Janet Groth, The Receptionist

Janet Groth’s memoirs of the two decades she spent as the receptionist at the famed New Yorker magazine will likely divide its listeners. New Yorker and literati fanboys and girls will adore the tales of her encounters with Dorothy Parker, Pauline Kael and Calvin Trillin set to the scenes of sophisticated, martini-soaked luncheons and sordid affairs. However, while Groth’s tale is partially that of an underdog (an aspiring writer, she never advanced while at the magazine), the telling is occasionally so dry it registers as pretentious or superior, which may delight critics of the New Yorker. Judith West’s proper narration doesn’t help this issue: Even when Groth tells tales of being desperate and unlucky in love, the listener may feel like the tale is more of a lecture than a confession.

Colorama, Good Music

It’s a simple title, but a multi-faceted album. The fifth from Cardiff-basedColorama, produced by Edwyn Collins, ranges from psychedelic pop to late-summer British whimsy to sinister groove-locking and is propelled throughout by the liquid voice and wit of their lynchpin, Carwyn Ellis.

Ellis, who has worked with many well-known names (from UNKLE to Franz Ferdinand), formedColoramain 2008, and has guided the outfit of ever-shifting personnel through both Welsh language and English language recordings and the death of double bass player David Fletcher in 2009. Experience has clearly helped him hone his craft: Good Music, sung exclusively in English, sounds focused and crisp. From wry ballad-over-backbeat opener “Old Fashioned Girl” to poignant finale “Anytime,” their touch is deft and their momentum high.

There’s a keen sense of humor at play, so Ellis can pull off lines like “She’s a classy dame,” without causing cringing. Likewise, the tight retro-rock of “Winner” unleashes the chat-up line, “You’re an amazing kind of creature/ You’re educated, you’re my teacher,” and comes up smelling of roses. It’s all about the gentle, guileful approach, which brings to mind very English staples like Caravan or The Kinks, but adds its own tints with Ellis’s distinctive Welsh burr.

There are plenty of pleasing stylistic leaps. Some tracks recall the melancholy whimsy of The Clientele, while “Do The Pump” is surely the coolest song ever to subtly parody Kenny’s Seventies hit “The Bump.” “The War Con” is a dark instrumental with spaghetti-western riffs, while the confessional “My Predicament” is a broken-hearted sigh of longing (“Why do I feel so fucking empty? When you were around there was plenty”). The single “Delaware” reveals they also excel at fuzzy dream-pop with spacey motorik rhythms, almost as a casual afterthought. Colorama’s palette is broad, but their brush strokes here are vivid and brilliant.

Bloc Party, Four

“Can’t shake the feeling we’re moving backwards,” sings Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke over de-tuned acoustic strums on “Coliseum,” moments before his band launches into a nasty blues-metal stomp. In a way, his intuition is spot-on: On Four, Bloc Party’s fourth overall album (and first in four years), these former indie-rock poster boys have re-harnessed the urgent, anthemic sound that catapulted their debut, 2005′s Silent Alarm, into the critical limelight.

It’s been ages since Bloc Party has “rocked” in any sense of the word: Their 2007 sophomore effort, A Weekend in the City, was plagued by self-conscious attempts at political lyricism and art-rock atmospherics, while 2008′s Intimacy was the exact opposite of intimate, filled with bloated electronic experimentation that de-fused the band’s explosive strengths. But Four wastes absolutely no time setting the record straight, blaring out of the gate with “So He Begins To Lie,” a startlingly raw epic built on the quartet’s aggressive “live in the room” communion: Matt Tong’s caffeinated drum cacophony, Gordon Moakes’ distorted bass, and the crossfire riff telepathy between Okereke and guitarist Russell Lissack.

But Four isn’t defined by nostalgic backward glances: Bloc Party may have returned to a more linear style of indie-rock, but they’re also evolving sonically. “Real Talk” is surprisingly sexy, Okereke flexing a soulful falsetto over restrained guitar effects and — get this — a banjo. The verses on “V.A.L.I.S.” are driven by ping-ponging stabs of trebly electric guitar (perhaps the band’s stylistic trademark), but they’re crafted in service of groove, rather than nervous propulsion; the chorus, meanwhile, is a delectable ’80s yacht-pop sing-along. “The future’s ours,” Okereke proclaims during the metallic rush of “Kettling,” his shouts swallowed by monstrous waves of distortion. “We can feel it in our bones!” For the first time in years, that optimism feels well-earned.

The 10 Most Unlikely Reunions in Music

Summer is festival season, but lately, festival season is actually just reunion season. Beginning with Coachella’s uncanny knack for raising the dead (sometimes with the assistance of a hologram), bands are proving with alarming regularity that “break up” is a phrase that’s lost its potency. Sure, there are some militant hold-outs — the Smiths and the Talking Heads come to mind — but for the most part, it seems every vitriolic relationship can be smoothed over with a paycheck.

However, despite how often reunions happen — and perhaps by that we mean “too often” — there are still some musical acts whose hatchet-burying genuinely surprises us. Like when the legendary punk act Refused renounced its definitive “fucking dead” status, or when, for no discernible reason, frontman Jarvis Cocker brought his Britpop collective Pulp back to the common people. In the spirit of those truly rewarding comebacks, we’ve compiled a list of our favorite, yet most unlikely reunions. Maybe all of these improbable reconciliations could inspire Morrissey? Probably not.

Matthew E. White, Big Inner

Richmond, Virginia-reared singer/songwriter/arranger Matthew E. White recently confessed to music blog Aquarium Drunkard that he had made a pilgrimage of sorts to Randy Newman’s home in L.A. a few years back. Rather than stalk the venerable songwriter/Oscar-winning soundtrack composer at a distance, though, White worked up the nerve to ring the man’s doorbell and hand off his own music. If it was a copy of his poised debut, Big Inner, there’s a good chance Newman might soon be ringing White up.

The biggest man to ever utter a line like “I am a barracuda/ I am a hurricane” and make it into the gentlest of admissions, White emerges on Big Inner fully steeped in the nuanced, vigilant and incisive songcraft of the likes of totemic American tunesmiths like Newman, Allen Toussaint and Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner. And while such debuts are usually tinged by youthful exuberance and metabolism, there’s such patience in White’s delivery and his backing band’s pacing that belie their years.

Opener “One of These Days” simmers and sees through the temporality of the world, White assuring his betrothed that even though “we all pass away/ everyone finds a way,” he still wants to be there “when the glory fadesand never turn away.” His whispers mingle with Dixieland horns and a crisp backbeat on “Will You Love Me,” and he sounds positively sage when he sings at that song’s climax: “Darkness can’t drive out darkness/ only love can do that.” The dilapidated yet regal strings of “Hot Toddies” sound as drunken and quietly mirthful as vintage Newman, while the nine stirring minutes of closer “Brazos” cloaks itself in cresting strings, a driving bassline and gospel choir that evokes Spiritualized’s sense of redemption through sound. Underneath almost every song there pulses New Orleans’s second line strut. You can hear it buoy the uptempo “Steady Pace” as White ensures his love with the same sense of calm that he and his band deploy throughout this magnificent debut: “We can take our time.”

Taj Mahal, The Hidden Treasures of Taj Mahal 1969-1973

Some “official bootleg” compilations dispel the notion of being for completists only, and this is one of them. These early outtakes and live performances reveal a free-wheeling, unpredictable side to Taj Mahal and his music that doesn’t always shine through in the shorter, polished format of his late-’60s studio albums. That’s not to say that his self-titled 1968 debut is anything other than an essential classic of the periodbridging the gap, as it does, between the old-school delta blues canon and modern blues-rockbut you don’t need to know this to get a rise out of an unreleased gem like “Yan-Nah Mama-Loo,” with its sassy swamp-funk backbeat, or the bawdy 16-minute shuffle “You Ain’t No Streetwalker, Honey But I Do Love the Way You Strut Your Stuff.” The same holds true for the collection’s second disca live set, in its entirety, from an April 1970 appearance at London’s Royal Albert Hall. With a locked-tight band behind him that includes guitar hero Jesse Ed Davis, Mahal tears through the barrelhouse “Bacon Fat,” “Diving Duck Blues” and a hot-footed version of “Oh Susanna,” his voice soaring with a Redding-like energy. If you’re looking for a fresh point of entry into Taj Mahal’s rootsy heyday, you can’t do much better than this.

New This Week: Four Tet, Bloc Party, The Darkness & More

Four Tet, Pink Is it 2003 again? This week sees new releases from Four Tet, Bloc Party and The Darkness, suggesting we’re on course for a Libertines reunion sometime next week. Still, the eighth album by Kieran Hebden operating as Four Tet is a reminder of his subtle, sophisticated charms. Ben Machell writes:

“Songs begin with a cheapo keyboard cymbal beat or a sparky, snap-crackle-pop groove, before darting off somewhere very different towards a faerie circle of music box chimes or highly pixilated melodies. Hebden’s roots are in folk music and there is something of the deep forest here.”

Bloc Party, Four Bloc Party’s fourth album, and their first for four years (see, it’s not just a clever title) reharnesses their urgent, anthemic sound. Ryan Reed writes:

“Bloc Party may have returned to a more linear style of indie-rock, but they’re also evolving sonically. “Real Talk” is surprisingly sexy.”

The Darkness, Hot Cakes The Darkness blaze back with an album of new material that’s exactly the same as the old material, for better or for worse. Features a hilarious, power-chording cover of Radiohead’s “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” – Thom Yorke must be thrilled.

Yeasayer, Fragrant World Following the arty impulses of 2007′s All Hour Cymbals and the poppier Odd Blood, Yeasayer return with an album of demented R&B. Barry Walters writes:

“It’s by far their most danceable record; you could play this at a party and keep everyone on the floor.”

Colorama, Good Music Produced by Edwyn Collins, the fifth album from Cardiff-based dream-poppers Colorama is a multi-faceted gem. Chris Roberts writes:

“There are plenty of stylist leaps. Some tracks recall the melancholy whimsy of The Clientele, while “Do The Pump” is surely the coolest song ever to subtly parody Kenny’s Seventies hit “The Bump”. Colorama’s palette is broad, but their brush strokes here are vivid and brilliant.”

Minotaur Shock, Orchard Bristol-based composer David Edwards returns with more synapse-tickling sonics. Andrew Mueller writes:

“Orchard is a worthy heir to a noble tradition, of strange, unbound music that sounds as if it was made not in a studio, but a shed, the consequence of determined tinkering by an inquiring and restless imagination.”

JJ Doom, Key To The Kuffs This is a love letter to London from the New York rapper Doom, which explains the song titles “Guv’nor” and “Snatch That Dough”. Mangled electronics come from producer Jneiro Jarel, and there are cameo appearances from Thom Yorke, Damon Albarn and Beth Gibbons of Portishead.

Bill Fay, Life Is People This sublime record is the first in 40 years from the cult singer-songwriter, whose ’70s recordings have been evangelised by everyone from Nick Cave to Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy.

Stealing Sheep, Into The Diamond Sun Sparkly debut from the Liverpool trio who craft three-part harmonies into wonderfully inventive three-minute pop songs.

Jure Pukl, Abstract Society

Jure Pukl is a classically trained Slovenian saxophonist and composer who earned his jazz bona fides studying under Joe Lovano and others at the Berklee College of Music. In his mid 30s, with six discs under his belt, he is ready for the heightened recognition that in a just world Abstract Society will provide. Pukl certainly couldn’t ask for a better supporting cast for his nine original compositionsVijay Iyer on piano, with a rhythm section comprised of drummer Damion Reid and bassist Joe Sanders. Pukl has roots in hip-hop as well as the classical discipline, but Abstract Society is unabashedly thorny jazz that honors its obvious influences with high-caliber performance. Songs such as “Circle Mind” and “Random Logic” have the slightly haywire spatial rhythms and flow common to Steve Coleman and other members of the former M-Base Collective (not surprising, as Iyer and Reid both had formative experience with the M-Base crew). But the real magic here is the way Pukl’s ensemble is able to channel the vintage sound of the John Coltrane quartet on the final four tracks. Many of the hallmarks of that classic, beloved music are resurrected here, including the spreading of an ethereal, slightly foreboding canvas, the blending of openness and density due especially to the punctuation of drums and piano, the fluttering preamble and upward swoop of the tenor sax, the breadth of the piano’s chordal spunk (Iyer invokes McCoy Tyner without blatant mimickry), and the majestic arc of the tunes overall. All of Pukl’s sidemen justify their exalted reputations, but a special shout-out here to Reid, who keeps a liquid tempo and is able to peel off martial snare beats in a manner reminiscent of Ornette Coleman’s timekeeper, Ed Blackwellyet another strong presence on a record that is exceptionally adept at calling forth some of the most enduringly creative spirits in the jazz canon.

Toddla T, Watch Me Dance: Agitated By Ross Orton & Pipes

You can go home again, it seems. Twenty-seven-year-old Thomas Bell aka Toddla T has been a pro in the game of British dancehall for more than a decade now, a journey that has seen the young producer/composer/DJ/remixer/radio presenter launch himself from the clubs of Steel City (Sheffield, to you and me) to become one of the most vital voices in UK electronic music.

First surfacing on Roots Manuva’s 2008 Slime & Reason LPhe produced that album’s standouts “Buff Nuff” and “Do Nah Bodda”Bell has never turned his back on his hometown: his debut album, 2009′s Skanky Skanky, wore its love for Sheffield on its sweat-soaked sleeve, right down to a guest appearance from Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helder. So it makes perfect sense that, on this album of remixes from last year’s bold and brash Watch Me Dance, Bell handed production duties over to DJ Pipes and Orton, the Sheffield DJs whose work was a key influence on his sound.

DJ Pipes and Orton are luminaries on the Sheffield scene, the former a DJ who formed the Desperate Soundsystem alongside Jarvis Cocker and Steve Mackey of Pulp, the latter the producer of M.I.A’s Galang and a member of The Fat Truckers, whose club hit “Teenage Daughter” remains a sludgy gem of home-made techno menace.

On Watch Me Dance: Agitated, Pipes and Orton retool Bell’s pop-savvy, hook-heavy second album for the dancefloors. Those massive choruses aren’t entirely smothered by the hardstep dancehall liverythe glinting harmonies of the giddy “Cherry Pickling” still shine through the martial drum-rollsbut the result is very much Watch Me Dance: After Dark.
The set opens with a heavier-than-lead dub retread of “Fly,” announcing that reverence to the originals is not on the agenda. Its rootsy, slow skank is transformed into a shuddering carnival of Black Ark lunacy, heavy echo and Scientist-esque bleeps. A swing at the album’s Roots Manuva-fronted single, “Watch Me Dance”in its earlier incarnation a mighty ’80s funk pastiche, all slap-bass and muscular guitar chopspares its groove back to needling three-note synth riffs and wiry 808 rasp, and is mercilessly effective. “Lose Control,” meanwhile, is nothing short of a smash’n'grab joyride through the original “Cruise Control,” hotwiring its urgent, R&B-upholstered throb to synth strobes and slicing Maxsta’s vocals into delay-swamped shards.

Some qualities are lost in the exchange: Pipes and Orton’s minimalist remake of “Take It Back,” for example, sucks all the air out of the housey, piano-drenched earlier take. But the duo’s re-imagining brings much that’s new to the party, and their vision of “Badder Man Runs” masterfully streamlines the original, setting its siren wails and chaotic holler to laser-guided pulses and hardfloor breaks, and raising a fine lunatic chaos.

Minotaur Shock, Orchard

Minotaur Shock is the flag of convenience for Bristol-based composer David Edwards. Edwards is usually described as an electronica musician, and though this is accurate as far as it goes, it seems too paltry and utilitarian a description for the colossal transports of eccentricity that comprise Orchard, Edwards’s fifth album under the Minotaur Shock name.

Most of the tracks on Orchard are somewhere between ambitious and epic: Only the rumbustious Afro-flamenco of “Quint” and the terse, pretty acoustic interlude “Too Big To Quit” come in at under four minutes. The longest, the nine-minute opening fanfare “Janet,” is more typical; for much of its long life it suggests an experiment in electronic surf rock, like Daft Punk playing Dick Dale, before it gives way to a pastoral folk guitar and violin interlude. Janet is clearly a complicated woman.

Edwards’s most obvious antecedents are the unorthodox, gently grandiose artists who defined the aesthetics of British label 4AD in the 1980s: Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil, Clan of Xymox. Fittingly, one of Minotaur Shock’s previous albums, 2005′s Maritime, was released by 4AD. Orchard is a worthy heir to a noble tradition, of strange, unbound music that sounds as if it was made not in a studio, but a shed, the consequence of determined tinkering by an inquiring and restless imagination.

Jessica Lurie Ensemble, Megaphone Heart

Defying genre borders, multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Jessica Lurie satisfies on Megaphone Heart, designing a multilayered sonic structure with an impressive ensemble that’s anchored by the crack rhythm team of bassist/co-producer Todd Sickafoose and drummer Allison Miller. Co-producer Lurie, who picks up alto, tenor and baritone saxophones and flute throughout, melds lyrical pop, stinging rock, rhythmic Eastern European folk music and improvisation-heavy jazz with a dose of free-wheeling avant-groove-meets-grind.

Rhythmically rich, Megaphone Heart alternately expresses glee and sobriety, allure and clamor, wit and humor without falling prey to stylistic traps. Witness the bouncy one-minute leadoff “Steady Drum” followed by the delightful “A Million Pieces All in One,” which opens with Brandon Seabrook’s Peruvian music-inspired banjo melody and then dips into Lurie’s flute interludes, zesty Miller percussion and electronic effects. “Boot Heels” ripens in 11/8 time, with a sinuous Balkan music flair, and the slow-moving title track finds Lurie singing and dubbing in harmonic phrasings through a megaphone. Melodic beauties include the mysterious sax and piano “Same Moon” and the poignant end song “Once.” In Lurie’s notes to her tune “Maps,” she says that in order to rediscover her balance and sense of self, she tosses out “the stacks of maps, disconnects the GPS and drives blind, listening.” That’s the perfect mode for taking in the entirety of Lurie’s musically multifaceted gem: casting off expectations and tuning in with an attentive ear.

Four Tet, Pink

Much of this, the eighth album by Kieran Hebden under his Four Tet guise, will already be familiar to his more committed fans, as six of its eight tracks having been released as vinyl-only singles over the past year or so. For everybody else,Pinkserves as a reminder of the Putney-born DJ/songwriter/producer/arranger’s subtle, sophisticated talents.

There’s something naturalistic about the layers of beat loops and jazz-inspired plays on momentum that run throughout Pink. While familiar dubstep textures inhabit opener “Locked,” so too does a mounting sense of ambivalence and, gradually, sadness. Conversely, “Peace for Earth” opens as a four-note space lullaby before expanding to become an 8-bit console game melody. Other songs begin with a cheapo keyboard cymbal beat or a sparky, snap-crackle-pop groove before darting off somewhere very differenttoward a faerie circle of music box chimes or highly pixelated melodies. Hebden’s roots are in folk music, and there is something of the deep forest here.

It’s a fun record, though ultimately Sphinx-like in aspect. Five-tracks in, the first snippets of garbled vocal samples are introduced on “128 Harps,” and it only reinforces the gnawing sense that there is some kind of hidden knowledge at work here. Repeated listening will yield different results.

Yeasayer, Fragrant World

Following the self-consciously arty impulses of 2007′s All Hour Cymbals and the heightened accessibility of 2010′s Odd Blood, Fragrant World is Yeasayer’s synthesis move: Pitting the band’s strongest batch of songs against its most jarring sounds, it radiates the tension of its opposing impulses and resolves them with rhythm. Described by the band during its creation as “demented R&B,” it’s by far their most danceable record; you could play at a party and keep everyone on the floor.

With several tours now under his belt, Chris Keating flaunts newfound vocal confidence; even when he’s chosen fairly arcane subject matterlead single “Henrietta” is about a woman whose rare form of cancer allowed her cells to continue growing after she diedhe’s emoting something, even if much of it suggests dread. Like much of instrumentation, though, his voice is subject to plenty of dubby/distorting/estranging effects; on “Glass of the Microscope,” he’s overdubbed into creepy choirs of uncanny harmony. Evoking the era suggested by its title, “Reagan’s Skeleton” flaunts familiar New Order motifs, but surrounds them with rattling percussion and disquieting chords.

“Damaged Goods” best represents the album’s dialectic: It starts with unsettling synths and thumping bass drum, then adds the quasi-Middle Eastern twists that initially saddled Yeasayer as world music hippies. Then the chorus kicks in, and its instantly hooky melody feels uplifting, even as its lyrics despair. These are the strangely satisfying contradictions of a band that balanced itself by accentuating its extremes.

Interview: Yeasayer

“We’re never scared of changing. We’re more fearful of repeating ourselves,” saysYeasayer’s Anand Wilder, by way of shedding light on the band’s shift from the poppier sound of their last album, Odd Blood to the more textured music found on their new album, Fragrant World.”We wanted to indulge our more experimental side”.

The Brooklyn group inventively dubbed their own music “Middle Eastern-psych-snap-gospel” and, accordingly, “experimental” is a word that often crops up in our interview. “[It's about] maintaining a certain sense of experimentation and then hopefully finding a marriage between that and really direct melodies,” says vocalist Chris Keating.

In a bid to pre-empt the leaking of Fragrant World, the groupposted clips of its songs, accompanied by psychedelic visuals, all over the internet, making for a kind of treasure hunt for fans.

eMusic’s Elisa Bray talkedwith Keating and Wilderabout pushing musical boundaries, sampling frogs and LED glasses.

Posting your tracks all over the internet was an interesting way of getting your music out there.

Chris Keating: We figured that an album leak is inevitable these days. We were making visuals for all the songs anyway, collaborating with artists we liked, and we just figured we’d release them ourselves to pre-empt it.

What did you want to do differently with Fragrant World?

Anand Wilder: When we recorded Odd Blood, it was the first time we had a budget and were able to really take our time with the production. We wanted to go in a pop direction, with anthemic songs. On Fragrant World, we wanted to scale that back and indulge our more experimental side. This is a much more abstract kind of dance album.

And you were listening to a lot of R&B?

Wilder: We’ve always been inspired by hip-hop production techniques, even on our first album, although you might not be able to hear it. We’ve always used samplers and we’ve always been interested in loops, but this is the first time where we indulged a kind of R&B sensibility in terms of vocal melodies and the overall production qualities.

Keating: We were listening to a lot of electronic artists, more out-there stuff combined with poppier R&B from the ’90s like Ginuwine and Aaliyah. There’s a lot of exciting stuff going on in the UK right nowMount Kimbie and SBTRKT. In a post-dubstep, post-IDM world, people are really pushing those sounds in an interesting way.

And you’ve rearranged your old songs for the live shows?

Wilder: We reworked them because we have a drummer now. And I’ve got all these new guitar pedals and Ira has a new MIDI bass and we’re using new hardware, so we had to rework everything. Instead of going back to the old arrangements, we found more pleasure in coming up with something new. It’s fun, it keeps us on our toes. But I get nervous before playing.

What do you do to calm your nerves?

Wilder: I just go out on stage and, by the end of the show, I’m either more nervous because something’s broken, or my anxiety is alleviated. I could just have a beer, but I try to save that for after the show so I’m not belching.

Did any unusual sounds make it onto Fragrant World?

Keating: There are recordings of frogs which we turned into a synthesizer sound. Although by the end it didn’t sound anything like frogs.

Where do you find inspiration?

Keating: I have these glasses I got from a website. They have LED lights in them and, if it’s dark, you can sit there and clear your mind, and you listen to some things you’ve recorded and get ideas. They’re called ChromaDepth glasses. It’s like a legal high. It’s a flickering RGB (red green blue) light and eventually you start to make all kinds of patterns. On tour we all got really into wearing them and now I have my own pair at home.

Was there an overarching theme to Fragrant World?

Keating: “Henrietta” was a starting point for some of the ideas. It’s about a woman called Henrietta Lacks, who died from a rare form of cancer in the ’50s. The amazing thing was that the cells from her tumor didn’t diethey kept growing. They ended up being used as raw material for scientists to experiment on, for vaccinations and things like that. It was an interesting idea about a singular life becoming an abstraction or commodity.

Wilder: It’s hard, because when we go into the studio we generally have a lot of nuggets of songs. We all always come with demos at different times. Sometimes it’s like, “Oh! You wrote about that? I wrote about that!” We can put those together on the album and then it will have some kind of cohesion.

Great minds think alike. Can you give examples of that on Fragrant World?

Wilder: If you look at some of the titles, like “Demon Road,” “Devil and the Deed” and “No Bones,” I think we’re all obsessed with mortality in some sick, narcissistic way. I might not be as obsessed as Chris. But it’s definitely there. Chris and I turned 30 in the past year, so it’s an interesting turning point. We’re both married and I have a kid on the way. So you’ve got all these kind of 30-year-old milestones reached.

Did your marriage feed into any of the songs?

Wilder: I wrote about it on “Devil and the Deed.” Although that is as explicit as I get about that kind of subject matter. And it’s still pretty abstract [laughs].

Considering all the celebration, there’s a lot of bleakness in the music.

Keating: I think we were trying to go for more minor keys and dissonance than on the last record, certainly. When you talk about certain political themes, it’s a bleak world.

Wilder: A song like “Demon Road” is pretty cheerful I think. But we’ve always enjoyed playing with the uplifting, hopeful side of things and then contrasting that with something darker. It just makes the songs more interesting.

How do you complement one another as band members?

Wilder: We all have our different talents. We’re all pretty good at singing. Ira is a timbre freak and he’s really into tweaking tones. Chris is the most attuned to beats and rhythmshe’s the beatmeister. My strength is probably coming up with harmonies.

And character-wise?

Wilder:We all love a joke. Our ideal kind of soundtrack to clearing up our studio is a comedy podcast interview. You’d think we’d be listening to Spiritualized or something, but no, we listen to interviews with Chris Rock and Norm Macdonald.

Bloc Party, Four

“Can’t shake the feeling we’re moving backwards,” sings Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke over de-tuned acoustic strums on “Coliseum,” moments before his band launches into a nasty blues-metal stomp. In a way, his intuition is spot-on: On Four, Bloc Party’s fourth overall album (and first in four years), these former indie-rock poster boys have re-harnessed the urgent, anthemic sound that catapulted their debut, 2005′s Silent Alarm, into the critical limelight.

It’s been ages since Bloc Party has “rocked” in any sense of the word: Their 2007 sophomore effort, A Weekend in the City, was plagued by self-conscious attempts at political lyricism and art-rock atmospherics, while 2008′s Intimacy was the exact opposite of intimate, filled with bloated electronic experimentation that de-fused the band’s explosive strengths. But Four wastes absolutely no time setting the record straight, blaring out of the gate with “So He Begins To Lie,” a startlingly raw epic built on the quartet’s aggressive “live in the room” communion: Matt Tong’s caffeinated drum cacophony, Gordon Moakes’ distorted bass, and the crossfire riff telepathy between Okereke and guitarist Russell Lissack.

But Four isn’t defined by nostalgic backward glances: Bloc Party may have returned to a more linear style of indie-rock, but they’re also evolving sonically. “Real Talk” is surprisingly sexy, Okereke flexing a soulful falsetto over restrained guitar effects andget thisa banjo. The verses on “V.A.L.I.S.” are driven by ping-ponging stabs of trebly electric guitar (perhaps the band’s stylistic trademark), but they’re crafted in service of groove, rather than nervous propulsion; the chorus, meanwhile, is a delectable ’80s yacht-pop sing-along. “The future’s ours,” Okereke proclaims during the metallic rush of “Kettling,” his shouts swallowed by monstrous waves of distortion. “We can feel it in our bones!” For the first time in years, that optimism feels well-earned.

Tonus Peregrinus, Music from the Eton Choirbook

The Eton Choirbook, compiled circa 1490, is the main source for late medieval English music. It contains some of the smoothest textures in music history: lots of parallel thirds, and mostly stepwise movement rather than leaps. Five composers are represented on this album, which among its small sampling of Eton treasures includes the first recording of Hugh Kellyk’s five-voice Magnificat, one of the older works in the Choirbook. It is an ecstatic work with a wide range and a more serpentine melodic sense than anything else heard here. The six-voice Stabat mater of John Browne is a darkly beautiful setting full of sensual phrases and widely separated voices that lend a great sense of drama. Other highlights: the four-voice Magnificat by William Stratford with its odd structural deviations that colorfully depict the text, and Robert Wylkynson’s uniquely eccentric 13-voice Credo, full of lively rhythms. Tonus Peregrinus has made its own modern edition of this music, so even collectors who have recordings of this repertoire will want to hear their unique application of scholarship to the questions of cross-relations and unwritten accidentals, which give these performances a piquancy missing from some of the competition.

Roni Ben-Hur and Santi DeBriano, Our Thing

Our Thing was born of the extraordinary rapport that Israeli guitarist Roni Ben-Hur and Panamanian bassist Santi DeBriano developed over the years in the concerts that concluded their annual summer jazz camp in the French village of St. Cezaire. But the contributions of a third member, Brazilian drummer Duduka Da Fonseca, seem equally vital to the album’s success. Da Fonseca has demonstrated his mastery of the souffl delicacy required to skillfully mix jazz with samba and bossa nova under both his name and with the Brazilian Trio. On Our Thing, whether it’s the seven multi-faceted group originals (four by DeBriano), the two Jobim numbers, the stylish-but-straight-ahead bop of Thelonious Monk’s “Green Chimneys,” or a rousing rendition of Irving Berlin’s “Let’s Face The Music and Dance,” his patter on brushes, splashed cymbals and hand percussion hem any loose threads remaining from the partnership of Ben-Hur and DeBriano. All three blend a heartfelt facility for subtle Latin and North African panache with a cerebral embrace of improvisation burnished by time in New York jazz clubs. The result is a nimble feel that combines airy grace with spry rhythms. Among my favorites are DeBriano’s “Afroscopic,” which features an impeccably smooth and catchy groove ruffled just enough by Da Fonseca’s cowbell; and Ben-Hur’s “Anna’s Dance,” a slightly skewed bossa nova that Jobim would appreciate.

Icon: Randy Newman

Randy Newman has never fit squarely into any conventional pop music category. He’s a pianist in a world of guitarists, a froggy singer in a world of AutoTune. He doesn’t even hold up as an underrated bard of the literary classafter all, the guy does have two Oscars, and he’s scored some of the most unapologetically mainstream films of his generation. What he is is an American original, an artist who has spent his career funneling more deadpan wit and social commentary into three-minute pop melodies than perhaps any contemporary songwriter besides Bob Dylan. His perennial touchstonesrace, place, love, aging, parenting and posingwere as present on his first record as they were in the music he made more than four decades later. In other words, he’s an artist who’s known all along what he had to offer, and who has spent nearly a half-century casting a cockeyed glance toward his subject matter.

Interview: Nachtmystium

Like some of the artists Nachtmystium frontman Blake Judd admires mostamong them, Ministry and Pink FloydJudd’s songs have been strongly colored by his past drug use, from the psychedelic excursions of 2009′s Assassins: Black Meddle Pt I. to the heavier, darker post-metal trips of 2010′s Addicts: Black Meddle Pt. II. Their latest, this year’s Silencing Machine, is no exception, but its messages are harsher. From a distance, it’s a creative blast furnace of fire and ash, with just enough melody to propel one song to the next. Telescope in, and it’s a sobering close study of both the scars of addiction and the struggle to remain clean.

eMusic’s Jon Wiederhorn talked with Judd about kicking drugs, how he first discovered bands like Emperor and Mayhem, his love for Chicago, and how he convinced indie icon and Sonic Youth co-founder Thurston Moore to join the black parade.

To me, Silencing Machine feels like a brutal, uncompromised purge.

I wanted it to be fierce and unrelenting. A lot of it is about overcoming my addiction to drugs, which I finally did before we did the album. I was real, real fucked up for a long time. It wasn’t as bad when we were out on the road, but when I got home I’d get really self-destructive with substances. When I was writing Silencing Machine, I was very angry at myself for having put myself in that position. I could have died any day of the week. I wasn’t respecting myself or my music, and it wasn’t fair to my friends and the people who love me.

Lots of musicians who use drugs say they can contribute to their creativity.

That’s totally true, and it’s also the reasoning an addict will use. That was my excuse for a long time, and it got to the point where it became counterproductive. Yet I still was telling myself I needed drugs to get creative. It took my bandmates and my wife to say, “No dude, you’re not doing anything. Don’t you see? Nothing’s happening now. You’re just a drug addict and you’re gonna fuck your life up really bad if you don’t get this under control.” The thing is, there comes a point where it’s not fun anymore. It’s not that you want it, it’s that you need it, and without it you don’t function.

Was there a breaking point when you realized you needed help?

When I would buy drugs and go home and do them by myself instead of doing them in a recreational way. That’s when I knew there was a problem and I had to change. I was putting my addiction before paying bills, and I realized I was going to lose everything, or overdose, or get arrested if I didn’t stop. Fortunately, none of those things happened. And my wife and friends were super supportive in helping me get clean.

Did you go to rehab?

I got counseling to try to understand why I have this addictive personality. I went out and stayed with friends on the West Coast where that shit was nowhere to be found and I got better. Now I’m addictive about other things, like music. But I finally understand that there’s some chemical imbalance within me that causes me to become very quickly addicted to drugs. Fortunately, I’ve never been an alcoholic and I’m glad I don’t have that problem. Now, I’m finally going to take advantage of all the things I have in my life that I’ve worked really hard to get.

Did the songs on Silencing Machine come naturally or did you find it difficult to create when your mind wasn’t altered?

It was pretty easy, because I knew what I wanted to do from the start. Since we signed to Century Media [in 2008], I wanted to do a psych record and a post-rock record, then go back to the kind of black metal I did on [2006's] Instinct: Decay. So this was very premeditated. And if you ask me, the two strongest Nachtmystium albums are Instinct: Decay and Silencing Machine because that’s the style that comes most naturally to me.

How did you first discover black metal?

SPIN magazine, February, 1996. Trent Reznor was on the cover. I bought it because I was a 13-year-old, way into Nine Inch Nails. There was a huge article on Norwegian black metal with a full-page picture of [Emperor frontman] Ihsahn from the chest up, and he had this black hood on and he looked fucking terrifying. He had a Satanic ritual robe and a pentagram necklace and I was totally sucked in. I had never even heard death metal at that point. The hardest shit I had heard was Slayer. So the article [about the music, church burnings, and murders in the early Norwegian metal scene] was insane and I went, “Man, I want to know what this is all about!” I went to Tower Records and bought the Emperor and Enslaved split CD. That was the first black metal I had ever heard, and from the minute the first note rang out, I have been a different person. It completely sculpted who I was.

So much black metal is generic. How do you separate the gold from the garbage?

Like with any kind of music, if you know what you’re listening to, you can tell what’s good. My favorite era of Norwegian black metal is ’93-97, after [Mayhem guitarist] Euronymous was already dead. Some people think that was the end of real black metal, but to me that’s when certain bands really got creative. I like Kvist; they did one album, [For Kunsten Maa Vi Evig Vike], which came out in ’95. There are no credits on it, but I found out from a friend in 1349 that it featured Urgehal guitarist Trondr Nefas, who died recently, [in May 2012, allegedly from natural casues]. It’s very symphonic and it has a really weird production and the guitars are quiet, but the keyboards and bass are loud. Also, Strid are mindblowing. And I like the Moonfog Records-era Darkthrone stuff, like Panzerfaust and Total Death. That’s where they changed up the formula and did stuff that was different than the black metal they had been doing.

What do you think of modern Norwegian black metal?

Norway is the last place that’s producing interesting black metal these days. It’s just not what it used to be. I like Watain, but they’re Swedish. They’re kind of the Cirque du Soleil of black metal because they put on this amazing live show that reeks of blood and death. Having toured with them, I know it’s gross, but it’s great because it touches on a third sense. You have sight and sound and then add this rotten, nauseating smell to it.

Your hometown Chicago has a history of great, loud bands, dating back to Ministry, Naked Raygun and Big Black.

I love that stuff, but I’m too young to have been around during the heyday of all of that. I was 13 when [Ministry's] Filth Pig came out. But I played catch-up. I heard Shellac when I was 14. I followed that back to Rapeman and Big Black. And then I got into the Touch & Go stuff, including Naked Raygun and Jesus Lizard. It has been a big influence on Nachtmystium the whole time, whether you can hear it or notmore in attitude than anything else. Chicago is known for that scene, our newer indie scene and the industrial scene. But our metal scene has generated really good, super-masculine, non-fruity groups, too. We don’t have a bunch of Dimmu Borgir-type bands that are gothy and pretentious. We have extreme bands like Scepter, Cianide and Usurper. That’s what I grew up with and I was very proud that those guys were from my city.

[The pre-album single "As Made"] is a living testimony from a Chicago band trying to sound exactly like Ministry. That’s a tribute to Al Jourgensen. Sanford and I always talked about doing something industrial, but we didn’t want to commit a whole album to that because it’s too far from what we normally do. So we went, “Fuck it, man. This is a perfect opportunity. Let’s try to make a song that sounds like Chicago industrial circa 1991.” And Ministry, Pink Floyd and Burzum are my three favorite bands of all time. Ministry’s Filth Pig is hands down my favorite album ever recorded. I absolutely adore their catalog. I even like the poppy stuff like Twitch and With Sympathy.

How did you get Thurston Moore to join your black metal supergroup Twilight?

He’s a big fan of black metal. We had talked about getting him involved on the last album, [2010's] Monument to Time End, but the logistics didn’t work out. We have a strange connection with him. [Keyboardist and guitarist] Sanford Parker [Minsk] used to run a studio called Semaphore with Jeremy Lemos, who is their longtime soundman. Naturally, they got to know Sanford through him and Thurston and Sanford get along quite well. Then Thurston had an article in Decibel about how he really liked black metal. We were like, “You know what man, we have enough of a connection to this guy that it wouldn’t seem inappropriate to ask him and he was into it.” We’re not trying to score scene points or anything. I’ve been a Sonic Youth fan since I was a kid, so I view this as a really cool opportunity. And I’m very curious as a fan to see what ideas he has for a black metal band. [Twilight also features Wrest (Leviathan), Parker, Aaron Turner (Isis), Imperial (Krieg, and Stavros Giannopoulos (The Atlas Moth). Twilight have been signed to Century Media and are currently in the studio working on their third album].

Interview: Nachtmystium

Like some of the artists Nachtmystium frontman Blake Judd admires mostamong them, Ministry and Pink FloydJudd’s songs have been strongly colored by his past drug use, from the psychedelic excursions of 2009′s Assassins: Black Meddle Pt I. to the heavier, darker post-metal trips of 2010′s Addicts: Black Meddle Pt. II. Their latest, this year’s Silencing Machine, is no exception, but its messages are harsher. From a distance, it’s a creative blast furnace of fire and ash, with just enough melody to propel one song to the next. Telescope in, and it’s a sobering close study of both the scars of addiction and the struggle to remain clean.

eMusic’s Jon Wiederhorn talked with Judd about kicking drugs, how he first discovered bands like Emperor and Mayhem, his love for Chicago, and how he convinced indie icon and Sonic Youth co-founder Thurston Moore to join the black parade.

To me, Silencing Machine feels like a brutal, uncompromised purge.

I wanted it to be fierce and unrelenting. A lot of it is about overcoming my addiction to drugs, which I finally did before we did the album. I was real, real fucked up for a long time. It wasn’t as bad when we were out on the road, but when I got home I’d get really self-destructive with substances. When I was writing Silencing Machine, I was very angry at myself for having put myself in that position. I could have died any day of the week. I wasn’t respecting myself or my music, and it wasn’t fair to my friends and the people who love me.

Lots of musicians who use drugs say they can contribute to their creativity.

That’s totally true, and it’s also the reasoning an addict will use. That was my excuse for a long time, and it got to the point where it became counterproductive. Yet I still was telling myself I needed drugs to get creative. It took my bandmates and my wife to say, “No dude, you’re not doing anything. Don’t you see? Nothing’s happening now. You’re just a drug addict and you’re gonna fuck your life up really bad if you don’t get this under control.” The thing is, there comes a point where it’s not fun anymore. It’s not that you want it, it’s that you need it, and without it you don’t function.

Was there a breaking point when you realized you needed help?

When I would buy drugs and go home and do them by myself instead of doing them in a recreational way. That’s when I knew there was a problem and I had to change. I was putting my addiction before paying, and I realized I was going to lose everything, or overdose, or get arrested if I didn’t stop. Fortunately, none of those things happened. And my wife and friends were super supportive in helping me get clean.

Did you go to rehab?

I got counseling to try to understand why I have this addictive personality. I went out and stayed with friends on the West Coast where that shit was nowhere to be found and I got better. Now I’m addictive about other things, like music. But I finally understand that there’s some chemical imbalance within me that causes me to become very quickly addicted to drugs. Fortunately, I’ve never been an alcoholic and I’m glad I don’t have that problem. Now, I’m finally going to take advantage of all the things I have in my life that I’ve worked really hard to get.

Did the songs on Silencing Machine come naturally or did you find it difficult to create when your mind wasn’t altered?

It was pretty easy, because I knew what I wanted to do from the start. Since we signed to Century Media [in 2008], I wanted to do a psych record and a post-rock record, then go back to the kind of black metal I did on [2006's] Instinct: Decay. So this was very premeditated. And if you ask me, the two strongest Nachtmystium albums are Instinct: Decay and Silencing Machine because that’s the style that comes most naturally to me.

How did you first discover black metal?

SPIN magazine, February, 1996. Trent Reznor was on the cover. I bought it because I was a 13-year-old, way into Nine Inch Nails. There was a huge article on Norwegian black metal with a full-page picture of [Emperor frontman] Ihsahn from the chest up, and he had this black hood on and he looked fucking terrifying. He had a Satanic ritual robe and a pentagram necklace and I was totally sucked in. I had never even heard death metal at that point. The hardest shit I had heard was Slayer. So the article [about the music, church burnings, and murders in the early Norwegian metal scene] was insane and I went, “Man, I want to know what this is all about!” I went to Tower Records and bought the Emperor and Enslaved split CD. That was the first black metal I had ever heard, and from the minute the first note rang out, I have been a different person. It completely sculpted who I was.

So much black metal is generic. How do you separate the gold from the garbage?

Like with any kind of music, if you know what you’re listening to, you can tell what’s good. My favorite era of Norwegian black metal is ’93-97, after [Mayhem guitarist] Euronymous was already dead. Some people think that was the end of real black metal, but to me that’s when certain bands really got creative. I like Kvist; they did one album, [For Kunsten Maa Vi Evig Vike], which came out in ’95. There are no credits on it, but I found out from a friend in 1349 that it featured Urgehal guitarist Trondr Nefas, who died recently, [in May 2012, allegedly from natural casues]. It’s very symphonic and it has a really weird production and the guitars are quiet, but the keyboards and bass are loud. Also, Strid are mindblowing. And I like the Moonfog Records-era Darkthrone stuff, like Panzerfaust and Total Death. That’s where they changed up the formula and did stuff that was different than the black metal they had been doing.

What do you think of modern Norwegian black metal?

Norway is the last place that’s producing interesting black metal these days. It’s just not what it used to be. I like Watain, but they’re Swedish. They’re kind of the Cirque du Soleil of black metal because they put on this amazing live show that reeks of blood and death. Having toured with them, I know it’s gross, but it’s great because it touches on a third sense. You have sight and sound and then add this rotten, nauseating smell to it.

Your hometown Chicago has a history of great, loud bands, dating back to Ministry, Naked Raygun and Big Black.

I love that stuff, but I’m too young to have been around during the heyday of all of that. I was 13 when Filth Pig came out. But I played catch-up. I heard Shellac when I was 14. I followed that back to Rapeman and Big Black. And then I got into the Touch & Go stuff, including Naked Raygun and Jesus Lizard. It has been a big influence on Nachtmystium the whole time, whether you can hear it or notmore in attitude than anything else. Chicago is known for that scene, our newer indie scene and the industrial scene. But our metal scene has generated really good, super-masculine, non-fruity groups, too. We don’t have a bunch of Dimmu Borgir-type bands that are gothy and pretentious. We have extreme bands like Scepter, Cianide and Usurper. That’s what I grew up with and I was very proud that those guys were from my city.

[The pre-album single "As Made"] is a living testimony from a Chicago band trying to sound exactly like Ministry. That’s a tribute to Al Jourgensen. Sanford and I always talked about doing something industrial, but we didn’t want to commit a whole album to that because it’s too far from what we normally do. So we went, “Fuck it, man. This is a perfect opportunity. Let’s try to make a song that sounds like Chicago industrial circa 1991.” And Ministry, Pink Floyd and Burzum are my three favorite bands of all time. Ministry’s Filth Pig is hands down my favorite album ever recorded. I absolutely adore their catalog. I even like the poppy stuff like Twitch and With Sympathy.

How did you get Thurston Moore to join your black metal supergroup Twilight?

He’s a big fan of black metal. We had talked about getting him involved on the last album, [2010's] Monument to Time End, but the logistics didn’t work out. We have a strange connection with him. [Keyboardist and guitarist] Sanford Parker [Minsk] used to run a studio called Semaphore with Jeremy Lemos, who is their longtime soundman. Naturally, they got to know Sanford through him and Thurston and Sanford get along quite well. Then Thurston had an article in Decibel about how he really liked black metal. We were like, “You know what man, we have enough of a connection to this guy that it wouldn’t seem inappropriate to ask him and he was into it.” We’re not trying to score scene points or anything. I’ve been a Sonic Youth fan since I was a kid, so I view this as a really cool opportunity. And I’m very curious as a fan to see what ideas he has for a black metal band. [Twilight also features Wrest (Leviathan), Parker, Aaron Turner (Isis), Imperial (Krieg, and Stavros Giannopoulos (The Atlas Moth). Twilight have been signed to Century Media and are currently in the studio working on their third album].