Average Rating: 3.10 Rating Variance: 0.51 Objectivity Score: 89% (Well Balanced)
Sort by: Rating | Release Date | Rating Date | Name5.0 classicGomez Split The DifferenceGomez Five Men in a Hut: Singles 1998-2004Jellyfish Spilt MilkMassive Attack ProtectionSufjan Stevens IllinoisThe Avalanches Since I Left YouThe Boo Radleys C'mon KidsU2 Achtung Baby4.5 superbCrowded House Temple Of Low MenDeath Cab for Cutie TransatlanticismGomez How We OperateGotye Making MirrorsThe most serious complaint I can make against this record is that it's totally scattershot: beginning with a series of songs about post-breakup suffering a la early Death Cab for Cutie, then taking a quick sixties/eighties-neo soul interlude, before mining mid-90s, early-00s sample records ("State of the Art" sounds like the best track that wasn't on this year's DJ Shadow release), then into a set of lovely indie balladry, all retro sweetness and subtle electronics. Amazingly, it's all really good, the sort of music that positively quivers with a sophisticated love of its influences and a genuine love of pop craft. Plus, Wouter de Backer can *sing*, and while he's not diva-ish about it, he certainly lets it show on tracks like "Save Me".The whole thing is good enough to make me feel like thematic coherence is overrated; hell, it's even good enough to excuse "I Feel Better", which is as (superficially) dire as everybody says it is. Everyone claims 2011 has been a great year for music. For me, it's been pretty weak, but this is a redeeming album and a strong contender for my pop album of the year.Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted FantasyMetric FantasiesModest Mouse The Moon & AntarcticaRadiohead Kid ASuper Furry Animals Phantom PowerThe Boo Radleys KingsizeThe Broken West Now or HeavenThe Cure DisintegrationThe New Pornographers ChallengersThe Tragically Hip Fully CompletelyTom Waits Mule VariationsWilco Yankee Hotel FoxtrotYeah Yeah Yeahs Fever To Tell4.0 excellentAmy Millan Honey From The TombsAmy Winehouse Back to BlackAnimal Collective Merriweather Post PavilionAzealia Banks 1991Beck Sea ChangeBic Runga BirdsBoards of Canada Geogaddibravecaptain Go With YourselfBrendan Benson LapalcoBrian Whelan DeciderBroken Bells Broken BellsBuilt to Spill Ancient Melodies of the FutureBuilt to Spill Keep It Like a SecretChristine Fellows Femmes de Chez NousThere's a lot of great Canadian music out there, but not so much great music about *being* Canadian. Christine Fellows' fifth studio album is a great album about being Canadian, sung in both English and very-good-but-not-from-the-cradle French. It's also a folk album in the proper sense: it's about time and place, about humble people living humble, glorious, bittersweet lives. "Mlle Steno" tells the story of a girl who "went back to school, got liberated", which meant allowing her to get a job as a typist in the major's office and eventually be promoted to the city clerk's assistant. There's plenty of melancholy, but where even the best modern folk albums sometimes get self-serious and draggy (e.g. The Middle East), Fellows always keeps her touch light and her choruses rousing and vaguely off-kilter. The plaintive vocals take a little bit of getting used to, but once past that, this is one of the most likeable and lasting records I've heard in a very long time.Crowded House WoodfaceCrowded House Recurring DreamCrowded House AfterglowDanger Mouse and Sparklehorse Dark Night of the SoulDavid Bowie Black Tie White NoiseDavid Byrne Grown BackwardsDeath Cab for Cutie Narrow StairsdEUS Pocket RevolutiondEUS Following SeaEels Electro-Shock BluesElliott Smith Figure 8Explosions in the Sky All of a Sudden, I Miss EveryoneFuture of the Left The Plot Against Common SenseGomez Whatever's On Your MindUnsurprisingly for one of indie rock's most perennially unfashionable bands, Gomez' latest release landed in June with an especially big thud. Don't believe the haters: this is a deeply enjoyable pop album and among the best releases of the year. True, WOYM doesn't scale the heights of Gomez' (wildly underrated) mid-2000s output. Its flaws are easy to identify on first listen: unnecessary violins swamping the should-be-minimalist title track; a weak wuss-pop centerpiece in Tom Gray's "The Place and the People"; unfortunate mixing (and more misplaced strings) on "Our Goodbye" and the otherwise amazing "Equalize". But these are ultimately details. Like they did on "How We Operate", Gomez demonstrate a rare and essential understanding of the pleasure principle in popular music. "I Will Take You There", "Song in my Heart" and "That Wolf" in particular are just phenominal, big-hearted pop songs, all perfectly balanced sweetness and sketch, and bolstered by the most liberal use of three-way harmony since 1999's Liquid Skin. "Place and the People" aside, Gray provides his smart, heart-on-sleeve songwriting, and some excellent lead vocals, sorely missing from 2009's underwhelming A New Tide. As usual, ever-restless Ian Ball contributes the obvious singles, "Options" and "Just as Lost as You". I think Gomez have suffered in recent years from that fact that a lot of former fans won't forgive them for focussing on being a pop act rather than an indie jam band. This is a shame: good pop is hard to do, and Gomez do it very, very well.Gomez Liquid SkinGuillemots RedGuillemots Hello Land!I liked Walk the River when it came out, but it hasn't held up at all -- sounding mannered and over-cautious after the very awesome Red got critically shellacked for its weirdness. This is a nice return to form though, full of the sort of pretty, freewheeling ballads found on Through the Windowpane, but in general less meandering, more controlled and cohesive than that record, maybe thanks to the use of an outside producer, Jonas Raabe. Closer I Lie Down especially is the sort of gorgeous dream pop that I expect from this band.Howling Bells Howling BellsIron And Wine Our Endless Numbered DaysIron And Wine Kiss Each Other CleanI bought this mostly for 2011 completeness, expecting based on everything I'd heard about it that it would be so much overproduced, underwritten tosh. Actually, it's great: a warm, dynamic, gospel-ly and occassionally spooky-sounding record that really gives you a feel for Sam Beam's vocal chops, much more than on either of his first two famous records. Only "Godless Brother in Love" and closing track "Your Fake Name Is Good Enough for Me" are tedious, and the latter would have been great had Beam chopped it off at four minutes. Elsewhere, the album is full of lush but smart instrumentation, like the xylophone underpinning "Monkeys Uptown" and "Glad Man Singing", probably my two favourite instances of that instrument on tracks from last year (and it was a big xylophone year); or the alternating woodwinds and (I think) detuned electric guitar that weirden up the end of "Rabbit Will Run". Much of the record ("Half Moon" in particuar) sounds like something a (much) more adventurous Fleet Foxes might make. Beam's beard is clearly the biggest though.Jack White BlunderbussReally did not expect to like this since I've never much cared for the White Stripes and didn't think the Raconteurs even improved on Brendan Benson's solo work. But this is great: the guitar and piano work is just fierce, the songs don't repeat each other, and there's energy and humor and sadness where I was expecting gimmicks and calculation.Japandroids Post-NothingJellyfish BellybuttonKathryn Calder Are You My Mother?Kimbra VowsLauryn Hill The Miseducation of Lauryn HillMartina Topley-Bird QuixoticMassive Attack Blue LinesMatthew Good Hospital MusicMatthew Sweet Kimi Ga Suki * RaifuMidlake The Courage Of OthersMidlake The Trials of Van OccupantherNeko Case Middle CycloneNeko Case Furnace Room LullabyNeko Case The Tigers Have SpokenOasis (What's the Story) Morning Glory?Pavement Slanted and EnchantedPJ Harvey Stories From The City, Stories From The SeaPortishead DummySmog Kicking a Couple AroundSpirit of the West FaithliftSuper Furry Animals Dark Days/Light YearsTears for Fears ElementalTears for Fears Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits '82-'92)The Beta Band Hot Shots IIThe Boo Radleys Wake Up!The Books The Lemon Of PinkThe Low Anthem Oh My God, Charlie DarwinThe National Sad Songs for Dirty LoversThe Rural Alberta Advantage HometownsThe Tragically Hip Day For NightThe Weakerthans Left and LeavingThe Weakerthans Reconstruction SiteTricky Pre-Millenium TensionTricky MaxinquayetUnE-yArDs w h o k i l lTunng This Is...Tunng: Mother's Daughter and Other SongsTunng Good ArrowsUgly Casanova Sharpen Your TeethX-Press 2 Makeshift FeelgoodXTC Apple Venus Volume 13.5 greatalt-J An Awesome WaveAndrew Bird The Mysterious Production Of EggsAnnie Lennox BareArcade Fire FuneralArctic Monkeys Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm NotBat For Lashes Two SunsBen Ottewell Shapes and ShadowsI've always considered Ben Ottewell to be Gomez's best vocalist and weakest songwriter. Thus it's surprising that his debut record Shapes and Shadows succeeds for me on the strength of the songs, without much help from a fairly underwhelming vocal performance. First single "Lightbulbs" is warm and trippy, exactly the aesthetic you'd expect of Ottewell and co-writer Sam Genders (formerly of Tunng) getting in a room together. "Step Right Back" is a stomping march with terrifically enigmatic, sexy lyrics and nice use of vocal reverb. Meanwhile the title track, second single "Blackbird" and "Chose" are exactly the sort of songs that solo albums are designed to accomodate, folkily intimate and lovely in a way that would likely not survive a collaborative environment. But while Ottewell might be able to write folk songs, they are unfortunately not an especially a good vehicle for his voice. Relentlessly controlled and set off against accoustic guitar, it never attains much power and often comes across as fey and tired rather than wise and gnarly. This problem is especially acute on the weaker tracks. Centerpiece "Chicago" is undone by boring crooning on the verses building up to a histronic bridge lyric analogizing a delayed flight home to being dragged through Lake Michigan. These sorts of stylistic faults don't diminish the careful and lyrical songwriting that charaterizes about 3/4 of the album. But if Gomez ever go their separate ways, Ben is going to need to learn to write more convincingly for his voice.Bjork Vespertinebravecaptain Better Living Through Reckless ExperimentationBrendan Benson My Old, Familiar FriendCalifone Roots and CrownsCalifone Sometimes Good Weather Follows Bad PeopleCloud Cult Aurora BorealisCloud Cult Feel Good GhostCrowded House Crowded HouseDanielson ShipsDanielson Best of Gloucester CountyDavid Bowie OutsideDeerhunter Halcyon DigestDiagrams The Diagrams EPDiagrams is new musical project of Sam Genders, one of the founding members of folktronica outfit Tunng, still going and now six members strong. Tunng was a pretty weird, atonal bunch when I first starting listening to them in the mid 00s, but their sound brightened up considerably after Genders' departure on 2010's And Then We Saw Land. So I (excitedly) bought this EP expecting something dark and weird and blatantly uncommerical from Genders on his own. Actually, the Diagrams EP suggests he has gone as soft as his former bandmates. This isn't a bad thing; "Antelope" overlays its electronica foundations with bouncey brass, strings and accoustic guitar, and the only real anamoly is the lyrics praising a lover (who embodies the titular antelope) rather than telling Tales from the Black. "Hill" sounds like the poppiest Tom Waits song imaginable. The highlight, and biggest surprise, though, is "Woking", an absolutely gorgeous, absolutely minimal ballad that finds Genders harmonizing by turns with a muted trumpet and with himself and calling to mind, of all things, Grizzly Bear's "Cheerleader". Previews suggest the first proper Diagrams album, due out in January, will be a little darker and weirder (i.e. expected), so maybe this EP was just a poppy one-off for the warm English summer rather than a sign of things to come. Either way, it's really good.Diagrams Black LightDoves (UK) Lost SoulsDrive-By Truckers Brighter Than Creation's DarkDrive-By Truckers Decoration DayDuran Duran Duran Duran (The Wedding Album)Eels Daisies Of The GalaxyFever Ray Fever RayFiona Apple Extraordinary MachineFoals AntidotesFuture of the Left Travels With Myself And AnotherGomez Bring It OnGotye Like Drawing BloodGuillemots Through the WindowpaneI Break Horses HeartsJapandroids Celebration RockThese two are pretty much the definition of one trick ponies. Fortunately for everybody it's a really good trick.Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins Rabbit Fur CoatJohn K. Samson ProvincialJosh Ritter The Historical Conquests of Josh RitterJunior Boys Last ExitKanye West The College DropoutLa Roux La RouxLadytron Light and MagicLaura Marling A Creature I Don't KnowM.I.A. KalaM.I.A. ArularMae Moore It's a Funny WorldMates of State Re-Arrange UsMatthew Good VancouverMatthew Good Lights of Endangered SpeciesMatthew Sweet Modern ArtMatthew Sweet Sunshine LiesModest Mouse No One's First, and You're NextMother Mother O My HeartMy Bloody Valentine LovelessNeneh Cherry The Cherry Thing (w. The Thing)Neon Neon Stainless StyleRadiohead The King of LimbsRadiohead The BendsRobyn RobynSmog Dongs of SevotionSmog SupperSparklehorse It's a Wonderful LifeStars HeartStars Set Yourself On FireSuper Furry Animals Hey Venus!Susanne Sundfor The Silicone VeilTears for Fears The Seeds of LoveTears for Fears The HurtingTeenage Fanclub Man-MadeThe Black Keys BrothersThe Blue Nile HatsThe Books The Way OutThe Broken West I Can't Go On, I'll Go OnThe Chicks HomeThe Decemberists Castaways and CutoutsThe Hold Steady Separation SundayThe Low Anthem What The Crow BringsThe Middle East I Want That You Are Always HappyThe New Pornographers Twin CinemaThe Postal Service Give UpThe Shins Wincing the Night AwayThe Streets Original Pirate MaterialThe Streets A Grand Don't Come For FreeThe Thermals Now We Can SeeThe Verve Urban HymnsThe White Stripes ElephantTimber Timbre Creep On Creepin' OnTunng Comments Of The Inner ChorusTV on the Radio Nine Types of LightWhile it got lots of praise, 2008's Dear Science sounded to me like the end of TVOTR's creative phase: essentially a tired retread of previous efforts. Thus, Nine Types of Light is a very pleasant surprise. It's TVOTR's cleanest, most mellow, and straightfowardly enjoyable record, and also one in which Dave Sitek and co shake themselves a good ways toward something new. Opener "Second Song" sounds uncannily like a Bill Callahan track on the verses, but then breaks into a giant, shit-eating chorus of awesome cheese: "All you lovers on a mission / Move your known position / Into the light". It's a guilty pleasure in the absolute best sense, including the fact that singer Tunde Adebimpe sounds totally in on the joke. "Caffeneited Consciousness" could be a really good Super Furry Animals song. And while TVOTR are new to optimistic ballads, they carry three of them off pretty well. "Will Do" is the most delicately produced single the band has ever released while "Killer Crane" actually features a banjo. On the minus side, TVOTR is still indulging its bad habit of recycling melodies to not-very-good effect (see "Dirtywhirl" => "Love Dog"). Much of the intermittantly good, intermittantly awful Kyp Malone-fronted "No Future Shock", has been heard before and better, most notably on "Dancing Choose". As well, it has to be said that the lyrical re-focus on committed love rather than mind-blowing sex is a bit jarring coming from these guys. But also makes this most unearthly cool band sound a little more human, and a little bit rejuvenated in the process.TV on the Radio Return to Cookie MountainWhite Denim DXTC Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2)YACHT Shangri-LaClaire Evans and Jona Bechtolt are possibly the scariest hippies you will ever hear. My appreciation of this, Yacht's second album as a duo, was probably much enhanced by the fact that the download version I purchased off Amazon lacks the portentious spoken-word intros to the songs that are apparently found on the physical version of the record. Thus unhindered, these songs seeth with menace ("I love you like a small town cop / Wanna smash your face in with a rock" croons Evans on "Love in the Dark", while on "Dystopia" she observes that "the earth is on fire" and, presumably in the interests of purification, we should "let the motherfucker burn".) Everywhere, concepts of peace, love and understanding vie with the girls' perpetual sneer. Mostly though, Yacht just want you to dance. In keeping with the general theme of not giving a shit, there's no dubstep or other faddishness here; YACHT's concept of dance music is that of a meaner, more cerebral ABBA, with "futuristic" bits pulled in from circa 1986, whether the darkest of new romanticism or your old Atari console. The whole thing does get a touch monotonous and a few of the songs are longer than they should be. But then, after all the throwback menace, the title track closes the album with a (relatively) gentle sway, a surprisingly modern-sounding love letter to Los Angeles and an invitation to "come along" to the "sweaty" Utopia they've created down below to compete with a heavenly reward. Spending an eternity in YACHT's Utopia is a pretty terrifying idea, but it makes for a fun 40 minutes.Yo La Tengo And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside...3.0 goodA.C. Newman The Slow WonderAcid Casuals OmniAndrew Bird Break It YourselfAnimal Collective Sung TongsAnohni and the Johnsons The Crying LightApex Manor The Year of Magical DrinkingApex Manor was conceived as Ross Flournoy's nom de plume, and eventually new band (with Adam Vine, Andy Creighton and former band mate Brian Whelan), following the dissolution of The Broken West in 2009. As the album title suggests, The Year of Magical Drinking loosely chronicles Flournoy's "lost year" spent drinking with neighbors in LA and wasting time before eventually summoning the energy and inspiration (through an NPR songwriting contest no less) to return to songwriting and, eventually, to touring. The subject matter and the title joke, in which a defunct band stands in for a deceased spouse as catalyst for existential crisis, suggest something pretty awesome is forthcoming: unfortunately, The Year of Magical Drinking rarely rises above solid. Its best tracks like opener "Southern Decline" and elegant single "I Know These Waters Well" are counterbalanced by some fairly lame debauched nonsense in "Teenage Blood" and false-note seduction tracks like "Burn Me Alive" and "Coming To", which Flournoy frankly sounds too old for. Surprisingly, it's the ballads "Holy Roller" and bonus track "Secret Language"---surprising because ballads were not really a Broken West speciality---that are among the most memorable things on the record. Listening to it, I never totally forget that I'm in the presence of the power pop genius that gave us Now or Heaven; but it's a genius that hasn't quite recovered from its gap year. Hopefully his new bandmates will provide Flournoy with a better muse than his back deck and a mason jar.Arcade Fire The SuburbsBat For Lashes The Haunted ManBeck Modern GuiltBic Runga Beautiful CollisionBill Callahan ApocalypseBjork PostBoards of Canada The Campfire HeadphaseBrendan Benson The Alternative To LoveBrendan Benson What Kind of WorldBuilt to Spill There Is No EnemyCake Comfort EagleCalifone All My Friends Are Funeral SingersCalifone RoomsoundChromatics Kill for LoveClem Snide The Ghost of FashionColdplay Viva la Vida or Death and All His FriendsCrowded House Time On EarthCrowded House Together AloneDaft Punk DiscoveryDavid Byrne Look into the EyeballDeath Cab for Cutie The Photo AlbumDeath Cab for Cutie We Have the Facts and We're Voting YesdEUS Keep You ClosedEUS Vantage PointdEUS In a Bar, Under the SeaDeVotchKa How It EndsDoves (UK) Kingdom of RustDoves (UK) Some CitiesDrive-By Truckers A Blessing and a CurseDrive-By Truckers The Big To-DoDuran Duran All You Need Is NowIt doesn't pay to go through life thinking you're too hip for Duran Duran. I was reaquainted with this fact when I recently got around to buying their latest album and realized I could have been listening to the title track daily for the last ten months if I had my music-buying priorities straight. Besides being probably the most straight-up enjoyable song I've heard this year, it's also the most quintessentially Duran Duran-y song released in the last 15 years: brash, arty, stuffed with every synth-and-harmonizing trick in the book, yet tinged with more than a little nostalgia, as befitting a band still going 30 years on, its regular members shifting in and out of the lineup like patrons in and out of their favourite pub. Duran Duran are a singles band and the important thing is that they get the single right, which they definitely do. The rest of the album holds up just fine against 2007's Timberlake/Timbaland collaboration Red Carpet Massacre, with roughly the same ratio of good stuff to tosh. "If You Leave a Light On" is an excellent of "Save a Prayer", with better production, while "The Man Who Stole a Leopard" is funny and weird in exactly the Rio-esque way that the band and Mark Ronson say they were going for. The fact is Duran Duran will never make a "great" record; they love their trash and offer up great heaps of it (the official CD version of AYKIN is fourteen songs long) knowing that somebody somewhere is going to enjoy it, and everybody who wants to will enjoy at least something. The junk is a small price to pay for the gold.Duran Duran Red Carpet MassacreEels End TimesEels Shootenanny!Elbow Asleep In The BackElbow Cast of ThousandsElliott Smith From a Basement on the HillEminem The Marshall Mathers LPEsthero Everything is ExpensiveExplosions in the Sky The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead PlaceFeist The ReminderField Music PlumbFiona Apple The Idler Wheel...Foster the People TorchesLike most people, my introduction to Foster the People was "Pumped Up Kicks", a horrid, lazy, omnipresent piece of goth-kitsch that nevertheless suggested an artist with the potential to churn out some non-horrid and potentially interesting pop. This debut album mostly supports this intuition: none of the ten other tracks on Torches is anywhere near as awful as "Pumped up Kicks". Highlights "Don't Stop (Color on the Walls)", "Houdini", and opener "Helena Beat" are actually pretty great, although the latter two have already been around for awhile having made their first appearance on January's Foster the People E.P. Unfortunately, Torches suffers from the bog-standard problem facing "bands" that are really solo artists with a couple of friends in tow. Most of the songs are interchangable one with another, not because of lazy songwriting, but because of a lack of range or any competing ideas. This is not helped by the presence of three tracks written by hired hands. "Miss You" in particular is indistinguisable from all the Foster compositions, making the boast that "what I got can't be bought", delivered by Foster but written for him by Paul Epworth on "Call It What You Want", unintentionally amusing. Still, these are solid electro-pop songs that stand up extremely well to repeat listening, due in large part to the meaty interplay of piano and synth, and Cubbie Fink's appealingly organic bass playing. They would be immensely fun to dance to at a festival while drinking wine on the grass. I bet they're fun to play live too. Burn bright, guys.Frank Ocean channel ORANGEFyfe Dangerfield Fly Yellow MoonGarbage GarbageGnarls Barkley St. ElsewhereGold Panda Lucky ShinerGomez A New TideGorillaz Demon DaysGrizzly Bear VeckatimestGuillemots Walk the RiverGuillemots need to ignore their critics. Following the drubbing handed out to 2008's wonderful and frenetic Red (honorable exception: Q Magazine, which also salutes their new one), Walk the River sounds a slight retreat back into the land of balladry. The resulting ballads are mostly excellent if a little overdone: seven songs are over five minutes long. Single "I Must be a Lover", the first Guillemots album track on which Fyfe Dangerfield does not have a songwriting credit, builds up into a fantastic, ecstatic romp. The title track, "The Basket" and "Vermillion" are all superbly constructed and achingly lovely. But the aching loveliness could be more effective if broken up with more of the pop eccentricity at which Guillemots have previously shown themselves so adept. A full album of ballads, no matter how individually excellent, is not quite the ticket.Half Man Half Biscuit 90 Bisodol (Crimond)Hey Rosetta! SeedsHey Rosetta! Into Your Lungs (And Around in Your Heart and onHot Chip In Our HeadsHowling Bells The Loudest EngineJanelle Monae The ArchAndroidJenny and Johnny I'm Having Fun NowJesse Malin The Fine Art Of Self DestructionJessie Ware DevotionJunior Boys So This Is GoodbyeKate Bush AerialKate Bush 50 Words for SnowKathryn Calder Bright and VividWhile Dan Bejar soaks up the praise, this other member of the New Pornographers has seen her solo records go pretty much ignored or, more strangely in the case of her great debut record, be met with pretty middling reviews. In a sense, Calder has the deck stacked against her. Obscured by annoying bandmates in Immaculate Machine and faced with the thankless task of "replacing" Neko Case in her uncle's more famous band, her songwriting talent is not the first thing most people associate to her. While she should have dispelled any doubt on her great 2010 release Are You My Mother?, a case could be made that she shot herself in the foot a bit on this probably too-quick follow up. Bright and Vivid lacks the emotional power of Are You My Mother, and some of the songs sound underwriten or, more likely, unfinished. "Right Book", "City of Sounds" and opener "One Two Three" are terrific examples of the idiosyncratic, not-quite-dream-pop songs Calder writes at her best, but there is a certain anonymity to much of the rest. This is a shame as Calder is---again---a very strong songwriter who knows how to write for her own voice. Her relatively obscurity is probably a little unfair; but, regardless, she'll just have to try harder next time.Keane Hopes & FearsLadytron Gravity the SeducerLadytron VelociferoLaura Marling Alas, I Cannot SwimLaura Veirs Year Of MeteorsLykke Li Wounded RhymesM. Ward Hold TimeMae Moore Oh My!Manchester Orchestra Simple MathManu Chao La RadiolinaMartina Topley-Bird The Blue GodMassive Attack HeligolandMassive Attack MezzanineMates of State Team BooMatt Mays CoyoteMatthew Good AvalancheMetric SyntheticaMetric are best when they go glam and rawk the joint, and worst when they try to be Broken Social Scene with synths, all emphasis on Emily Haines' ironic baby doll voice and not-all-that-clever lyrics. This album bottles enough of the glam residue from 2009's awesome Fantasies to be pretty ok, but the songs themselves are pretty undistinguished this time around and nothing holds a candle to "Gimme Sympathy" or "Satellite Mind". I was hoping for more.Midlake Bamnan and SlivercorkMinus the Bear OmniMogwai Hardcore Will Never Die, But You WillMogwai Young TeamMother Mother Touch UpMother Mother EurekaGiven Ryan Guillemond's obvious dominance of his band, the line-up change that preceded this record--Jasmin Parkin replacing Debra-Jean Creelman on female harmony vocal and adding her synth playing to the mix--had a surprisingly significant effect on their sound. Eureka is synthier-sounding, obviously. But it's also sweeter and more sure-footed (and, on the flip side, more conventional) than either of Mother Mother's previous records, 2007's Touch Up or 2008's O My Heart. Parkin's voice is less well suited to baby doll-isms than was Creelman's and, accordingly, she and Molly Guillemond sing more genuine harmony and less cutesy call-and-response. Molly even takes lead vocals on "Getaway" for only the second time on a Mother Mother record (the first being "Sleep Awake" from O My Heart). On the downside, Eureka lacks a great single like "O My Heart" or "Hayloft"; neither "The Stand" nor "Chasing it Down" really compare as stand-alone songs. But as an album, it's pretty consistent, and it's mostly good to see Mother Mother continuing to jettison their original limiting (and occassionally irritating) novelty approach in favour of a more direct and appreciable pop sensibility, even if it does occassionally draw toward anonymity (see "Problems" or "Born in a Flash"). This is a tough line to walk for any maturing pop band and it will be interesting to see how Mother Mother deal with it as they continue to evolve and cohese.Mutemath Odd SoulOf all the bands I follow, Mutemath probably has the highest potential to delivery ratio, their first two records featuring one or two amazing singles followed by a metric assload of filler. Although it landed pretty quietly with no real breakout single a la "Typical", Odd Soul is generally a huge improvement, with a much higher proportion of quirky, solid songs. My praise is a bit qualified by Mutemath's finding their muse mostly in other contemporary bands interested in similar sounds. Plenty of people have remarked on the title track's (and I would add "Tell Your Heart Heads Up"'s) resemblance to the Black Keys, with their big bluesy riffs and talk-sung vocals. As well, "Blood Pressure" sounds uncannily like a Christian-rock re-write of Gomez' song "Blind" right down to the vocal harmony on the verse, while "In No Time" sounds like it owes quite a lot to "Butterfly" from the same b-sides compilation. That's ok as far as it goes: Mutemath adopt an energetic and endearingly straightlaced approach to the material, and frankly I prefer any of the aforementioned four tracks (especially "Tell Your Heart") to more classic Mutemathy-sounding jams like "Equals" or "All or Nothing", though even these would rank pretty high among previous Mutemath album tracks. Further, Darren King's drumming really shines as does Roy Cardenas' bass, creating tight, intricate grooves for Meany's keyboards and vocals. With all the elements in place, I can imagine these guys making a classic record next time out, but for me this invites too many comparisons to quite be it.My Morning Jacket At DawnNeko Case Fox Confessor Brings The FloodNoel Gallagher's High Flying Birds Noel Gallagher's High Flying BirdsNorah Jones The FallPajama Club Pajama ClubPaperlung BalanceSice's second solo record (his first totally Martin Carr-less record) was released in 2007 to about 95% indifference and 5% scorn. (It's possible this is the best review Balance has ever got.) Given his apparently tenuous relationship with the music industry, that probably means it's the last we'll ever hear from him unless the Boo Radleys someday reform (she wrote wistfully). Which is a shame: Sice was a great singer of Martin Carr's songs and he is a great singer of his own, with an uncanny ability to sound like a completely differ singer track to track as the songs require (check "Helia Regina" into "Can't Bear Love When You're Around" for instance). He's also a perfectly decent songwriter, smart enough to cut bitterness---this is a very bitter record---with humor and sentiment, and to recognize the pleasure principle inherent in a simple, repeated hook delivered well. The songs on Balance take a few plays to stick and to stand out one from another, but except for "Ashes of Your Life", which comes off as Liam doing Noel at his most ponderous, they're all fundamentally good compositions, if a little dated. The worst thing on the record is the overly-polite lead guitar from bandmate Ben Datlen, which offers little dissonance or competition with the vocal, something unlikely to sit well with Boos fans.Pernice Brothers Yours, Mine & OursPJ Harvey Let England ShakePJ Harvey Uh Huh HerRadiohead In RainbowsRadiohead OK ComputerRilo Kiley More AdventurousRobyn Body TalkRoger Joseph Manning Jr. Catnip DynamiteSantigold SantogoldShe and Him Volume OneSleigh Bells TreatsSmog A River Ain't Too Much To LoveSomething For Kate Leave Your Soul To ScienceSpoon Ga Ga Ga Ga GaSufjan Stevens Seven SwansSufjan Stevens Enjoy Your RabbitSufjan Stevens The Avalanche: Outtakes and ExtrasSugababes Angels with Dirty FacesSuper Furry Animals Love KraftSuper Furry Animals Rings Around the WorldSuper Furry Animals RadiatorTears for Fears Everybody Loves a Happy EndingTeenage Fanclub Howdy!Tegan and Sara SainthoodThe Basics Stand Out/Fit InThe Basics Get BackThe Bees Every Step's a YesThe Bees OctopusThe Beta Band The Three EPsThe Black Crowes Shake Your Money MakerThe Black Keys ThickfreaknessThe Blue Nile Peace at LastFor their first record since 1989's "Hats", the Blue Nile backgrounded a lot of the synthesizers that drove their classic first two records in favour of accoustic guitar and a bit of piano. I recall finding Peace At Last jarring and unengaging when I first heard it 15 years ago; but revisiting it now it's actually aged remarkably well. (Or maybe you just have to be a certain age to appreciate it.) It does lapse a little too often into either jangliness or affectation or both, which keeps it from achieving transcendance except on the gorgeous "Love Came Down", one of the best sex-as-religion songs ever made.The Boo Radleys Everything's Alright ForeverThe Boo Radleys Ichabod And IThe Boo Radleys Giant StepsThe Books Thought For FoodThe Chicks FlyThe Cure WishThe Cure BloodflowersThe Decemberists The Crane WifeThe Divine Comedy Bang Goes The KnighthoodThe Fiery Furnaces Gallowsbird's BarkThe Gaslight Anthem The '59 SoundThe Killers Hot FussThe Knife Silent ShoutThe Mountain Goats All Eternals DeckThe National High VioletThe National BoxerThe New Pornographers TogetherThe Notwist Neon GoldenThe Raconteurs Broken Boy SoldiersThe Rural Alberta Advantage DepartingA couple of months ago, "The Air" turned up in my ipod shuffle when I wasn't expecting it and literally stopped me in the street. It's a quitely stunning song: its lovely accoustic guitar figure, and Nils Edenloff's raggedly unpretentious vocals about cleaving and leaving: a lover, a town, a life. It's the the best track off an amazing album: Hometowns was a very Canadian record, and yet very universal, an album about place: about the trek from the formative places that shape our identities to the bigger, riskier places where adult things happen. Maybe it's in simple deference to its greatness that RRA don't mess with the formula at all on their latest LP, Departing. This play it safe strategy insures that the record is pretty good. "Muscle Relaxants" and "Barnes' Yard" in particular are fine additions to the RRA song catalogue. Listening to Departing over the past couple of months though I can't shake the awareness that I've heard nearly this exact same thing done better, more poignantly, a few years ago. Given how convincingly RRA capture the stickiness of where you come from, it's fitting that they haven't got beyond it, shook it off, just yet; but one thing about leaving home and moving on is that, eventually, you do in fact have to move on to something new. Next album maybe.The Shins Port of MorrowThe Stone Roses Second ComingThe Tragically Hip Road ApplesThe Weakerthans FallowThe White Stripes White Blood CellsThe Wrens The MeadowlandsTom Waits AliceTom Waits Bad As MeTricky BlowbackTunng ...And Then We Saw LandTV on the Radio Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty BabesU2 PopWilco A Ghost Is BornWilco Sky Blue SkyWilco The Whole LoveThis is for me, by a reasonable margin, the best Wilco record since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (which I recently listened to again to remind myself why I keep buying Wilco records). It's certainly a massive improvement on 2009's dreadful self titled record whose cover camel seemed to offer a telling pair of middle humps to fans. Having managed to maintain the same line up for three straight albums now, it's not surprising that Wilco sound tighter and more cohesive than on previous recent releases. In particular, Nels Cline sounds less like a guest star busting out on the occassional guitar solo, and more like a supporting actor who reads and emphasizes Jeff Tweedy's moods and ideas. Easily the worst thing here is first single "I Might", another installment of boring been-done-better-before Tweedy faux-edginess squatting on a perfectly conventional alt-country-pop song. But, except on the impossibly dull "Sunloathe", this time Wilco don't spend the rest of the album overcompensating with subdued mush and mealy Feist duets. On "Standing O" Wilco actually rock out, and rock out quite well. The twee-est number, "Capitol City" is genuinely sweet. And while experimental opener "Art of Almost" doesn't hold a candle to "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart", it's still a good song. And hopefully a signal of a permanent return to form.X-Press 2 MuzikizumXTC Oranges & LemonsXTC NonsuchYo La Tengo I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your AssYuck Yuck2.5 averageAlabama Shakes Boys & GirlsAllo Darlin' EuropeAmy Millan Masters of the BurialArctic Monkeys Suck It and SeeBadly Drawn Boy The Hour Of BewilderbeastBand of Horses Everything All the TimeBattles Gloss DropBeach House BloomBen Kweller Ben KwellerBenjamin Gibbard Former LivesBloc Party Silent Alarmbravecaptain Advertisements for Myselfbravecaptain The Fingertip Saint Sessions Vol. 1bravecaptain All Watched Over by Machines of Loving GraceSome of bravecaptain's early material was definitely underrated, and it's hard to imagine a better testament to the disorientation of going indie just as the industry implodes around you (no money, no recognition, no real assessment of your worth) than, say, 2000's "Go With Yourself". Martin Carr was arguably the songwriter most equipped to chronicle that half- chosen adventure into obscurity, and his shitty vocals more often than not just added poignancy to the mix. By this album though, the poignancy had pretty much worn off. Want to hear a bad singer wreck a potentially great alt-folk song? Check "Every Word You Sound". Wonder why "Good Life" >>> everything else on the record? Because Sice is singing it, with Martin contributing muted off-key backing vocals like in the good old days of Creation when a good paycheck could make ace songwriters understand when they should defer frontman status to people with range.Built to Spill You in ReverseCake Fashion NuggetChris Walla Field ManualClap Your Hands Say Yeah Clap Your Hands Say YeahColdplay A Rush of Blood to the HeadColdplay Mylo XylotoColdplay are a competent band---they have to be, obviously---who have too much money on their hands, and/or too much pressure from their record company to churn out something universally appealling. Judging from this album, "Enoxification" has become simple code for "wild overproduction". The Pitchfork reviewer praised Johnny Buckland's underrated guitar playing, but how can he tell in all this sweeping communion-of-brilliant-snowflakes fuzziness? Really, Chris Walla and Alan Moulder achieved nearly the same thing on this year's Death Cab for Cutie record, and I bet Walla comes a lot cheaper. Still...there are some nice surprises. "Every Teardrop is a Waterfall" sounds a lot better here than it did as a stand-alone single. Chris Martin's vocal on "Us Against the World" is gorgeous. The lyrics are, for the most part, better than usual (I actually like the bit about the "crocodiles ticking around the world"). There's a sense---completely intentional, but still---that the songs would translate really well live. And while there's nothing as pretty as "Strawberry Swing", there are some ok hooks poking out through all that production wash. Unfortunately, the most immediate song "Princess of China", is undermined for me by Coldplay's decision to feature the only female vocalist in the world who really doesn't need the exposure, and then give her a bunch of crap lyrics full of hamhanded references to her and her hosts' exalted pop status. Not only content to dominate the charts, the implication is that's all Coldplay listens to, or cares about, anymore.Crowded House IntriguerCut Copy In Ghost ColoursDeath Cab for Cutie PlansDeVotchKa 100 LoversDinosaur Jr. FarmDirty Projectors Bitte OrcaDJ Shadow The Less You Know, the BetterDjango Django Django DjangoMaybe this will click later, but a month with this record and I'm still hearing mostly a lot of annoying quirk-rock, albeit interspersed with some nice, unusual harmonies here and there. The last third of "Waveforms" is great and closer "Silver Rays" is superb. Mostly, though, it's like The Bees with art school pretensions.Doves (UK) The Last BroadcastElbow The Seldom Seen KidEleventh Dream Day Zeroes and OnesEmily Haines and the Soft Skeleton Knives Don't Have Your BackExplosions in the Sky Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die...Field Music Field MusicGood Old War Come Back As RainThese guys are basically Fiction Family with 95% less religiosity, 60% less misogyny, and an extra singer to harmonize on the rollicky feel-good strummed choruses. For sure, all these things represent improvements on the model, but they aren't quite enough to recommend this.Immaculate Machine FablesIron And Wine The Creek Drank the CradleJamie Woon MirrorwritingI picked up Jamie Woon's debut on a lark after seeing a promotion in the HMV arguing that, if I liked Elbow, I would also like Mirrorwriting. The problem, as I've been reminded again, is that I don't really like Elbow, in the sense of deriving any serious joy from any of their songs. It's more that I respect the Elbow aesthetic. And moving that tasteful, lovelorn, uber-British vibe from a Manchester pub to a London club (or city street) is conceptually appealing. The result is exactly what I should have expected. The songs on Woon's debut are well constructed (although single "Lady Luck" loses some points for having a chorus melodically identical to the verse), smart, impossibly stylish, and really, really boring. Most of the tracks are just synthy/clubby enough to tap into the dupstep craze, though nothing actually sounds like dubstep, at least as I understand the phenomenon. And amid all the mannerisms, only "Spirits" achieves a level of stylish danceability that pushes it out beyond the overweening torpor of the album. Look, music should be smart and tight, but it should also appeal to your gut. Dance music should make you want to go clubbing, or at least throw your arms up in your kitchen, not just nod in intellectual appreciation at the singer's taste. I suppose people that don't find this boring would be correct in their assessment of its other merits. I can only speak for myself. The heart says 2.0. The head says 3.0.Jesse Malin The HeatKanye West Late RegistrationLiam Finn I'll Be LightningLightning Bolt Earthly DelightsMae Moore FolkloreMassive Attack 100th WindowMates of State MountaintopsI feel like everybody, myself included, seriously underrated Mates of States' last record, Rearrange Us. For my money, on reflection it surpasses Yo La Tengo's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out as a portrait of a failing relationship: at least as poignant and a whole lot tighter. And like YLT, the Mates are still mates, which is also kind of poignant. So I'm reluctant to say too much critical about the new MoS record, which mostly splits the difference between the more frenetic earlier records (though with more synth and outside instrumentation and less organ) and the solid, precise pop of Rearrange Us. I'm a sucker for blatant retro workouts like "Sway", which sounds like something straight out of a John Hughes movie. And I can't but appreciate a band so dedicated to digging out and offering up hooks, particularly on ebullient anthems like lead off track and single "Palomino". Yet, for all the whooping and harmonizing, nothing on the record really grabs me, and the continuing theme of relationship angst pales after the considerably more brutal stuff on the last record, making Mountaintops feel a little forced and artificial in places. I continue to really like this band, but Mountaintops hasn't totally won me over, at least not yet.Matthew Sweet GirlfriendMetric Grow Up and Blow AwayModest Mouse Good News for People Who Love Bad NewsMojave 3 Excuses For TravelersMojave 3 Puzzles Like YouMutemath ArmisticeMutemath MutemathMy Morning Jacket CircuitalMy Morning Jacket ZNeko Case BlacklistedNeneh Cherry Raw Like SushiThis album -- one of the very early Bristol dance scene records with writing credits to Robert Del Naja among others -- really hasn't aged very well. Lead off track "Buffalo Stance" is still great, and the whole thing makes a decent nostalgia trip. But the album owes more to U.S. hip hop/pop hybrids from the era than to the burgeoning Bristol/Manchester "trip hop" sound. As a result, Cherry really doesn't come across all that "raw", and the late-80s production is occasionally appalling.Panda Bear Person PitchPassion Pit GossamerPaul Buchanan Mid AirPeter Bjorn and John Writer's BlockReal Estate DaysJingle. Jangle. Also, I gather these fellows are afflicted by a certain amount of melancholy. On the bright side, "Younger Than Yesterday" has the loveliest and most memorable basslines I've heard in a long while, and it does go a ways toward saving this.Snow Patrol Fallen EmpiresDespite having a serious weakness for this kind of music, I've never really understood Snow Patrol. Eyes Open was a horrible record: dumb lyrics sung in an annoying Irish brogue over chord progressions that as often as not contained a single chord (ok, maybe two). I wasn't going to bother again, but I bought this because friends had tickets to see them in concert. Happily, Fallen Empires is surprisingly tolerable, by Snow Patrol standards even inventive and dynamic. If Jacknife Lee wasn't screwing up the procedings with the worst sort of polite string accompaniments imaginable (one of the seven guys in the touring band was apparently getting them out of a keyboard during the concert or they were piped in) and Lightbody were an even marginally better lyricist who didn't haul out a lighter-waving platitude for every chorus, it would even be sort of good. "I'll Never Let Go" is solid stadium rock, the sort of thing I didn't mind getting stuck in my head. And in "Lifening" Lightbody gives a shout out to Teenage Fanclub, even though they're Scottish and he's imagining watching Ireland play in the World Cup. It's sweet and affecting until the f'ing violins come back in.Spoon Kill the MoonlightStars In Our Bedroom After The WarStars The Five GhostsSufjan Stevens MichiganSufjan Stevens A Sun CameSuper Furry Animals MwngTame Impala LonerismTeenage Fanclub BandwagonesqueThe Cure Wild Mood SwingsThe Low Anthem Smart FleshSetting a challenge for themselves, Low Anthem recorded much of this follow up to their great breakthrough record, 2009's Oh My God Charlie Darwin, in an abandoned pasta sauce factory, with decidedly mixed results. The warehouse accoustics forced them, by their own admission, to focus on soft, folky songs that wouldn't drown in echo, or simply sound small in the expanse. "Boeing 737", a stomping 9-11 tale, actually benefits from the confines of the space, heavy reverb lending the song an urgent but far-away quality befitting the subject matter. The better softer songs, like "I'll Take Out Your Ashes", marry evocative lyrics to intricate but unfussy arrangements (in this case, two banjos), while Jocie Adam's clarinet sounds wonderfully ghostly on "Golden Cattle" and "Wire". But the constraints of space don't just shape the record; they also bind it. One problem is that Low Anthem are simply not great accoustic folk composers. Opener "Ghost Woman Blues", a George Carter cover, is most notable for the band's inability to match it in songwriting until halfway through the record. Lead vocalist Ben Knox abandons both his falsetto and his winsome Tom Waits impression, employing an arch hillbilly vocal affect on nearly all the tracks. While this worked fine for a few tracks on Darwin, here it evokes Colin Meloy in its grating relentlessness. And the string of folk ballads, with amost no rock songs to break them up, is monotonous to the point where the details of the arrangements, the reverb, and the fading of sounds in the expanse are just not enough to maintain my interest.The National The NationalThe New Pornographers Mass RomanticThe White Stripes De StijlTinted Windows Tinted WindowsTom Waits Real GoneTrain Drops of JupiterTrain TrainTricky Knowle West BoyTV on the Radio Dear ScienceU2 The Joshua TreeVampire Weekend Vampire WeekendWilco A.M.Wilco SummerteethWolf Parade Apologies to the Queen MaryYeah Yeah Yeahs It's Blitz!Yeah Yeah Yeahs Show Your BonesYo La Tengo I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One2.0 poorAnimal Collective Strawberry JamArcade Fire Neon BibleBen Folds Lonely AvenueBen Folds Songs for SilvermanBright Eyes CassadagaBroken Social Scene You Forgot It in PeopleCarbon Leaf Love Loss Hope RepeatColdplay X&YDeath Cab for Cutie Codes and KeysCodes and Keys begins very well with "Home is a Fire" and ends very well with "Stay Young Go Dancing". The former is a deceptively off-kilter pop song with Tunng-like lyrics about melting fences and Ben Gibbard's fear of earthquakes. The latter is a perfect straight-up love song in which Gibbard explains Why He'd Want to Live Here, despite the tremors. Sadly, these tracks are bookends to what turns out to be a dismayingly lazy album, a set of sludgy synth washes replete with Coldplay-calibre lyrics, weak hooks and some of Gibbard's most intentionally irritating singing to date, albeit mercifully buried pretty deep in Chris Walla's mix. The album also features possibly the two worst Death Cab singles ever in "You Are a Tourist" and "Underneath the Sycamore". (The former is partially redeemed by a killer hook coming off the bridge, although this mostly serves as an unfortunate reminder of what Death Cab can serve up when they're actually trying.) There are some other nice moments here and there: "Some Boys" is warm and gutsy while "Monday Morning" is the most "classic Death Cab"-sounding thing here, and a terrific respite after "Unobstructed Views", a tuneless and ponderous mediation on Girbbard's very unexceptional atheism. Taken as a whole, Codes and Keys is pretty unappealing, an album by a band coasting on talent and empty Big Think while ignoring the details that make good pop albums tick. Then again, going by Death Cab's history, the next one should be excellent.Department of Eagles In Ear ParkEcho Lake Wild PeaceElbow Leaders of the Free WorldFinn Brothers Everyone is HereFleet Foxes Fleet FoxesFujiya and Miyagi VentriloquizzingFujiya and Miyagi LightbulbsHowling Bells Radio WarsJesse Malin Glitter in the gutterKanye West GraduationKings of Convenience Declaration of DependenceMatt Pond PA The Green FuryMetric Live It OutNeutral Milk Hotel In the Aeroplane Over the SeaOasis Don't Believe the TruthOkkervil River The Stand InsPernice Brothers The World Won't EndPet Shop Boys FundamentalPorcupine Tree The IncidentSilversun Pickups CarnavasSmith Westerns Dye It BlondeI missed Smith Westerns' self-titled debut, and it's now pretty far down the list of records I plan to buy. As I understand the band's evolution, however, that record was a lo-fi affair which achieved sufficient success to encourage them to follow it up by coating their sounds in some higher-priced studio sheen. They've received a lot of praise for this but, judging from Dye It Blonde, it really doesn't suit them at all. In fact, I have the strong sense that the glossy production strips these songs of whatever innate personality and pleasurableness they might have had as sweet, rough-hewn compositions. There are genuine hooks, but, coated as they are in such slippery and expensive-sounding production, they glide on past, leaving the listener (or me at least) yearning for a bit of sweat and strife, something that sounds at least a little bit physical. Cullen Omori sounds positively anodyne as he drops sweet bon mots to his beloved ("weekends are never fun if you're not around here to-ooh-ooh-ooh") or glams it up with puppyish exerburance ("All Die Young"), his vocals mixed into the stew of shimmery guitars and keyboards with disconcerting precision. After several months of listening I can barely distinguish the songs from each other and never have the urge to listen to any one in particular. For a band that wants to (be) pop, this is not a good outcome.Stars NightsongsSufjan Stevens The Age of AdzTears for Fears Saturnine Martial & LunaticTegan and Sara So JealousThe Decemberists The Hazards of LoveThe Decemberists PicaresqueThe Field From Here We Go SublimeThe Hold Steady Boys and Girls in AmericaThe New Pornographers Electric VersionThe Pains of Being Pure at Heart BelongI hate to pan this. The Pains do loveable power pop built on propulsive drums-bass-guitar-fuzz essentials, big melodic lines, and the sort of airy emo vocals that evoke yearning while maintaining a certain distance. It's all competently executed, and these are indeed the elements of which the best power pop is composed and for which we all should have a healthy weakness. And yet...I have no idea how anybody relates to this. The songs are warm and fuzzed out; but in the end they are only marginally more textured and less obvious than a set of Snow Patrol ballads. There's also no dynamism to speak of. Every single track builds through an insistent 4/4 riff-and-drums-verse into a big chorus you can sing along to after hearing a few times. They differ mainly by whether the vocal is supported by an electric guitar or a keyboard on organ setting, and by how much they remind you of a younger and less douchey Cure. The lyrics, meanwhile, are a barrage of tame dream pop / New Romantic bromides. "Even in dreams I could not betray you/...There's nobody like you/Is that why they don't like you like I do?" Kip Berman sings on "Even in Dreams". It's delivered with sufficient cool to keep from being ridiculous. But, really, can anybody over the age of 15 be affected by this sentiment? In "The Body", Berman gets earthier, asking his beloved to "Tell me again what the body?s for.../I want to hurt like it did before". As a poignant ode to teenage blue balls and the whinging that frames it, it works. Unfortunately, these guys are in their 20s, and I don't think that was entirely the goal.The Rubens The RubensThe Temper Trap ConditionsTiny Vipers Life on EarthTravis Good FeelingZeus Busting VisionsI love bands where all the members contribute different songs, but judging from this record, some of the members of Zeus should give up and let whoever wrote opener "Are You Gonna Waste My Time?", or maybe "Love is a Game", do most of the writing. As is, the band's infectious playing and multi-pronged vocal attack gets wasted on a lot of forgettable, retro-pastiche-y songs that sound like they were composed during a group jam session in which the band landing hard together on one note is all that passes for a hook. A little precision in the songwriting department would go a long way.1.5 very poorA.C. Newman Get GuiltyChantal Kreviazuk Plain JaneDestroyer Trouble In DreamsFiction Family Fiction FamilyLos Campesinos! We Are Beautiful, We Are DoomedSnow Patrol Eyes OpenThe Fiery Furnaces Blueberry BoatThe Tragically Hip World ContainerWilco Wilco (The Album)Wintersleep WintersleepYo La Tengo Popular Songs1.0 awfulEditors An End Has A StartTears for Fears Raoul and the Kings of Spain
Bands: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
