Seven years after The Eraser, Thom Yorke reassembles his touring band -- co-producer Nigel Godrich, drummer Joey Waronker, percussionist Mauro Refosco and bassist Flea (!) -- as Atoms for Peace. For such big names, their studio output is remarkably hushed, favoring subtle collage over live rock; the rhythms are a hybrid of loose-limbed stick-work and digital cut-and-paste, while liquid bass lines and African-inspired guitars lend a gentle sense of ebb and flow. Yorke's quavering falsetto is the force around which it all swirls, an aching stillness at the center of a quiet storm.
After a visceral detour into feral horndog garage ribaldry via his Grinderman project, gothic rock's wiliest bard is back for his 15th (!) record with The Bad Seeds, and it's a softer, gentler, even more intimidating affair. Unsettling anti-ballads like "We Real Cool" (dark bass pulse, gorgeous strings) dominate here, amid tons of R-rated mermaid imagery ("Their legs wide to the world like bibles open") and oddball digressions like the Miley Cyrus-referencing "Higgs Boson Blues." Thesis: "It's the will of love/ It's the thrill of love/ Ah, but the chill of love is comin' on." Bundle up.
UMO's second album provides something of a smoother high than their equally great yet slightly lower-fi debut. Leader Ruban Nielson double-tracks his vocals for a dazed and echoed effect, which makes him sound both eerie and content, and either trapped at the bottom of the ocean (where he wishes he could hide on "Swim and Sleep") or beamed in from the moon. Bubbly, noodle-y guitar snakes through a fog of synths as the psych-poppers add hints of soul and funk on "So Good at Being in Trouble" and "One at a Time," and go all-out classic rock on "No Need for a Leader" and "Faded in the Morning."
Slow, breathy, sinister indie-R&B is all the (quiet, simmering) rage these days, and young California brothers Andrew and Daniel Aged have their fingers on that barely discernible pulse for their debut as Inc. Less overtly evil than The Weeknd and not quite as poppy as Maxwell or TLC, No World still has a familiar air of ethereal lasciviousness; the off-kilter two-chord swoon of "Desert Rose (War Prayer)" is the highlight, "Tell me what it takes to be a man" repeatedly intoned in a mournful falsetto. You've tried How to Dress Well; consider this How to Mope Better.
London foursome Veronica Falls have excavated the loose, playful sounds of classic indie pop and made them fresh again. The girl-boy harmonies swirl as sweetly as chocolate and PB, while upbeat rhythms and jangly guitar belie a more potent sense of youthful restlessness in the lyrics: "I'm a broken toy like you"; "Everybody's crazy, what's your excuse, baby?" Vocalist Roxanne Clifford's gentle purrs inject the songs with a Stereolab tenderness, but the band also touches on influences like Television ("Tell Me"), Pixies ("Shooting Star") and The Velvet Underground ("Daniel").
Following a 2011 debut that inspired more hipster blog bytes than the rest of Copenhagen's population combined, depressive Danes Iceage return with a squatter-rock sophomore set maybe even punkier than its predecessor -- at least if punk means varying your Killing Joke dolor with Hüsker Dü Zen Arcade barrage (see "In Haze" and "It Might Hit First") fronted by Darby Crash-style blabbermouthing through a Vaselined lens. "Ecstasy" gets stressed out and spits staccato; "Interlude" goes the militia-drummed industrial instrumental route. "Everything Drifts" raises fists like the revolution's begun.
Clearly still misanthropic messengers of mundanity even if you can only make out snatches of complaint, these Allentown, Penn. reprobates spend most of their fourth set yanking their dirty, dirgey glop downward with basslines anchored Flipper-style deep beneath the Lehigh River. They tell a "Teenage Adult" not to grow up; "Cafeteria Food" snarls at a "stick-figure family" stuck to some car. Now and then, a hook surfaces: Stranglers melody in "Bathroom Laughter," garage riff in "Cathouse," and the guitars in the doctor-shunning "Health Plan" catapult out the gate like mid-'80s Hüsker Dü.
Since 2008 debut Antidotes, Foals seem to have gotten progressively gloomier. Or maybe they're just building on the success of "Spanish Sahara," because the softer fare outweighs the edgier cuts here, even if that's not so clear at first: Opener "Prelude" transforms into crunchy alt-rock funk, while "Inhaler" fluctuates from Rapture-like disco to Deftones' tortured metallic swirl. Mostly though, frontman Yannis Philippakis is feeling introspective, and the band conforms with tracks like the atmospheric "Moon" and jittery, post-punk ballads ("Late Night") that reach great anthemic heights.
Dang, you gotta feel for Scott Hutchison. Frightened Rabbit's frontman makes the plight of the ordinary man sound so urgent and eloquent: "The knight in sh*tty armor rips a drunk out of her dress," not to mention "I've got a voice like a gutter in a toxic storm." Such literary musings are boosted even further by the band's constantly soaring art-pop melodies and rhythms that stutter with the nervous energy of their frontman. The drama never wanes, whether it's meaty anthems "Holy" and "The Woodpile" or morose gems like "Dead Now" and "State Hospital." Think Coldplay with more brawn and brains.
Wry, off-kilter and wise, Bay Area alt-folkie Thao Nguyen throws the kitchen sink at you only after she's unloaded the cabinets, shelves and fridge, too. We the Common crosses the weirdo-profundity of vintage Beck with the feral pots-and-pans ingenuity of recent Fiona Apple, a pleasingly jittery mix of honking horns, jaunty handclaps, dainty keyboards, clattering drums and so forth. Joanna Newsom drops by on the sweet "Kindness Be Conceived" and fits right in, if that tells you anything. Overall lyrical thesis: "Everybody has a body above/ Yes we get naked, but not naked enough."
It's impossible to determine whether Marr intended to make a classic-sounding Brit-rock album, or if it's just that the legendary guitarist is classic-sounding Brit-rock incarnate. Either way, The Messenger has it all, from '80s jangle over Motown bop ("The Right Thing Right") to this-town's-closing-in-on-me melancholy ("Lockdown") to Manchester dance-rock ("Word Starts Attack"). The music's easy proficiency suggests that the guy can compose this stuff in his sleep; still, this has more verve than anything Morrissey has released in the 21st century.
Don't be dissuaded by that name -- Portland's Starf*cker (STRFKR) make some truly entrancing pop music. On their third album, that means a concoction of funky dance cuts soaked in vacillating synths (the bouncy, life-embracing "While I'm Alive," the Tetris-blooping "Malmo") mixed with psych-pop mind-melters like the dreamy "Say to You." "Beach Monster" and "Nite Rite" both flow like a distilled mix of My Bloody Valentine adapted for a candlelit lounge. The vocals are their own hypnotizing force, fusing with the instruments as seamlessly as a drug slithering into the bloodstream.
Four albums in, these buoyant, coed, '80s-leaning Swedes are practically indie-pop veterans. And while Optica may lack a smash hit in the "Young Folks" or "Somebody That I Used to Know" vein, fans of either tune will thrill to the cool, coy, disarmingly sweet synth-and-jangle truffles here, packed with the lovelorn, literate wit of vintage Belle & Sebastian: "It was the smoke in my eyes/ That made me want to cry/ But I don't think you believed me." Bonus points for incorporating strings and horns and flutes without getting all corny and baroque about it.
Not counting Tribute To, the singer's EP of George Harrison covers, Regions of Light and Sound of God is Jim James' debut as a solo artist. And it's a fairly ambitious one. Using his roots in singer-songwriter fare for a base, he erects a sound boasting touches of electronica, Tin Pan Alley nostalgia and, interestingly enough, blue-eyed soul. On maze-like miniatures "Dear One" and "Know Til Now" James slides into a self-reflection mode that relies heavily on his falsetto; in contrast, he really lets his trademark pipes open up on "All Is Forgiven" and the Donny Hathaway-inspired "Actress."
With a cartoon-gravelly voice and a grim but gently whimsical worldview, Eels boss Mark Oliver Everett made the '90s bearable for sweet slacker depressives like himself, from "Novocaine for the Soul" to "It's a Motherf*cker" to that Shrek song. Wonderful, Glorious splits the difference between ramshackle alt-rock vigor ("I'm up for the fight," he snarls, perhaps eyeing his younger, hippier indie peers) and Merle Haggard-style grouchy bromides: "You're all gonna be sorry/ When I leave town/ And get it together/ For the turnaround." The album title is exactly 50 percent sarcastic.
In 2013, this Australian band's debut is exactly what "indie" sounds like to a major label: overly slick yet undeniably catchy electro-pop. This band of three brothers and a keyboard man follows in the neon footsteps of fellow Aussies Empire of the Sun with their similarly funky '80s synth pop, while also tiptoeing along Death Cab for Cutie's earnest, sensitive-man path. Stargazing synths gasp and wobble around jittery rhythms, ringing guitar and handclapped hooks (see "Trojans"), as lead vocalist Keith Jeffery reaches for Chris Martin levels of lost-love metaphors and falsetto grandeur.
