The title Go is a perfect fit for the Sigur Ros frontman's debut album. It's a tiny word loaded with affirmation and dynamism, much like Jonsi's inimitable falsetto, a delicate instrument with immense power behind it. Like his work with Sigur Ros, huge symphonic crescendos are almost required to keep up with him; they serve to melt the frosted touch of his coos, in return giving listeners uncontrollable chills. Composer Nico Muhly lightens the mood with jovial beats and chirping flutes, and Jonsi even gives up some of his mystique by singing in (mostly) English. Beautiful.
They may be from Florida, but their "surfer blood" is strictly reserved for the music. Instead of riding waves, these indie rockers use swimming, floating and oceans as metaphors. They employ the West Coast breeziness of the Beach Boys, Weezer, the Shins, and a touch of Dick Dale to justify their name. Slinging intricate riffs around dainty harmonics (see: "Harmonix") and heavy fuzz ("Slow Jabroni"), they reference David Lynch ("Twin Peaks") and throw around Animal Collective harmonies and polyrhythms a la Vampire Weekend. It's hard to believe they cooked this all up in a college dorm room.
Enjoying Beach House is almost solely dependent on your mood (languid, lonely, nostalgic are all recommended). The snaking slide guitar, rumbling organ and feather-light beats slowly seep in like a codeine drip, helping you sink into a melancholic cloud, before Victoria Legrand's deep Stevie Nicks-esque drawl grabs your attention, like a ghostly chill keeping you up at night. Where the duo's previous two albums were a little more one-note, Teen Dream is a bit more dynamic, the rhythms more variant and interesting, all while the group's signature sleepy melodies remain intact.
Twin Shadow seems to have all the indie prerequisites: Brooklyn-based, '80s-inspired, Grizzly Bear-approved. But those are just superficial stats that the man behind the moniker, George Lewis, Jr., is able to transcend on his debut album. With a voice that resonates with Morrissey woe and navel-gazing lyrics to match, Lewis adds sparkling synths and drum-machine beats that are alternately ominous and upbeat (think Depeche Mode), and sometimes even funky ("Shooting Holes"). As producer, Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor adds a crystallized sheen that makes this debut hardly easy to forget.
Right away Yeasayer make it clear this is not All Hour Cymbals, part deux. Machines clink and clank; vocals mutate and melt, mud bubbles and boils; and that's just track one. Next is "Ambling Alp," a tribal-hippie delight offering up empowering fatherly advice. The single is the backbone of a set stuffed with funky yelps, falsetto freak-outs, rumbling polyrhythms, heavy synths, electric guitar solos, loon calls, claps, loops, samples, various computerized chaos -- and, simply, entreaties for love. It's like Depeche Mode playing with Rusted Root at a Love Parade. In one word: awesome.
MGMT poked fun at pop culture on their debut, but they were too good at it. The album was a hit, too irresistible for the pop gods to dismiss. So they retort with a "non-singles" album, a set that's woozy with ambition yet still playful. It's not a huge departure, though; Congratulations is more a continuation of the last half of their debut. It's a further study of Syd Barrett and name-checked heroes like Dan Treacy and Brian Eno; it's two Brooklyn kids professing their utter dependence on pop culture, just trying to piece together the workings of some of its most eccentric minds.
Titus Andronicus are what happens when you combine literary nerdiness and history geekdom with punk zeal and an attitude perpetually set at pissed off. In other words, great music to get a little wild with, to blast when CNN is just too much to handle, and to shout along with (particularly with lyrics like "The enemy is everywhere"). The Monitor is the Jersey band's sophomore release and features guests by members of the Hold Steady, Vivian Girls, Ponytail, Wye Oak and more. As far as that history geekdom, the album's central theme is the American Civil War. Finally the 1800s are back in style.
Inspired by Elvis Presley and a trip to Lisbon, The Walkmen exercise great restraint on their sixth album. The 11-track set is potent in its minimalism; guitar, bass and drums rely very little on other supporting players, aside from the funereal horns of "Stranded." Held up by jangly guitar and waltzing rhythms, singer Hamilton Leithauser's weathered Bob Dylan/Tom Waits drawl is even more pronounced in the sparse setting. Though stripped down, the band remains versatile, from the galloping lament "Blue as Your Blood" to surf-rocker "Woe Is Me" to dreamy dirge "While I Shovel the Snow."
The Age of Adz is incredibly ambitious. This isn't precious Sufjan equipped with a banjo and enamored with the 50 states; this is a man who's digested a whole lot of electronic music in the five years since Illinois. "Futile Devices" opens in sparse style before glitches, bass-y thumps, laser swoops and machine-gun beats start to multiply. Soon majestic horns and flutes maneuver their way through this digital world like Snow White caught in a video game. "Sufjan, follow your heart," he sings, his introspection -- backlit even more by the electro squall -- still his most powerful instrument.
Spoon had a pretty incredible '00s (seriously, four great albums). So for their first release in a new decade, also their first self-produced effort, Transference is just what the title promises it to be -- a transferring of all that the band has learned and defined into a sound that is as familiar as it is fresh. Slight piano bumps, soft hi-hat hits, lo-fi guitar, the occasional echo, and the rare fuzz effect ebb and flow with the same patience and ease as Britt Daniel's coos. This is Spoon as you know and love them: minimalist, smart, catchy, always playing it cool.
The virtual band gets even more out of touch with anything resembling reality on their third album. Much of Plastic Beach matches the surreal landscape the title suggests: the noise painting "Glitter Freeze" (sounds just like you'd expect a, uh, glitter freeze to); the trippy Beach Boys buzz of "Empire Ants." But this time there's no "Feel Good Inc" to hang your hat on: Single "Stylo" is alienating '80s synth-pop that only gets weirder with Bobby Womack. You know you're not in Kansas anymore when De La Soul provides a reality check -- on a track called "Superfast Jellyfish," no less.
The Brit band evolves beyond the hyper post-punk of its debut album, weaving in thick melodic swells of washed-out synths and layered guitars. A few funky turns and downtempo twists make this a more balanced and cohesive effort that's full of both fun and feeling. Don't miss "Miami" and "Spanish Sahara."
Deerhunter's music is like the sonic translation of that hazy moment between dreaming and full consciousness. And on Halcyon Digest, Bradford Cox fittingly writes a lot about dreams and memories, and how they all end up muddling together over time. A similar idea comes alive in the music, where subtle layers develop and then fuse. The light dusting of fuzz on songs like "Revival" and "Desire Lines" allows the pop undertones to float just a little higher, while tracks like "Earthquake," "Sailing" and "Helicopter" start out sparse before melting into an underwater world of bubbling guitars.
Since 2008's Attack & Release, Dan Auerbach went solo, Patrick Carney formed Drummer, and both collaborated in the hip-hop/rock group Blakroc. It's all been nothing but inspiration for the Akron natives, who are starting to sound like true Southern boys. They open with the funky shoop of "Everlasting Light"; bring back Danger Mouse for some R&B swagger on "Tighten Up"; and cover Jerry Butler with "Never Gonna Give You Up." It sounds like the Keys boogieing with the ghosts of blues and soul. Then again, maybe they were: Brothers was recorded at the legendary Muscle Shoals Studio.
A longtime lingerer in lo-fi, Ariel Pink ups the production values and releases his best album to date. Before Today touches on a wealth of retro influences; if you didn't know better, you could guess this was an underground classic from the '70s. Subtle, psychedelic pop that has everyone from Pink Floyd to The Moody Blues to Hall & Oates to thank, Before Today moves with the fluidity of a lava lamp, smooth and hypnotizing, sometimes flowing in unpredictable directions. "Round and Round" would be a hit single if we were all still spinning vinyl and picking out shag carpeting.
This pairing makes total sense: Both Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse) and the Shins' James Mercer have an uncanny ability for packaging perfect little pop songs, big diamonds in petite boxes that hit just the right pleasure points. On their debut, they give us two fat gems right from the get-go with "The High Road" and "Vaporize." From there, Burton finds drama in every nuance: woozy orchestral flourishes, rickety static, spaghetti-western horns, beats that melt on impact. These effects allow Mercer's lullaby croons to find more places to fly -- even to a funky falsetto on "The Ghost Inside."
Fans of the kind of tattered, emphatic folk-ish rock made famous by everyone from Richard & Linda Thompson to Arcade Fire could do a lot worse than this London four-piece's sterling debut. Augmented by banjo, Dobro, horns, mandolin and double bass, among other instruments, these songs (anthems?) do not go gently into that good night. Rather, they explode, careen, effuse, languish, etc. And did we mention the banjo? Super-faves include "The Cave" and "Little Lion Man," and "White Blank Page" is liable to give you goose bumps. Really, there's not a dodgy tune on here.
This depicts suburbia as many live it, but not as anyone has heard it. The Suburbs is an intimate portrayal of not just sameness and shopping malls, but also the nostalgia and jadedness that comes with it all. It opens with a deceptively jovial beat... then things get morbidly epic. As they "drive through the sprawl," guitars, strings and synths gather and tumble, then sway sinisterly, like an empty swing in the wind, before dissipating into laser bleeps and ABBA beats. Win Butler then makes his final admission: "If I could have it back/ All the time that we wasted/ I'd only waste it again."
Not since Radiohead has a band outdone itself so emphatically album over album. High Violet is a high-water mark, jam-packed with surprises: the falsetto coos in the middle of "Sorrow," the mechanical screeches that kick off "Little Faith," the bassoon (bassoon!) in "Afraid of Everyone." Vying for MVP status are Matt Berninger's lyrics and phrasing, as exemplified on "Lemonworld," a song about the suburbs so raw and languid it could star Kate Winslet: "You and your sister live in a lemonworld/ I wanna sit in and die." If piano wire were an ice cream flavor, it'd taste like this.
