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New This Week: Big Boi, Green Day, & More

Big Boi, Vicious Lies & Dangerous Rumors – Second full-fledged solo album from Big Boi, one-half of Outkast – his third if you count his half of Outkast’s 2004 Speakerboxxx/The Love Below – finds him mixing it up with collaborators as wide-ranging as A$AP Rocky and indie-poppers Phantogram to Wavves and fellow ATL stars Ludacris and T.I. Dan Hyman writes:

On Vicious Lies there’s no genre, collaborator or experiment too out-there for Daddy Fat Sax. What’s more impressive though, is that (nearly) all of it works. Whether he’s chopping it up with underrated indie-pop duo Phantogram on the electro drugged-out funk groove “CPU,” letting Wavves’ Nathan Williams go punk-apocalyptic on “Shoes For Running,” or unspooling Xanax-popping depression rap alongside Kid Cudi during “She Hates Me,” it’s Big Boi’s willingness to go for broke that sells this sometimes overstuffed album.

Green Day, ¡TRÉ! – Third in the punk-pop institution’s bang-bang-bang rapid-fire trilogy of records this year, all in an attempt to scale back down from their American Idiot grandeur back to the three chord yearners they were in their Kerplunk days. You can never go back, of course, but it’s nice to hear Billie Joe work out his sweet tooth on this smaller scale.

Julia Holter, Ekstasis (expanded) – The vocalist and composer’s beautiful, shimmering Ekstasis reissued with some revelatory live takes on her crystalline music.

The Jam, The Gift – The final studio album by the legendary Jam. This is the one with “A Town Called Malice” on it.

Jawbreaker, Bivouac – One of the classic emo records, reissued, full of as much raw, ragged power as the day it was released.

Gil Shaham, Arvo Part: Tabula Rasa – A masterpiece of mystic minimalism, performed by one of the most spiritually attuned violinists on the planet.

The Game, Jesus Piece – The West Coast stalwart catches the holy ghost for his fifth album of classical gangsta rap, featuring appearances, as per usual for him, by half the functioning mainstream rap industry.

Masta Killa, Selling My Soul – Latest from the Wu-Tang’s quietest and most enduring member. He seems to understand his own place in the game: He opens the record with a dialogue snippet from the cult film The Spook Who Sat By The Door, in which a voice wonders, “I forgot he even existed. He has a way of fading into the background.” His low-key delivery and reflective tone never goes out of style.

Howard Shore, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack – Special Edition – In advance of Peter Jackson’s new film version of The Hobbit, Howard Shore provides a more regal, sumptuous, orchestral version of that misty mountain hop. You can practically hear Ian McKellen’s whispered dialogue over these sweeping, Romantic cues. Plus, a couple of tankard-clinking Hobbitt drinking songs, for good measure, perfect for your next really, really nerdy party.

Various Artists, On The Road OST – The soundtrack for the Kerouac film adaptation features period-appropriate bebop jazz and blues as well as compositions from Gustavo Santoalla, whose work you might know from the Brokeback Mountain score.

Peaking Lights, Lucifer In Dub – In the “what it says on the tin” department: a deep-dub dive into Peaking Lights’ 2011 Lucifer.

Eat Skull, Where’d You Go – Grotty, dazed lo-fi dirges from former Siltbreeze act Eat Skull; for the primitivist in you. Some of these even have the vague shape of love songs.

Marsha Ambrosius, Cold War – A nicely sultry Quiet Storm R&B-influenced single from one half of Floetry.

Hanni Al Khatib, Roach Cock – Abhorrently repulsive song title/cover art of the day award aside, this is more infectious, greased-up punkabilly from a guy who knows how to summon the spirit.

Ra Ra Riot, When I Dream – New single from the beloved indie-rockers finds them going surprisingly laptop soul. We’ll see what the album brings.

Marnie Stern, Year of the Glad – Maaaybe an Infinite Jest reference in the title of this new Marnie song? Hard to know, but it would suit the too-brainy-for-my-own-good, over-caffeinated vibe of Starn’s music. Sounds tantalizingly great.

Dec 11, 2012

eMusic.com Inc.

Various Artists, Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968

A landmark that's still wall-to-wall fun, perfectly paced and endlessly inviting

It’s funny, a decade on from the Strokes/White Stripes/Hives “rock-is-back” moment, to re-listen to these 27 tracks and realize just how widescreen the founding “garage rock” document is in comparison. Those ’00s bands made their name by stripping everything away, but the majority of the bands on Nuggets, Lenny Kaye‘s still-amazing 1972 collection of suburban American kids’ experiments with amplifiers, are aiming for widescreen. The Electric Prunes’ “I Had Too Much to Dream,” the set’s keynote, announces itself with a hovering fuzztone shard that’s like nothing so much as an Ennio Morricone harmonica sounding in the distance, signaling as much artful violence as a Sergio Leone western, only Kaye’s one-hit wonders tend to be a lot giddier.

Amazing fakes abound: Sagittarius’s “My World Fell Down,” which sounds like a frat-dorm dweller’s idea of what the Beach Boys were really trying to do with Smile; the Knickerbockers’ “Lies,” a perfect Beatles-’65 snarl; Mouse’s “A Public Execution,” a perfect Dylan-’66 gleeful leer. The Nazz’s “Open My Eyes” opens with some Who “I Can’t Explain” chords before future space-pop auteur Todd Rundgren redirects it toward something more obviously bubblegum (the unbelievably glottal bass sound is pretty chewy, too), not to mention way more studio-phased.

Of course, almost no one thinks of Nuggets as a bunch of songs anymore. It’s a totem, a landmark, a signal shot in the War Against Prog Rock and the Battle For What Would Eventually Become Punk, arguing against auteurist concept albums and getting-it-together-in-the-country songwriting sessions and in favor of one-hit wonders and nasty cases of arrested development. But you know that drill, right? Are you bored with it yet? Then put on this album and try to forget what it engendered. Nuggets is still wall-to-wall fun, perfectly paced, endlessly inviting. While it plays, history, including its own, seems less than relevant.

Dec 11, 2012

eMusic.com Inc.

eMusic’s Best Albums of 2012

Spinning grit with the luminous vibrancy of the best singer-songwriters

R&B auteur Frank Ocean’s masterful and disarming major-label debut channel ORANGE is meticulously structured like a long-planned confession, and as Ocean announced shortly before its release, it presents a major one: The first love Ocean alludes to in lead track “Thinkin Bout You”; the unreciprocated love that haunts him in “Bad Religion” and who ultimately runs away in “Forrest Gump” at the end, is a man. Celebrating an autobiographical same-sex attraction, however anguished, and pinpointing its subject with masculine nouns, is nothing less than revolutionary for a mainstream African-American male performer. It would overshadow a lesser work, but it is but one revelation among many here. Ocean presides over his album like a visionary filmmaker, one who favors bright colors and stylized mise-en-scène to offset dark and raw emotional states.

Ocean narrates ORANGE as both participant and shell-shocked observer of “the sweet life”: Drugs are everywhere. Women are riding him like an escalator to the heavens. Super-rich kids and their super-fake friends swarm around him like bees. Despite his bemused detachment, there’s a fireball of hurt smoldering at the center of Ocean’s psyche, and he drifts through ORANGE‘s dream-reality, hanging on to the memory of his painful but profoundly true first love as if it were the ladder of a swimming pool that suddenly got way too deep. Meanwhile, a fluidly shape-shifting backdrop morphs from kaleidoscopic soul grooves to bleak techno to lush orchestral interludes and beyond, further intensifying his inner and outer visions.

He cries out for help with a clarity that’s both stunning and disarming, flipping double and triple entendres the way showier singers get churchy: He likens the “Pink Matter” of his lover’s womb to peaches, mangos, cotton candy and Dragon Ball villain Majin Buu. His subject matter and vocabulary similarly bares the schooling of hip-hop bards: The multi-part epic “Pyramids” concerns a time-traveling Cleopatra the unemployed narrator ultimately pimps in a motel so shabby it’s still got a VCR; “Crack Rock” bemoans the difference between the death of a dope-pushing cop and a brother who gets popped — one brings out a search party 300 strong, the other dies “and don’t no one hear the sound.”

Yet Ocean spins this grit with the luminous vibrancy of the best singer-songwriters, burnishing everything to brilliance with pleading delivery and love of wandering jazz chords. He’s both R&B classicist and rebel; a buoyant Stevie Wonder with Elvis Costello’s acerbic wit while serving up his own favorite flavor — bittersweet. “You run my mind, boy/ Running on my mind,” he croons to his muse, then whistles to him like Otis as if sittin’ on the dock of the bay, gazing at one of the album’s many pink skies that mask the blues within.

Dec 10, 2012

eMusic.com Inc.

2012 Breakthrough: Sharon Van Etten

[Rock history is full of albums that document breakups, but few of them are as ruthlessly recounted as the one that inspired Sharon Van Etten's devastating third album, Tramp. Beating her fretboard into a spear, Van Etten attacks the loutish ex-boyfriend who ridiculed her and undermined her self-confidence, fully exploring the rage and hurt and uncertainty that accompanies an abusive relationship. eMusic's Christina Lee talked with Van Etten in February about the album's origins.]

“Basically my songs are diaries,” says Sharon Van Etten. “I analyze them and rework them in hopes people can relate to them.” For Tramp, her third album and first for Jagjaguwar, Van Etten revisited songs she’d written before the release of her 2010 album, epic, songs that detailed her flight from Tennesse and a domineering boyfriend to her struggle to overcome that past as she began a new life in New York. While epic was mostly a solo affair, on Tramp, Van Etten is surrounded by a cast of indie all-stars – among them, Walkmen drummer Matt Barrick, Wye Oak frontwoman Jenn Wasner, and the National’s Aaron Dessner, who also produced the record. The help give Van Etten’s songs both shadow and scope, as she wriggles free of her past and soldiers on toward new strength.

Tramp is made up of songs you’ve had for some time. What made you decide to go back and revisit them?

You know what? I never really know what is going into each album. I just end up with this stockpile of songs, and so I end up revisiting songs and seeing if I can use them now, or if I need to edit them to fit where I am. When you go back and find songs that you haven’t touched in a year or something, it’s kind of interesting to see where you were, and then to rework it so it’s more relevant now. I wanted to work with a collection of songs that wasn’t just sad all the time, and these were all [topically] very vague.

Which song off Tramp have you had the longest?

Probably “Give Out,” the second song. I think that’s the only one I didn’t touch that much. That one’s still pretty relevant; it’s about moving toNew York and letting myself fall in love, open myself up and being vulnerable again. It’s scary to fall in love all over again, but so is trying to make it inNew York as a musician!

That seems to be an ongoing debate in Tramp, whether to start anew or let the past serve as a precedent.

That’s definitely part of it. You don’t want to make the same mistakes you made in the past. Leaning from them is important, and moving on from them is even more important.

What part did Aaron Dessner play in shaping the album’s production?

When we first started talking about the record, I didn’t really know what I wanted. I had these songs with guitar and vocals, but I wanted to collaborate in a way where, even though the songs would have arrangements, there would also be a lot more space. I didn’t know how to articulate that, so I had to learn how to describe what it was that I wanted. I’m not really good at technical speak – I don’t know time signatures, I don’t know key signatures – so that was the ongoing struggle with me and Aaron. We had to learn to communicate, and while we didn’t have a set goal of what exactly I was going to do, he knew generally that I wanted to figure out how to do arrangements.

Was there anything he’d suggested that initially didn’t feel right?

Well, when he first mentioned bringing horns in, I was definitely sketched out. I thought that would be weird – like, “I don’t know. I don’t think this song necessarily calls for a horn section.” But he did it in such a low-key way for “I’m Wrong,” that we tried horns in one or two other songs, even though I ended up not keeping them. [I think] I wasn’t sure whether or not it was going to sound like me. I didn’t want to be sappy, I didn’t want it to be classical or silly. So he’d help me describe, if I were to have strings, what I’d want. In the last song, “Joke or a Lie,” he really nailed what I wanted.

Was “We Are Fine,” with Beirut‘s Zach Condon, always meant to be a duet?

Definitely not. When we laid down the basic tracking of the song, I sat with it for a while and realized that the song was meant to be more of a conversation than a story – a friend talking to another friend going through a panic attack. I never thought I’d want to do a duet, but I it ended up making the song stronger.

Let’s talk about albums that ended up serving as inspiration – you’ve mentioned Patti Smith’s Horses.

She has such a distinct voice; she’s always singing in a way that’s almost spoken, real low and raspy but not overly fragile. Her performance is always really strong and emotional without it ever seeming overdone, and the band is also being aggressive without being messy.

You’ve also mentioned Radio Ethiopia, which is still a somewhat polarizing record.

“Pissing in the River” is one of the most incredible songs I’ve ever heard, and it’s about moving to New Yorktoo, which, by the time I heard it, was very meaningful to me. She wasn’t even really doing music at the time. Everyone encouraged her to do it while she was struggling to get by, but she wasn’t sure what she was there for. I read [Smith's memoir] Just Kids when I was working on the record, and I was actually subletting a place that was a block away from where she stayed with Robert Mapplethorpe. I couldn’t imagine what that neighborhood was like in the late ’60s, early ’70s – when she saw that chalk outline [of a dead body] on her front stoop.

Another one you talk about is John Cale’s Paris 1919.

I think it was really sentimental record. He’s at his most delicate and fragile and open – not trying to be a tough guy all the time. I think that’s really nice.

He seemed to be grappling with a lot – the aftermath of World War I and how he related to that.

And he ties it up into love songs, so in a way where more people could relate to it, I think. I don’t know that much about his back story, quite honestly. I need to get a book on John Cale.

What about [Cale's album] Fear?

I think that was much more a diverse record than Paris 1919. I don’t think I sound like him, and I don’t think I write like him, but I’ve had him in mind.

Because of the changes he made to his sound?

Yeah. His records always sound so different from the previous ones, but they’re also very Cale, if that makes any sense.

In what ways did PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me inspire Tramp?

I loved how direct she was and how badass she was. She’s really focusing on the vocals and being really loud on the guitar and keeping it super stripped down. That must have been some badass recording she’d done for that record. She gets aggressive, but it doesn’t feel staged. I just think it’s powerful.

What about Let England Shake?

I like that record, but she got some shit for it: about letting her travels influence her production and being a lot more experimental with her instrumentation, which she’s never done before – and singing differently, trying different scales, things like that.

I’m surprised The New Yorker didn’t like that record. It basically cited her history as a “punk rocker” and said she wasn’t using her guts, but I thought she did – just in a quieter way. Just because she’s not singing with her balls out and a Righteous Babe kind of aggression, about sex all the time, doesn’t mean she isn’t taking chances. I didn’t think that was fair.

Dec 10, 2012

eMusic.com Inc.

eMusic’s 13 to Watch in 2013

We hate to gloat, but last year, we predicted Purity Ring, Kendrick Lamar, Porcelain Raft and Nicolas Jaar would have big years in 2012. Were we wrong? That’s a decent success ratio, sure, but we’re aiming for an even better guess-rate for next year. And looking through our list of 13 to Watch in 2013, I feel confident in saying this year’s hopefuls will be next year’s breakouts. Take a few minutes to get to know them now.

Oh, and one more note on last year’s list? We also named Lady Lamb the Beekeeper and Bleached, both of whom may not have blown up in 2012, but who just signed significant record deals for 2013. As it turns out, we weren’t wrong. Just early.

Parquet Courts

Light Up Gold
Parquet Courts
2012 | Dull Tools / TuneCore

Anyone looking for a shorthand to describe the devil-may-care attitude pervading Light Up Gold, the irresistible debut from Brooklyn band Parquet Courts, will find it 24 seconds into the first song, when Austin Brown first sneers the album's most indelible hook: "Forget about it!" It's meant sarcastically – he's playing the part of a privileged one-percenter looking down his nose through his monocle at the unwashed masses – but it's a good... indication of the jaundiced eye through which Parquet Courts view our troubled times. Like the most beloved cult movies, the thing that makes Light Up Gold so addicting is its infinite quotability. On regional cuisine? "As for Texas: Donuts Only. You cannot find bagels here." On the value of wisdom? "Socrates died in the fucking gutter." And on the job market? "The lab is out of white lab coats/ 'cause there are no more slides and microscopes/ But there are still careers in combat, my son." They drop these bon mots between jagged guitar lines that sound like they were lifted from Wire's 154 – bent-coathanger leads that teeter on the steep incline between punk and post-punk. But Light Up Gold's greatest irony is that its creators aren't ironic at all. In their interview with Douglas Wolk, they stressed the importance of emotional honesty, and as the album goes on it becomes clear their acrid wit isn't the result of disaffection but deep-seated alarm. Sarcasm is the scalpel they use to dissect contemporary culture, turning its ambivalence against itself and exposing is rotten core. Insight like that is as rare as a bagel in Texas. – J. Edward Keyes
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White Lung

sorry
White Lung
2012 | Deranged Records / IODA

In 2012, the widespread acclaim for Japandroids bolstered the profile of other bands from Vancouver, including (and especially) thrashing punks White Lung. The quartet capitalized on this boost, touring with Ceremony and releasing a scabrous second album, Sorry, which melds corrosive guitars to frontwoman Mish Way's gritty lyrics and bellowing vocals. Like their sonic kindred spirits Pretty Girls Make Graves, the band succinctly confronts the anti-women sentiments that permeate society. And given... that those attacks are occurring with distressing regularity, White Lung's music – and fierce feminism – is vitally important. – Annie Zaleski
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Merchandise

Children Of Desire
Merchandise
2012 | Katorga Works / SC Distribution

While most of the U.S. hasn't even heard of Merchandise, the defiantly DIY band had a room full of record execs foaming at the mouth on the outskirts of Brooklyn recently. Listen to any of their self-released records (free of charge here for the time being), and it's easy to hear why; despite hailing from Tampa's hardcore punk scene, Merchandise whip up a racket that's equal parts Krautrock and noise-pop. Depending... on where they decide to go next, they could either implode spectacularly – like Death Grips did this year – or become The Next Killers. – Andrew Parks
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Icona Pop

Iconic EP
Icona Pop
2012 | Big Beat Records/Atlantic

There's been no shortage of pop ringers in 2012, but Swedish duo Icona Pop still managed to make a lot of noise with just a handful of EPs. The group, consisting of Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo, belong to the new class of underground artists pushing pop to new heights with massive hooks and thrashing beats that hit with the force of a champagne glass smashed on the dancefloor. They've had some... help: Their peer Charli XCX penned their celebratory breakup banger "I Love It" and Patrik Berger (Robyn) produced it. Lyrics like "I threw your shit into a bag and pushed it down the stairs" are proof enough Icona Pop are not to be underestimated. – Marissa G. Muller
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Pure Bathing Culture

Pure Bathing Culture
Pure Bathing Culture
2012 | Father/Daughter Records / TuneCore

Pure Bathing Culture are as tranquil and luxurious as their name implies – gently lapping guitars and rippling layers of synth, topped with Sarah Versprille's lazy purr. But listen closely to the lyrics of "Lucky One," the intoxicating first track on their too-brief debut EP, and that cool faÃ§ade starts melting fast. As Daniel Hindman's guitar does a sock hop slow dance in the background, Sarah Versprille rebuffs an indifferent ex-lover by... bragging about the suitors lining up at her door ("Who's the lucky one now?" she asks) and in "Silver Shore's Lake," in front of a rippling, translucent musical backdrop, she laments, "I wish my heart was deep enough." Pure Bathing Culture were 2012's most alluring mirage:foamy waves of sound that hide stinging nettles. – J. Edward Keyes
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Joey Bada$$

Waves
Joey Bada$$
2012 | Cinematic Music Group

Earlier this year, 18-year-old Brooklyn MC, Joey Bada$$ released his first mixtape, 1999, which prompted the question, "Whose DeLorean did he use to jump from that year to 2012?" Now he's released his first official single, "Waves," boasting breezy production from Freddie Joachim. He's cited J Dilla and MF Doom as musical influences, and it's evident: Joey has a throwback style and a natural ease about him, sharing childhood stories over carefully-chosen,... and equally laidback, beats. – Tambi Younes
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Savages

I Am Here
Savages
2012 | Pop Noire / Republic Of Music

The four women in London post-punk act Savages are bringing danger back to indie rock. Formed in late 2011 (and a U.K. media darling by this past May), the quartet turned heads with their abrasive concerts, androgynous look and a stark sound: doomy, greyscale post-punk with boiling basslines and a bleak outlook. (Think early PJ Harvey meets the Pop Group.) With just a live EP and 7-inch to its name, Savages have... kept demand high for new music – and primed itself to become massive in 2013. – Annie Zaleski
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Night Beds

Every Fire; Every Joy
Night Beds
2012 | EP/SINGLE

Like Justin Vernon in Bon Iver or Justin Ringle from Horse Feathers, Winston Yellen, of the Nashville-based chamber-folk outfit Night Beds, leads with his voice. Tensile and slightly androgynous, it swoops among the acoustic strums of their recent single "Even If We Try," and swells against the cinematic strings throughout their 2012 EP Every Fire; Every Joy. It all sounds like a warm-up for Night Beds' forthcoming debut, Country Sleep, out in... February from Dead Oceans; that will surely offer a richer showcase for Yellen's distinct instrument. – Stephen Deusner
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Sky Ferreira

Ghost EP
Sky Ferreira
2012 | CAPITOL

Between Sky Ferreira's Lolita-like stage presence, repeated Terry Richardson visits, and Pitchfork-approved repositioning as an edgier example of post-Robyn pop music (see also: her "Youth Quake" co-stars Charlie XCX and Grimes), the singer's bound to become one of 2013's Downtown 'It' Girls. Translation: when her long-awaited debut album finally drops, expect photo spreads and think pieces everywhere from Vice magazine to The New York Times. Scrappy in spirit yet... sleek in execution, this is Top 40 music for a Tumblr world. – Andrew Parks
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Daughn Gibson

All Hell
Daughn Gibson
2012 | White Denim / TuneCore

As first pointed out in an extensive eMusic piece earlier this year, Daughn Gibson's rural upbringing makes him a man of contradictions. On one hand, yes, he enjoys blasting country music, joyriding down back roads, and pelting watermelons with shotgun shells. But that's only half of the story. As first revealed on All Hell – a low-key release on the label of Pissed Jeans frontman Matt Kosloff – Gibson sings like... Johnny Cash but constructs his lonesome highway hooks around a thoroughly modern mix of thrift shop loops and spooky laptop samples. And now that he's joined the Jeans on Sub Pop, a joint tour/takeover mission can't be far away. – Andrew Parks
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Jessie Ware

Devotion
Jessie Ware
2012 | Universal

In the video for breakout single "Wildest Moments," UK singer Jessie Ware appears, dressed in white, in front of a blank white backdrop and begins to sing. And that is pretty much all that happens. But the thing is, not much more needs to happen: The song itself is potent, big, "Paper Planes"-style bass drums and Ware's smoky alto preaching the gospel of two-way love as a path to self-actualization. It's like... that throughout Devotion, Ware's sneakily seductive debut that fuses the best parts of '90s R&B with current trends in UK dance. Throughout, the music is deliciously underplayed: cool blankets of synths, percussion that percolates like an 8-bit coffeepot and the occasional filigree of guitar. It makes for a new kind of high-tech lover's rock, cruising sleek and quiet as a sports car on a city street in the hours just before the sun comes up. Like all the best crushes, it sneaks up on you unexpectedly, and takes a firm, unwavering hold. – J. Edward Keyes
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Blut Aus Nord

Memoria Vetusta II - Dialogue with the Stars
Blut Aus Nord
2009 | CANDLELIGHT/TANGLADE

With Cosmography, the third album in their 777 trilogy, French iconoclast Blut Aus Nord (fronted by the cryptic Vindsval) completed its evolution from a strange, experimental black metal band into an underground entity that transcends borders and boundaries. Sounds ranging from ethereal choir music to Godflesh-inspired industrial rock are well within its grasp, as are more avant-garde electronic-based compositions, Pink Floyd-ish psychedelia, mesmeric drones, downcast goth, otherworldly Krautrock and ripping, blast beat... battering metal. It's staggering that the group released all three 777 albums as well as the 30-minute EP What Once Wasâ€¦ Liber II (the follow-up to 2010's What Once Wasâ€¦ Liber I) in less than 18 months. It's too bad Vindsval doesn't promote his achievements by playing live, conducting interviews or updating fans with Tweets. But given Vindsval's track record, it probably won't be too long until 888 – or whatever he chooses to call it – is upon us. Chances are it will be just as jaw-dropping and groundbreaking as 777. – Jon Wiederhorn
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Ducktails

Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics
Ducktails
2011 | Woodsist / Revolver

Matt Mondanile, the guitarist of Real Estate, has been recording his one-man ultra chill psych pop project Ducktails as a one man project since 2007. But things have changed for his upcoming album The Flower Lane: He's added a full band (the members of Big Troubles), several prominent collaborators (Oneohtrix Point Never and Madeline Follin of Cults), and got signed to Domino. Early tastes of the album suggest that Mondanile and company... tap into some Steely Dan grooves to make catchy, smooth music. – Evan Minsker
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Dec 10, 2012

eMusic.com Inc.

2012′s Overlooked Albums

The way we assemble our annual best-of list is this: Our editorial team creates a spreadsheet every January and then, over the course of the year, each of us adds to it albums that we love from month to month. And then, in November, we go through the list, album by album, argue it out and settle on an order each of us can live with. But even with a best-of list as long as ours, it’s inevitable that some albums are going to fall through the cracks. Here are some of our personal favorites of 2012 that just missed making the final cut.

In Limbo
TEEN
2012 | Carpark Records

It's easy to get lost in In Limbo, the promising debut from Brooklyn's TEEN. Led by Kristina "Teeny" Lieberson (with her sisters Lizzie and Katherine and friend Jane Herships), the band mixes reverbed girl-group harmonies with jangly guitars and woozy, psychedelic synths. Highlights are the album opener "Better," where Teeny defiantly asserts, "I'll do it better than anybody else, ha!" and the soothing title track, with each of the women cooing a... different layer of vocals over wavering guitars. – Laura Leebove
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Zingers
Milk Teddy
2012 | Lost and Lonesome / IODA

Seriously though, you guys: What's going on in Australia? Between Royal Headache, Total Control, Eddy Current Suppression Ring and Woollen Kits, it's as if all of Down Under is rising up to stage a new international pop overthrow. Add to that list Milk Teddy, whose latest full-length, Zingers, is a sparkling slice of jangle-pop that sprinkles the best bits of the Paisley Underground with just enough angel dust to make the colors... start to run. Gently-bobbing melodies get tangled in glistening guitars like kites in telephone lines, making for one of the year's most subtle – and subtly infectious – records. – J. Edward Keyes
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Playin' Me
Cooly G
2012 | Hyperdub / IODA

Although its miasmic sense of anxiety suggested otherwise, Playin' Me was one of the heartbreak albums of the year, the seductive rush of "Come Into My Room" splintering into the unease of "Trying" and finally the devastation of "Is it Gone." This intensely soulful debut from the former queen of UK funky was as understated as it was unsettling, mixing slow-mo melodies with passages of beatless ambience to create a heady, hallucinatory... sound. It was probably unrealistic to expect such an low-key record to cross over in the Olympics year – even if it did include a cover of Coldplay's "Trouble" – but as a soundtrack to London in 2012, it suited the destabilized mood perfectly. – Amber Cowan
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Jessica Pratt
Jessica Pratt
2012 | Birth Records / Revolver

You'd be forgiven for thinking San Francisco songwriter Jessica Pratt's debut was some lost chestnut from the early '70s. Stark, soft and beautiful, it combines the mystery of Vashti Bunyan with the angelic wonder of Judee Sill, Pratt's gentle coo drifting over gentle guitar like a leaf down a river. Typically, music this spare and willowy can drift quickly toward the soporific. Pratt's, though, retains its sense of the strange and fantastic,... like it's being transmitted from the middle of an enchanted wood. – J. Edward Keyes
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Animal Joy
Shearwater
2012 | Sub Pop Records

Shearwater is known for bleak, brooding songs about birds and islands, at the hands of ornithologist and former Okkervil River multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Meiburg. Meiburg and co.'s 2012 release, Animal Joy (their first on Sub Pop), still has some of the sense of doom found on the band's earlier work – though not quite on the level of a bird apocalypse, as in the 2008 song "Rooks." But musically it's by far their... most accessible, especially in the triumphant opener "Animal Life" (easily one of my top tracks of 2012) and the piano layered with xylophone in "You As You Were." – Laura Leebove
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The Threnody Of Triumph
Winterfylleth
2012 | Candlelight Records / IODA

Manchester black metal quartet Winterfylleth combines folk and post-metal leanings with a streak of romantic nationalism and a fixation on early Anglo-Saxon history and poetry. The lyrics on their third album The Threnody of Triumph delve into Medieval traditions related to death and the afterlife. It's probably just as well that they're unintelligible though. All the real poetry is in their lovely, harsh music. Sometimes it sounds like sort of netherborn melodic... hardcore. At other times a wisp of Celtic fiddle or some deep, droning vocals underscores the folk and experimental inspirations. Wolves in the Throne Room comparisons are appropriate, but Winterfylleth deserves credit for following their own woodsy muse. – Amelia Raitt
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Look Out Mama
Hurray for the Riff Raff
2012 | Born to Win Records / TuneCore

Hurray for the Riff Raff continue to be one of our most beloved eMusic Selects alums, and their third album Look Out Mama is a reminder of why the New Orleans outfit caught our attention in the first place. Where singer/songwriter Alynda Lee Segarra's earlier releases were largely a solo act, this is a full-band affair: "Born to Win (Part One)" has a big group chorus alongside a harmonica, "Little Black Star"... is a hand-clapping gospel tune, and "Lake of Fire" is ramshackle rockabilly, complete with plenty of "shoo-wop shoo-wahs." Less acoustic strumming, more Southern twang. – Laura Leebove
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Blood Lust
Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats
2012 | Metal Blade Records / IODA

Okay, so we know that this album was first released in 2011, but as that was on vinyl only and the digital release was this year, we decided to sneak it into our list – weâ€™ll take any excuse to shout about this band. Uncle Acid are a Black Sabbath-inspired â€œcoven of freaksâ€ (according to their label) whose second album, Blood Lust, is about a drug-crazed sadist who goes on a witch-killing... spree only to meet his own doom at the withered hand of Satan. The music sounds like Electric Wizard covering Queens of the Stone Age, with melodies that, Beatles-like, seem to inspire mass hysteria. Vinyl copies of this album sell for Â£700 and scratchy YouTube recordings have notched up hundreds of thousands of hits. However Uncle Acid do it â€“ and we suspect it involves books, candles and incantations of the Lordâ€™s Prayer backwards â€“ itâ€™s impossible to resist their awesome rocking power. – Amber Cowan
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Crystal Anis
The Liminanas
2012 | Hozac / Revolver

We could say that French duo Lio and Marie Liminana recall all that is great about the classic sound of their country's '60s pop heyday, but that almost feels like it's selling them short. It's true: in their songs you can hear both the smoky seduction of prime Francois Hardy and the grizzled Gitanes-huffing of Serge Gainsbourg, but the Liminanas only use that music as a base. "AF3458" has the same stone-faced... chug as the best moments of Neu! or Can, and "Hospital Boogie" tie-dyes country twang until it's a swirl of colors not appearing in nature. Crystal Anis raises gooseflesh; it's as gently provocative as the tip of a feather on the back of your neck. – J. Edward Keyes
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Movement
Holly Herndon
2012 | RVNG INTL. / SC Distribution

Movement is a fascinating and at times deeply disturbing album, in which Holly Herndon pulls apart sounds on a cellular level, taking forensic delight in how they can inflict acute discomfort. Her musical path began in Berlin clubs and ended with a composition degree, and Movement braids these two twisting paths into an unprizable know of conflicting impulses. Her music is a mesmerizing negotiation between propulsion and stasis. Half the time, it's... tugging coyly at your body; the other half, it's cruelly teasing your mind. Often, it's doing both. – Jayson Greene
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Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi, The Four Seasons
Max Richter
2012 | DG

Composed in 1723, Antonio Vivaldi's four programmatic violin concertos The Four Seasons have in recent decades been the subject of degrees of revision ranging from switching the featured instrument to switching all the instruments to introducing a wild card (on the album The Meeting, Dave Lombardo of thrash metal band Slayer played drums on Vivaldi pieces, including movements from The Four Seasons). None have been as drastic, or as interesting, as the... efforts of the German-born British composer Max Richter. Richter is classically trained, and co-founded the contemporary classical ensemble Piano Circus, but has also worked with electronic group Future Sound of London. His solo work combines ambient electronica with melodic minimalism, and in his recasting of The Four Seasons, everything is up for reconsideration except the classical instrumentation. Sometimes the melody is retained while elements of the accompaniment are reconstituted into a droning or minimalist style: Sometimes the rhythm is chopped up into uneven time signatures. Motifs are stretched through repetition in a way that reminds us of the similar construction of much Baroque music. Occasionally revisions practically result in a new melody, as in the opening movement of "Summer." Most of the time, though, Richter is inimitably Richter, even as he honors Vivaldi. It would have been very easy for Richter's Four Seasons end up a cheap gimmick. Instead it aligns the Baroque and the modern in thoroughly enjoyable and memorable ways. – Steve Holtje
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The Silk Pistol
Happy Jawbone Family Band
Night-People

Few things in indie rock make me reach for my revolver quite as quickly as the neo-beardy-roots-rock-choogle-catastrophe that's been foisted on all of us over the course of the last five years or so. So an outfit called Happy Jawbone Family Band pretty much automatically has me eyeing the exit. Here's the thing, though: That name is a huge canard. No one's holding hands or quoting Skynyrd or soloing for 20 minutes... here. Instead, there's clattering kindergarten instruments, three-sheets-to-the wind vocals, cassette-recorder quality production and a brass section that sounds like it's on loan from the "Pink Elephants on Parade" sequence in Dumbo. Fortunately, all of these gently-worn elements are put in service of genuinely cheery melodies. Anyone who misses the ramshackle, simultaneously ruined and ornate quality of vintage Elephant 6, Happy Jawbone Family Band are here to help you remember. – J. Edward Keyes
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Dec 10, 2012

eMusic.com Inc.

eMusic’s Best Albums of 2012

A comeback heavy in both sound and concept

When Godspeed You! Black Emperor disbanded in 2003, they didn’t exactly go out with a bang: Their last album, 2002′s undercooked, over-thought Yanqui U.X.O., was upstaged by its packaging, which included a chart that linked missile companies to major labels. So when the group reconvened in late 2010 to play a handful of dates, including All Tomorrow’s Parties in Minehead, England, it seemed like a second chance. Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!, their comeback full-length announced just two weeks ago, offers resounding redemption.

Along with their penchant for cryptic, seemingly coded titles, the group’s facility with sprawling, majestically apocalyptic suites remains intact. ‘Allelujah!, like their best material, conveys an unnamable dread that lies well outside the purview of lyrics (they don’t have any) and standard song structures (which they explode). The expected elements remain — heraldic guitars, jarring sound collages, disquieting drones, roiling crescendos — yet they combine in new and unexpected ways. In fact, it shows the band rediscovering and reclaiming its primary mission, which is to make music that is heavy in both sound and concept.

‘Allelujah! contains four tracks: two short drone/collage pieces as well as two towering compositions that lurch and lumber well past the ten-minute mark, contorting into unexpected shapes along the way. Despite being persistently tagged “post-rock,” Godspeed do not stray far from actual rock, specifically the proto-metal of the late ’60s and early ’70s. “We Drift Like Worried Fire” moves with an apocalyptic stomp similar to Black Sabbath, while a Zeppelinesque exoticism/eroticism defines opener “Mladic.” That heaviness lends the album a gravity and immediacy that Yanqui lacked, yet there are no solos, no lead instruments, no blazing displays of technique. In short, no egos. That each Godspeeder is absorbed into the collective makes ‘Allelujah! sound bracing and bold, instilling these doom-laden songs with a sense of renewed promise.

Dec 10, 2012

eMusic.com Inc.

eMusic’s 13 to Watch in 2013