Music

So while I started the year off with the idea that I’d discuss my bizarre listening schedule that involves slowly re-listening to all of the music in my collections, it kind of got hard to keep up with and it isn’t exactly “timely” when an indie snob is writing about classic rock or albums that came out a decade ago. Instead, here are my thoughts on all of the albums that have come out this year, including ones I’ve written full reviews for. I’ll try to repeat this feature again in the summer, t

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Canadian group Tokyo Police Club likely had the best of intentions when they formed their garage-rock tinged indie rock band. Unfortunately, they couldn’t have chosen a worse time – the mid 2000s – to enter the scene. Every other garage-rock tinged indie rock band had their heyday by this point (think of all those bands with names fitting “The _____s”) and had moved onto new styles to stay relevant. Tokyo Police Club modestly entered in 2006 with their EP A Lesson In Crime, which featured franti

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It would have been difficult to discuss indie music in 2011 without at least mentioning Foster the People. Their debut Torches from this year made many “best of” lists, including a high slot on my own, and even if you disliked the album you still probably heard it at some point. This is because their hit single “Pumped Up Kicks” was everywhere in 2011 (and well into 2012), receiving airplay on both indie and pop radio stations. It was a mellow, dreamy-sounding, Blur-esque indie rock song wit

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With all of the electronic-based indie albums that have been released in the past few years, it has become harder and harder to stick out. While some groups have favored a maximalist approach, throwing in all the bleeps and bloops they can, Metronomy’s distinguishing feature seemed to be their subtlety. On their 2011 album The English Riviera, nearly every song was crafted so that any sort of added instrumentation or note change was easily perceptible. Melodies were framed around a basic, repeti

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Describing Beck’s music is no easy task. He got his start making “anti-folk” music in the early 1990s, culminating in the hit single “Loser” from 1994’s Mellow Gold. He then went on to record the breakthrough Odelay in 1996, which combined rock, hip-hop, and country, and followed it with a straightforward folk album Mutations in 1998. Continuing to explore new terrain, he released the funk and R&B influenced Midnite Vultures in 1999, only to follow it up with a very somber, acoustic album Sea C...

I’ve always found reviewing post-rock music to be difficult. For those that don’t know, post-rock can be summed up as the genre where rock instruments are used to create compositions without standard rock music structures. There are no choruses, bridges, and frequently no lyrics, which leads to many post-rock songs being described as “ambient.” Mogwai definitely fit this bill, so here goes nothing.

Scottish post-rock group Mogwai are not a band to allow lengthy gaps in their discography. They h



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It’s pretty hard to divorce Stephen Malkmus from his legendary indie rock band of the 90s Pavement, even if his 14 years with the Jicks now outstrips Pavement’s decade of existence. While Stephen Malkmus wanted his post-Pavement project to simply be released as “The Jicks,” record label Matador insisted he attach his name to the project. While the band will therefore always have the recognition benefit of being associated with Pavement, it has no doubt caused Malkmus to stress that his solo proj

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Trying to encapsulate a year in music in one Top Ten list is completely impossible. Most reputable music outlets do Top Fifty albums of the year list, and still leave a lot of great work on the table. This helps me to assuage, at least slightly, my guilt at maintaining three honorable mentions slots again this year. There was a lot of greatness in 2013, and even with this, I cannot hope to capture even much of it. That being said, here are my very favorite albums of 2013.

Honorable menti...

The Year 2013 was, once again, an exceedingly good one for music lovers. Narrowing down these lists is always difficult, and when it comes to music, often nearly impossible. In preparation for year-end lists, I listen to days worth of music, and still miss much of the year’s excellent output (as always, feel free to point out favorites I have completely ignored, so that myself and other readers can check them out). The “Top Ten Songs From Albums That Didn’t Make My List” always becomes a smatt...

I have to say that 2013 was a really great year for music. Looking back at 2012…I was kind of a dick about what came out then, so I’m going to focus on the positives this year. This year was very hard to make a top 10 countdown for, since dozens of the roughly 50 albums I listened to this year were contenders for some sort of recognition. There were solid albums by some of my personal favorites, best albums in years by bands I was growing distant from, and even new artists with impressive debu
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As you’ll find out tomorrow, 2013 was full of great albums and it took quite some time for me to narrow down my favorites of the year. Some albums were solid throughout, whereas others had songs that I kept coming back to even if I didn’t get too into the album as a whole. This countdown is for the latter category.

10. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Despair
Album: Mosquito



The fourth album by Yeah Yeah Yeahs turned out to be their most eclectic one yet, with some tracks rocking hard like Fever To Tel







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Despite listening to more and more of it in recent years, I’ll admit that I’m no aficionado of all electronic music. I can’t get into extended sessions of trance music, I generally require lyrics to go with the dance beats, and I tend to be very picky with what I see as a huge genre. But I do know what I like, and damn I love me some Cut Copy. I was sold from the moment I heard the chorus of “Take Me Over” on 2011’s Zonoscope, and loved that the band not only did the 80s new wave sound, but di

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Montreal indie rock band Arcade Fire could not have asked for a more successful career to date. Their 2004 debut album Funeral was unanimously praised by critics for its emotive lyrics, striking vocals, and beautiful melodies that utilized piano, strings, and accordion. While their debut was more a critical than commercial success, their 2007 follow-up , Neon Bible would be both and pushed the band into the fore of the indie scene. This album expanded upon the orchestral-influenced sound of the
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Of Montreal are a band whose style has changed an incredible amount of times since their inception. What started as frontman Kevin Barnes with an acoustic guitar singing cutesy songs (see Cherry Peel and The Bedside Drama: A Petite Tragedy) became Kevin and a few friends making silly-sounding tracks that were usually vignettes about made-up characters (see The Gay Parade and Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse). After this, the band started getting in a more psychedeli

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I imagine that Yuck never expected their second album to be as much a metaphysical question as an artistic statement. Yet with the departure of lead singer Daniel Blumberg after their self-titled debut album, and the promotion of guitarist Max Bloom to fill the role, Yuck turns their sophomore effort Glow & Behold into a chance to meditate on the question of what, exactly, makes a band a band. Some groups have managed to replace prominent members and continue to perform successfully. But is Qu...

To call The Diving Board a back-to-basics album for Elton John would be both true and completely misleading. In that the album is centered around John and his piano, with lyrics provided by Bernie Taupin, this is vintage Elton John. Yet in a more honest sense, the album goes back even further, to the earliest days of Elton’s career. Stripped of a lot of the glitz and glam of his heyday, The Diving Board is a more straight forward piano album than John has recorded in decades. More than at anyt...

Even if you didn’t want to, you’ve probably heard MGMT at some point in the last 5 years. Their songs “Time to Pretend,” “Kids,” and “Electric Feel” were everywhere - on the radio, in bars, and on the dance floor. All three came from their 2008 album Oracular Spectacular, which was hailed as one of the best albums of that year and even contained catchy (albeit less danceable) non-single tracks that were more psychedelic. And this was no sellout strategy, as their demo album Climbing to New Low...

The career of Bill Callahan has always seemed to be, in some sense, whittling down the edges, searching continuously for the core. Early in his career, he obscured himself within the name Smog, but since beginning to go by his own name, he seems to be increasingly reducing ancillary elements, searching for the diamond-hard center of his soul. He creates sonic landscapes, but never feels the need to overcrowd them; their sparseness is part of their beauty, and the room he provides allows listen...

First off, I have no idea what this album cover is supposed to be, but I like it.

Islands are a band that have changed themselves many a time over. To paraphrase what I said in my review of their last album, their first two releases Return to the Sea and Arm’s Way were fairly similar in style and featured violins, synthesizer, and the occasional steel drum to give the songs a lush sound. Then they had the simpler, poppier, and electronic-driven Vapours, only to do a 180 and come out with the me...