hard rock band Kylesa, you could do worse than Scylla and Charybdis. Wait, hear me out: Scylla is a six-headed sea monster, snapping sea travelers with its mighty teeth. That one’s Philip Cope, the group’s guitarist and vocalist whose frenzied bark and snarl provide the clearest links back to the group’s metal roots. Charybdis is a whirlpool, spiraling slowly and hypnotically, its placid surface deceptively masking its devastating force. That’s Laura Pleasants, the group’s other guitarist and vocalist, whose ghostly wail — of which there is a whole lot more on Ultraviolet, the group’s sixth and best album — circles the songs’ stormy centers, calmly pulling all ships to destructive ends.

That push-and-pull extends to the group’s entire aesthetic, which navigates nimbly between metal’s rough edges and the aqueous surge of psychedelia. 2010′s Spiral Shadow earned critical plaudits for expanding the group’s sonic palette (at the cost of alienating their older fans), but Ultraviolet is braver still. Even its most brutal moments are gifted with rich detail: The pinwheeling guitars in “Unspoken” glisten eerily; “Low Tide” ¬is built around dead-eyed zombie-monk chanting and on “Vulture’s Landing” Pleasants pitches her voice up to a chilling high register — a pre-school witch singing black magic on the playground. It’s a nervy, multilayered record, one that incorporates its disparate influences rather than being defined by them.

eMusic Editor-in-Chief J. Edward Keyes talked with Pleasants and Cope about spirituality, psychedelia and the passing of Pleasants’s mother.

I loved Spiral Shadow, but listening to it now, it almost feels like a transitional record taking you from Static Tensions into Ultraviolet. What were some things you learned while making that record that you wanted to carry into this one?

Philip Cope: One of the things we tried with Spiral Shadow that was new for us was not just setting [guitar] tones for a particular song and then leaving them for the whole song. We would switch up tones with each riff in the song. And that was the first time we’d ever done anything like that. Looking back on it, I see some places that were successful and some places where I’m like, “We didn’t totally understand what we were doing yet.” With Ultraviolet, we had that practice. I think it’s interesting to be able to put several [different] vibes within the same song. It just makes it more interesting to listen to.

Laura Pleasants: On the production end of things, I think Philip has learned a lot in the past couple of years. So in that respect, this record is leaps and bounds better than the last. The way we did Spiral Shadow, just the recording process, was not my favorite. It was kind of crazy and disorganized, whereas this was more focused and efficient and was just a better overall experience. As far as the material, I think we got our feet wet with some ideas on Static Tensions and we explored those a little more on Spiral Shadow, and I think they were fully realized on Ultraviolet.

Which ideas are those?

Pleasants: The cleaner singing, some of the trippy elements, that sort of thing. As far as us writing heavy stuff, we know how to do that at this point. We can bring that back whenever. But the other aspects of our songwriting we wanted to expand and explore a bit more. And I think with our next album, it will be even more fully realized. I think with the next one, it’ll be like, “OK, after all these years of experimenting, we have our formula.”

Cope: I think on this record, at least for myself, fear just wasn’t there. We just went for it. At this point, we’ve had such a rough few years, we were like, “What have we got to lose now? Let’s just do what we want how we want to do it.” And so I, personally, didn’t have many fears. If I had, I wouldn’t have put out a song like “Low Tide.”

That song feels like the centerpiece of the record to me.

Cope: It was just us wanting to do something different. I’ve been screaming [in songs] for years, but I have a decent singing voice. That song was a real personal song to me, and I didn’t feel like screaming it, so I just decided to sing it.

It seems to get at the idea of impermanence — the lyrics are “It’s on again/it’s off again.”

Cope: It’s just based on how my life has been. It’s been real up and down. I’ve had on-again/off-again relationships with people that are close to me. My health has been up and down. And I’ve always kind of enjoyed listening to depressing music — I have no problem wallowing in depression sometimes. It suits me just fine.

Laura, you said in an interview that your aim with Spiral Shadow was to write a “pulsating, breathing” record. What was the goal with Ultraviolet?

Pleasants: I’m kind of fixated on feeling trancelike when listening to a lot of music — especially with the more mellow electronic stuff that I listen to. And so with this record, I wanted to be able to see it — not just to feel it, but to see it. I wanted to evoke a vibe and an energy that the listener could grab a hold of. I tend think about music in visual terms, especially the more ethereal kinds of things.

So are there particular colors you associate with the records?

Pleasants: Yeah. I think Spiral Shadow was a lot warmer. I think this one is a lot cooler.

You know, that kind of leads into my next question. The lyrics on this record are pretty dark, yet the record itself is called Ultraviolet — which I associate with brightness. How do you reconcile the two ideas?

Pleasants: well, the idea of ultraviolet light — you can’t even see it, really, but you know it’s there. It’s among us, it’s an energy field, but it’s beyond what we can see. So it’s getting at this idea of something that is in our lives, and something we know is there, but we can’t reach it. We can’t tangibly hold it or cradle it.

Do you mean that in a spiritual way?

Pleasants: Somewhat. In an abstract spiritual way, maybe.

Cope: I mean, I wouldn’t be doing what I do now if I wasn’t reaching for something more — even if I don’t know exactly what that is. Every time we work on an album, I’m not 100 percent sure what we’re trying to do, I’m just going out there doing it. It’s hard to explain. Because I don’t believe in any particular religion — and I think for other people, religion gives them the reasons to go through the things they have to go through, and the strength to get through it. So if you don’t have that, you need something, or life gets pretty depressing. So I want to believe that there’s some reason for it all, I just don’t know what it is.

You’ve said that the last record dealt with the idea of “distance,” and this one deals with the idea of “loss.” What do you think you like about thinking about records thematically?

Cope: It helps with writing lyrics — especially because Laura and I write our own lyrics. It helps us to stay on a path and have something that makes sense. I think it helps having one idea that you want to vibe for the whole album. Instead of putting just a bunch of songs on an album, it gives the album a particular mood.

Pleasants: I’m best when I hyper-focus on something. And it was a heavy couple of years for me personally and for Philip personally, and I just knew that this record was going to revolve around certain things for me, lyrically. Musically, it can run the gamut a little more. All of our records haven’t been themed around central motifs, but the last few have. We may do it this way the next time or we may not. It has to do with where we’re at during that time in our lives when we’re writing.

Which aspects of loss were you most focused on?

Pleasants: I had lost some close family members in a short period of time. When that happens, there’s kind of a domino effect of other things happening. So I was concentrating a lot and thinking a lot and feeling a lot, and so I was ready to explore those feelings. It was a catharsis for me.

As you start to explore those ideas, do you struggle with being too open or too revealing?

Pleasants: Yeah, definitely. I think a lot about it. In the past I didn’t want to open myself up to that vulnerability, so I’ve been very abstract. I’ve opened up in recent years, but it’s still not so literal that you can’t take something else out of it. For this particular record and the last record, I have been more literal and linear in my lyrics than ever.

I feel like you can really see that in “Unspoken” — “My own heart has failed me/ youlooked the other way.”

Pleasants: Yeah, that was about a very specific event.

Has the person it’s about heard it yet?

Pleasants: The person has heard it. I don’t know if he knows it’s about him. It’s actually about my twin brother. It was tough — I was really, really sad about this difficulty that he and I went through. It’s been resolved, but it was a hard time in both of our lives. We have not spoken about this song, but I think that we probably will. He hasn’t directed any commentary to me about it.

Do you find it easier to deal with confrontation in song?

Pleasants: Yeah! I’m horrible at confrontation — especially verbal confrontation. I’m really bad at it. So it’s much easier to deal with it in this way. But I’m learning. As a grown-ass woman, I’m learning.

The first line of the record is, “Watching your back, detractors everywhere.” It almost feels like a little summary of the last few years in the life of the band.

Cope: That line could describe the whole history of the band. There’s always going to be people out there that try to push you down or make you feel like what you’re doing isn’t worthwhile, or what you’re doing is not as good as it should be. There’s always going to be someone out there that’s not with you.

How conscious are you of trying to satisfy those expectations?

Cope: We’re a little conscious of it. We don’t want to put out records that will alienate the people who got us to where we are now. We’ve been very lucky to even be able to make six records, and we’ve had people supporting us every step of the way. We don’t want to say, “Well, screw all those people, we’re going to do what we want and they can like it or not.” We know where we came from and how we’ve gotten to where we are, and there’s a certain amount of respect that we have for that. Even though sometimes we may go, “OK, this is getting kind of weird,” in the back of our head we won’t push it so far that people who like what we’ve done so far can’t relate to it at all.

Laura, your vocal presence is a lot more pronounced on this record than on previous records. Are there any moments you were particularly proud of?

Pleasants: There are moments on the record that are special to me for personal reasons. But I do think my vocals overall sound a lot better than they ever have, and I think that has to do with me singing a lot more over the last couple years — whether it’s singing around the house or on tour. I’m more comfortable with my own range and my own voice than I ever have been in the past. You have to understand: I never set out to be a singer. It never really interested me that much. It wasn’t really until recent years that I was like, “OK, I need to step it up a little bit.”

I feel like you can really hear that in “Vulture’s Landing,” the contrast between the sweetness of your voice and the kind of bleak, turbulent music.

Cope: [Drummer]Eric [Hernandez] wrote the riff for that, and the thing we found strange about it was that it sounded like older Kylesa. So we let him play his parts on it and get it where he wanted it, and Laura came in with her part. People are either gonna love me or hate me for this, but I kinda talked her into going a little higher register than she normally does with her vocals. I just thought it fit, and it gave the song a different vibe than what we normally do. If we had just screamed over it, it would have just sounded like an older song. This way, it’s like taking something from our past and adding something new to it.

Pleasants: It was a cool idea to contrast that with the heaviness of the music — especially that song, since it has its dirgey, noise-rocky moments but then it has this higher-pitched female voice.

Another moment to me that feels really brave and really different for you guys is “Drifting.” It’s such a gorgeous, textured song.

Pleasants: That song is really simple. It’s literally just three chords. But that came about because… [pauses] I haven’t told many people this, but my mom was really sick. She had cancer, and me and my brothers moved back home. They took leave from work, my brother moved from California and quit his job, I took leave from the band. And we went home. And we were just hanging out with her, helping her, spending time with her. And she was in bed one day, and I just kind of strolled in and I was strumming on this guitar and humming to her. She was high on morphine, but she was like, “It’s so pretty, I love it. Keep playing.” So I did. And those chords ended up being the last bit of music I ever played for her. And so I knew that I needed to write a song from those chords for her. And that’s how that song came about. And it’s absolutely for her, and about her.

You know, hearing the story, it all makes sense. The note I had written down about this song was, “Most of the record is fighting loss. This song accepts it.”

Pleasants: Yeah, I was trying really hard to make peace with it. And I doubt we’ll ever play that song live, but it was really important for me as a person to get that song on the record. Her getting ill and her health turning pretty quickly… [pauses] I thought I knew a lot about life, but I didn’t know shit. And it’s not that I’m a better person now, it’s just different. I have a much keener insight into my own longevity.

Six Degrees of Four Tet’s Rounds

It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five other albums we've deemed related in some way. In some cases these connections are obvious, in others they are tenuous. But, most important to you, all of the records are highly, highly recommended.

Laura Marling, Once I Was an Eagle

“Undine, make me more naïve,” sings Laura Marling a little more than halfway into her fourth studio album. In the old folklore, Undine was a water nymph that gave up immortality for the love of a man; her act of devotion was met with unfaithfulness and her love’s betrayal with a curse. On Marling’s expansive Once I Was An Eagle, this duality of blind trust and blind wrath mark out the twin poles of a journey that explores pure hope and pained confusion in equal measure.

With Ethan Johns again along for production duties, Marling and her band venture deep into the brambles of love. The first several tracks flow together, drawing the listener into a familiar landscape of open chords, haunting cello, and stripped down percussion. The driving folk-rocker “Master Hunter,” meanwhile, borrows Dylan’s classic sneering kiss-off “It ain’t me, babe” — a pose that melts with the following song, the devastating “Little Love Caster.” Over muted flamenco guitar trills and spellbinding strings, Marling sings “I can’t seem to say I’d like you to stay,” a line that reads as much a tender confessional as casual cruelty.

“Love’s not easy,” Marling concludes on album closer, “Saved These Words.” If it’s a final verdict on Marling’s feelings on the subject, it’s a cautiously hopeful one. After struggling with trust (“I Was an Eagle”), the vagaries of timing (“Take the Night Off”), and regret (“You Know”), she settles on faith. “When you’re ready, into my arms come,” she sings, risks be damned.

Baths, Obsidian

“I hope people understand that I’m not the depressed, suicidal, and death-obsessed person the record may paint me as being,” says Will Wiesenfeld, referring to Obsidian, his second full-length release as Baths. “These are just darker areas that I wanted to explore.”

He could have fooled us. On Obsidian, Wiesenfeld doesn’t just explore darkness; he full-on embraces it, without a hint of distance to assure us that he’s not actually seconds away from slitting his wrists with the same volcanic glass that gives the record its name. So while Wiesenfeld was photographed with furry animals for his last album and is clearly a connoisseur of cutesy emoji icons on Twitter, the lyrical content — death, doubt, lustful, loveless sex — and minor-keyed melodies this time around match the cover’s grey skies and grinning gargoyles.

Here’s the catch, though: As bleak and broken as some of the songs sound, glimmers of hope poke through the gloom thanks to Wiesenfeld’s lavish layers of field recordings, swoon-worthy strings, fluttering falsettos, plaintive piano progressions and snap-crackle-pop beats. It’s as if the Postal Service went off their meds and smeared their electro-pop productions with mascara and mud. The result is like a photo-negative version of Give Up, one that takes that album title at face value. Whatever darkness Wiesenfeld had to plumb to turn up Obsidian, we are the better for it.

Kylesa, Ultraviolet

Keeping up with the bustlingGeorgia metal scene has often meant growing up: On last year’s Yellow & Green, Savannah’s Baroness made a double-LP that focused quite literally on adulthood, while Mastodon have dropped the prog storytelling, signed with a major label and partnered up with fellow Atlantans Adult Swim to become one of the mainstream’s friendlier metal acts. Kylesa, meanwhile, have always been something of a dark horse among their peers, and on their third album Ultraviolet, they convey maturity by simply being a more uncompromising version of themselves. Their once stereo-panned, double-drum assault has been streamlined to an efficient groove machine, while Laura Pleasant, the more distinctive of Kylesa’s two vocalists, has become the prominent frontperson.

More crucially, they synthesize the rhythmic force of Static Tensions and Spiral Shadow‘s anthemic melodies into something simultaneously darker and catchier than what preceded it. Their range has certainly expanded — “Grounded” is Pantera-esque Dixie boogie, while “Low Tide” is M83 in a metal mood — but rather than following in the alt-rock path set by Spiral Shadow highlight “Don’t Look Back,” they take the message of that song to heart instead and Ultraviolet is a testament to Kylesa’s tunnel vision.

Keith Jarrett, Somewhere

This 30-year-old group seems ubiquitous, with 19 albums plus two DVDs released before this one. However, some of that was late release of stockpiled concert recordings; this 2009 Swiss concert is notable as their first post-2002 recording to come out.

The swinging uptempo tracks (“Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” “Tonight”), are highly classy lounge jazz, mostly functioning as change-of-pace, though Jarrett’s solo piano intro to the former is imaginative and witty. It’s the more ruminative tracks that offer the rewards here, and dominate the album. Most obviously, there are the two medleys: Jarrett’s solo improvisation “Deep Space” leads into a playful “Solar” (Miles Davis) and the epic (group improv?) “Everywhere” follows “Somewhere” (Bernstein/Sondheim). Jarrett’s luscious lines on “Stars Fell on Alabama” and “I Thought About You” are ballad playing at its soulful best.

Gary Peacock — arguably the best active jazz bassist — is never content to offer predictable support, his creativity always enlivening tracks without distorting them. Though drummer Jack DeJohnette can’t cut loose here like he does in other contexts, he’s sounding more comfortable (in a good way) in this group. Changeless and Bye Bye Blackbird remain this trio’s high points, but Somewhere is quite satisfying.