Various Artists, Hey Girl, Hey (Polyvinyl Records Sampler)

Though they’re probably best known for of Montreal’s high-gloss psych-pop and Mates of State’s irresistible choruses, Polyvinyl Records have been responsible for some of the more singular and engaging records in all of indie rock. From Braid’s groundbreaking Frame and Canvas to the bounding bash-and-shout of Japandroids, Polyvinyl has always had a clear instinct for the Instant Classic. Check out new (free!) tracks from rising talents like Sonny & the Sunsets and Norse Horse, along with seasoned labelmates like Asobi Seksu and Deerhoof.

The Coup, Sorry to Bother You

Boots Riley has had a few other things to do than rap for Oakland collective the Coup as of late — appearing at the forefront of the Occupy movement, for one. But for their seventh album in 20 years, Riley’s loose sense of humor remains intact in much the way as his taste for lyrics that spell out rebellion. Just check the Monty Python kazoos of “Your Parents’ Cocaine” or the tinny punk beat of “You Are Not a Riot,” not to mention some of that song’s pissy lyrics: “You are the tight leather pants on the old ex-general/ You, you are not rebellion/ I got the invite to your party and I threw it away.” “Riot” eventually morphs into drawling, Bernie Worrell-style synth, but it’s spare rather than enveloping, and that’s Sorry to Bother You as a whole as well. Riley wants to spotlight musical schisms as well as societalones.

Taylor Swift, Red

Taylor Swift is infamous as the superstar who’s perpetually in shock when she wins awards. But it’s instructive to remember that those “Who, me?” moments have taken place at the CMAs as often as the VMAs. Swift has become the biggest pop star in the world even as her songs, and her image, still wink at country. Her fourth album Red, meanwhile, is colored by a handful of songs in which she throws herself headfirst into radio zeitgeist: dance beats, careful dollops of dubstep and an overall glossy sheen courtesy of the production duo Max Martin and Shellback.

These moments are also where the album shines. In songs like “22″ and “I Knew You Were Trouble” she finds considerable chemistry with her mainstream-pop hired guns. These are bright blasts of tight songwriting where Swift exhumes and examines relationships that could leave some with whiplash, describing them as shifts in color (from red to blue to grey, hence the album title) or falls from flying high to the “cold, hard ground.” In response, she’s come back at her punchiest (“It feels like a perfect night to dress up like hipsters/ And make fun of our exes,” is likely aimed at Jake Gyllenhaal), with songs that suggest Swift can indulge her curiosities and come out the other side with some of her best work.

Yet, the album feels like a growing pain. Soft, meditative ballads like “Treacherous” and “All Too Well” are fine songs, but they are her bread-and-butter, and Swift has done them better on previous albums. Peppered in between the outsized pop tracks and songs like “State of Grace” and “Holy Ground” that deftly nick Snow Patrol-style arena rock, they feel slight — even a little musty. The album’s sequencing feels like a playlist on shuffle — some new Taylor here, a little old Taylor there — which is a problem that has not plagued her in the past. Still, Red contains a multitude of gems, and leaves open the possibility that there’s a classic album waiting for Swift to uncover within herself as she grows and wrestles with both her life and her sound.

James Ferraro, Sushi

On 2011′s Far Side Virtual, James Ferraro specialized in gleaming surfaces: Bright tunes played on ultra-bright neo ’80s synths, festooned with FX that alluded to the sonic detritus of digital life (the squeal-pop that announces you’ve logged onto Skype, for instance, which ends Far Side‘s title cut). Sushi sounds more deliberately broken, like a cross between Machinedrum’s Room(s) and old Prefuse 73 — arrangements that halt and stammer a la Chicago juke (“Playin Ya Self”), crumple up old house music (“Baby Mitsubishi”), and push hip-hop through a crisply fluttering laptop sieve (“Jet Skis & Sushi”). Ferraro initially planned on calling this album Rainstick Fizz Plus, then Shoop2DaDoop — jokey names that get to the geeked-out party spirit embodied by the likes of “SO N2U” (clap-happy and funky, a la Si Begg’s late-’90s Buckfunk 3000 releases) and the sideways skank of “Flamboyant.” It’s silly, of course — but it moves anyway.

DJ Yoda, Chop Suey

London turntablist DJ Yoda’s career thus far has been an exercise in banishing hip-hop’s more po-faced impulses in favor of a hit-and-run, cut-and paste approach. As his name suggests, he’s not above weaving crowd-pleasing pop-cultural references into the mix, even at the risk of sounding gimmicky: his compilations have included 2009′s How To Cut & Paste: Country Edition, which dropped Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and the theme from TV’s The Littlest Hobo alongside Nas and Treacherous Three.

But when it comes to turntable chops and scratching — not to mention deep knowledge of the hip-hop form — Yoda is among the best. He plays it relatively straight on his second album proper, abandoning the kids’-TV themes and comedy samples but keeping a lunatic, scattershot approach and a mood of playful, unabashed vibrancy. The swollen-ego stomp of “Charlie Sheen,” voiced by rapper Greg Nice, evokes the fallen star’s coked-up mania with its swaggering, muscular beats, tempo-changing dashes and Nice’s bellow of “Don’t tell me how to spend my motherfuckin’ money.” The deluge of Eastern samples and licks on “Big Trouble In Little China,” meanwhile, treads a fine line between exoticism and Orientalism.

Yoda’s gonzo approach yields some real triumphs, not least on “Happy,” a bittersweet two-step ballad sung by Boy George that reminds you that beneath the make-up, George Dowd possesses a deeply soulful croon — older and smokier than in his Culture Club heyday, but more affecting because of it. Better still is “U No Likey That,” which throws Roots Manuva and Kid Creole & The Coconuts in a studio together and turns out a rattling carnival rumble.

Coherency would be a long-shot, given the avalanche of guests and styles, but the grab-bag of inspired tracks still deliver 50 minutes of solid thrills. By tempering his inclination to play cute, Yoda proves himself a producer with a keen, inventive ear.

Aerosmith, Music from Another Dimension!

When a band as big as Aerosmith gets back together after yet another round of flame wars, drug addiction, rehab, song doctors, corporate tie-ins and reality TV appearances, you can bet that the results are going to be scattershot. Music from Another Dimension! is the superstar quintet’s first album of new material since 2001′s forgettable Just Push Play. At 15 songs and 68 minutes (and 18 and nearly 81 on the deluxe edition), Music offers second-rate rewrites of the band’s rightly-beloved hits, absurdly over-packed arrangements, largely bloated song lengths that twice approach seven minutes, and ego as outsized as Steven Tyler’s legendary lips.

It also features a few performances worthy of the group’s reputation as scrappy but professional showmen. As befitting a Boston band that exploded in the ’70s with a funky slant on Brit-rock interpretations of American soul, much of Music revisits the studio tricks of the Beatles’ psychedelic era together with the strutting rhythms and wailing background singers of vintage R&B. Starting with the Julian Lennon-augmented “Hello”s of “Luv XXX” through to the intro of “Another Last Goodbye” that combines the piano chords of “Dream On” with the flutes of “Strawberry Fields Forever” (as well as the gently weeping, George Harrison-esque guitars of what’s by far the best bonus cut, “Sunny Side of Love”), Fab Four influences abound. There’s also Stones-y strutting; short and sweet on the refreshingly straightforward “Oh Yeah,” and then stretched out and sassy on “Out Go the Lights,” which swings on a quintessential Joe Perry guitar riff and a shameless cowbell beat for four minutes, then restarts in a tangle of Perry soloing and churchy vocal vamping.

Way more surprising is “Can’t Stop Lovin’ You,” Steven Tyler’s duet with fellow American Idol celebrity Carrie Underwood. The pairing seems airplay-calculated, like the band’s boilerplate Diane Warren-penned power ballads. (There’s another one here, “We All Fall Down.”) Yet this blatantly commercial move ends up charming because it removes the band from the comfort zone they retreat to elsewhere on the album. Even though you can sense everyone involved pushing each other to make the unlikely pairing work, the result feels effortless. Their voices blend as well, and the arrangement’s savvy mix of descending Beatle chords and soaring country strumming makes this the album’s most memorable song: “Tell me what you put into that kiss” is a Tyler-ism on a par with his cheeky best. This is Aerosmith walking tall, and they’re all the better for it.

Of Montreal, Daughter of Cloud

Most B-sides collections are a songwriter’s way of clearing house, artistically speaking, an excuse to release their weirdest ideas that wouldn’t fit in the context of a proper studio album. For of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes, the opposite is true: While the polarizing funk-pop freak’s most recent trio of albums (2008′s Skeletal Lamping, 2010′s False Priest, this year’s Paralytic Stalks) have blurred the line between traditional songs and nightmarish, existential experimentation, his new rarities compilation, Daughter of Cloud, is — strangely enough — his most coherent collection of music in many years.

The 17-track set blends unheard rarities and previously-released B-sides, dating back to 2007′s Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, Barnes’s last truly great album of pop songs. There’s still plenty of schizophrenic sonic horseplay: “Obviousatonicnuncio” is the musical equivalent of an ice-cream headache, cramming an entire career worth of outlandish ideas (nails-on-chalkboard spoken-word bits, chirpy vocal operatics) into a three-minute span that feels like two hours. But elsewhere, Daughter of Cloud is often thrilling — even when the lyrics are cringe-worthy: “Come play with my erection/ Can’t you see that it’s standing at attention?,” Barnes sings on “Jan Doesn’t Like It.” The campy porno-drill sergeant act wears thin quickly, but it’s backed by a hypnotic electro-pop groove. “Georgie’s Lament” is dizzying, but unlike so many of his recent cut-and-paste clusterfucks, it isn’t gag-worthy — even as the track morphs from lounge-y keyboard soul to prog-funk to the warped singalong of “My cock is so torn up about it.” Meanwhile, the riff-driven “Tender Fax” harkens back to the tuneful glory days of Sunlandic Twins. Few modern songwriters are this fearless with their freakiness. But Daughter of Cloud is a much-needed reminder of this indie outcast’s pure pop strengths.

New This Week: Lindstrøm, DJ Yoda & More

Lindstrøm, Smalhans After his foray into prog with Six Cups of Rebel, the Norwegian producer took inspiration from food for his fifth album: the songs are all named after national dishes. Bill Brewster reviews:

“As one of the few non-DJs operating in house music, his music has a pleasing and glittery attack that is more often suited to the headphones than the dancefloor… Can’t vouch for the food but the musical accompaniment is suitably tasty.”

DJ Yoda, Chop Suey This wasn’t inspired by food, although DJ Yoda has opened a pop-up restaurant in London’s Chinatown this week to promote Chop Suey. Never let it be said the man is afraid of a gimmick. Stevie Chick reviews:

“By tempering his inclination to play cute, Yoda proves himself a producer with a keen, inventive ear. The force is strong with this one.”

Darren Hayman & The Long Parliament, The Violence Hayman leaves Hefner far behind with this powerful concept album about the 17^th century Essex witch trials. Luke Turner writes:

“These 20 bold tracks take the familiar Hayman template of slightly ramshackle folk and build on it with pastoral instrumentation: banjo, clarinet and lilting guitar. But what makes this Hayman’s finest solo album yet is his knack for a tune.”

Andrzej Korzyñski, Secret Enigma 1968-1981 Having already released two Korzyñski soundtracks this year, Finders Keepers bring out an anthology of rare cuts by the composer known as the Polish Ennio Morricone.

Reso, Tangram This mesmerising debut from the 25-year-old Londoner is already being called one of the electronic albums of 2012.

The Pyramids, Otherworldly The Pyramids were a spiritual jazz collective who released three albums before splitting up in 1977. Their first album in 35 years is a fiesta of brass, harp and zither, powered by supercharged positivity and the spirit of Sun Ra.

Fatboy Slim, Big Beach Bootique 5 This is the album accompaniment to Fatboy’s two-night beach party in Brighton this summer, featuring big beats by Armand Van Helden, Tocadisco and Norman himself.

Isis, Temporal Two hours of rarities and unreleased material that channels everything from masochistic black metal to bleak ambient music.  Andrew Parks reviews:

“While the Boston-born band was often considered a less-complicated second coming of Neurosis, Temporal paints a different picture, hinting at the five very different voices that were vying for attention at every turn.”

Vitalic, Rave Age Fuelled by the sort of rush that keeps energy drinks companies in business, Rave Age is 2am in a club, sustained over a whole album, if you hadn’t  guessed from titles like “No More Sleep” and Rave Kids Go”. You need never go out again.

Emeralds, Just to Feel Anything

Over the last few decades, wheezing analog synthesizers, tranquil New Age textures and the bracing noise-cassette tape-trading underground have all enjoyed minor renaissances. In Emeralds, these three distinct trends congeal into a unified vision. The Cleveland trio of John Elliott, Mark McGuire and Steve Hauschildt converted these old, oscillating sounds into new throbbing noise to great effect across innumerable cassettes and CDRs before their 2010 breakout album, Does It Look Like I’m Here? brought them greater attention.

In the intervening two years, Emeralds have nurtured industrious solo careers (as well as a label), and on the aerodynamic Just to Feel Anything, they reconvene with a similar focus and sense of studiousness. Opener “Before Your Eyes” mingles soft synth textures with a melody that approaches the glide of “Trans Europe Express” before a martial drum machine and soaring McGuire solo elevate the track. Similarly, the moody melodicism and Italo beat of “Adrenochrome” suggests an ’80s cop show chase set against a German Expressionist backdrop. The final two tracks nod to the late-’70s work of German guitar master Manuel Göttsching and Ashra. Onetime krautrock pioneers, they were also New Age and synthesizer innovators. So while the title track shows Emeralds at their most cosmic and streamlined, effortlessly reaching into the stratosphere, closer “Search for Me in the Wasteland” is pure sonic drift, somewhere between the past and futuristic.

Menahan Street Band, The Crossing

It makes sense if you know the name Daptone Records before you know the label’s artists — there, the retro-R&B aesthetic comes first. There are exceptions, though, and along with Sharon Jones and Antibalas, the Thomas Brenneck-led Menahan Street Band is a big one. It’s telling that Menahan’s second album inaugurates a new sub-label, Dunham — clearly, these lush, full arrangements recall classic Philly soul far more than they do the James Brown-style funk Daptone made its name on. Though Brenneck, along with everyone else in the lineup, has a hand in multiple other Daptone affiliates, the two albums with him as leader rank among the camp’s most consistently rich. And just because you can hear Philly in the mix doesn’t mean The Crossing is anywhere near disco. In fact, the album’s second half veers into blues (the slide guitar that keynotes “Seven Is the Wind”) and spaghetti western atmosphere (“Bullet for the Bagman”). Throughout, the tunes are juicy, the grooves forthright and irresistible, the instrumental décor lively. Sure it’s retro. But that’s not nearly all it is.

Matthew Friedberger, Matricidal Sons of Bitches

Fiery Furnaces keyboardist Matthew Friedberger erects a shaky self-reflexive conceptual conceit around his eleventh solo album (he released nine of these in 2011-12 alone). Friedberger’s fractured and almost entirely instrumental four-part suite borrows the no-budget factory esthetic of the Poverty Row studios that cranked out B-movies in Hollywood from the 1920s to the ’50s. Consider the framing as a wry, repetitious commentary on both the plight of the contemporary indie artist and Friedberger’s own profligate output.

“I have hated many people in my life,” confesses a French-accented woman near the beginning. “But the person I hate the most, is my mother.” From there, Friedberger generates 45 tracks in 61 minutes, most of which establish, loop, and then texturally alter short themes played on keyboards ranging from piano to heavily filtered synths (with occasional voices, guitar, harp, and double-bass). Sometimes reminiscent of the early silents’ chase scenes (“Fleeing, Plus Pursuing”), ’30s melodrama (“Disappointed Dads”), and film noir nightclub exotica (“The Next Morning”), Friedberger’s distressed, ironic and yet oddly compelling cookie-cutter concoctions offer both too much and too little at once. Which for many Friedberger devotees, will equalize to just about right.

New This Week: Prince Rama, Isis, E-40 & More

Jayson Greene and I are tag-teaming this week’s roundup, and you can tell who wrote what based on the initials at the end of the blurb. I’m mostly doing this for Jayson’s benefit, so people don’t think he was the one who went to a goth club in the ’90s.

Dirty Projectors, About To Die EP: A short, lovely EP that follows up on their sunray of an album Swing Lo Magellan, which remains one of the best and most life-affirming records of the year. [JG]

Prince Rama, Top Ten Hits of the End of the World: Scrappy dance-rock duo Prince Rama play Halloween-style dress-up with their latest. Laura Studarus explains:

 The conceit for Brooklyn art-duo Prince Rama’s sixth album goes like this: Life as we know it finally ends in the long-promised apocalypse. But lucky for us, Prince Rama has provided a glimpse into the future: Top Ten Hits of the End of the World, which is billed as a compilation of the 10 most popular songs on the day everything came screeching to a halt, are written and performed — not by band members Taraka and Nimai Larson — but by the various musical alter egos that they’ve channeled. What the complex mission statement ultimately translates to is a headlong dive into the sisters’ hedonistic brand of dance music.

James Ferraro, Sushi: Experimental electronic musician James Ferraro offers a playfully glitchy, retro-futuristic music that feels lit softly by the cathode rays of old, flickering televisions. Comforting in mood and disturbing in texture, it’s full of clonks, bangs, zips, squelches and other vaguely cartoony sounds, beneath which he has laid some softly sighing vocals that bring everything  back into human focus. If Heaven were a pinball machine. [JG]

Isis, Temporal: Beloved Boston art-metal band releases a vault-clearing two-hour survey. Andrew Parks says it is as essential as any of their recordings:

 On paper, the nearly two hours of rarities and previously unreleased material on Temporal looks more like an attic-clearing exercise — the proverbial nail in the coffin of ISIS’s 13-year career — than a must-listen .. Temporal paints a different picture, hinting at the five very different voices that were vying for attention at every turn. Meanwhile, the Melvins/Lustmord remix of “Not In Rivers, But In Drops” and Thomas Dimuzio’s widescreen take on “Holy Tears” show what kind of creative wells ISIS tapped in other acts.

Ne-Yo, R.E.D.: if you’ve been paying any attention to contemporary R&B lately, you’ve no doubt noticed a trend towards something we’ll loosely call “auteurism” — artists with a singular vision, voice and approach fiddling with the boundaries of the genre and figuring it out a way to brand it with their distinctive character. Well, Ne-Yo was already on that came years before any of these newcomers arrived. Secretly one of R&B’s strongest songwriters (he wrote Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable”), his voice has only gained depth and texture over the years, matching his always-mature songwriting. [JEK]

Aerosmith, Music From Another Dimension: This is Aerosmith’s first studio album since 2001.  They sound exactly the same, and I mean exactly: “Can’t Stop Loving You” is a textbook histrionic, Alicia Silverstone-era AeroBallad, with Carrie Underwood providing radio-country trimmings on the side. Ditto “We All Fall Down,” their bid to stay on Lite-FM radio; it  could have been on any Aerosmith album of the past twenty years untouched and sounded of its era. And rockers like “Lover Alot” and “Legendary Child” are as rubbery and lean and bluesy (ahem, “Bloozy”) as anything they’ve done. They are an ageless band, and honestly? God bless the institution that can keep itself this consistently preserved in cheap whiskey. [JG]

Sugar Minott, Sufferer’s Choice: 1983 record from the classic reggae vocalist features the kind of easy-rolling rocksteady for which he became famous. Minott’s got a light, sweet vocal tone, which makes him the perfect vehicle for these lover’s rock-style bouncers. A classic. [JEK]

Too $hort and E-40, History: Function Music: Two Bay Area rap titans team up for a dual album celebrating their 20-year dominance; two old guys who still sound young. [JG]

Mr. MFN Exquire, Power & Passion EP: The rough-edged Brooklyn rapper Mr. Muthafuckin Exquire cleans up his name ever-so-slightly for his major label deal but still manages to call his first single “Telephuck.” [JG]

Teen Daze, The Inner Mansions: Glowing-obelisk synths and breathy vocals power this wisp of a dream-pop record. [JG]

Flying Burrito Brothers, Last of the Red Hot Burritos: 1972 album from one of the bands that basically invented alt-country. This one is post-Parsons, which is going to lose some people, but there’s still enough rollicking, boot-stomping country to satisfy those who are looking for it. [JEK]

Lil Fame and Termanology, Fizzyology: Lil Fame of M.O.P. and indie-rap stalwart Termanology team up for the grey-toned rough-stuff NYC rap that they remain lifelong devotees of. [JG]

Kylie Minogue, The Abbey Road Sessions: No one here really has any kind of axe to grind with Kylie, right? Cuz that’s crazy. This one features Kylie backed by a full orchestra and revisiting some of her best-known hits, including “The Locomotion” (!), “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” and her duet with Nick Cave — who reprises his role on this recording — “Where the Wild Roses Grow.” That list alone shows Minogue is a pop performer of alarming versatility. Don’t fight it, people. [JEK]

Laibach, An Introduction to Laibach: Opening with a bizarro German language cover of “Warm Leatherette,” this comp is intended to help folks who always wanted to get into these Slovenian industrialists but were not sure where to start. I am genuinely curious to know how many people that might be. In any event! I was a Laibach fan back in the days when I was painting my nails black and putting on a cape and going to Long Island goth clubs, and hearing some of these again filled me with a sense of, let’s say, “nostalgia.” [JEK]

Califone, Sometimes Good Weather Follows Bad People: Beloved Chicago group emerges with another record full of moody songs that blend country and folk impulses with a decided experimental mindset. The tone throughout is hushed and perfectly restrained. [JEK]

Underoath, Anthology: 1999 – 2013: I was a pretty massive fan of this band a few years back. Their strength is in combining blistering hardcore with moments of alarming melodicism, chainsaw riffs suddenly opening into pained, pelading choruses. They often got lumped in with more commercial screamo, which I thought was a terrific disservice. These dudes had chops. They’ll call it quits next year — this compilation rounds up their best. [JEK]

Megadeth, Countdown to Extinction Reissue: This was Megadeth’s fifth and most commercially successful record, and its reissue comes bundled with a vicious, hyper-clear live set. [JG]

Anaal Nathrakh, Vanitass: YES. Sickening (in the best way) British metal duo uncork another unholy batch of filthcore, with sword-sharp riffs and helicopter-blade rhythms and songs called “Of Fire, and Fucking Pigs.” [JEK]

Barb Wire Dolls, Slit: Bug-eyed, brawny punk rock that reminds me of early Distillers. Which is a good thing, since God only knows what Brody Dalle is up to these days. This Greek group puts an emphasis not only on furious riffing but furious lyrics, restoring to punk rock a spirit of defiance. [JEK]

Featureless Ghost, Personality Matrix: I’ve really been getting into the stuff on the Night People label lately. This is some dead-eyed, minimal synthy stuff — appropriately spooky and stripped back, but with fully-developed, eerily melodic songs. [JEK]

Goldendust, Goldendust: More from Night People, this one even more minimal than Featureless Ghost. It kind of reminds me of The Normal in a way — nasal male vocals and only the barest essential musical instrumentation. [JEK]

Graveyard, Lights Out: Man do I love these guys. Swedish melodic metallers come yowling from beyond the grave with another batch of relentlessly melodic metal. Don’t believe me? Check that second song. It’s basically a ballad, you guys. This is for anyone who is still suffering from the affliction that The Darkness is a legitimate metal band. Meet Graveyard and see what you’ve been missing. [JEK]

Horseback & Locrian, New Dominions: Reissue of 2011 recording by black metallers Horseback and obstinate experimentalist Locrian. Though is there any other kind of experimentalist? Is there an accomodating experimentalist? Or is that just the name of an old Peter O’Toole movie? Regardless. This is 41 minutes of blackened drone, suitable for freaking out your roommates/parents/spouse. [JEK]

Dragged into Sunlight, Widowmaker: Good week for metal, man! Miminalist metal group splits their latest into three 10-plus-minute segments that go from spare to punishing to brutally slow and sludgy. This probably has more in common with classical music than metal in terms of structure if not sound. It demands deep, patient listening. [JEK]

Games, Games: Lovelorn psych-pop from HoZac with a slick of hot-rod-rock grease on it. [JG]

Harris Wittels, Humblebrag

Twitter has made great strides in the field of famous/non-famous-people relations. Now not only can we make our tiny voices heard — in 140-character-or-fewer bursts — by the once-unreachable movie stars, rock gods, athletes and models we adore and despise, we can also hear directly from them, often utterly unprovoked and unfiltered.

It’s there that Harris Wittels — a very funny comedian and a writer for Parks & Recreation — first noticed the phenomenon he’s come to refer to as the humblebrag. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a ridiculous boast disguised as self-deprecating complaint. Here’s a classic from Snooki: “Damn sick mansion party! Huge lights and I forgot to wear white @ a white party. Just my luck. You here Ludacris?”

Tweets like that are a goldmine to Wittels. His book, Humblebrag: The Art of False Modesty, contains hundreds, if not thousands (OK, probably just hundreds) of these self-promoting-slash-effacing mini-missives along with some hilariously deadpan retorts. His quips rarely come off as mean-spirited, just funny and frank. When supermodel Trisha Cummings humblebrags about modeling a wedding dress but not having any real marriage prospects, Wittels is consoling: “Aw, c’mon, Trisha. There’s someone out there for everyone — even models.”

Wittels finds humblebrags are funniest when they’re tweeted by red-carpetbaggers and VIP partiers, though hangers-on have produced some gems, to be sure. Among those who take their lumps in the book are Greta Van Susteren, Dane Cook and Kevin Smith — plus some likeable people, too.

Libba Bray, The Diviners

In this eponymous first installment of her new The Diviners series, YA favorite Libba Bray takes on a genuinely wild ride. It’s the height of the Jazz Age, and flapper Evie O’Neill has been “banished” to New York City by her conservative parents. Consigned to live with her stuffy Uncle Will, who just happens to run the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition and the Occult, Evie is thrilled to swill bootleg hooch, dance all night in Harlem speakeasies and…help solve a series of grisly murders? Beneath Evie’s Roaring Twenties slang and cloche hat, she hides a special power: She can divine (get it?) all sorts of information about people by holding objects that belong to them. Or — more importantly, in the case of the relevant murder victims — belonged.

Evie is just one of The Diviners‘ many characters. Clearly Bray is writing the first book in a series here, and while the main plot is resolved (no spoilers), almost too many threads remain tangled. How will our favorite Harlem numbers runner and poet, Memphis Campbell, help his possessed brother and make a life with Ziegfeld-girl-with-a-past Theta? Will young radical and Evie’s best friend, Mabel Rose, find love? And will Evie’s weird old lady neighbors, the Proctor sisters, ever explain why they’re sprinkling bags of salt in protective circles around their apartment?

No doubt, The Diviners‘ next installment will answer some of these questions while raising still others. In the meantime, Bray’s thriller is a kicky ride. Period details are delicious: Evie’s clothes seem to be exclusively peacock-patterned, and Mabel’s life changes when she bobs her hair. Silent film idol Rudolph Valentino has just died, and the girls love watching his pictures at red velvet-covered movie palaces. If your taste runs to historical fiction with just a soupçon of gore, The Diviners will be a treat as bubbly and illicit as bootleg champagne.

Prince Rama, Top Ten Hits of the End of the World

The conceit for Brooklyn art-duo Prince Rama’s sixth album goes like this: Life as we know it finally ends in the long-promised apocalypse. But lucky for us, Prince Rama has provided a glimpse into the future: Top Ten Hits of the End of the World, which is billed as a compilation of the 10 most popular songs on the day everything came screeching to a halt, are written and performed not by band members Taraka and Nimai Larson — but by the various musical alter egos they’ve channeled.

What the complex mission statement ultimately translates to is a headlong dive into the sisters’ hedonistic brand of dance music. There are subtle tonal variations (this is, after all, the work of 10 different “bands”), but spacey synth-and-guitar jams, accented with frenetic tribal drums, provide the album’s through-line. Rama hit hard with opening salvo “Blade of Austerity,” which fuses a punk chant to a sinuous, Middle East-inspired melody. “No Way Back, ” continues the kinetic pace where — as Nu Fighters — the band employees a wall of squealing guitars, pitched-down vocals, and guttural groans. But Top Ten Hits isn’t all sonic assaults. Slowed to a sexed-up crawl on “Welcome to the Now Age,” Prince Rama (or rather their robot persona Hyparxia), coo a series of sweet nothings against an 8-bit backing track. “Exercise Ecstasy” takes cues from 1980s Jazzercise backing tracks, complete with mid-song Kenny G-style sax solo. A sprawling beast that never once wants for enthusiasm, Top Ten Hits of the End of the World makes the demise of mankind sound not just palatable, but downright danceable.

Isis, Temporal

On paper, the nearly two hours of rarities and previously unreleased material on Temporal looks more like an attic-clearing exercise — the proverbial nail in the coffin of Isis’s 13-year career — than a must-listen. After all, an entire disc is devoted to demos, and the other one’s split between remixes, cover songs and collect-’em-all cuts like the ISIS side of a split EP with the Melvins and a tense acoustic rendition of “20 Minutes/40 Years.”

If only things were that simple. While the Boston-born band was often considered a less-complicated second coming of Neurosis, Temporal paints a different picture, hinting at the five very different voices that were vying for attention at every turn. Cover wise, “Streetcleaner” and “Hand of Doom” take us back to the group’s early days, when they saw nothing wrong with grinding through the industrial wastelands of Godflesh one minute and following the doom-y directives of Black Sabbath the next. Meanwhile, the Melvins/Lustmord remix of “Not In Rivers, But In Drops” and Thomas Dimuzio’s widescreen take on “Holy Tears” show what kind of creative wells Isis tapped in other acts.

And then there’re those demos. “Wills Dissolve” plows through a Panopticon track like a vinegary garage band; “Carry” and “False Light” move from mood-altering atmospherics to pure anguish, channeling everything from masochistic black-metal to bleak ambient music; and the 16 knot-tightening minutes of “Grey Divide” unfold in movements, a hint of what could have been. Or what’s yet to come.

Bobo Stenson Trio, Indicum

For more than four decades now Bobo Stenson has been the face of Swedish jazz piano. With his gorgeous solo recordings, as well as his collaborative efforts with fellow Scandinavians like Jan Garbarek and Joakim Milder and global figures such as Charles Lloyd, Tomasz Stanko and Don Cherry, Stenson has established himself as a broad-minded player with a carefully measured yet deeply probing sound. The latest work from his trio — with long-time bassist Anders Jormin and recently added drummer Jon Fält — finds him in top form. As is often the case with Stenson’s own recordings, he leads his cohorts through a wide array of music, taken from all corners of the globe, but manages to make it sound of a piece.

The album opens with a gorgeous version of “Your Story,” a late-career tune by Bill Evans that’s one of two works here giving the nod to Evans’s drummer, the late Paul Motian, who died in November 2011 and with whom Stenson had also worked. Yet the trio also tackles “La Peregrenación” by the great Argentine folk music composer Ariel Ramírez; “Ermitigung” by the German political folk singer Wolf Biermann, and “Tit er Jeg Glad” by the Danish classical composer Carl Nielsen. In each, Stenson creates an atmosphere that bridges it all, so the eclectic repertoire never sounds or feels willfully diverse.

Even when the trio freely improvises, as on gorgeous, peripatetic explorations like the title track and “Indigo,” the musicians retain a contemplative, tender vibe, massaging the repertoire to fit its graceful, tight-knit sound. Nearly everything flows by at a ballad-like clip, yet within that glacial pace there is action. Fält’s scrapes and judiciously deployed stutters generate wonderful friction, and Stenson and Jormin have such an intuitive connection that they can play loose and fast with time and harmony without ever losing the thread. This is small-group improvising at its most sublime.

Interview: New Order

Few bands have ever proven both their survival and evolutionary skills like Manchester’s New Order. The ultimate post-punk dance band transitioned from their earlier incarnation as Joy Division when frontman Ian Curtis hanged himself on the eve of what would’ve been their first American tour in 1980. Guitarist Bernard Sumner took over on vocals, the remaining trio added keyboardist Gillian Gilbert and, three years later, released what would become the largest selling 12-inch single of all time, “Blue Monday.”

Becoming the flagship band of influential indie label Factory Records, New Order bridged the gap between alternative rock and club music with simultaneously ruminative and euphoric hits like “True Faith” and “Regret,” as well as through side projects like Sumner’s Electronic and Bad Lieutenant, Gilbert and drummer Stephen Morris’s The Other Two, and bassist Peter Hook’s Revenge and Monaco. Then in 2007, Hook announced that the band had split. The truth was, he simply left them. Last year, the band resumed touring without Hook but with Gilbert, who had left to raise her daughters.

eMusic caught up with Gilbert and Sumner in San Francisco on the initial day of October’s brief North American tour, the group’s first with Gilbert since 1993, to discuss these comings, goings, and in-betweens.

Gillian, had you missed being in the band?

Gillian Gilbert: I did, because it had been my whole [adult] life — like, 20 years. I was still in the band when I had two children [with husband Morris]. It was very strange trying to do everything, ’cause we rehearsed in our house as well. We were doing [2001's] Get Ready when I had my second child, the first was three, and then it was straight into the studio again. When we were writing, it was good because I could just dip in and out, but the crunch came when they started school, and I’d been thinking that I’d rather be home than in another studio.

You were in the unusual situation of hearing from your husband what you were missing in the band you used to be in.

Gilbert: That was very hard at the beginning, especially seeing Stephen go off to Japan. My daughter was ill and we were due to tour, and obviously I couldn’t do it. Phil Cunningham was our new guitarist; we decided to have a second guitarist to help, especially with Get Ready, because it was more guitar based. He was going to join the band anyway, as well as me playing keyboards, so I learnt him all my parts, and they just carried on.

What was it like rejoining last year?

Gilbert: It was completely out of the blue, which was good, and I thought I’d give it a try. We just thought we’d do two gigs as a benefit for Michael Shamberg, who’s our video producer and has an illness. We did everything low-key because we didn’t know if we’d carry on; we just thought we’d see how this goes first. We have a new bass player [Tom Chapman from Bad Lieutenant], and [Madonna/Killers producer] Stewart Price has remixed some of the tracks, so we’re all relearning the songs. We got new visuals. We wanted to do something different and not be the same as we were in the ’80s and the ’90s.

Has your relationship with your family changed since you’re back on the road?

Yeah, they’re all up for me. This year my dad died, so I’m glad he saw us get back together again, because he wanted that. Everybody’s helped out with the kids, and even they’re happy for me. They weren’t interested in New Order, ’cause it’s their mum and dad, and it’s something that happened a long time ago. But now, with all this coming back, my younger one is mad on the Control film [rock photographer Anton Corbijn's bleak but poetic 2007 Joy Division biopic], which is really weird because she puts it on in the car in the morning. Before that it was Katy Perry.

So you got together for the Michael Shamberg benefits, and then you kept it going because it felt right?

Bernard Sumner: It was for Michael, but it came at a turning point. [Years ago], I had to get away from New Order because it had become difficult again, and I had to get some distance from it so I could see things more clearly. That’s one of the reasons why I did an album with Bad Lieutenant. So when that had run its course, there was a question mark. Do we make another Bad Lieutenant album, or do we pick up where we left off with New Order?

Did you anticipate Peter Hook’s false claim that the band was finished, or were you surprised?

Sumner: It had become increasingly difficult over the last few tours that we’d done, the last year [with him], really. He’d become more – not obstinate – but difficult to work with.

Gilbert: And he was doing his DJ stuff on tour…

Sumner: And he was more interested in celebrity DJing…

Gilbert: …than finishing the album, The Lost Sirens.

Sumner: We wrote so much material for the last New Order album, [2005's] Waiting for the Sirens’ Call, that we had to start another album. We had seven songs and the idea was to get together after [playing] South America, write and record another three tracks, and bingo, we’ve got another album and no one has to wait for ages to see us again. But he refused to come to the studio because he had DJ bookings. That’s what I was told, anyway. So the next thing we know was that he releases a statement on the radio just before the Cannes Film Festival, where Control was showing. French journalists were asking us, “We just heard New Order had just split up; can you tell us about it?” “Well, you’ll have to ask Peter Hook, who’s staying at the hotel down the road, because he’s told us nothing about it.” We knew he was unhappy, so it didn’t come as a complete surprise, but the way he did it was pretty arrogant.

Where those Lost Sirens songs at the demo point, or were they finished?

Sumner: They needed mixes done. Some sounded OK and some sounded not so OK. But it became so difficult to get everyone, I’m being really nice about it, to get everyone to agree on mixes, that we’ll put them out [in November] pretty much as the demos were. To me it’s a non-completed album, which we’ve never released before. I find that a bit frustrating, ’cause seven tracks don’t make an album. But we needed to clear the blockage in the pipe work before we could move on. And hopefully we will be doing some new material. I want to as soon as possible because you get that creative itch. Playing live has been good fun, but it’s purely a reproductive thing.

Had working together as New Order become more difficult having learned how to work on your own in your various side projects?

Sumner: Not to me, because those had gotten other things out of your system that you probably couldn’t do in New Order. Everything had to be a total democracy in New Order, and we took votes. In Electronic, it was [also] a democracy, but no one was being bloody minded about it. If someone said, “I don’t like that guitar part,” they wouldn’t become offended for the next three weeks about it, whereas that was the situation with New Order. Johnny [Marr, formerly of the Smiths] was a very open-minded and easygoing person.

Gilbert: It became a very personal thing, because we’d been together for so long that you took it as a slight. Well, some people would. It’s like when you do mixes. If somebody did a remix of New Order and left a particular person’s instrument out, you’d get offended.

Sumner: I wouldn’t.

Gilbert: No, I wouldn’t, but some people would [both laugh] because they think that’s the only part of the record that’s making the song.

Sumner: To me the song is the god, not you.

Gilbert: And it’s just a different interpretation of it.

Sumner: I think by the time I’d been working with Electronic, the situation in New Order had become fraught because we had business problems, and problems with the nightclub we owned [the Hacienda], and problems with Factory Records. And it was just like you were sick of shouting, “Get your shit together!” It was like seeing a car crash on the street. At first you look, but then you just wanna get away from it, ’cause you can’t fix it.

Your point about New Order being a democracy is interesting because the music itself is so democratic. No part is more important than the other.

Sumner: In Joy Division, one person wrote the vocals: Ian. One person wrote the bass guitar: him, Hooky. One person did the drums: Stephen, and one person did the guitar and keyboards: me. So the math, as you call it in America, we call it maths in England, the math worked out very well. But in New Order, it didn’t work out so well, the maths. At first, I couldn’t sing and play at the same time. When I wrote parts, I couldn’t play ‘em, so that’s why we got Gillian. And I was doing a role that I didn’t really want to do, be a singer. I wanted to bloody play guitar or play keyboards, but [having me sing] was the only way forward.

The other thing about the maths was that we started making a lot of electronic music. You had to go, “All right, I’ve got an idea. Let’s program it.” Operating a computer terminal is not a democracy. Only one person can operate that keyboard at once, so that meant the rest of the band has to sit around. These were the early days of electronic music, and some of them weren’t even computers, but little sequencers where you put the notes in by manually writing it all down. The synthesizer that we did “Blue Monday” on wasn’t MIDI, and that’s why it sounds so tight; there wasn’t so much processing. It was a sequencer I’d made from an electronics kit; to buy one would cost you the equivalent of a house. Also, when you get into that style of writing, when you’re not just jamming with a guitar, when you’re programming against a beat, you hear the rest of the song in your mind, so you know what the other parts should be.

So the person programming the computer has the arrangement, and then he or she tells the other members their parts?

Sumner: It varies from song to song.

Gilbert: Sometimes when you couldn’t come up with stuff, you left a gap, didn’t you, and I filled the gap. But it’s all different, really, ‘Cause we jammed some, like “Age of Consent.” We did both because we didn’t want to be completely electronic.

It’s been written that you, Bernard, don’t like traveling to North America, and that this lead to the long gap between 1993′s Republic and 2001′s Get Ready.

It was just that we got into so much bloody trouble over here. There are certain hotels that I can’t stay in now because I’d get dreadful flashbacks to hedonistic nights. [Laughs] We made Mötley Crüe look like kindergarten children, but we kept quiet about it. The worst for me were the airports in the morning because we flew everywhere. I’d throw up in the airport toilet, and then just flake out on the floor of the airport concourse. I think we saw America as a kind of playground; I was being very childish at the time. But if you’re given the opportunity to stay up all night, go to as many parties as you want, drink as much as you want, and the rest, you know, that goes unsaid, who wouldn’t do it? Isn’t that the reason for joining a band? The music is important, but you’ve done that work back at home and in the studio, and you’ve toured up and down, and you go out to British clubs in foggy winters. And suddenly you’re beside the swimming pool in Los Angeles with girls throwing themselves at you, asking you to go to parties with them. It’s great, and we took full advantage of it until it took a few discreet turns and started taking advantage of us.

How did that play out for you, Gillian?

Sumner: Oh, she was very demure. She went to bed early…

Gilbert: I’d read a book!

Sumner: Knitting patterns. [Laughs.] She was the worst. She was.

Gilbert: Well, it was great. Yeah. But we don’t do that anymore. Stephen’s become the opposite now. He doesn’t drink or anything, really.

Sumner: I had two moments of, what’s the expression, my road to Damascus. I used to drink Pernod and orange juice, which is a lovely drink. If any of you readers are laughing at that, just try it. I started out the tour with an inch of Pernod and four inches of orange juice, and by the end of the tour it was an inch of orange juice and four inches of Pernod, and I ended up in a hospital in Chicago because I burnt the lining in my stomach. In fact, that’s when I stopped touring the States, ’cause I thought I don’t want to end up dead like Jimi Hendrix. So I went back to the UK just as acid house music was starting to happen, and I was out of the frying pan and into the fire. I’d used to go to the Hacienda with the Happy Mondays doing E’s, and ended up going out all night to warehouse parties and acid house parties, and just being as bad if not worse over there.

But then my second road to Damascus, which actually sorted me, was a party at a club, a place called Northside. Everyone was trying to get in, but one guy with a big beard and an orange jacket was trying to get out and someone punched him, ’cause he was causing a lot of trouble. But we all got in and everything had settled down. I remember having a drink and then everyone in the room spread like bulrushes in the wind. I just thought I was having a trip, and then I noticed the guy with the orange jacket coming towards me, only this time he had a balaclava and a big fucking gun. And he came right up and pointed it at me to see if I was the guy who punched him. Then he pulled away and went into the other room to find this guy, to shoot him dead. After that, I just stopped going to clubs and wised up. I don’t get drunk a lot, but I drink a lot. But with drugs, I could definitely just stop, and not have a problem. With chocolate, I do [laughs], but it’s not like heroin, is it?

I recently saw [1979 German WWII film] The Tin Drum, which has a new director’s cut. The central character looks like a smaller version of you in the ’80s. Have you ever seen that?

Sumner: Yeah, but a long time ago. I went to see it with Ian Curtis, actually.

You did an illustration for Joy Division’s first EP, An Ideal for Living, that also looks like that Tin Drum character.

Sumner: I did draw that, but that was before the movie. I remember thinking when the film came out, “That looks like the sleeve.” We used to watch a lot of Werner Herzog films; quite an odd quality about them. I liked Nosferatu the Vampyre. I remember seeing that with Ian, and Taxi Driver.

That may be my all-time favorite movie.

Sumner: That was Ian’s as well.

Before you entered the conversation, I was telling Gillian that you were the first real musician I interviewed.

Sumner: [Deadpan] That’s the first time I’ve ever been called a real musician. [Erupts in laughter] Thank you!

New Order were about to play [legendary Manhattan disco] the Paradise Garage.

Sumner: It was a fantastic club, wasn’t it? A great sound system in there. The DJ [proto-house icon Larry Levan] had a joystick. On the walls was the PA, and he could play his records and pan it ’round the walls with the joystick. We used the DJ’s sound system, and so that show was in surround sound.

My friend and I snuck in that afternoon and you agreed to an impromptu interview, and then wanted to go record shopping with us the next day.

Sumner: I don’t remember any of that.

It was particularly memorable for me when Peter jumped onto the bench you and I were sitting on, pulled his sweatpants down, and waved his dick at me.

Sumner: [More deadpan] My interpretation is that he was saying, “Look at me, I’m a dick.” [More laughs from both].

Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Psychedelic Pill

On which Neil Young & Crazy Horse get on their ponies and ride…and ride… and keep on riding, as three of the eight new songs on Psychedelic Pill just go on, like the road, forever. Or at least north of 16 minutes. Opener “Driftin’ Back” is nearly 28 minutes of NY & CH in excelsis, rambling gorgeously with dream fragments and meditations that include sightings of Picasso, the Maharishi and Rust Never Sleeps. Yes, Young sings, he wants “a hip-hop haircut.” No, he repeats, he still “don’t want my MTV.” These images are offset by the reliable barbed wire instrumental sound of Crazy Horse — the layered guitars, the steady drums, the limited-range solos that travel like Morse code moving down a telegraph wire between isolated western train depots. The sprawling, unhurried “Walk Like a Giant” laments the failure of Young and his larger circle of friends to change the world, and ends with four minutes of musically-generated Godzilla stomps. Among the shorter tunes, “Born in Ontario” may be Young’s long-awaited response to “Sweet Home Alabama,” while the winning “Twisted Road” carries shout-outs to the Grateful Dead, and to Bob Dylan, “poetry rolling off his tongue/ like Hank Williams chewing bubble gum.”

Cody ChesnuTT, Landing on a Hundred

Every aspect of Cody ChesnuTT’s 2002, 36-song debut — its four-track production, White Album-inspired spontaneity and cheeky lyrics about his dick — introduced the songwriter as a brash, arrogant virtuoso. But just as The Headphone Masterpiece gained notice, ChesnuTT disappeared. Why?

Turns out, he no longer stood by his Masterpiece. (“Even when I was performing [that album], my relationship with God was getting better and I began to feel the conflict…The mindset of the songs didn’t line up with the mind that I’m supposed to have,” he said to Believer.) So in Landing on a Hundred, a far leaner sophomore effort that took a decade to create, ChesnuTT leads a 10-piece band in search of soulful, studio-polished redemption. He often apologizes for his past behavior; in “Don’t Follow Me,” his titular pleas are like echoes bouncing off cave walls.

ChesnuTT’s also surveying a world that he once blissfully ignored. In the leisurely “Love is More Than a Wedding Day,” he dismisses the base materialism many people confuse as symbols of love — package honeymoons, summer cruises. On the scathing “Under the Spell of the Handout,” he sings “I’m hungry for freedom, but I don’t know how to eat that meal/ because I’m under the spell of the handout.” He expects more of others, just as he now expects more of himself.

As he wrote Landing, ChesnuTT studied songs by blues and gospel-trained singers — Billie Holiday and Sam Cooke. Its standout moment, though, is when ChesnuTT introduces his African-ancestry anthem “I’ve Been Life” with a single, transcendent, wordless “Ooooh.” He sounds strikingly like the Marvin Gaye of “Inner City Blues.” But more importantly, he sounds humbled.