Various Artists, Stash Rituals: Mexican Summer/Software Spring 2012 Sampler

Mexican Summer is only a five-year-old label, but in that short time it has quickly grown irreplaceable. You might know them best for releasing Crazy For You, the first full-length album from former eMusic Selects alum Bethany Cosentino, aka Best Coast, but their taste for watery, jangly lo-fi indie rock is stellar across the board, running the gamut from Kurt Vile and No Joy to The Fresh & Onlys and more. Basically, their palette runs the gamut: If you are an electronic-music fan with a jones for soundtracks and weird, arty, found-sound stuff, they have released vital music by Daniel Lopatin (better known as Oneohtrix Point Never), Lilacs & Champagne, and even horror soundtracks by John Carpenter. They are one of the best, and this sampler is a free reason to get to know them better.

Rage Against The Machine, Rage Against The Machine – XX (20th Anniversary Edition)

Though their music and their politics would grow more effective as they grew more nuanced, Rage Against the Machine's self-titled 1992 debut still packs a certain bratty rush. That gleefully inchoate — and occasionally just plain boneheaded — rebellious streak is best captured by the utterly shameless, profanity-heavy, eighth-grade-level agit-prop delivered at the end of "Killing in the Name." A beyond-blunt kiss-off to any and all authority figures, it remains Rage's most iconic nine-word statement, for better or worse.

But if Zach De La Rocha is still a little too comfortable complaining about a generic "system" this early in the band's career, his three bandmates help him sell the vague admonishments to big government (and bigger business) with fusions both of-their-time and prophetic. The slap-bass and pogo-stick grooves of "Take the Power Back" and "Bullet in the Head" are closer to peppy, turn-of-the-'90s California party-metal than the brawny, funk-informed heaviness of the band's later albums. But guitarist Tom Morello had already happened upon his classic mix of hip-hop-informed texture (the sonar-esque squeals on "Bullet in the Head") and straight-up hard rock raunch (the near-southern rock riff that boogies lead-footed through "Bombtrack").

Some of the lesser-known tracks actually contain some of the album's best music, and Morello's most forceful playing: the chunky metallic twang of "Fistful of Steel"; the near-psychedelic, reverb-glazed dirge "Township Rebellion"; and the surprisingly atmospheric "Settle for Nothing," which merges the "extended psychotic breakdown" howling of Rollins-era Black Flag over a leaden groove squalling with feedback. It's the invention of the deep cuts that gives RATM a life beyond the historically weighted tracks that made the band's name.

Various Artists – Bloodshot Records, Bloodshot Records Sampler

In truth, Bloodshot Records’ future was revealed in the title of the first album they released nearly 20 years ago: For a Life of Sin: Insurgent Chicago Country. Though their roster has, over time, expanded far outside their home city, Bloodshot is still the home of “insurgent country” and rabble-rousing roots rock, providing a home to time-tested pioneers like Andre Williams and Graham Parker and welcoming new faces, like JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound. What binds all the bands together is their dedication to classic American music — most of the acts on the Bloodshot roster fall somewhere along the country/blues spectrum — and their deep-seated iconoclasm. The music may not be punk in sound, but it is undeniably punk in attitude, proudly rough-around-the-edges and always ready with a shot of Jack or a light for your smokes.

Bad Brains, Into the Future

In the introduction to “Popcorn,” the first song from Bad Brains’ ninth album Into the Future, frontman H.R. says, “Give thanks and praise/ You’re doing a beautiful job.” He might as well be talking directly to his band mates.

Blending the PMA (positive mental attitude) Bad Brains brought to heavy music 30 years ago with a THC-infused hybrid of DIY-punk, angular guitar metal and spacey dub, the band has recaptured much of the sonic glory of 1986′s I Against I without trying to replicate the ferocity of the era. The first Bad Brains studio album since 2007′s Build a Nation (which was produced by the late Beastie Boy Adam Yauch), Into to the Future is galvanic and multifaceted, packed with mid-song rhythm and tempo changes and sudden shifts from rock to reggae that illustrate the Brains are still hungry, if not as frantic as they were in when they first burst onto the New York hardcore scene.

Overall, the group has slowed down a bit and experimented more, and H.R. has abandoned his snarky snarl for softer, more melodic and sometimes spectral vocals. The heterogeneous, almost schizophrenic quality of the songs gives the Bad Brains room to explore, experiment with four-to-the-floor beats and spoken word lunacy as well as their usual reggae riddims and echoey stoner-dub jams redolent of King Tubby and Lee Scratch Perry. As multifaceted as the music is, the message is straightforward and doesn’t stray far from the tones of self-empowerment and optimism Bad Brains were founded with. “Unity for all, no matter the color/ The Youth of today is the man of tomorrow,” exhales H.R. in a wobbly, ethereal voice on “Youth of Today.” The lyrics of “Fun,” are even simpler and almost anti-rock: “Music is fun, school is fun, love is fun.”

Into the Future isn’t the best possible introduction to the Bad Brains. Newcomers who want to discover the band’s hardcore accomplishments should seek out Bad Brains and Rock for Light. Those looking for the group’s most metallic songs need look no further than Quickness. But Into the Future is an excellent case study of how a pioneering, underground band can remain relevant 30 years after its formation. Not only are Bad Brains still credible, they’ve maintained their vitality by retaining their self-belief and doing what they love.

Kylesa, From the Vaults, Vol. 1

Along with Georgia peers Mastodon and Baroness, Savannah’s Kylesa offers a flavorful take on psychedelic sludge and crust punk that’s simultaneously dense and expansive. From the Vaults, Vol. 1, which follows the band’s landmark 2010 album Spiral Shadow, is a collection of rare and previously unreleased material along with one newly written song.

That tune, “End Truth,” is a dynamic jawdropper that starts with a mutated bass line and atmospheric wah-wah guitars, builds with a series of melodic licks atop layered, otherworldly textures, and hits zero gravity with the sedate, intertwining vocals of Philip Cope and Laura Pleasants. The two repeat the approach with equally enjoyable results on the grungy “Paranoid Tempo.”

Whether the style is a sign of what’s to come from Kylesa or a caution-to-the-wind experiment, it works, offsetting some of the more hardcore-rooted — but not necessarily less compelling — songs on the album. “Inverse” is slow and raging, with shouted vocals that slice through murky, chugging guitars, and “Wavering” is faster and, peaking with ascending guitar harmonies that yield to a jarring off-time rhythm.

Elsewhere, the deep, reverberating stoner-jam “Bass Salts” would be mere filler if it didn’t lead to the bi-polar head trip “Between Silence and Sound II,” the heavier original of which was on 2000′s Time Will Fuse its Worth. And while “Drum Jam” might exude the kind of self-indulgence that motives beer breaks at concerts, a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” reveals the roots of Kylesa’s mindwarped approach to hardcore and metal. With From the Vaults, Vol. 1, Kylesa dust off and modify some of oldest material, and effectively illustrate where they’ve come from and hopefully where they’re headed.

The Twilight Sad, No One Can Ever Know: The Remixes

In one sense, No One Can Ever Know already was a Twilight Sad remix album: The Scottish shoegazers didn’t alter their songwriting approach much, but traded geysers of distorted guitars for sleek synthesizer textures and the cavernous, warm production of Peter Katis for the guidance of dance maven Andy Weatherall. It’s a rewarding listen largely because it keeps Twilight Sad’s strongest traits at the forefront, namely James Graham’s compelling brogue and a keen ability to create hackles-raising tension at any volume.

Those are largely jettisoned for No One Can Ever Know: The Remixes and, like nearly all indie rock remix records, you might initially scoff at its mere existence. At the very least, it shows Twilight Sad’s commitment to electronic music in a way the original LP couldn’t or wouldn’t. Working with only four of the original LP’s nine tracks, most of the charges herein expand their portfolio by giving us exactly what you’d expect from them, whether or not they were working with a Twilight Sad track. Com Truise turns in a typically VHS-retro rendering of “Sick,” Liars take the most Liars-esque of the originals (“Nil”) and applies another coat of murky grey, while Brokenchord go for glitchy deconstruction. The JD Twitch/Optimo instrumental remix of “Alphabet” is the most radical of the remixes, but it begs the question of why or how a Twilight Sad song can exist without Graham.

It all makes for a record that might actually be more of interest to people who haven’t heard the original or found issue with Twilight Sad’s instantly recognizable traits. For everyone else, The Remixes functions better as a peer evaluation rather than a guide to their future endeavors.

Six Degrees of Rage Against the Machine

A genuinely experimental record, with Springsteen playing all the (sparse) instruments, recording on a lo-fi 8-track, and peering deep into the lives of those for whom there's no escape, certainly not any of the sort hoped for in earlier songs such as "Born to Run," "Promised Land," and so many others. Its characters are pursued by demons — both inner and outer — of the kind that can turn the American dream into a nightmare. The stories are bleak, but also complex and compelling — the events described in "Highway Patrolman" in fact inspired the Sean-Penn-directed film The Indian Runner.

Emma Donoghue, Astray

Loosely organized around themes of displacement and exile, Emma Donoghue’s follow up to her shattering Room is something of a palate cleanser. Its 14 tales are historical in origin, spanning from the American Revolution to the 20th century, and most are set in or at least point toward the New World, mirroring Donoghue’s status as an expatriate Irishwoman living in Canada.

As one would expect from a collection whose origins span more than a decade — the earliest were published in 1998, the latest in 2012 — the stories vary widely in tone. The notes that follow each one, detailing their factual bases and often serving as an extra-textual epilogue, also serve as speed bumps, reminding readers to pause and reset before continuing on. From “Man and Boy,” in which a British elephant trainer’s prized animal is sold into P.T. Barnum’s care, to “What Remains,” wherein Canadian sculptors Frances Loring and Florence Wyle cope with their descent into dementia, each brief episode is an undiscovered country with its own rules, its own way of being.

The stories in Astray never wear out their welcome, and the best use their brevity as a weapon. “Counting the Days” interweaves the thoughts of a husband and wife separated by a transatlantic crossing. As she flees the Irish famine, he lies dying, choleric, in Montreal, the story’s structure fashioning a reunion that will never be, a dream cut short. “The Hunt” finds its way into the redcoats’ ranks via a young German mercenary, little more than a slave himself. As the British soldiers systematically rape every woman and girl they come across, the young boy absents himself, leaving the worst atrocities outside his field of vision but well within the range of our imagination.

So it is too with the connections between Astray‘s far-flung tales. There’s little overlap, but together they form a partly finished map, leaving readers to chart their own course and navigate the wilds between them.

Chinua Achebe, There Was a Country

There Was a Country, Chinua Achebe’s firsthand account of the Nigerian civil war, which lasted for almost three years and claimed more than a million lives, marries poetry and prose to create a straightforward, in-depth history. No background knowledge of Nigeria is needed to understand the story — Achebe carefully explains every link in this complex chain of events.

In short, the Igbo ethnic group, of which Achebe is a member, emphasized education, which brought them prosperity and a pathway to assimilation under British colonial rule. Their successes made other Nigerians resent them, which culminated in widespread massacres that went overlooked by the Nigerian government. When the Igbo people pronounced Biafra, the eastern region of Nigeria, their own independent nation, it catalyzed a civil war and a series of scarring humanitarian tragedies.

Achebe’s passion is clear throughout the book, whether he’s discussing Nigeria’s potential for democratic rule or the artist’s role in contextualizing political conflict. At times, it can seem like Achebe is trying to cover too much ground. Still, his ambitious storytelling style makes sense in context: He’s a high-profile writer who’s been embraced by a Western media that isn’t exactly preoccupied with Nigerian politics. In a sense, his writing helps to fill a void. As Achebe puts it, “I worry when somebody from one particular tradition stands up and says, ‘The novel is dead. The story is dead.’ I find this to be unfair, to put it mildly. You told your own story, and now you’re announcing the novel is dead. Well, I haven’t told mine yet.” In There Was a Country, Achebe both tells his story and emphasizes the right of others to do the same.

eMusic’s Black Friday Sale

This is not exactly the same Chairlift that buzz-catching bloggers fell in love with on the back of a 2008 iPod Nano ad. In the four years since, the Brooklyn-based trio re-released its indie debut Does You Inspire You on a major label and became a duo after the departure of founding member Aaron Pfenning. On Something, the group hooks up with Franz Ferdinand producer Dan Carey and radically expands both its sound and vibe. Whereas the original Chairlift flipped between Twin Peaks spookiness and synth-pop spoofiness, its 2012 incarnation visits several places between and beyond.

Frontwoman Caroline Polachek has become a far more confident singer, not ashamed to let out her inner Sarah McLachlan, which in the context of the band’s brighter and bolder palate is not at all a bad thing: “Take It Out on Me” floats on a raft of serene but sticky synths while its lyrics suggest either S&M or an affair gone askew – an uncanny combination that recalls McLachlan’s seductive yet unsettling “Possession.” Sleek ballads like “Cool As a Fire” reveal a far more earnest and finessed beauty in Polachek’s delivery that transcends Does You‘s archness. Yet some of its playfulness remains intact here, bolstered by firmer beats and more dexterous basslines, particularly on jaunty opening cut “Sidewalk Safari” and the nonsensical but supremely hooky “Amanaemonesia.” It’s unclear if Chairlift is reaching for deeper meaning, but the prettier and more propulsive Something suggests that the shape-shifting pair is keeping all options open.

New This Week: El Perro Del Mar, Mogwai, Björk & More

El Perro Del Mar, Pale Fire After chronicling a break-up on her last album, Swedish chanteuse Sarah Assbring, previously known for her subtlety and restraint, releases a house music album about house music: every synth pulse and machine rhythm sounds like it was recorded between 1986 and 1991. Barry Walters writes:

“The key influence here is Larry Heard, the super-influential but under-recognised Chicago musician who pioneered the heady, jazz-influenced vibes of deep house with Mr Fingers’ “Can You Feel It”, a record the sound of which is all over this one.”

Damien Jurado, Maraqopa (Deluxe Edition) - This is an ***eMusic exclusive***, everybody! Damien Jurado’s 10th solo album sees his solo career entering a creative flowering, as Stacey Anderson put it in her eMusic review:

On Maraqopa, his liveliest yet, he indulges in all the lush, psychedelic instrumentation that his modest prior efforts have only suggested; as the acidic opener “Nothing is the News” portends, the plentiful backing vocals and writhing guitar solos are the work of a brazenly confident artist.

This Deluxe Edition comes with six new tracks, and you can only find this version on eMusic. Already have Maraqopa? Then you can cop the Maraqopa Sessions, a standalone EP of the six new tracks from the Deluxe album.

Mogwai, A Wrenched Virile Lore It’s a rare remix album that improves on the original, but there are two contenders out this week, from Mogwai and Björk. Stuart Braithwaite has always been a proponent of the imaginative retake, and here he invited Tim Hecker, Justin K. Broadrick and Cylob to take on Mogwai’s 2011 album Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will. Sharon O’Connell reviews:

“With their characteristic deep layering and open spaces, these eight (mostly) instrumentals provide plenty of opportunity for individualism to stretch out. Zombi’s groovy reimagining of “Letters To The Metro” suggests Kraftwerk tackling the theme from “The Exorcist.”

Björk, Bastards Bastards is a remix of Björk’s eighth studio LP Biophilia, which was more of a multimedia experiment than a collection of songs, with accompanying video games, art installations and iPhone apps. Ryan Reed approves:

“Biophilia’s astral art-rock beauty commanded respect, but the more down-to-earth Bastards adds a missing ingredient: fun.”

The  North Sea Scrolls, The North Sea Scrolls The latest project from Luke Haines of The Auteurs pursues a hare-brained concept beyond the point of rational explanation. The idea is that Haines, Cathal Coughlan (ex-Microndisney and Fatima Mansions) and rock journalist Andrew Mueller (of eMusic!) have taken possession of some documents – similar to the Dead Sea Scrolls – that tell a weird alternative history of Britain. Andrew Perry takes a deep breath:

“In isolation, the songs about these implausible developments are baffling, and leave you hanging on for every line in disbelief… With time, however, they become pop songs that you hum along to, just like any other pop song, skilfully crafted, subtly textured over acoustic guitars with moody synths and muted strings.”

Tim Hecker and Daniel Lopatin, Instrumental Tourist Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never) teams up with Hecker for the first in a series of experimental electronic duets, called SSTUDIOS. Andrew Parks reviews:

“While that may sound as exciting as the purely academic pages of Wire magazine – the parts that make us feel like we’re back in a philosophy class about Lacan and David Lynch – Lopatin’s inaugural entry with Tim Hecker is seamless to the point of sounding like an entirely new entity… something that’s greater than the sum of its parts.”

Wild Billy Chyldish and The Spartan Dreggs, Coastal Command, Dreggredation, Tablets of Linear B With a work ethic that suggests he’d probably find a spell of hard labour in a Siberian prison camp a chance to unwind, Billy Childish releases two albums albums and a single, “We Spartan Dreggs Be Fine”, this week. As ever, expect “abridged popular classics and examples from the histories” from men who look like they last saw action in the Boer War.

Various artists, Man Chest Hair Finders Keepers unearth previously-unreleased gems from Manchester’s tesosterone-fuelled Seventies rock scene: a pre-Veet era where music was hairy, hard and very heavy. Best listened to with a can of Kestrel in hand. Recommended.

Zombie Zombie, Rituels D’un Noveau Monde The French neo-prog duo – known for vamping up John Carpenter’s soundtracks – deliver their own collection of otherworldly, cinematic soundscapes with excellent song titles (see opener “The Wisdom of Stones (Do You Believe In…?”) .

Kate Nash, Death Proof – EP Nash embraces all things riot grrrl on this EP, the first release from next year’s album Girl Talk (apart from the bit about hating men, if “I Want A Boyfriend” is anything to go by.)

Netsky, 2 Deluxe The platinum version of Netsky’s 2, with unreleased material, live recordings and remixes from Other Echoes, Rockwell, Metric and the drum and bass superstar himself.

Trans-Global Expression: John Tchicai and Sean Bergin

Capsule jazz histories tell us European harmony and African rhythm came together west of the Atlantic. Yes, but: North Americans may forget that Africa and Europe are close neighbors whose cultures were interacting long before Columbus; even now, their musical mixes may bypass direct American mediation. In September and October 2012 two great and very different Afro-European saxophonists passed away: Denmark’s John Tchicai, well known to American fans, and the South Africa-born Dutchman Sean Bergin, who deserves much wider fame.

Born in Copenhagen in 1936 to a Congolese father and Danish mom, Tchicai struggled with bebop’s demands as a young alto player. When free music hit around 1960, he heard greater opportunities for self-expression. In 1962 he moved to New York, and soon was in the thick of the scene, recording with tenor Albert Ayler on New York and Ear Control and with John Coltrane on his big-group blow-out Ascension. Tchicai co-founded the New York Contemporary Five, where he was sandwiched between bugling cornetist Don Cherry and tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp, notorious for hogging solo space. (John also played on Shepp’s four-horn Four for Trane: rearranged Coltrane tunes.)

The altoist got more space in the New York Art Quartet, where — as on their 1964 debut — his thin tone contrasted with Roswell Rudd’s thicker trombone sound; that band also featured a new drummer with a dry, logrolling sound: Milford Graves. Tchicai’s sound is oddly cool, given free jazz’s usual heat. His long bent notes suggest Ornette Coleman’s influence, but where Ornette’s elasticity brings out his blues strain, Tchicai’s note-stretching sounds more like a straight taffy pull.

In hindsight, he sounds like he’s straining on alto, not least when competing with bigger horns. In the early ’80s Tchicai switched to tenor, and his sound became deeper, earthier and more confident: a new beginning.

But we get ahead of ourselves. In the mid ’60s he’d returned to Denmark, and began collaborating with other luminaries of the new European jazz — Holland’s Willem Breuker, Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink, Switzerland’s Irene Schweizer, fellow Dane Pierre Dørge — and with South African exiles like Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo.

Later Tchicai made several weird, overlooked albums with pianist Kristian Blak, from Denmark’s far, far Faroe Islands. Blak’s music (as on 1982′s Ravnating with Tchicai on alto and soprano saxes and bass clarinet) is an unlikely amalgam of fake medievalism, early Keith Jarrett rolling and Canterbury rock, with some nature sounds thrown in. He and Tchicai were still at as late as 2000′s Anybody Home? under John’s name.

Tchicai’s tenor sounds great, voicing Curtis Clark’s catchy but curve-bally melodies on 1987′s Letter to South Africa, recorded in Amsterdam by an international quintet. As composer or pianist, Clark can be romantic but never sappy, and can go “outside” without forsaking lyricism, making him a good match for Tchicai, the lone wind player here. Dutch cellist Ernst Reijseger alternates among sweet/sour/scratchy solos, frisky rhythm strumming, and syncing with Ernst Glerum’s bass. Moholo brings his South African swing to the drums.

John Tchicai spent much of the 1990s teaching at UC Davis, and recording with many younger American players on three coasts. His 1999 Infinitesimal Flash recalls his roiling ’60s New York bands; its sensibility reflects fellow tenor Francis Wong’s interest in traditional Chinese material as well as John’s own broad curiosity. His old slippery alto feeling returns on soprano sax, for the traditional “Autumn Moon.” There’s also a little spoken-word stuff, echoing Amiri Baraka’s recitation back on the first New York Art Quartet album.

Back in Europe, he made 2007′s Coltrane in Spring with three younger Danes: cornetist/pianist Jonas Müller, bassist Nikolaj Munch-Hansen and drummer Kresten Osgood. With its poetry recitation (the title track), one-world pentatonics and South African echoes (“Dashiki Man,” “Row Your Loveboat”), Ornetty/New York freebop (“Ude I Det Fri,” “Double Arc Jake”) and push-pull quartet dynamic (“On Top of Your Head”) it showcased John’s lyrical and blustery sides, and felt like a career summing-up.

In Holland, the soft-spoken Tchicai crossed paths with Sean Bergin, a volatile, cantankerous charmer in the Charles Mingus mode. Bergin was born in Durban in 1948 and settled in Amsterdam in 1970, where he too worked with Reijseger, Bennink and Mengelberg, and schooled younger players in workshops and weekly jam sessions. He stayed connected to South African roots, working with fellow exiles Moholo and bassist Harry Miller. Bergin may be best known Stateside for his go-for-broke alto and tenor playing on drummer Barry Altschul’s 1985 That’s Nice. But Sean’s greatest achievement was recorded two years later, the first and best album by his little big band the M.O.B. (My Own Band).

Kids Mysteries isn’t just one of the great documents of the amazingly fertile Amsterdam scene, it’s one of the great jazz records of the last 25 years, period, with an uncanny balance of loose feeling and precise execution. Bergin’s international tentet all but bursts out of the charts, yet the players are fully in tune in every sense: They nail the melody statements, delve deep into the written material in their solos, and never knock each other off balance for all the elbowing they do. Han Bennink’s whipcrack drumming snaps everybody’s rhythm into line.

Concertos for soloists include “Monkey Woman” for donkey-braying trombonist Wolter Wierbos and the penguin-sleek “Beach Balls” for clarinetist Michael Moore, but it’s all sterling. Sean’s orchestral writing can be knotty and clever, but there’s a strong whiff of South African streetcorner kwela in his catchy tunes; even the three-chord bassoon bassline to “Thoko’s Tune” will have you whistling. (The howling lead alto is Sean’s.) Kids Mysteries is a near-perfect masterwork.

Tim Hecker and Daniel Lopatin, Instrumental Tourist

In case you were wondering, SSTUDIOS is not a long-overdue compilation of chillwave Phil Collins covers. Like a jazz improv label with customized synths and samplers in place of brass parts and brushed drums, the Software/Mexican Summer imprint is actually a duet-driven exploration of experimental and electronic music, as curated by Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never) and his part-time production partner Joel Ford (Airbird, Ford & Lopatin). And while that may sound as exciting as the purely academic pages of Wire magazine — the parts that make us feel like we’re back in a philosophy class about Lacan and David Lynch — Lopatin’s inaugural entry with Tim Hecker is seamless to the point of sounding like an entirely new entity. It’s a dizzying procession of extraterrestrial drone tones, wobbly radio waves, teeth-gnashing white noise and pure ambient moods that work better than Ambien ever did. A shining example of two Type B personalities meeting each other halfway, and arriving at something that’s greater than the sum of their parts.

New This Week: Damien Jurado, Bjork, Rihanna & More

Damien Jurado, Maraqopa (Deluxe Edition) - This is an ***eMusic exclusive***, everybody! Damien Jurado’s 10th solo album sees his solo career entering a creative flowering: as Stacey Anderson put it in her eMusic review:

On Maraqopa, his liveliest yet, he indulges in all the lush, psychedelic instrumentation that his modest prior efforts have only suggested; as the acidic opener “Nothing is the News” portends, the plentiful backing vocals and writhing guitar solos are the work of a brazenly confident artist.

This Deluxe Edition comes with six new tracks, and you can only find this version on eMusic. Already have Maraqopa? Then you can cop the Maraqopa Sessions, a standalone EP f the six new tracks from the Deluxe album.

Twilight Sad, No One Can Ever Know: The Remixes – Liars, Com Truise, Optimo, The Horrors, and many more offer their refracted takes on the beloved Scottish indie-rock band Twilight Sad.

Bjork, Bastards – A gang of remixers get their grubby hands all over Bjork’s Biophilia, and the result, as Ryan Reed tells it, is actually an improvement on the original:

bastards may seem like a frivolous concept on paper, but it’s the rare remix album that actually improves upon the original … “Sacrifice” was once a droning, ambient dead-end — in Death Grips’ hands, it’s borderline danceable, punched up by in-the-red beats and a demented bassline; the creepy, crawling 16-Bit version of “Hollow” sounds like Radiohead vacationing at Bowser’s Castle. But bastards is an improvement not only due to its bountiful beats, but also its diversity: These New Puritans layer Björk’s anguished cries over dubby sub-bass, stark piano chords, and Middle Eastern chants.

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Live From Alabama  - Former Drive-By Trucker continues his intrepid push into solo-dom. Stephen Deusner calls it “his finest and most persuasive solo release yet”:

Recorded in Birmingham and Huntsville, this concert album moves Isbell and the 400 Unit out of the studio and onto the stage, where they’re obviously more comfortable and more commanding. It also allows him to cherry-pick some of his best solo and Truckers tunes, with a few covers thrown in for good measure. Building off their southern rock foundation, he and his band show off an elastic Muscle Shoals rhythm section on”The Blue” and punch up “Danko/Manuel” and “Goddamn Lonely Love” with some exquisitely forlorn Stax horns.

Rihanna, Unapologetic – The world’s biggest pop star continues her blitzkrieg with her seventh studio LP. Guys:  over the last eight years, there has only been one – 2008 — without a chart-topping new Rihanna album. Here’s Dan Hyman on this one:

Last year’s dance-pop-heavy Talk That Talk rode bubbling Eurodance trends to delirious heights, and Unapologetic goes to apposite lows with this year’s downer cocktail of dubstep and Weeknd-style R&B. As usual, however, RiRi’s dumpster-diving yields of-the-moment earworms  (see her latest guilty-pleasure of a single”Diamonds,” or”Jump,” a.k.a. Ginuwine’s “Pony” run through the Skrillex wub-machine). Even”Right Now,” with David Guetta’s ever-present synths working overtime, is destined for glory – if only for the next few weeks.

The 1975, Sex EP – Manchester band channels Jimmy Eat World and writes the ridiculously anthemic song “Sex.” Here’s our man J. Edward Keyes with the rundown:

Thematically, the 1975 obsess over the Universal Questions of adolescence — chiefly, not getting laid enough and getting laid way too much. The former is the subject of “Sex,” a full-boil three-minute case of pent-up, jean-bursting frustration where the angel on the protagonist’s shoulder keeps yelling, “She’s got a boyfriend, anyway,” while the devil coolly assures him that this is no one’s idea of a deal-breaker.  The next song, the gently-spiraling “You,” is almost the spiritual sequel, with Matty defensively insisting, “It’s not my fault I’ve fucked everybody here” as he and his date fumble their way through a loose tangle of silvery guitars … All of this would be awfully caddish except that The 1975 manage to convincingly sell meaningless sex as true romance, investing their pants-pawing basement makeouts with deep meaning and dogged determination. They are the Ben Gibbard of the dry hump.

Night Plane, Heartbeat – A sticky-catchy melting together of indie rock, techno and house. Some of these have billowy house  vocals on them, some of them have jabby, uncertain indie-rock guitars, some have arid, pistoning techno click drums on them. Many have all of them. An intriguing and fun hybrid vision.

Oneohtrix Point Never, Rifts – A box set from Daniel Lopatin, of OPN, containing rare and out-of-print material as well as early tapes from his NNA, Utmarken, and Catholic releases.

Nicki Minaj, Roman Reloaded: The Re-Up – Keeping track of Nicki’s releases is getting a little confusing: There was Pink Friday, then Pink Friday: Reloaded, then Roman Reloaded, and now this. This is her re-release of her second studio album, boosted with a full a new eight-song EP. This kind of release is pretty transparently positioned as a holiday cash-in, but there’s actually a pretty serious stash of material that should have been on the original here.

DVA, Fly Juice – More joyfully chaotic dance music from the UK funky producer, who loves to smear the edges of his propulsive tracks so that they sound like they might just fall apart in front of you.

Adrian Belew, Desire Caught By the Tail – Experimental album by King Crimson’s Adrian Belew, released in 1986, and popping up here today.

Christian Gerhaher , Romantische Arien – Acclaimed baritone Christian Gerhaher, known for his penetrating work with lieder, tackles the songs of Schubert, the master of the lieder

A staggering number of Tony Bennett albums. Seriously, just go here and take a gander.

Gang of Four, Mall – Fifth studio album by Gang of Four, post-initial break-up, showing up on eMusic today. This one was starchier, stiffer, and slicker than their previous efforts .Definitely one of the weirdest moments in their career; At Home They Sound Like Erasure, am I right? (I’m aware this joke doesn’t make any sense.)

Mogwai, A Wrenched Virile Lore

All too often, the remix presents like a creative parasite, functioning only to extend the commercial life of a Top 40 single via half dozen iterations in different pairs of hired hands. But the best remixes can be deeply interpretive — a post-everything construct with its own elastic aesthetic and a life independent of the original track.

Mogwai have long been inventive remixers, putting the disparate likes of Apparat, Bloc Party and Rammstein through their bracing quasi-classical/ambient electronica/post-rock rinse cycle; they’ve even got a reshaping of The Cure’s stark 1981 album Faith in the pipeline. They’ve been equally enthusiastic about handing over their material to others, most notably to My Bloody Valentine and µ-Ziq, among others on their 1998 LP Kicking A Dead Pig. Now, they’ve unlatched the gate on 2011′s Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will.

With their characteristic deep layering and open spaces, these eight (mostly) instrumentals provide plenty of opportunity for individualism to stretch out. Given his industrio-metal CV, Justin K Broadrick’s touch on opener “George Square Thatcher Death Party” is surprisingly light, replacing the original’s rockist wallop with a sweet, melodic wooziness. Others play more to type: Tim Hecker’s take on “Rano Pano” opts for a lush field of phased electronics instead of Mogwai’s blizzard-like distortion; labelmate Umberto turns “Too Raging To Cheers” into a shimmering, retro-futurist synth excursion; and Zombi’s groovy reimagining of “Letters To The Metro” suggests Kraftwerk tackling the theme from “The Exorcist.”

None of which would be possible without the innate flexibility of Mogwai’s originals. “For me,” Stuart Braithwaite has said, “a successful remix is simply one where the remixer imposes their own personality on their version of the song.” Ten personalities, 10 targets squarely hit.

Various Artists, Sacred Bones Records 2012

For the last five years, Sacred Bones Records has stuck doggedly to the shady side of the street. Whether it’s the rowdy rock ‘n’ roll of The Men or the doomy pagan folk of Cult of Youth, all of their albums are undercut by a distinct, tangible current of darkness. It’s what makes them so alluring — their ability to be as bracing as a blast of icy air and as chilling as a childhood nightmare. The 16 songs on this sampler are the perfect entry into the label’s ominous world of sound.

Discover: The Books We’re Giving Thanks For

The whole “giving thanks” part of Thanksgiving rarely gets the attention it deserves. Too often it’s wedged into an already overlong family meal by your aunt Maude, who insists on putting everyone around the table on the spot, or it’s co-opted by jewelry commercials that are prematurely, maddeningly, already hustling Christmas gifts. Under those circumstances, it can be hard to get into the thankful spirit. But in a holiday based on a questionable colonial history and a remarkably unhealthy binge-and-gorge cycle, the reminder to take full stock of all you’ve got going for you is pretty special, and worth observing.

Books are something we are always, always thankful for. Over the years, we have found books that have changed our worldview, opened doors and reminded us that no matter what we’re going through, we’re not alone. When you have a moment to yourself this week, maybe while traveling to the aforementioned family meal or while reveling in the quiet afterward, queue up a book and try exercising some gratitude. Need some inspiration? This year, we’re giving thanks for:

Damien Jurado, Maraqopa (Deluxe Edition)

[Maraqopa (Deluxe Edition) is an eMusic exclusive. Already have the standard edition? You can get The Maraqopa Sessions, a standalone EP of the six new tracks from the Deluxe album. — Ed.]

On Damien Jurado’s 10th album, the tried and true folk bard is quick to turn on himself — not a comfortable task for a solo performer who stares into seas of people nightly. “Many nights you would hide from the audience/ When they were not in tune with your progress,” he sings on “Working Titles,” as angelic harmonies glide in for some reprieve. “In the end you’re a fool like a journalist/ Who turns what she’s seeing into business.”

The lyrical self-flagellation is not entirely new to Jurado’s catalogue; he is an extraordinarily sensitive singer-songwriter, one whose reedy voice and deft lo-fi arrangements do little to offset his frequent anguish. He has rested comfortably on cult idolatry for well over a decade by singing with a thoughtful hitch in his throat, largely eschewing the gratuitous noise of his hardcore punk youth. Yet on Maraqopa, his liveliest yet, he indulges in all the lush, psychedelic instrumentation that his modest prior efforts have only suggested; as the acidic opener “Nothing is the News” portends, the plentiful backing vocals and writhing guitar solos are the work of a brazenly confident artist.

One of the album’s tersest tracks, “So On, Nevada,” finds his delicate vocal chords straining to something akin to a yowl, acoustic strings providing thoughtful counterpoint; it echoes the more overt intensity of his 2010 record, St. Bartlett, his initial collaboration with Maraqopa producer Richard Swift. It contrasts so beautifully and unexpectedly the album’s longest track, the swooning Wall of Sound pop ballad “Reel to Reel,” of both prove equally clear glimpses of Jurado’s mercurial mind; as he croons on the latter’s heroine, “The greatest songs I’ll ever hear from a band you started in your mind.” This is the crux of Jurado’s excellent effort, it seems: closing the balance between impulse and craftsmanship, letting both unfurl fully with ease. This, in every way that matters, is progress.

Louise Erdrich, The Round House

Returning to the some of the same characters and geographies as in her 2008 novel The Plague of Doves, Louise Erdrich’s National Book Award-winning The Round House is a wrenching work centered on three members of the Native American Coutts family in the aftermath of the rape of Geraldine Coutts, wife of tribal judge Bazil and mother of Joe.

In a departure from Erdrich’s prior novels, The Round House’s sole narrator is the 13-year-old Joe, voiced with honesty and conviction by Canadian First Nations actor Gary Farmer (best known for his featured role as Nobody in Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 acid western Dead Man). As his mother’s rape forces Joe to try to reconcile his own teenage desires with the reality of sexual violence, the crime finds itself in a dead zone of prosecution due to the overlapping jurisdictions of tribal, state, and federal law. The Coutts must balance their need for closure with their longtime efforts toward tribal sovereignty. As the investigation drags on, Joe remarks of his mother that “with all that we did, we were trying to coax the soul back into her. But I could feel it tug away from us like a kite on a string. I was afraid that string would break and she’d careen off, vanish into the dark.”

While Erdrich’s prose offers a compelling look at the grey areas of justice, sex, love, family and ethnic identity, in the end it is Farmer’s narration that truly allows the Coutts’s North Dakota reservation to creep slowly under your skin until you feel an integral — if silent — part of the community.

The 1975, Sex

Sex, the second EP from the Manchester, UK, group The 1975, takes a little while to get off. The first two songs are pleasant but nondescript daubs of ambient electronic music — gauzy layers of synthetic sound wrapping up frontman Matty’s pleading vocals; they drift along sleepily, never pausing at anything that looks much like a chorus or a hook. And just when you’re wondering if we really, truly need another bedroom synth band, the title track arrives, and it’s as if the sheepish local opener spontaneously rip off their masks and reveal themselves to be Jimmy Eat World circa Bleed American — which, if for some reason you need to ask, is a very good thing.

Thematically, the 1975 obsess over the Universal Questions of adolescence — chiefly, not getting laid enough and getting laid way too much. The former is the subject of “Sex,” a full-boil three-minute case of pent-up, jean-bursting frustration where the angel on the protagonist’s shoulder keeps yelling, “She’s got a boyfriend, anyway,” while the devil coolly assures him that this is no one’s idea of a deal-breaker. The next song, the gently-spiraling “You,” is almost the spiritual sequel, with Matty defensively insisting, “It’s not my fault I’ve fucked everybody here” as he and his date fumble their way through a loose tangle of silvery guitars. The album-closing “Milk” blends the snowy synths of the EPs first two songs with the throb and thrash of the middle two, building to the kind of needy crescendo that characterizes the best Frightened Rabbit songs. Its hook, of course, is “She’s doing it all the time.”

All of this would be awfully caddish except that the 1975 manage to convincingly sell meaningless sex as true romance, investing their pants-pawing basement makeouts with deep meaning and dogged determination. They are the Ben Gibbard of the dry hump. If there is any drawback to Sex, it’s that it wastes its first six minutes idling before finally delivering a tidy batch of perfect guitar pop. The 1975 belong to a rare group of young men: the kind who spend too much time on foreplay.